Lady to Queen (Webnovel) - Chapter 232

[Side Story 1] The life of the dead is in the memory of the living. (Complete)

[Side Story: The Eighth Episode]

[Side Story 2] The violet rose.

“Please go a little faster.” There was a bit of anxiety mixed in his voice. Anyway, it was true that he was worried. -Is he in a lot of pain?-‘ He was trying to calm the beating of his heart with a serious expression inside the carriage, when suddenly he felt a huge impact and the carriage swayed. Rothesay was perplexed as he quickly grabbed onto the floor of the seat in the carriage and tried to regain his balance.

Apparently, the driver of the carriage had made a mistake. Before the carriage had even stopped moving, Rothesay opened the door and got out of the carriage. The carriage and another carriage had tried to avoid colliding with each other and seemed to be swaying back and forth hard. The carriage on the other side appeared quite luxurious, and probably belonged to someone of a similar status to Rothesay, a high-ranking noble.

“Oy, be careful! Do you know who is riding in this carriage right now?”

“Come on, I said I am sorry!”

“Who is the one that did something wrong, to then be shouting loudly?”

The situation did not look too good. The moment Rothesay opened his mouth to try to cool down the two coachmen, somebody got out of the carriage, speaking in a light voice.

She was a woman, who seemed to have sparkling fireworks bursting from her red hair, along with a shining golden sun that seemed to be embedded in her eyes. She looked to be roughly similar in age to Rothesay, if not even younger than him.

“Oh, Lady. You should just stay inside…”

“I am fine. Please do not fight. More than that, is the person riding inside the other carriage alright?”

He did not believe in the expression “falling in love at first sight” and had even leaned towards hating it, but the moment he first laid eyes on her, Rothesay wanted to beat his past self senselessly for having even thought such a thing.

He wondered if this was what ‘falling in love at first sight’ was like.

He could not think of anything else. Only two thoughts dominated his mind. First, was that she was a very beautiful woman. Second, was that he wanted to start a conversation with her. This was a natural kind of phenomenon, and he put that exact thought into action.

“I am sorry, my Lady. It seems that my coachman made a mistake.”

“No, my lord. I am fine.”

They did not know each other since they had never met, but it was the fault of the man rather than the fault of the woman. Rothesay hated social gatherings so much that the chance of him attending them was as rare as the beans that grew during a drought. So, no matter how often people went to those social gatherings, if their luck was on the bad side, the chance of encountering and knowing Rothesay was extremely small.

The woman was courteous, sticking to decorum and asking him, “Perhaps, you were hurt somewhere, or do you have any injuries?”

Rothesay was thrilled that the woman before him had said this to him first, and without having any particular thoughts go through his head, he replied to her, “I am fine. Is the Lady okay?”

“Yes, I also…”

It was a relief to hear that. He tried to come up with other words to keep the conversation going, but the woman opened her mouth first.

“That is a relief. Then I will be taking my leave. Please be on your way safely,” she said.

-No!- Rothesay shouted internally to himself. He could not let her go on her way like this. He gathered up his courage and called out to her to stop her from leaving, “Wa- wait a minute, my Lady.”

However, whether the woman could hear his words or not, she was already entering the carriage.

Soon the woman’s carriage departed, and Rothesay remained standing there for a while with a dazed look. -Oh my goodness… I let her go like that!- As he was blaming himself silently, the coachman by his side said to him,

“Master Rothesay, if you wait here any longer, the sun may set. Let us be on our way quickly.”

“…” Rothesay had no choice but to move his feet that were now full of countless regrets. However, the red-haired woman that he had just met continued to linger in his head.

—–

After Rothesay arrived at the Count of Lascelles, he observed Walter lying in his bed and said bluntly, “I do not think that you are even that sick.”

At his words, Walter got up from his bed, as if he felt it was unfair,

“Sick! I am sick!”

“Alright. Be quiet already. When you act in such a way, you seem even less like a sick person.”

“Damn it all…” Walter sniffed his nose and laid back in his bed. The blanket was raised all the way to his neck.

Rothesay thought that he had just caught a mild cold and fever as he explained to him, “My mother spoke to me as if something catastrophic had happened, and so I came over here just in case, but it is just a mere cold and fever?

“I could die like this, Ro.”

“A fool cannot get sick, Wal.”

“You want to die?”

“Seeing you in your current condition, I think you will die earlier than me.”

Walter gave one glimpse to the chuckling Rothesay, and said in a split voice, “After lying down all day, I am bored to death. Any interesting stories to share with me?”

“Well…” He turned the wheels in his head to think, and soon remembered one thing. The woman he had seen on the roadside. Rossy opened his mouth nonchalantly, “I saw a woman.”

“A woman?” Walter asked in a very surprised tone at the unexpected topic. Rothesay and a woman, this was a combination that really did not fit together. Unlike Walter, who often had romantic relationships, Rothesay was of a breed that did not get close to women. Of course, this was something that Walter could not fathom. Anyway, Rothesay was bringing up the subject of a woman. This was really rare. Walter promptly, “Was she pretty?”

“…Of course your level is so low.” Rothesay clicked his tongue in condemnation as he replied right away, “She is so beautiful. She resembles a goddess of the sun.”

“…I almost vomited just now.”

“But she really was so beautiful.”

“…The person who should be making a trip to the hospital is most likely you and not me, Ro.”

“I am more than fine. She was just exceedingly beautiful.”

“Who in the world was it? Was there such a beautiful woman in the capital?”

“I saw her for the first time today as well.”

“That must have been the case, since you are someone who does not attend social gatherings at all. That is why I said we should go to some of the parties together!” Walter hit the nail on the head as he followed up right away with another question, “So, who is she?”

“…”

The biggest problem was that he did not know who she was. Rothesay’s face turned serious…