My Lord’s Engagement – J of Hearts (Part 2)

Note: Please don’t read it in the little pop-up for the reader. For some reason it doesn’t reflect my later edits (which I often make a lot of after publishing), so please click ‘view original’.

One Day I Became a Burikko Villainess Noble Girl, out now.
Honto tutorial here.

Think of it as throwing money at the author and Alphapolis, and getting a book with squiggles and pretty pictures as a pleasant extra.

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“Camille?”

Carrying Camille to the two-person room that His Highness prepared for us, I lowered her onto the bed.

“I’ll bring you water, so stay right there.”

When I tried to leave her side, the cuff of my shirt was caught.

“Achi, lle, don’t go.”

Camille’s raspberry eyes were gazing up at me, moist and upturned.

“…What a difficult drunk.”

I immediately folded.

“As long as you don’t want me to, I won’t be going anywhere.”

When I combed her silky hair with my fingers, she narrowed her eyes in pleasure.
And she just continued to cling to me.

“Achille…”

What is this? So cute.
It seems that the plan that His Highness suggested at the entrance ceremony was actually realised.
I thought that getting Camille drunk to have her act spoiled was much too risky for a person like her though.
But it seems that since she’s weak to alcohol, getting her drunk on sweets instead of liquor is just right.

“Camille, what did Beatrix mean by 『going to the academy』?”

“Nnnn, it’s a seeecret.”

Seeing Camille giggle as she looks at me is incredibly, incredibly cute, but…
I’d better wring the answer out of her here, even if by force.
I get the feeling that if I leave this be, absolutely nothing good will come of it.

“Camille? Properly answer please.”

I looked at her eyes and slowly spoke.

“…You won’t stop me?”

Camille asked me as she leant against me.

“Mn, I won’t stop you.”

Is it something that I would stop her for?
In that case, I’d better stop her whatever the cost.

“I want to go see the Headmaster.”

The drunk Camille was unexpectedly obedient.
The normal Camille probably wouldn’t answer honestly unless you forcefully tied her up and forced it out of her.

“The Headmaster?”

“Right. He’s the secret character, so I’m going to have him stop the Heroine.”

“Secret, chraacter?”

By ‘Heroine’, she means that schoolgirl, right?

“Right. He’s the only one who can match the Heroine.”

I don’t really know about the secret character or whatever, but it seems that it’s somebody from the story in Camille’s old world. It seems the Headmaster appeared in the story as well.
Just like His Highness and I.

“Beatrix told me about it. That the secret character was the Headmaster, and was stronger than the Heroine.”

“…I see. So Miss Beatrix was the 『same』 as you, huh.”

After we were attacked by the schoolgirl, Camille told His Highness and I.
That in fact, Miss Beatrix was also from the same place as her.
This was also one of the reasons that His Highness took her as his bride.

Hearing the details from Camille, I found out just how serious this matter was.
Apparently this stupid girl was planning on marching alone into the base of somebody who might still be a dangerous person.
…I’m really glad that I found out before she headed there.

“I calculated it all. When I met him last time, I didn’t feel any hositilty.”

“That doesn’t mean that everything would work out, you know?”

Camille’s thinking was fundamentally too naive[amai]. As sweet[amai] as the candy that she loves.

“It’s finee I said.”

Even if you use that lovely voice that tickles a man’s heart, it’s pointless.
Even if everybody in the world believed her words, I alone won’t.

“Then you plan on meeting another man alone despite being married? That’s immoral, you know?”

“Ah-…!”

Hearing my suddenly lowered voice, Camille backed away while trembling.
It seems that even drunk, she can still sense the changes in other people’s atmosphere.
I really wish that she would direct that sensitivity to danger towards her own actions.

If you’re going to run away from me, then you could just avoid sticking your neck into danger to begin with.
I grabbed Camille’s arm as she tried to escape.
She’s drunk right now, so her movements are sluggish. I easily caught her.

“Eh-… Ah-, you’re wro-, it’s not being immoral-”

“Am I not enough for you?”

Her eyes were swimming.

“That’s not, it so-, not it-…”

But well, I wasn’t worried about her cheating on me or falling in love with someone else anyway.
Camille doesn’t have that sort of capacity. She’s become like this with just me alone.

But her lacking sense of danger is lethal.
If I don’t correct this while I still can, I get the feeling that one day something will happen that I can’t undo.

“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t notice.”

I’m sure that from Camille’s point of view, I’m giving quite a smile.

“So like I said, that’s not it… -HYAA-!”

Camille was putting some distance between us and desperately trying to resist, but… being a person who uses magic for everything, she was really weak.
Without her magic tattoos, she probably wouldn’t be able to defend herself directly.

Incidentally, her magic tattoos don’t work on me.
She kindly adjusted her tattoos so they wouldn’t work on me alone.
I’m happy that I’m that special to her.
After all, it’s useful in situations like this.

“I’ll work hard so that you won’t feel uneasy.”

“Sto-, it’s fine even if you, don’t work so hard, so-”

Camille tried again to fruitlessly run away.
When I relaxed the power in my arms, the force she put into it made her topple onto the bed.
She doesn’t seem to be feeling unwell, so there probably isn’t any need to nurse her.

Now then, enough of questioning Camille…

“It would probably be better to relay this information to His Highness, huh.”

I sent a communication spell to His Highness.
It would be fine too to just head there myself, but if by some chance His Highness and Miss Beatrix were in the middle of something, it’d be bad.

I’m already getting no breaks because of his burst of anger, so it’s hard to find time to relax with Camille, after all.

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“I’m sure that from Camille’s point of view, I’m giving quite a smile.”
Originally ‘ii egao’ which literally means ‘nice smile’, but usually when it’s written in katakana, or else in the wrong context, instead it means a dark or evil smile. I tried to carry this across by writing ‘quite’, but I know that some people aren’t English natives and yeah. Thought I’d explain just in case.

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