I made use of everyone I could, and drastically changed my planned schedule for tomorrow. I'll go over the details later, but supporting Cornell's plan that he came up with will be convenient for me as well. Although I want to break the engagement in some way, I still intend to keep the information about Diferis a secret.
To begin with, it's strange why Viscount Ogren would ask Feria and Cornell to see him and discuss things, when he's always been so vehemently opposed to canceling the engagement.
According to what Cornell told me, the girl that Ista Ogren likes is the daughter of a western domain lord, and that domain's primary income stems from agriculture. Oscar gathered some basic information for me on that domain, but the conclusion is that there's no way that domain will have enough money to cover the Ogren family's debt to the Nordsturms.
Meaning, there's no way that Viscount Ogren asked for Feria in order to agree to cancel the engagement. Then, what exactly is he planning?
……If something happens to Feria's engagement at this current timing, it will probably be the Rogshia family as well as me that suffer from it. The Ogren family is being supported by the powerful Nordsturm family. Even if something happens to cancel the engagement, the Ogren family is in no danger of financial ruin given their backers. The biggest victim will be the Rogshia family as it will cause their downfall, and I'd be affected by the ripples of such an outcome as well.
The Arxian nobility greatly dislike seeing the downfall of one of their own. Although legally I won't be directly responsible, it's actually a heavy responsibility that's been given to me. If the Rogshias are ruined, the other nobles are sure to assign the blame to me. I won't be able to avoid having my reputation in shambles……
So, did Viscount Ogren summon Feria at the instruction of Marquis Nordsturm? There's a high chance that he's merely working as Nordsturm's chess piece for the sake of having Earl Terejia and I exiled from noble society.
……Did Marquis Nordsturm anticipate that Feria would come without obtaining permission from noble school? Students inside the school are supposed to be isolated from the outside. Basically speaking, the students aren't able to obtain information from outside, the only things they hear about noble society are what their parents tell them.
But conversely, it's quite easy for those outside to learn about the affairs inside the school. There are many servants working in the noble school. They're an easy source of information.
Even I've used my personal funds to hire two commoner women working in the lecture halls for information purposes, and Earl Terejia has more than a dozen sources himself.
While the noble school itself has no direct involvement with politics, having knowledge about the future power players in the royal capital is still useful.
Since I'm primarily focused on my own domain for the time being, perhaps it's a bit early for me to have hired people inside the school already, but I want to be fully prepared for the time when I'll have to enter noble school myself. ……I've gone off a tangent here.
Meaning, perhaps Marquis Nordsturm found out from sources in the noble school about Feria's engagement situation, and it would have been quite easy for him to predict Feria's actions if he had Viscount Ogren call her out to discuss the engagement. Things will be even easier for him if there are Viscount Ogren's people around Feria. Because their two families are engaged, there won't even be anything suspicious about it.
I don't know the exact reason that Viscount Ogren summoned Feria over. But, it seems to me that Viscount Ogren is making moves in order to destroy the engagement between their families.
-The fact that I caught Cornell and Feria before they were able to arrive at the Ogren residence was quite a stroke of luck. But thanks to this I'm able to make a counterplay, and I'm not going to let this chance to turn everything around slip past.
For the next three days, I was consecutively absent from meetings at the House of Lords, claiming I was ill. In the meantime, the items I had prepared arrived at my residence one after the other, and one of the items I had procured, an amount of fruit, began sending sweet scents wafting through my house.
……It will be nice if I can gain the upper hand through this. Some things depend on other parties' movements though, and I don't know what may happen in the end.
"Um……"
Feria who was sitting on the bed in the guest room, was looking at me with an incredibly awkward expression on her face. I lowered my cup of black tea, and asked her "what is it?" as I looked in her direction.
"It's about, my father's business……"
"Ahh. Did you learn more about it?"
"……Yes. It seems that, he's in the beeswax business."
……Bees, eh.
"Beekeeping seems to be a flourishing business in the Greenfield region."
"Yes. I believe that my father raised bees also in order to join the beekeeping business. However, his bees didn't produce any honey, so he probably was forced to change to raising bees for the purpose of producing beeswax."
"Why do you think so?"
When I asked for the reason behind this, Feria seemed to consider the answer for a short while, then she hesitantly began telling me the reasons that she came up with.
"In my home…… We go a little overboard with lighting wax candles everywhere. Also, for the past five years, I often received skin care cream from my father……"
"I see."
Beeswax making, eh…… However, I still have some doubts remaining. It's reasonable to say that there's a high demand for candles. But still, Viscount Rogshia's business started out as a failure. And I've never heard anything about beeswax being a special regional product of the Rogshia domain before.
……Something about all this bugs me. I'm really bothered by it, but I have no way to investigate it……
Besides, right now I have to focus on the opponent I have to deal with immediately, Viscount Ogren. I pushed away my doubts to the back of my mind for the time being.