Lucrezia decided to be bold.
"Yes, he is my nephew. His name is Zanobi, the son of my second brother, Stefano."
Giovanni, the Latin teacher who had come before, had been a fifth cousin to Lucrezia, but this time they were more closely related. She seemed to be taking care of it properly.
Arabella, who had just finished her month-long probation, interjected without her noticing.
"Oh, that ugly brother?"
"You shut up."
Lucrezia growled in a low voice at Arabella from the head of the table, and Arabella, stunned, covered her nose in her plate and ate.
"I don't have many relatives at home, so is there anything special? If I had relatives from my parents' house, I would have brought them, but since I don't have them, I will."
It was a subtle twist on the fact that Cardinal de Mare was an orphan and had no relatives on his father's side. Indeed, when Cardinal de Mare heard this, he did not answer but only let out a somber voice.
"What is that brother doing these days?"
Lucrecia gave a lengthy answer to Isabella's question. Words such as promising, kind, and diligently preparing for the future came out, but to summarize after removing all the rhetoric, it was a story that in the end it was neither a knight nor an apprentice knight, but the seed of a knight. A knight's squire was a person who, instead of learning martial arts from the knight, did chores without pay, such as pulling the knight's horse, putting on armor, feeding the horse, and so on.
If an aristocratic boy from a knight's family works as a knight's squirt, he will usually be promoted to an apprentice knight around the age of 20, but if a son from another family is working as a knight's squirt, it is really hard to determine when he will be promoted to a knight, there was no For 5 or 10 years, most of them sucked the spines of their parents dreaming of being appointed as a knight and rising in status. In other words, when a boy with some money in the family doesn't have the brains to have a job like a lawyer or a merchant, but doesn't want to do farming because it's trivial, the position he chooses to put on hold is the seed of this article.
"Isn't that too rushed?"
In the end, Cardinal De Mare couldn't stand it and sighed. It was not something to say to her in-laws and nephews, but Lucrezia's parents, strictly speaking, were not even real in-laws. It was her cognition that her words did not come out well.
However, from Lucrezia's point of view, when she heard that, it seemed that this was not the case again. She fired at her husband as she packed her nerves.
"Do you want me to marry Ariadne some kind of Zanobi? It's just to stand as a debutant partner for a while! If you don't order Zanobi, do you have a relative who can make you a partner instead?!"
When Lucrezia came out like this, for at least three days, the atmosphere of quarrels, nagging bombardment, and attacks of lamentation over her life would continue. In that case, Cardinal de Mare had to keep an eye on his house. Cardinal de Mare pressed his forehead against the oncoming headache and patted his hand.
"Yes, yes, there are no people! It's all my fault for not having any relatives! Do as you please!"
***
Lucrezia's power of action was amazing. Her niece, Zanobi, had already left his hometown of Taranto after receiving Lucrezia's message a week earlier. At a luncheon for Cardinal de Mare's family. Lucrezia had already crossed the city limits and unilaterally informed Cardinal de Mare that she would bring Zanobi. Arriving at Cardinal de Mare's residence that afternoon, he was immediately invited to a tea party and introduced to Ariadne.
"This is Zanobi de Rossi, invited by the hostess of this house. The mansion is absolutely gorgeous. Hey, did you guys live so luxuriously by yourself?"
As befits the son of a family that relied on Lucrezia for all their living expenses, he was greedy did not know how to be grateful, and was good at blaming. He was a stocky young man in his early twenties with a thick neck and short limbs. His small eyes, full cheeks, and short chin made him look younger than his age. The three sisters, Isabella, Ariadne, and Arabella, sat in the girls' parlor and looked at this 'cousin' with different thoughts.
Arabella was the simplest.
'He's ugly, right?'
Ariadne felt conflicted at the sight of this young man.
'My eyes are cloudy'
Isabella smelled the hukou before Zanobi properly entered the living room and sat down.
'That style. Listen to me.'
Zanobi greeted her aunt with a swagger, never knowing what the three sisters under Cardinal de Mare were thinking as they were looking at him.
"Aunt Lucrezia! It's the first time I've seen you five or six years ago at my great-grandfather's funeral. How have you been?"
"Zanobi. I heard that you are living hard these days."
"Sure."
Zanobi sat down with Lucrezia and her sisters to brag about herself. He mainly talked about how great the knights were, who had recently been great knights, and what was the hot topic among knights as if he were a knight, and on the topic of visiting the aunt's house, if the article went well, it would be better than the priest.
He struggled as much as he could, implying that it was a much better job.
Zanobi, who had been boasting for a while, turned his gaze towards his sisters.
"Oh, by the way, among them, there is a lady I need to take to the debutante."
He looked up and down the three sisters and passed Arabella.
"It's not because you're a complete kid."
Arabella's expression crumpled, as she hated being treated like a child the most.
As she turned her gaze to the side, Nobi saw the innocent and delicately beautiful Isabella, and his face brightened, but she heard nothing. It was the story of Cardinal De Mare's family having a beautiful eldest daughter who was a thousand gold, her new mediocre second daughter, and the original youngest daughter. Since Taranto is a territory at the far southern end, it seems that the story of the 'girl who can see through the truth', which is making San Carlo proud, has not been delivered yet. Even as a slave, he knew that the eldest daughter, who had a reputation for beauty, was not his opponent. Today, his date was not the beautiful eldest daughter, but the second daughter, who was said to have eaten a lot.
After licking his lips in regret, Nobi looked at Ariadne and held out his right hand. He was to place Ariadne's left hand on top of his to kiss the back of her hand.
"It must be you. Zanobi de Rossi. I am your cousin."
Ariadne's left eyebrow rose high into the sky. The two eyes of Sancha, who was standing behind her, were also emitting light-green fire.
If it wasn't for Lucrezia, Sancha might have hit Zanobi with a tray. Ariadne hid both of his hands behind her back. Zanobi's forward right hand was left alone in the air.
"A little hand."
With his mouth, he turned around and protested,
'You are too short?'
Zanobi was Lucrezia's niece, but he was practically a stranger to Ariadne, who was not related by blood to Lucrezia. She wasn't comfortable talking in the first place. However, as she resented that her gesture to kiss his hand was ignored, Nobi's words turned into a quarrel.
"My aunt! Uh? It's your mother, so I am your cousin. Hey, can't a relative's older brother talk to his relatives?"
Although it was an attitude of calling for a fist, Zanobi's words were all right in principle. For San Carlo's perceived illegitimacy, it was a virtue to treat the wife as if she were her real mother, and it was polite for everyone around her to pretend that the bastard was really the wife's child.
The problem was that kissing on the back of the hand had sexual nuances, so it wasn't done between real relatives. His intentions were very impure when he insisted on kissing the back of her hand despite talking about her cousin.
Ariadne gritted her teeth and nodded her head.
"Brother Zanobi. Nice to meet you. The back of my hand is not even wearing gloves right now, so do it next time."
It was polite not to ask for a kiss on the back of the hand from the gentleman when the lady was not wearing gloves. If Lady is bare-handed and inevitably kisses the back of her hand, it's polite to do it in the air so that her lips don't touch her hands, but Judging from the way he's doing it, it doesn't seem like he'll keep that manner at all.
However, the guy in front of Ariadne was a style that would surely make a fuss if she pointed out a mistake, saying,
"Of course, I tried to kiss the air. What do you think people are?"
Rather than arguing in detail, Ariadne decided to just pretend that she was a sensitive person and move on boldly. But Lucrezia was not a great person to not add a word to that.
"What about kissing the back of the hand, why are family members so picky? Zanobi will be upset."
"Ariadne is a bit picky. If she doesn't like herself, she doesn't like it and doesn't care about other people's circumstances. She has no flexibility whatsoever."
Isabella, her mother's soul mate, intervenes and joins in making Ariadne weird. It seemed that if Ariadne sat here any longer, she wouldn't be able to see anything good. Ariadne decided to try a quick escape.
"I want to go to a restroom..."
Ariadne asked for permission to go to the bathroom for a while and stood up. She planned to stay in the bathroom for an hour or so and then come back slowly. Seeing Ariadne rise from her seat, Zanobi clicked his tongue.
"Yeah. You are really tall."
Ariadne glanced back at Zanobi at the sound she didn't want to hear. Since entering the residence of Cardinal de Mare, Ariadne has grown as tall as a watered bamboo tree, already 166 cm despite the extreme restraint in eating. She was quite tall for someone her age.
As Ariadne's debutante partner, Zanobi, who would be at the ball and had her first dance, was, of course, small for her peers.
"You're that tall, do you wear heels?"
Ariadne casually looked down at her shoes. It was a shoe with a low heel, about 3.6 cm high.
"Your brother is your relative, so I will give you some advice. Listen carefully."
Zanobi began his speech triumphantly, as if he were giving a secret tip that no one asked, but of great importance.
"These women, huh? She thinks she needs to stand out, so she just wears high heels, but that's really disrespectful. A woman who really stands out is a woman who knows how to make the man next to her stand out."
Zanobi said while smirking.
"On the day of debutant, wear shoes without heels. A really smart woman should do it."
Lucrezia was looking at this scene with a happy face, and Isabella was holding her belly button and enjoying it, crossing the river in suspense. She was left alone with Arabella, Sancha, and Ariadne staring at Zanobi as if she were seeing something disgusting.
Ariadne managed to manage her expression elegantly and managed to leave everyone smiling, including Zanobi. Ariadne, who left the room with a smile, turned rotten as soon as the drawing-room door closed. She abandoned the idea of going back in an hour and told Sancha to tell her that in 15 minutes Ariadne would not be able to drink any more tea today because she was sick.
"I put up with most things, but I don't think this is a bit."
"Yes. I don't think so, Miss."
A servant from the butler informed Ariadne that a letter had arrived. The envelope the servant brought was decorated with golden decorations and sealed with the initials AFC in red wax.
"It is ia from the Prince, My Lady."
"The answer is a Prince."
Ariadne and Sancha looked at each other and nodded.
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