CH 35

The seating order around the garden table was as follows: the Queen, Elise, Diana, Cain, Arundilano. 

The mothers wanted Arundilano and Diana to sit next to each other since they were the same age, but Cain prevented that from happening. 

However, the two mothers were surprised by how diligently Cain was looking after the two four-year-olds on either side of him. 

“Diana, hold your drink with both hands. Put down your food for a second. That’s right. It’s improper to hold your food in one hand and a drink in the other,” said Cain, advising Diana as she tried to grab her drink while still holding a biscuit. 

“Your Highness, you have whipped cream on your face… The other side… A little higher… Please bring your face closer to me,” Cain said. Arundilano stuck his face out and Cain wiped the whipped cream away.

“Diana, I’ll get you what you need, so don’t lean over like that. You’ll tip a plate over. Which one do you want?” Cain asked. He brought a plate of macaroons over to her.

“Listen carefully. When you put whipped cream on a biscuit, you can’t be greedy about it. If you use enough for one mouthful, you’ll be able to eat it without getting it all over the place. You can always put on more for your next bite,” said Cain as he wiped more whipped cream from Arundilano’s face. 

“My, my! How helpful! Is this how children act when they are older siblings?” asked the Queen.

“Cain clings to Diana so much that he won’t let me or her wet nurse take care of her. It would be nice if he handed her over to us once in a while…” said Elise. 

“Wow. He really loves Diana, then. He is so good to Arundilano, as well. I wonder if he would be a big brother to him?” asked the Queen. 

“I would like to formally reject any action that would result in me becoming his older brother,” said Cain, responding immediately to this sudden proposal. 

He couldn’t agree to any situation that could result in Diana and Arundilano getting married, and him becoming the Crown Prince’s brother-in-law. 

It would be improper to turn down any official request made by the royal family, of course, but since this was a private tea party, it wasn’t a big deal. Of course, there was also the fact that this was all just a conversation about little children who were not even in school yet.

“Any actions?” asked the Queen, curiously looking over at Elise. 

Elise sighed and explained, “Cain has no intentions of having Diana married off.”

The full truth was that Cain didn’t want her to become the Crown Princess, but saying that would take the impropriety too far, so Elise settled on saying he didn’t want her married off. Thankfully, Cain wasn’t foolish enough to correct this small detail.

The Queen laughed in surprise and said, “I see. Cain adores Diana so much that he can’t help himself.”

The Queen nodded cheerfully and understandingly, and seemed to be satisfied with this information. Cain couldn’t figure out what she was so satisfied about. 

After that, the conversation moved on, and the Queen told Elise that the ladies at the embroidery meeting had expressed their wishes to meet Elise again and that they should have another embroidery meeting or a tea party. They also talked about how difficult it was to raise a child, and whether Elise had any interest in writing poetry. They talked about all types of things, and the conversation was flowing smoothly between the two mothers. 

“Your Highness. Mother. Would it be all right if Diana, the Crown Prince, and I strolled the gardens for a short while?” asked Cain. 

Cain had noticed that Diana was no longer interested in eating, and she had started opening up the macrons and putting them back together again. So, he requested that they be excused from the tea party. 

Cain thought that since the two mothers were so engrossed in their conversation (which meant nothing to Diana), she had lost interest in the tea party, and it would be good to take a break and go for a walk. 

When he glanced over at Arundilano, Cain saw that he was fiddling with his cup, and was probably bored, as well. 

“Ah, yes. If your children don’t get any exercise, you might not be hungry enough to eat lunch, later. Cain, watch over Arundilano, will you?” said the Queen. 

“Thank you very much,” said Cain. 

Once he got up from his chair and bowed, he picked Diana up from her chair and set her down. When he turned around, he saw that Arundilano had leaped off of his chair on his own. 

“All right, Diana, let’s go take a look at the flowers,” said Cain. As he put out his right hand, Diana grabbed it as a matter of course. It was the result of her always taking his hand whenever they walked anywhere together. [Read this novel and other amazing translated novels from the original source at the “Novel Multiverse dot com” website @ novelmultiverse.com]

“Your Majesty, let us go together… Would you like to hold hands, too?” asked Cain. 

He had asked as a mere formality, assuming that Arundilano would decline. However, surprisingly, the Crown Prince took Cain’s hand. 

Cain did a double-take in surprise, but he quickly composed himself and squeezed his left hand, and Arundilano happily smiled at him. 

“Are you not afraid of me, Your Majesty? I tried to set your head on fire, you know?” said Cain. 

“You said sorry to me, so it’s okay. I was surprised when there was a big fire in front of me, but it was pretty. I want you to show me more magic,” said Arundilano. 

“Big Brother has a lot more magic he could show you! Big Brother is amazing!” said Diana. 

“I’ve heard that the royal bloodline is full of magical energy. If you practice, Your Highness, you’ll be able to use a lot of magic, too,” said Cain. 

“I started practicing magic,” said Diana. “I’m going to be as amazing as Big Brother, one day!”

“I wonder if I could…” said Arundilano. 

“That’s up to you, Your Majesty,” said Cain. 

As the three of them talked, they walked over to the flowerbeds. 

Since this was a garden on the roof balcony, the flowerbeds were being cultivated in planter boxes with dirt packed into them. 

For a while, they looked at the flowers and taught each other the names of the flowers they knew. They also quizzed each other on what the flowers represented as they walked. 

As they were about to continue on to the next flowerbed, Cain felt a tug at his left hand. When he looked down, he saw that Arundilano had stopped. 

“Your Highness?” said Cain. 

“I want to tell you what happened that day. Please listen,” said Arundilano. 

On the day of the incident, when Cain saw that the Crown Prince had hurt Diana, he had gone into a rage and grabbed the Crown Prince’s head. Cain still didn’t know how things had gotten to that point. When he heard a bunch of wooden blocks falling down, Cain had turned around, and he had gone into a rage as soon as he saw the Crown Prince pulling on Diana’s arm, so he’d had no time to find out about what Diana and Arundilano were doing right before the blocks fell. 

Since Cain was confined to his room right after the incident, he hadn’t talked to Diana about what had happened. Cain had seen Arundilano throw Diana to the ground, though, so that was enough to consider him guilty. Cain had no real interest in the details of the events leading up to the incident. 

However, since his mission was to raise Diana to be a proper, pleasant lady who would never end up a villainess, if Diana had said or done anything to hurt the Crown Prince, Cain realized that that was something he had to make right. 

“I would like to hear it,” Cain said to Arundilano, nodding to him. Then, he turned back to Diana and said, “Diana, listen along, and if there’s something that you don’t think is right about his story, let me know after His Highness is done talking, okay?” 

Diana said, “Okay!” in a lively voice, and moved to where she could see Arundilano, while still holding onto Cain’s hand. 

“That day, I made a castle with blocks. It was really high and cool, and I said, ‘Finished!’ So, everyone started looking at it and saying, ‘It’s great! It’s great!’ But then, there was a group of girls talking to each other and they didn’t notice.  I thought it was so cool that they would want to see it, so I said, ‘Look!’ but they wouldn’t look. So, I tried to get them to come over and look,” said Arundilano. 

“No! I was doing a quiz about why rabbits’ ears are so long, and Kay was still trying to think of an answer, so I said, ‘Later,’ but, then he said, ‘Look, now,” and pulled me,” said Diana. 

“You didn’t say, ‘Later!’” said Arundilano. 

“I did! Highness, your voice is so loud you couldn’t hear me!” 

“I’m not loud! You’re too quiet!” 

The two of them were getting more and more aggressive. Their free hands were starting to fling about dangerously. 

Cain lifted both of his arms up, and when the two of them were half-dangling from his hands, he looked up at the sky and sighed, softly enough so that they couldn’t hear him. 

On the day of the incident, the graceful, cheerful, and dignified Lady Elgrandark had leaped up from her chair so fast that her chair fell over. Her skirt had fluttered as she hurried over, and she grabbed her son’s collar with one arm, lifting him. She had used her other hand to hit him on the head. 

The ladies who saw her do that thought that despite being a duke’s wife, Elise was clearly an experienced mother. They felt closer to her after that and wanted to become friends with her so that they could talk about the hardships of raising children. 

When the three Elgrandarks had gone home that day, the ladies could not stop talking about them