CH 6

—[Hmmm…]

In the middle of the night, I pass by my husband… Clement’s office, and I hear a distressed voice inside, so I get curious and knock on the door.

[Who is it?]

“You. It’s me. It’s Elaine.”

[Oh… right. Come in.]

When she was prompted to enter, the first thing she saw was a pile of papers on her office desk and her husband, Clement, who had a little dark circles in his eyes.

“Are you… working?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to spend much time with you and Sieghardt recently. It seems that the crop yields in the villages in the territory have been declining recently. I’ve been busy with countermeasures…”

In this case, unlike many other evil aristocrats, he is not likely to be talking about how to squeeze tax revenues out of the situation.

Clement is not that type of person.

Rather, he is probably thinking about the protection of the livelihoods of the lords whose harvests have fallen.

The quality of life of the people, especially those in rural areas, is almost directly linked to the yield of crops, so if there is a visible decline, it will eventually appear as a problem in the form of famine.

It happened several times in previous years.

In such cases, Clement provided subsidies and food aid, but I remember that a lot of effort was put into checking this, considering the risk of officials and other middlemen cutting in.

The piles of documents that still pile up today are the sort of things that should originally have been left to his subordinates rather than looked at by him personally.

However, there are not many subordinates who can be trusted completely.

Clement probably has a few trusted subordinates. But even so, there are still so many things he has to check himself out.

“…Really, thank you for your work. Well… hey, I’ll take these documents over here.”

“Hmm? Oh, hey…Elaine. That’s not something you’d recognise…”

Clement said this, but this is not because he doubts my abilities.

It was more due to my negligence.

After graduating from the Institute of Magic and marrying Clement, I had never shown any ability in this kind of office work.

In addition, Clement knows my achievements at the Academy of Magic, so he understands that I have a certain amount of clerical skills. but territory management is a matter of taste, so it is not as if I can suddenly do anything from the documents.

However, I had the experience of the previous time.

But when I started planning the replacement of the royal family, I realized that I really needed to make an effort in this area.

From that point on, I learned little by little and acquired the know-how of territory management, which I will live with now.

I process the documents carefully, but maintain speed.

The number of documents I took from Clement was about ten, not a large amount, but when I had processed all of them, I handed them back to him.

“I wonder. I’ve identified the problems and solutions… and I’ve included notes to make it easier for the people in charge to understand. I’ve tried to make it as similar as possible to your way of giving instructions…”

I know exactly how Clement did things from the previous time.

So it was easy for me to do that too.

At first, Clement looked doubtful. But as he went through the documents one by one, his expression changed.

Then, when he had looked at the last one.

“…Elaine. I have a favour to ask you.”

He said.

I asked him.

“What is it? You.”

Then Clement said.

“…half… no, a third of this paperwork. Can you help me…?”

“Fufu, You are my husband. You can order me to help you.”

“No, I want to be equal with you. Outside of the house, I am the duke’s head of the family, so I can’t say that I am, but inside the house I am.”

“That’s nice of you to say. I like that about you… I’ll get half the papers. Let’s get this done as quickly as possible. Otherwise, your lovely face will be all covered with shades.”

At these joking words, Clement took out a hand mirror from his desk to examine his face, and seemed to realize that my words were not all jokes.

Shaking his head, he said.

“…The servants might mistake me for a monster. It would be laughable if the duke was defeated by the servants. Let’s do our best to get some sleep as soon as possible.”

He said.

◆◆◆◆◆

“…Phew, I’ve managed to finish.”

By the time the morning sun was streaming in from outside, all the paperwork was done.

Almost at the same time as me, Clement seemed to have finished his work, too.

“…Elaine, I shudder to think that without you, it would have taken until this evening.”

He said this in a really frightened tone, which makes me laugh a little.

“Maybe you should get a few more reliable subordinates or think about your schedule.”

“I know that too, but the schedule is a bit difficult. Especially in this case, there were a few villages that needed urgent attention.”

“That’s… you’re right. If it’s just a bad harvest, we can probably manage with subsidies and food aid, but we can’t just leave the areas affected by the monsters.”

“I guess you think so too. There were few reports coming in from the villages that mentioned about the monsters…”

“There are a few areas that the villagers are not aware of. They seem to think it’s just an animal attack. It is not an emergency today or tomorrow, but it would be dangerous to leave it unattended for a month. It’s good to learn early on where this is the case.”

“Ah. But there are more of them than I thought. It’s a bit early in the breeding season for the kind of monsters that appear near farming villages, but…”

“That’s been on my mind too. I think we need to go and see them in person.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do. But the Knights have a limited number of staff… we’re shorthanded. I guess we’ll have to assign them to the most urgent first…”

“Well… you, if that’s fine with the Knights, I have a proposal…”

“Hm? What?

“I think I’ll go and make the rounds in the countryside.”

Clement’s eyes widened.