Each Has Their Own Concerns
The marriage market had been entertaining.
That finale was something else.
Watching a woman experience her first climax in front of an entire crowd made for quite the spectacle. Seeing that smug expression of hers collapse under pure pleasure had been genuinely excellent.
She'd shot me a faintly resentful look at the end, sure…
What's a noblewoman going to do about it?
She'd be too busy figuring out whose wife she was supposed to become under her shiny new status. Time for revenge? Not a chance.
Mm-hmm.
"Young master."
I'd been about to turn in for the night when a servant arrived. He'd dug up the information faster than expected.
"You found out sooner than I thought."
"It was already being processed, so the details came through quickly."
All right—so what's the verdict? Exile to the opposite end of the provinces would be a dead end. And if the whole family got dismantled, that would be an even bigger problem…
"Roughly ten mandatory war deployments."
"Hm?"
Surprisingly lenient. I'd been bracing for a crushing fine, or maybe a forced reassignment to some remote posting. This was unexpected.
"His Majesty will just order another campaign soon enough anyway."
Like it or not, the battlefields along the eastern riverbanks weren't something you could simply sit out.
"Looks like the inspector didn't speak too badly of us."
"Haa…."
One less weight off my shoulders. Lenient punishment was the best possible outcome.
"So we haven't been blacklisted by the Belmore family—they've got deep roots in the capital."
"Yes, it seems that way."
Hold on. The Belmore noble house had just put one of their own daughters on the market, hadn't they?
"Hmm…."
"That's a scheming look if I've ever seen one."
"The Belmores could become one of the empire's great new houses, you know."
I'd heard more about them from my mentor. They were known as the most diligent family in the empire—widely respected for it. Sure, they'd done it all to climb into the nobility, but that reputation wouldn't vanish overnight just because they'd finally made it.
"I'd like to build a good relationship with them if I can…."
"Are you after Lady Elin Belmore, by any chance?"
Already calling her "Lady" just because she'd become a noble.
"In the empire, men are constantly marching off to war, so they keep several wives so they won't get lonely. Isn't that right?"
"Well… I suppose that's how it works…."
"Let's bring one more home."
Capable talent is always welcome. And if I was being honest, she was also very much my type.
Overnight, Elin Belmore had been forced to set everything down. The last right she still held as an adult was choosing her husband.
Not that choosing one meant it was settled on the spot. Even so, a bride's preference carried a high chance of going through.
"Is this… quite a lot?"
She looked over the men who wanted to marry her, then called for her maid.
"Is there a family you'd recommend from this list?"
"That depends heavily on your criteria."
"If we're looking only at the house itself…."
She pointed to one name.
"This one holds considerable power in maritime trade."
"But there's a downside, isn't there?"
Sharp as ever.
"Yes. They're seafarers, so their conditioning methods are especially strict."
That man was out. Elin had already decided her family didn't particularly need to forge new connections. From the position they already held, a path upward had just opened—they would become a fine house on their own.
…The problem was that for that to happen, she herself would have to belong entirely to another family.
"What about the gentler houses?"
"Not necessarily bad, but you'd end up farther from real power and serious wealth."
She had never particularly cared about money. Even so, going from a wealthy household to a comparatively modest one was bound to grate. And once you married in, escaping that family's belonging was all but impossible.
"Then……."
The maid pointed to someone else.
"Ah—this one looks promising."
She flipped a few pages and tapped a portrait.
"A provincial house, but when it comes to military authority in their region, they rank second only to the Emperor."
The family's name was Valerius. And the man from that house who wanted her was—
"Huh…?"
Cassius Valerius.
Why is he on this list?
He was the very man she had thoroughly audited as an imperial inspector. Why would someone she'd done that to put himself forward as a husband candidate?
"Looking at what you prefer, my lady, this is actually a rather good match. Of course, it takes you away from the central houses, so there's that—but in their region, they command real respect."
"Th-that part is fine, but…."
There was a problem.
"Is it his face you don't like? Strange… I wouldn't have thought so."
"I—I'm the one who audited his house. He's the man I went after……."
"What???"
For once, the maid was the one who looked shocked. Until now it had always been Elin reeling from the empire's outrageous noble customs; finally she'd landed a hit of her own.
Not that that was the important part.
"D-do noblemen usually ignore the past and just apply if they like a woman?"
"Th-that shouldn't be how it works…?"
Nothing in noble culture covered this. Even the maid couldn't sound particularly confident.
"C-could he want to beat me up?"
"However far beneath a man a noblewoman may stand, striking her is still not permitted…."
And for a man of Cassius's caliber to seriously try thrashing her—Elin was simply too small and delicate.
"Maybe he just likes you?"
"Huh?"
The answer could be surprisingly simple.
"What's past is past."
"B-but still…."
"As long as the punishment isn't too grueling♡ he probably just took a look at you, liked what he saw, and wants to take you home."
Would someone really bring home an enemy like that, though? Then again, thinking of the other houses her audits had gutted… maybe not so far-fetched.
"Why not meet him once, then?"
"Huh?"
"You can see him in advance. It's not as if you have to marry anyone immediately."
The maid's suggestion was perfectly reasonable. Perhaps that really was the best approach.
"But before that, I'd recommend arranging meetings with the other gentlemen as well."
"Because the distance is far, and leaving the other applicants waiting too long would be a problem?"
"Oh, exactly. You're remarkably sharp for a noblewoman."
For a noblewoman?
Elin's expression turned odd, and the maid hurried to explain.
"Ah—most noble ladies simply do whatever the people around them tell them to."
"I-is that so?"
"The most choice they ever exercise is picking whoever has the bigger cock. Plenty of women whose heads have room for nothing else, you know."
In the present noble society, no one particularly demanded anything of women. So it wasn't all that strange for them to become little more than lust-driven simpletons.
"All right. Once things are ready, I'll go see Lord Cassius."
Meanwhile, the Valerius family had gathered.
"Haa. We've weathered the worst of it."
Fortunately, the family's punishment hadn't been severe either. They'd simply been handed a few more mandatory deployments than I had.
"If anything, it seems they took into account our determination to follow His Majesty's will by any means necessary."
"Indeed. Ours is a house loyal to the Emperor."
"Even if the fact that the Emperor is a woman remains an utterly absurd joke of a situation."
No one was clinging to what was already done.
"More importantly—Carna, was it?"
"Yes."
"Have you begun her wife training?"
The "training" in question meant sexual conditioning, plain and simple.
"Not yet. I've been helping her prepare for the tournament, so…."
Training one's wife was properly a husband's duty.
"The capital types always look down on the provinces. Make sure her conditioning is thorough—I won't have our house dismissed lightly."
"Yes, sir."
Come to think of it, I hadn't asked about that yet.
"What does our family's conditioning method look like?"
"I never did tell you, did I."
More accurately, I simply hadn't cared enough to listen at the time.
"Right. Call that maid in as well."
The maid my father meant looked familiar. She was the one who had come with Carna from her family when they married.
"Our house's method for training brides is… well. There isn't much consistency to it."
"Pardon?"
"Ordinarily, we've simply taken whatever conditioning a bride's original house used and made it harsher."
So that was it.
"In other words, I just need to take the Valteron family's methods and intensify them."
"Correct. But we can hardly tailor everything from scratch every time a new wife arrives. Eventually, just pick something suitable from the methods we already have."
Father looked at the maid.
"You belong to House Valerius now. Forget House Valteron. Ah—except for the training methods. Those you'll need to remember."
"Yes. I will keep that in mind."
The maid answered with crisp precision. I hadn't observed her this closely before, but she carried a strict air—fitting for a house tied to a military academy.
"The tournament is well and good, but start the training as well."
"Yes, sir."
Now it was time to condition my mentor as a bride.
Once we were back, I relayed everything to my mentor.
"Well. Fine. We can't put this off forever."
The others nodded in agreement. But then—
"So, as for the training method…."
The moment she heard what the education—really, the conditioning—entailed, she froze solid.
"W-wait, that has to be a lie…? A-any other method would be fine, but……."
Carna shrank back all over again. I wasn't sure if "all that size for nothing" was a fair way to put it, but her terror was plain as day.
In a way, it made perfect sense.
We will use the Valteron family's training methods.
The conditioning she'd endured while still unmarried wasn't, strictly speaking, what Valteron daughters received. It was the conditioning reserved for brides marrying into House Valteron. So of course she'd assumed she'd be getting something different this time.
"C-can't we do something else? Please?"
My mentor had a surprisingly pathetic streak when cornered.
Still—no.