Herald of Steel

Alexander's recount of the 'embellished' events with Miss Linda seemed to greatly energize the sulking lady, causing her to let out almost a manic grin.

"Hahaha, I think it was a great shame that you turned her down my lord. You should taken her! And then throw her out into the corridor without anything, letting the soldiers take her. Hahaha, that would have taught her"

"......" Alexander could not believe how deep Lady Miranda's hatred of her sister went, to pray for such a painful fate.

This was even much contrary to when Alexander talked to Miss Linda- she did not seem that bothered with her elder sister, hardly bringing her up during her time.

It almost made one think she was the one who won the war.

'Its the pregnancy making her have such mood swings?' Alexander wondered to himself, but keeping his opinions to himself.

Instead, leaving Lady Miranda to celebrate her sister's imagined humiliation, Alexander began to go through what the lady had said to figure out how this information got leaked.

It did not take long for him to understand what was going on and he cursed,

'I will cut my arm off if that scheming vixen has nothing to do with this. How else could this get revealed way too soon.'

As for the question why…. well Alexander quickly found the answer to that too.

The most plausible explanation he could think of was that clues of their tryst were intentionally leaked by Miss Linda as a way to try and strip him of his ally and force him to join hands with her.

It might have been a long shot but Miss Linda still had not given up trying to place her feet on two boats.

"That idiot! Does she think her sister is going to give up on me just because I slept with her once? And wasn't she the one most afraid of getting this out? Is she not afraid of this spectacularly backfiring on her?'

The realization made the man once again internally curse this foolish move, and for a brief second, Alexander even seriously considered breaking off the deal with Miss Linda.

But as he calmed and shifted through all the clutter of the events, he began to see many missed things,

'Hmmmm… she is cornered and likely thinks the gamble is worth the risk. And…. I cannot say I totally disagree!'

'Her meeting with me was likely to produce such rumors whether she liked it or not. No, they already exist! Many believe she was violated by me and my soldiers back in the camp! So there was indeed little harm in re-telling this again!'

At that point, Alexander could not help but even feel a bit impressed at Miss Linda's way of thinking, and mused with some appreciation,

'Damn. she moves fast. It was already dusk when she left yesterday. Yet it reached her sister's ear by today morning… maybe even as soon as yesterday night! She knew I was going to meet her sister today and knew exactly when to take advantage of things.'

'Heh! That old Margraves coot did indeed have a good reason to choose her over Lady Miranda. The will to struggle and fight fate even when it is so stacked against her is a fantastic wonder to witness indeed.'

Coming to this conclusion, Alexander even wondered if one of the reasons why he had chosen to shake hands with her in such a dangerous move was due to Miss Linda's personal charm and charisma, over the realistic feasibility of it succeeding.

Alexander did not have an exact answer there.

He brought his attention back to the present a while later, and turning to face the lady still relishing in her sister's distress, commented in a testing, prodding sort of voice,

"I must say, I did not think the maids of this manor were such experts. It could not have been easy for them… finding everything out so quickly. Haha, but I guess that is totally expected of an ancient family a few centuries old, even the walls have eyes. I am impressed."

"....." Lady Miranda at first thought Alexander was taking a dig at her for spying on him.

But as she thought a bit deeper, she suddenly found that his words sounded a bit odd for that.

And that suspicion soon became clear when Alexander finished by sarcastically saying,

"I am especially impressed those maids could know so much given this part of the house is entirely controlled by my men. So how could they have seen Miss Linda leaving my room? And so clearly in such darkness?.... Hmmm, I wonder…"

"..."

That nagging feeling in Lady Miranda instantly bloomed like a red, poisonous flower hearing this as beads of cold sweat dripped down her cheek.

"I… am sorry my lord. I let my suspicions get the better of me. That girl… to think she would plot to divide us even now! Even after she was so thoroughly defeated! I… we…should… um…"

The eyes quickly turned to give Alexander a pained, ashamed look.

While watching the plump, pregnant lady struggle to articulate her sister's behavior into words, Alexander only produced a comforting face, lightly reassuring her with a gentle chuckle,

"It's okay, my lady. As a lord, I too can be sometimes misled by such whispers. Many like to spew unfounded whispers just to get my attention….. While many others… have their loyalty elsewhere!"

Alexander made that last sentence in a slow, deep, voice, with flickering lights in his eyes.

Lady Miranda's ones soon blazed with fury afterwards.

Then in the following days, many of her maids would mysteriously suffer extremely pitiful deaths, with many begging to the gods for it all to be over.

Alexander's men would report these findings to him, noting hearing mysterious screams at night and without going into the gory details, finding females mutilated corpses with missing limbs, eyes, facial features, and skin too dark and tortured to look at.

Alexander would not be impressed by this.

He might have led his men to kill tens if not hundreds of thousands in the name of war and conquest, but other than very special, unavoidable circumstances, he had never tortured anyone.

It was one of his staunch principals.

Even if someone betrayed him and turned turncoat, he would have usually just executed him.

But this was his personal opinion and at the end of the day, this would not affect his relationship with Lady Miranda.

He might not condone such heavy handed way of rooting out spies, but the alliance was too strategic to fall over for such an unrelated issue.

Hence he would simply note to himself, 'It seems all the things that have happened here have scarred the lady. In many areas she has turned… extreme!'

He could only hope this bloom of cruelty was restricted to only a small part of her life.

Now back to the present, upon receiving Alexander's sincere advice, Lady Miranda's cheeks suddenly turned flush and she quickly flashed a frank grateful smile, and repeated her apology,

"Thank you, my lord. It was my mistake to doubt you, my lord!"

At that point, she even courteously lowered her head a bit.

Alexander once again played the gentle host, just gently flashing his palms and smiling,

"It is okay my lady. These are cheap tricks only used by the weak and defeated. It will never work against us. We are in this together as allies and as long as we stick together and properly communicate with each other… we will continue to flourish!"

The words appeared to greatly comfort the lady, creating a huge grin,

"Right! The fact that she is trying to use such an underhanded technique tells us everything about her true state."

Nothing seemed to please her now as much as learning of her sister's predicaments.

"Mmm, I will also tell you here the reason why my meeting with Miss Linda took so long." Alexander had not also forgotten about that other matter, and worked to completely erase all suspicions from the lady, saying,

"It was because I was interested in knowing a few things from her. For instance, I was curious to know what Lord Parker had told her about his family. We have precious detail on the details of the ducal family after all."

"I also made her retell the entire plot of her marriage with Lord Parker, including your grandfather's role in it, as well as what happened in Lord Parker's tent while we were fighting each other. I will tell you about that later."

"And after that… I also asked about her current standing within the Margraves family and why was she so desperate. As you know, both the family elders and her in laws hate her. It seems they want her to turn her into their puppet or worse, even send her away. Hahaha!"

That last revelation seemed to make Lady Miranda's countenance go from happy to ecstatic, and she almost begged to Alexander try and somehow make it happen.

"I will try and bring it up in the next talks." Alexander only weakly assured, appearing quite conflicted.

Of course, he had no intention of doing that. In fact, he wanted to do the complete opposite.

But Lady Miranda would remain oblivious to these thoughts and straightening her back, move on the real reason she came here,

"Ahhh, it seems we got a bit side tracked here my lord. I wanted to see you because those 3,000 men of my family you have…. I would like you to gift them to me!"