The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 134

Chapter 134: Baby Mobile and Fan

Nid and the other villagers from Melto Village were hearty eaters. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they ate at least three times more than Melfina and Marie.

Noticing the two of them sipping tea after quickly finishing their meal, Nid bowed apologetically.

“I’m sorry. We gobbled down the food.”

“No, we asked them to prepare extra since we planned to eat with everyone. Besides, I enjoy hearing everyone’s chatter during meals. You don’t hear those things usually.”

While not a grand lunch meeting, sharing meals naturally fostered good feelings towards those present, proving effective for building smooth communication.

The Melto Village residents’ cooperative spirit last year was not solely due to the lord’s orders. It was greatly influenced by Melfina’s direct presence at the village, sometimes even sharing tea or meals with them, answering their questions whenever they arose.

Cedric was quiet and unassuming while he ate, barely noticeable. He would simply pick up one sandwich after another and put them in his mouth. The most enthusiastic eater seemed to be Lloyd, young and undergoing training as an attendant.

“Lloyd, how is your studies going? It must be tough balancing attendant training and your studies.”

“….Well, both are every other day, and we have weekends off, so it’s actually easier than the physical training I did as a soldier.”

Lloyd, who had been stuffing his mouth with a sandwich, hurriedly swallowed it and replied with a bright expression.

“But there’s so much to study, my head is about to burst. This is the most I’ve ever used my brain… but it’s incredibly enjoyable. I learn one thing, and then I realize, ‘Ah, that connects to that!’ It’s fascinating.”

“Oh, I understand completely. I find it enjoyable when I grasp how things connect to each other, more than the study itself.”

“Right! Ouch!”

Lloyd, suddenly beaming, leaned forward, but Cedric swatted his back with a resounding blam. It sounded painful.

“Disrespectful to your superior, Lloyd.”

“Ah, sorry.”

“Fuf, Cedric is quite the strict senior.”

“Improper etiquette will bring shame to oneself, and shame brought upon the people is shame upon the lord. Knights are always expected to be exemplary in their conduct. Understand?”

“Yes!”

Lloyd straightened his back and responded earnestly. The scene, with Cedric’s senior-like attitude, was rather heartwarming.

By the time they finished lunch, the light rain had stopped. They parted ways with Nid and the others, who had afternoon work, and returned to Melto Village in the carriage.

The lord’s mansion and Melto Village were a considerable distance apart, making frequent visits difficult, especially when Melfina was busy. However, with Julius currently staying there, she was constantly keeping tabs on the situation.

Even after Julius began staying in Melto Village, he would readily visit the lord’s mansion whenever called. This confirmed he was well, and also suggested he was enjoying life in the village. Though a strange character, he was still a member of the nobility. It was surprising, even to Melfina, how he had become so integrated into Melto Village, a former serf community.

When they visited Nid’s house, Eli greeted them, cradling a baby.

“Welcome back, Lady Melfina.”

“I’ll intrude upon you. My, Sara, you’ve grown quite a bit.”

Sara, who had previously kept her eyes shut, now stared at Melfina with wide eyes. Her hair had become considerably fuller, and her chubby cheeks made Melfina feel happy just looking at them.

She was in good health and well-nourished, which put Melfina at ease.

“She’s so cute. Babies really are wonderful.”

“Fuf, would you like to hold her?”

Melfina hesitated for a moment but finally agreed after being urged.

Wrapped in a large cloth, Sara was heavier than expected. Her warm body temperature was even noticeable through the fabric. She hadn’t started showing signs of stranger anxiety yet, and perhaps Melfina was a novelty. Sara reached out with her tiny hands towards her, waving them in the air.

“She’s really adorable. Fuf, I bet I look silly right now, smiling like this.”

She couldn’t stop grinning. Holding her any longer would compromise the lord’s dignity, so with a tinge of regret, she returned Sara to Eli.

“Lady Melfina, you truly love children.”

“Yes, of course. They’re simply adorable, and watching them grow fills me with excitement.”

When her brother, Rudolf, was born in the town house in the capital, Melfina had visited the nursery diligently until he could hold his head up.

With bright red hair even as a baby and features resembling his father, Rudolf had been born. Melfina still remembered the deep smile on her father’s face as he held Rudolf in his arms when he visited the town house shortly after his son’s birth.

She definitely felt a pang of jealousy and insecurity back then, but it had nothing to do with her baby brother’s charm.

Nothing could compare to the joy she felt when he called out to her with a lisp, “O-nee-chama.”

“Sara will soon start walking, then running, and be like Rod and Rena. Fuf, I’m so excited.”

As Melfina gently stroked Sara’s head while she was in Eli’s arms, the door behind Eli slowly creaked open. A tall, blue-haired man, slightly bending over to avoid the doorframe, stepped out.

“Lady, I heard voices. You’ve arrived!”

“Lord Julius, hello… What are you wearing?”

Julius was wearing an undyed linen shirt and trousers dyed with plant-based dyes, a type of clothing worn by commoners considered to be of decent quality.

“Ah, I bought these when a merchant came to the village recently.”

He didn’t finish with “Do they look good on me?” It was probably because he realized they didn’t suit him.

Melfina, who loved linen dresses during the summer, couldn’t really say anything. It was obvious to her that a born noble doing a peasant cosplay wouldn’t look good.

—It feels… strange somehow.

According to the game’s memory, Julius was a pleasure-seeking charmer, always teasing the heroine, showering her with sweet words and manipulating her.

He was often depicted in popular stills with a luxurious silk robe, his long blue hair cascading down, and a captivating smile. His images were used on many different merchandise.

But the Julius in front of her was smiling like a child, wearing ill-fitting commoner clothes and awkwardly bending his tall frame to enter and exit the door. He seemed to have become quite comfortable at Nid’s house, naturally taking Sara from Eli.

“Mom, I put a toy on the bed… Oh, Lady Mel!”

“Rena, hello. What were you doing with Lord Julius?”

“I was making a toy for Sara. It’s just finished, so you should take a look, Lady Mel.”

Rena grabbed her hand and pulled her towards Eli, who smiled apologetically and nodded in agreement.

“Please, do take a look, Lady Melfina. It’s a masterpiece that Lord Julius and Rena have been working on for the past few days.”

Rena led Melfina to the next room. It seemed to be Rod and Rena’s room, with two small beds lined up side by side. There was another, fenced-in crib by the door.

“This… is this a baby bed?”

“Yes. Sara is still too young to roll over, but Lord Julius made this because she might fall out of the bed.”

In serf houses, a single room was the norm. Adults and babies would all live and sleep on the tatami floor. Since Melfina became the lord, there had been some changes in hygiene and living habits, but since it was only a year or so, some people still said they couldn’t relax unless they were on the tatami floor.

Nid, as the village head of Melto Village, was the first to accept Melfina’s suggestions for a better life. He had immediately embraced the notion that babies, who put everything in their mouths, shouldn’t be allowed to sleep or crawl on the floor.

Nid had lost a child to severe diarrhea, so he must be overjoyed, more than anyone, to see Sara growing healthy and strong.

“Lady Mel, look up, look up!”

“Huh? Oh, this is…”

“It’s a toy using a wind magic stone. Juli-oniichan, turn it, turn it.”

At Rena’s request, Julius lowered Sara into the crib and flipped the switch for the “toy” that had been set high up. With a gentle whoosh, the wind started to move the toy, spinning it around.

It looked like a small, thin version of a carriage wheel with wooden ornaments attached to strings, which would bump together and make a click-clack sound as they spun. Sara’s eyes followed the movement, and she reached out with her hands, giggling.

It was a developmental toy for babies called a mobile in Melfina’s past life. In the absence of electricity, using a wind magic stone was an ingenious solution.

“I’m surprised. Did Lord Julius and Rena invent this?”

“Rena had the idea. She noticed Sara’s eyes reacting to moving things, so she tried waving various things in front of her, but she reacted most strongly to things with sound and movement.”

“Sara is a baby, so she’ll be in bed all the time. But if it’s just hanging from above, it won’t move, right? So I told Juli-oniichan to make it spin.”

“Wind magic stones aren’t very common, are they? I don’t remember seeing them before.”

“They are distributed in the Eastern region because there are wind monsters there. However, not many people use them, so they aren’t often seen, and the price is very low.”

Apparently, Julius used a wind magic stone with depleted magic, purchased at a bargain price from a peddler, and infused it with magic.

It was a product of Rena’s imagination and Julius’s skills as an alchemist. She was genuinely impressed, feeling both heartwarming and slightly apprehensive at the combination of Rena’s ideas and Julius’s ability to materialize them.

Once an application is found, the invention of variations can happen rapidly.

This toy for babies could even overturn the notion that wind magic was the least practical type of magic.

“With this, we could create a fan.”

“Lady, what is a ‘fan’?”

Julius, curious as ever, immediately latched on. Rena, with a similar expression, looked up at Melfina.

“It’s a device that creates wind. I think we can bring in a glass workshop after the rainy season, but the processing of glass requires extremely high temperatures, so the workshop will be very hot. It’s important to improve ventilation inside and to use wind to cool the glass to some extent, which can help control its thickness and expansion. Therefore, a device that blows a constant wind is crucial.”

“Ah, in that case, it should be possible. Let’s give it some thought. To ensure constant wind direction and strength, we could set a magic stone in a cylindrical container. Or, to use the magic stone as a power source, we could create a fan-like structure with blades to generate the wind.”

“It would be nice if we could change the wind strength with a switch, in several stages.”

“I see, so we should have three levels: strong, normal, and weak?”

“Yes, that should be sufficient.”

While Melfina was discussing it with Julius, Rena had been listening with a restless expression, but she couldn’t contain herself any longer and raised her hand.

“I want to help too!”

“Then Rena will be my assistant.”

“Yes!”

“Lady, Rena is very reliable. She notices things that I don’t, and they often turn out to be crucial.”

Julius said this, and Rena smiled proudly.

She got along well with Rod, but she seemed to have a very good relationship with Julius in a different way.

—They’re more like childhood mischief partners.

While they immediately began discussing the shape, number, and direction of the fan blades, Sara, lying in her crib, continued to follow the spinning mobile, its click-clack sound echoing in the room.