Living As the Villainess Queen

“Of course he is, grandfather. Your grandson-in-law is a fine man.”

Mitchell then turned to the men behind and told them to leave the room. As soon as they were given permission to leave, the men lowered their heads before they made a bolt for the door. Watching as they left, Mitchell clicked his tongue at their unseemly backs.

When things quieted around them, he asked Charlotte.

“What brings you here today?”

“I’ve come to give my greetings to you of course. Especially since it’s been so long since I had last visited the Holy City.”

“You shouldn’t have bothered to. We would have run across each other anyway.”

Charlotte was not in the least offended by her grandfather’s grumbles as he has always been ill-tempered and never knew how to speak kindly to anyone.

In fact, as a person who never tends to waste even a second of his time in a day, he showed no tolerance against any idleness and applied the same principle to his children as well. However, he had basically forced his principle onto his children, often by yelling and rebukes instead of convincing them through enough communication. As a result, his children grew to hate his father as much as they found him difficult. And the same goes for his grandchildren as they were all afraid of him.

Charlotte, however, was the only person who didn’t seem to be afraid of Mitchell, unlike everyone else. Even when Mitchell raised his voice at her, she only smiled and even daringly retorted instead of bursting into tears like most girls would do.

And it was all because Charlotte was born to be a good judge of character. She had easily realized that her grandfather was never a bad person after all as he just wasn’t very good at expressing himself to others. Mitchell, the owner of the Scan firm who’s also known as a man as hard as nails, endeared Charlotte the most among all his grandchildren. And that was why he had helped an Anika, who had become the queen of Hashi Kingdom, upon Charlotte’s request. It surely was a waste of his time, and it never came to any money as well. He would most likely have turned it down if it wasn’t for Charlotte.

“I hear that you all came together.”

Charlotte, who had cleverly understood the meaning behind his significant question, answered him at once.

“Yes. The trip to the Holy City was most pleasant all thanks to Her Majesty.”

“Did she ask for a favor again? Is that why you are here?”

For a moment, Charlotte was at loss for words seeing that he had hit the nail on the head. She realized once again that her grandfather was indeed an astute businessman.

[Count Oscar. Do you know what kind of favor I asked your grandfather, perchance?]

Charlotte was unable to answer Eugene when she was asked the question since she had played no more than a middle role to introduce her grandfather to the queen.

She had merely sent a letter to her grandfather asking him if he could be of help to the queen when she was asked a favor from the queen in the past. But in the reply from her grandfather, he had only written that there was no need for her to get involved further as he would take care of the rest by himself.

Despite the curt expressions written on the letter, Charlotte was able to understand what his grandfather was trying to convey. It basically meant that ‘It’s best not to pry before getting yourself involved in unnecessary hassles.’ Charlotte thought it was best to follow his advice. And as it happens, as she had no intention to get close to the queen back in the past, she paid no more attention to the matter since then.

Just as Mitchell suspected, Charlotte had indeed been asked a new favor from the queen. Her job was to find out about the favor the queen had asked Mitchell in the past and about what she had received from him.

[Count Oscar. Like I’ve already told you, I have lost much of my memories from the incident. So I’m now trying to retrieve my memory as much as I can with all the clues that I’ve found out so far. And it seems to me that I’ve received a great deal of help from your grandfather, and I want to find out what it was about. Do you think you can help me out?]

Charlotte gladly offered to help since she couldn’t quite turn her down as the queen sounded sincere when she asked for her help. Besides, she had personally received an agreeable impression from the queen throughout their travel to the Holy City.

However, she must find out about what the queen had asked her grandfather in the past without telling him about the queen’s memory loss. To do that, she had actually come up with a plausible story after much discussion with Eugene. She was going to tell him that she had been assigned to replace Count Wacommbe as the liaison so that she wished to take over all of his duties he had done so far.

“Grandfather. The thing is, I do have something to ask you.”