Lucrezia decided to be shameless.

“Yes, he is my cousin. He is Janovi, the son of my second brother, Stefano.”

The Latin teacher Giovanni, who had visited before, was Lucrezia’s cousin, but this time he was closer kin. It seemed she meant to take good care of him.

Arabella, who had just finished a month of vigil, intruded thoughtlessly.

“Ah, that ugly brother?”

“Shut up.”

From the head of the table, Lucrezia growled at Arabella in a low voice, and Arabella, whose spirit was crushed, just ate her rice while holding her nose over her plate.

“Is it a problem if there are few relatives at home? If there were relatives on my paternal side, I would naturally have brought them, but since there aren’t, I do so.”

It was a subtle jab at the fact that Cardinal de Mare, being an orphan, had no relatives on his paternal side. Indeed, upon hearing this, Cardinal de Mare let out only a silence.

“What’s that brother up to these days?”

In response to Isabella’s question, Lucrezia gave a lengthy answer.

Words such as promising future, kind, preparing for the future sincerely, came out, but to summarize without the religious jargon, it was essentially the story of a squire who was neither a knight nor an apprentice knight.

A squire was someone who learned martial arts from a knight in their spare time, in return for unpaid labor such as pulling the horse that the knight rode, dressing them in armor, feeding the horse, and so on.

If a noble boy from a knight’s family was working as a squire, he usually became an apprentice knight around the age of twenty, but if a son from another family was working as a squire, there was really no telling when he would be promoted to knight.

In most cases, they drained their parents’ resources while dreaming of a knighthood and rise in status for 5 years, or even 10 years.

In other words, this position of a squire was chosen as a placeholder for career choices when a boy with some money in his family, who was not suited for jobs like a clerk or merchant, did not want to do farming, finding it too mundane.

“Isn’t that a big drop?”

In the end, Cardinal de Mare could not help but complain.

It was not something to say to his soninlaw’s nephew, but strictly speaking, Lucrezia’s paternal family had been draining Cardinal de Mare’s noble blood for the past 20 years, even though it was not really an inlaw. It was understood that he would not speak nicely.

However, it seemed not so for Lucrezia, who had to hear that. She fired back in irritation.

“Do you want me to arrange a marriage with Janovi? He’s just a temporary partner for the debutante ball! If you don’t want Janovi, do you have any relatives who can be a partner instead?!”

When Lucrezia lashed out like this, there would be at least three days of tension, nagging, and complaining about her fate. Then Cardinal de Mare had to be careful in his own home.

Cardinal de Mare stroked his forehead at the impending headache and waved his hand.

“Alright, alright, there’s no one! It’s my fault for having no relatives! Do as you please!”

Lucrezia’s initiative was impressive. Her nephew, Janovi, had already left his homeland, the Taranto territory, a week ago after receiving her order.

At the point when Lucrezia unilaterally announced to Cardinal de Mare at the family lunch that she would bring Janovi, he was already crossing the city boundaries of San Carlo.

Upon arriving at Cardinal de Mare’s mansion that afternoon, he was immediately invited to the tea party and presented himself to Ariadne for the first time.

“I’m Janovi de Rossi, invited by the lady of the house. The house is so splendid. Wow, have you been living in such luxury just by yourselves?”

As expected of the son of a family that depended on Lucrezia for all living expenses, Janovi was an ungrateful, faultfinding, and greedy person.

He was a young man in his early twenties with a short stature, a thick neck, and short arms and legs. His small eyes, the fat on both cheeks, and his lack of a chin made him look younger than his age.

Isabella, Ariadne, and Arabella, the three sisters, sat in the girls’ reception room, each looking at this ‘cousin’ with different thoughts.

Arabella was the simplest.

‘You’re ugly, right.’

Ariadne felt cheapness from this young man’s physiognomy.

‘His eyes are dull.’

Isabella sniffed the smell of a sucker even before the fool had properly entered the reception room and sat down.

‘That style. He listens to me well.’

The fool, who had no idea what the three sisters under the cardinal de Mare were thinking while looking at him, was swaggering and greeted his aunt.

“Aunt Lucrezia! It’s the first time I’ve seen you since my greatgrandfather’s funeral five or six years ago. Have you been well?”

“Fool. I heard you’re living hard these days.”

“Of course.”

The fool bragged about himself after seating Lucrezia and the sisters.