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My Lover Isn’t Interested With The Female lead!
✽ CHAPTER 43✽
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Two days after the ball at the royal palace, Letticia attended the ball hosted by the Marquess of Digby.
“Countess Sharon, Lady Sharon, Lord Sharon, welcome!”
Letticia, along with Camilla and Kenneth, greeted the marchioness who welcomed them warmly.
“Thank you for the invitation, Marchioness. I’m really looking forward to tonight’s ball.”
“You should look forward to it. I’ve asked them to play mostly gavottes tonight. Young people prefer gavottes to minuets, don’t they?”
“Thanks to your thoughtfulness, everyone will surely have a great time.”
Although Letticia didn’t necessarily agree with her, she smiled out of respect for the elder.
Thirty years ago, it might have been true that young people preferred the lively gavotte over the elegant minuet, but nowadays, even gavottes were considered a dance of the older generation.
But what truly mattered was not the type of dance, but who one danced with. As soon as Letticia entered the ballroom, she was asked to dance by the host’s son, the Marquess of Digby.
“Lady Sharon, if you don’t have a prior agreement, would you honor me with the next gavotte?”
Instead of asking her for the first dance, the quadrille, the Marquess requested the second dance, the gavotte, casting a glance at Kenneth.
Usually, when a lady came with a male chaperone, she would dance the first dance with him, making it practically a given.
“If it’s you, Marquess, I’d be delighted to do that.”
As Camilla winked at her, Letticia smiled and accepted the invitation. Immediately, other men lined up to ask her for dances.
“Good to see you again, Lady Sharon. May I have the honor of a dance tonight as well?”
“Lady Sharon, would you grant me a dance too?”
“Lady—”
While the flood of dance invitations gave Letticia a bit of a headache, she skillfully maintained a polite smile.
Some of the men asking her to dance were familiar faces from the previous ball, but many were new.
One thing was certain: the number of invitations she received today was several times more than on the first day.
***
“Letty, look at all these invitations. We need to sort out the ones you should attend.”
A few hours after mentally cursing her fate, Letticia stared wide-eyed at the enormous pile of invitations that looked like it could contain dozens.
“Are all these for me? Not for you, Mother?”
“I’ve already sorted mine. Now, since we don’t have much time, start by checking the names of the senders and categorize them. Kenneth, you remember the list I gave you, right?”
“Yes, Aunt.”
Kenneth swiftly sorted the letters into three categories.
The largest pile was for rejections, the middle pile was for pending decisions, and the smallest pile was for accepted invitations.
“There aren’t many events you must attend. The key is deciding which of the pending invitations are worth attending.”
“Shouldn’t you and Ken decide that?”
“Kenneth is doing the initial sorting, but you need to understand why. You need to know which events to attend and why. Otherwise, you’re no different from a doll.”
Letticia nodded at Camilla’s advice and began to look through the names on the accepted invitations Kenneth had sorted.
Viscountess Paulette, Countess Cassilis, Duchess Dinever…
“Isn’t Countess Cassilis the one we met at the royal ball?”
“Yes, it seems she considers you a good match for her son.”
“Well… the young lord didn’t leave much of an impression on me.”
Only three dance partners from the previous ball stood out in Letticia’s memory.
The worst was Matthias, followed closely by Lord Milan, and then Ezkhiel, a pleasant acquaintance from her academy days and her brother’s friend.
The rest were just categorized as ‘dance partners,’ and she could barely remember what they talked about.
“Well, being a western noble, I was a bit worried, but he did mind his manners. I’m not sure if he’s a good match for you, though.”
“It’s not just that I’m unsure… I don’t want to marry a provincial noble. Especially someone from the west.”
The west was the most conservative region in the vast empire. The only exception was Camilla’s family, the Marquess of Wade.
Letticia couldn’t even imagine what life would be like if she, a new noble, married into such a place.
“Luckily, we find that idea troublesome as well. We didn’t support you with so many dresses and jewels just to make you a promotional model for six months.”
“My money was spent on the dress too, Mother! I bought the Amarasun silk with my own money!”
“Letty, the important thing is that if your active period is short, it will be a loss for the family. It might be hard not to get married for three years, but it would be best if you could stay in the capital as much as possible. That way, you can continue to be a promotional model even if you get engaged or married.”
Kenneth’s reasoning calmed Letticia down.
Unmarried debutantes have a maximum of three years to find a husband. If they do not get married or at least engaged within those three years, they are considered defective brides and often marry into lower-status families. Ideally, they should get married within three years and then remain in the social circles of the capital as married hosts of social gatherings.
After confirming that Letticia had calmed down, Kenneth handed her the letters he had sorted.
“Here are the pending letters. The invitations to balls were already sent to aunt, and these are for tea parties and outings. There’s a ball at the Marquess of Digby’s tomorrow, so you need to attend that. Afterward, we’ll choose from these invitations to plan your schedule. I’ll select the most effective balls for promotion.”
Kenneth, who trained with the secretarial team after graduating from the academy, was now assigned as Letticia’s secretary. He was even more capable than most maids in supporting her in social circles due to Camilla’s education.
He was so competent that he could handle some of the tasks Letticia was supposed to do, so Letticia often delegated tasks to him.
“I’ll act as your chaperone, so when you reject dance requests, use me as an excuse. But don’t get too close to me; we don’t want any rumors about cousins getting married.”
“Don’t say something so creepy, please. Why would I marry you? This isn’t a hundred years ago.”
About a hundred years ago, it was not uncommon for cousins to marry to keep the family wealth or preserve bloodlines. But these days, cousin marriages are taboo and frowned upon unless it’s for critical family succession or legitimacy.
“Rumors can be created easily. And I don’t like the idea either, so don’t make that face.”
Kenneth’s eyes were wide open, showing his genuine dislike.
The children of the Sharon family, who grew up together in a large household, considered each other more like siblings than cousins.
For them, marrying a sibling was more horrifying than being tortured in hell.
“Come on, what’s this? Some families tell their younger sisters that they have to marry their brothers when they grow up. Don’t you hate that?”
“What kind of crazy family says such crazy things?”
“You know, the kind that is collectively insane towards the youngest.”
“Oh.”
At those words, Kenneth closed his eyes again, seemingly recalling things he didn’t want to think about.
“Let’s stop talking about that crazy family and look at the schedule again. There are other meetings we must attend besides the ball.”
Camilla, who had been listening to their conversation, brought up the previously discussed meetings again, aptly changing the subject.
“You need to show your quality, so you should attend a literary meeting, and it would be good to go to a music meeting too. Also, think about going to a riding meeting. You love riding.”
“Did we get an invitation to a riding meeting? Big brother, I want to go to that.”
“So I categorized it as an acceptance. Considering your personality and image, and the debutante dress you wore, it’s good to show a trendsetting and lively appearance.”
“And if you get tired of dancing at the ball, go to the lounge or tea room. If you sit by the wall while others are dancing, you might be sensationalized in the social papers the next day as a ‘wallflower.’”
Imagining a headline like ‘Queen of Flowers Falls to Wallflower,’ Letticia vowed to dance until she ran out of energy.
***
While she had made up her mind, Letticia didn’t have the skill to gracefully decline the dance requests flooding in from men. At the academy, she only interacted with women, so she had barely conversed with men outside her family.
Fortunately, Camilla and Kenneth stepped in to politely decline on her behalf.
“Gentlemen, it’s not gentlemanly to promise dances so far into the future when she hasn’t even had her first dance. Why not return after the first dance?”
“And while we appreciate the requests, please keep your distance. A true gentleman should not make a lady feel uncomfortable.”
Meanwhile, Letticia subtly distanced herself from the men, quickly scanning to find suitable dance partners.
‘That man danced with me two days ago, so I’ll pass today. Mother strictly forbade dancing with that man… I’ll accept from the remaining ones appropriately.’
Only after roughly organizing her thoughts could she prepare to dance.
Her only concern was whether Kenneth could dance well.
“By the way, Ken, did you practice dancing? As far as I know, you hate dancing.”
“I trained with aunt until I almost died, so a little… But I can only dance quadrilles, so don’t use me as an excuse for other dances. Especially not for the waltz.”
“I hate that too! Why would I enjoy dancing a waltz with my cousin?”
While they bickered, the music started, signaling that the guests had all arrived.
The hostess, the Marchioness, and the Marquess stepped onto the dance floor with their partners, and the guests began to fill the floor as well.
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To Be Continued…
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