Chapter 1690 - 234 - The Duchy of Lerbia (6)

A person could be competent and still be a complete bastard, apparently, which was a lesson that seemed to come up surprisingly often in this world.

There was still something that he seemed hesitant about, but I believed it was something that needed to be done if this place was ever going to flourish beyond what it had been before. Simply removing the former duke from the equation would not automatically make everything better, because someone still needed to make sure the farms were functioning, the trade was moving, and the people actually had a reason to believe that their situation was improving.

Once they saw actual results for themselves, I believed they would eventually become much more willing to accept my involvement and the changes I was proposing. Trust was probably going to take time, but time was something we had as long as nobody decided to ruin everything again.

***

Anna was someone I had not seen for quite some time.

Although I had continued receiving her letters and regularly wrote back whenever I had the opportunity, we had not actually met face-to-face in a very long time. Thinking about it more carefully, I realized that it had probably been around a year, perhaps even longer, since the last time we had actually seen one another.

The next letter I sent to her explained that I wanted to meet with her and asked her to come to the capital. Admittedly, it was probably a little scummy of me to suddenly ask her to travel all the way there after such a long period without seeing her, but judging from the response I received, Anna seemed genuinely delighted by the invitation rather than annoyed by the inconvenience.

She apparently became so excited about coming to the capital that she decided to make the trip by horse and carriage. Seeing someone still traveling around in a carriage like that felt somewhat outdated to me, especially considering how much transportation had developed, but since using one was not prohibited, there was hardly anybody who could stop her from doing it.

Besides, Anna was apparently determined enough that telling her to use something else probably would not have accomplished much anyway.

I waited for her in front of the Leonamon cakeshop, occasionally glancing down the road while wondering how different she might look after all this time. I already had a fairly clear image of her in my memory, but people could change quite a lot over the course of a year, especially someone who spent most of her time working outside the capital.

Eventually, her carriage arrived, and when Anna stepped out, I immediately noticed how different she looked compared with the woman I had first met back then.

"Lord Faust!" she shouted as soon as she spotted me.

I stared at her for a moment.

"Lord Faust?" I thought, wondering why she was suddenly calling me that. "Why did you call me with that kind of name?" I asked her, unable to hide my confusion. "You can just call me Darling like you used to."

"Well, you are being called Lord Faust all over the kingdom these days," she explained with a gentle smile. "People are praising you everywhere, and apparently everyone keeps saying that the war will be won with you fighting alongside us, so naturally, I thought I should call you Lord Faust as well."

She was clearly teasing me, and judging from the gentle smile on her face, she was enjoying my reaction quite a bit. I had a feeling she had deliberately chosen that particular greeting because she knew it would make me uncomfortable, which was probably another thing that had not changed about her.

Anna looked surprisingly elegant in her formal attire, and there was something rather seductive about the way she carried herself compared with the woman I remembered meeting for the first time. Her appearance had changed enough that I almost felt as though I were looking at someone completely different, although the familiar expression in her eyes made it obvious that she was still the same Anna underneath all those changes.

When I first saw her, she had been wearing a simple tunic and a straw hat, looking so much like an ordinary farmer that I could have easily mistaken her for someone who had spent her entire life working in the fields. Well, she was, but that was beside the point.

Her appearance had always been striking, though, because she had an incredibly busty figure and a very foreign-looking appearance, along with pale skin that almost made it seem as though she had barely experienced any farmwork despite the life she had been living. The contrast had been amusing even back then, considering how much she looked like someone who belonged in a completely different setting from the fields she worked in.

Seeing her properly dressed for the capital made that contrast even more obvious.

"You certainly look different from the last time I saw you," I said, looking her over with a mixture of amusement and surprise.

"I suppose that is what happens when you are invited to the capital instead of spending the day working on a farm," Anna replied, giving me another gentle smile. "I thought it would be rather embarrassing to arrive here dressed exactly as I normally would."

"That probably would have made you stand out even more," I admitted.

"I think you would have recognized me either way," she replied.

"Of course I would have," I said, because there was little chance I would have forgotten someone like Anna.

She laughed softly at my answer. Afterward, she looked directly at me, and the expression in her eyes seemed to carry so many different emotions at once that I found myself struggling to figure out which one stood out the most. Affection and longing were probably both there together, mixed with the obvious happiness she felt at seeing me again after such a long time. She smiled warmly, and then she took a smooth run toward me before I even had enough time to properly react.

Then, she wrapped her arms around me in a huge hug, and I immediately felt as though I had been completely swallowed by her entire body. Her weight settled against me, and I could feel just how soft and warm she was as she held me tightly, making it surprisingly comfortable despite how overwhelming the hug itself was. Her body was incredibly soft to the touch, and her figure was so busty that I could not help noticing it when she pulled me close.

Was she always this busty?

Before I could think about that for much longer, she pulled my cheeks gently with both hands and then leaned forward, pressing her lips directly against mine in a sudden kiss. The gesture caught me slightly off guard, although considering how affectionate she had been from the moment she saw me again, perhaps I should have expected something like that.

"I'm happy to see you again after such a long time, Darling~" she said.