Swiss Arms 42 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 42

-VB-

I stared at the woman across the table from me.

The self-introduced Isabella of Gorizia, daughter of Albert I of Gorizia and governor of Tyrol, sat with a self-satisfied smile.

“You have a lot of guts just saying something like that,” I told her matter-of-factly. “Marriage isn’t something you just throw at a person.”

“But I’m not!” she exclaimed proudly with a shit-eating grin. “I have seen enough to know you’re the one for me.”

I sighed for what felt like the fifth time in the past hour. While she looked familiar, I had never met her before so her claims of having met and seen me before felt too much for me. Worse, her bodyguards told me that I had indeed met her before.

Which, you know, felt like gaslighting because I would have recognized someone with fair skin and a pretty face like hers in the backwater mountain valleys! Well, aside from Alvia but Alvia’s intensity when her passion and crafts were concerned left her bodily traits more out of focus and out of mind.

As for the girl sitting across from me, she also had a similar intensity about her.

It was just my (mis)fortune that she directed hers at me. Or was me?

Hmm. Grammar.

I stared in deadpan before looking up at her “minder.” “Mind explaining?” I asked him.

The man, a grey-haired man-at-arms, shrugged with the “what can you do?” look. He did, however, explain. “Lady Isabella is the daughter of Count Albert I of Gorizia.” He reached into his rear pack and pulled out a rolled up scroll (letter?). “For you, Lord Fluela.”

“I’m not a lord, so you can be at ease,” I snorted as I took the letter(scroll?). Before I unfurled it, the man-at-arms shook his head, causing me to stop and look at him.

“You may not call yourself a lord, but you have the attention of the Prince-Bishop of Chur, named yourself as the enemy of Counts, killed a count, have that dead count’s heir as your hostage, and hold the attention of the emperor. Disregard your true status all you want, Lord Fluela, but you are a lord in all but title. From what I have heard from my liege, that particular tidbit was also due to your own actions.”

I looked at him and nodded slowly. “I see. And you are being frank with me.”

“Yes, because if you keep portraying yourself as a commoner, then the lords around you will treat you as one, even if they should know better,” Isabella entered the conversation smoothly. She raised both of her hands, palms up. “This also means that they will expect things from you. However, recent actions both here in the valleys and in the surrounding territories have made it clear to me and my father that you will not stand for the normal ... behaviors of the nobleborn.”

One hand lowered itself below the other. “This disparity will cause irritation, frustration, and then anger. And I believe you know what an angry noble does,” she said as the other higher hand balled up into a fist. “But you aren’t just a regular commoner.” The lower hand balled up into a fist. “You are someone who can and will strike back. You don’t fear the nobility. You don’t fear titles. You raised your sword against a bishop, against a count, and against your rightful liege. Why? Because you claimed that they were wrong.” The lower fist smashed up into the upper one, knocking it out.

“If you continue to lower yourself, then you also mock the nobles and lords around you. You might not know but the Counts to your north and south are now all laughingstocks. Counts who lost to peasants. Lords who died to their rebels. Nobles who couldn’t control their peasants.”

I listened to her as she wove a story. It was … I didn’t know all of the details but it fit somewhat with what I have been hearing.

“Angry nobles do what angry powerful men do, Baron Hans. Even if you do not accept a noble title because you profess that you do not control this Compact, you do control a fort, the people who work and live there and make deals with nobles. You are a noble in all things but title. Why, my father’s peer in the Carinthian lands have been calling you the Peasant Baron,” she smiled. “An acknowledgment of your accomplishments, even if they call you that to belittle you among themselves.”

“Then why come to this peasant baron and propose marriage?” I asked in exasperated befuddlement. She had her reasons, pinpointed local political dynamic, and … not sure what else. She was a very capable woman. “You also realize that your father and I had been butting heads just a year ago, right?” I asked her.

And her eyes hardened.

“That does not matter to me. The Lord states that when a daughter leaves her father’s house, she becomes part of her husband’s house. Even if my father may have a say on who I marry, I still choose you. I chose you because you are a warrior, a leader, a craftsman, an orator, and so much more. However, you keep lowering yourself. It’s something I kept hearing about you and have seen in person twice. Even if unknowingly, you belittle yourself because you think that is what you should do. Yet you are the most capable man in perhaps all of the Alps and in around a hundred leagues. You stopped a horse and -”

That was when my lightbulb went off.

“Oh, that was you?” I asked with a bright smile at seeing her alright. “I was honestly a little worried!”

She looked at me with wide eyes, and I realized I just cut her off.

“Sorry, go on.”

She blinked before smiling softly and shaking her head. “Still apologizing for the smallest of things. I will have to reeducate you on that once I’m your wife.”

“... You mean if.”

“No,” she smiled. This one was definitely predatory. “Once I have my eyes set on something, I will have it. I just haven’t had much I wanted before you came around.” She pointed at me. A rude gesture in and of itself in a normal setting, but our current meeting and circumstance were anything but normal. “I want you, Hans Fluela, and if that means I have to walk naked into your room at night, then so be it.”

Her bodyguard sighed in tired exasperation.

I could understand his burden. He had my sympathies.

I looked back at Isabella, and saw how tense she was. She had been honest with me (honest to a fault). She showed how useful she could be, which was an A+ tactic for someone of this era but not to me.

I mean, sure, I did want to get a wife and settle down. It wouldn’t be bad to be in love again.

Would it be selfish to try?

… It helped that she was pretty.

I took a deep breath in…

And answered.

-VB-

Isabella returned to their residence, one they have been using for the past week in undercover.

And she let out a squeal.

“Did you see?! Did you see?! He actually listened to me instead of dismissing me!”

Jacob snorted in amusement. Her ladyship had indeed feared that when it came to matters of family and politics, Lord Fluela would have dismissed Isabella on account of her being the daughter of his former enemy.

But he hadn’t.

Instead, he had listened to her, talked with her, and made his decision.

“My lady, you understand that he didn’t say yes, right?” he asked her.

But she just shook her head with a big, fat grin of a cat that caught the birdie. “But he didn’t say no! He said he wasn’t averse to getting to know me better!”

Then she squealed again.

He sighed.

She was going to be squealing for the next week, wasn’t she?