Chapter 410 Escort (6)
We took the towel and dried ourselves off the best that we could, but our clothes were still a bit wet since it was the middle of autumn.
If we stayed like this, there was no doubt that we would catch a cold.
I couldn’t help feeling regret over following the princess in.
If I had stopped her, perhaps none of this would have happened.
If the princess was to catch a cold, then there was no doubt that I would be the one blamed for this and the prince and the king would retaliate on me…
I should think of a way to dry us off while we still could.
But before I could do anything, the butler led us to the side where he had already set up a shelter with a roaring fire inside of it. As long as we stayed by the fire, it would warm us up and it would dry off our clothes.
lightsΝοvεl ƈοm As long as we stayed here, then there was no doubt that we would be able to dry off and keep warm.
It was just…how did the butler know to prepare this?
Still, there wasn’t any time to think about that now since the princess was certainly cold.
I could even see that she was shivering a little bit when the cool autumn breeze blew across us.
So I escorted her into the shelter prepared and the two of us sat down in front of the fire.
As we felt the warmth coming from it, I couldn’t help rubbing my hands together and putting them in front of the fire.
Across from this fire, I could see that the princess was doing the same thing.
As we looked at each other doing the exact same thing, I couldn’t help revealing a smile.
I was sure that if I was able to see her face, she would be doing the same thing as well.
It was then that the butler came back.
He had left to do something and I had no idea what he was doing, but I understood what he went off to do when he came back.
He had come back with two mugs in his hand that had steam coming from them.
There was also a faint scent of chocolate in the air when he came over.
He handed one to the princess before coming over to hand me the other one as he said, “Count Zwein, please drink this to warm yourself up.”
I looked down to see that it was a fresh cup of hot chocolate that had been prepared.
There was even what seemed to be a bit of milk foam that was on top of the hot chocolate.
I couldn’t help looking at the butler with a strange look.
How did he prepare everything that he was even able to bring out two cups of hot chocolate like this?
It was almost as if he had already expected all of this to happen.
Not to mention, why would he bring hot chocolate in the first place?
The picnic was one thing, but would people normally bring hot chocolate out to pick herbs?
This was a very strange thing to do, right?
In the end, I couldn’t ask the questions that were in my heart.
Partly because I didn’t know how to ask them and partly because I knew that I wouldn’t get an answer from the butler.
The butler had even gone as far as threatening me to go along with the princess, I was sure that he wouldn’t give me an answer if I asked.
So all I could do was take the hot chocolate and enjoy warming up by the fire.
The two of us remained here for a bit.
Eventually, the sun even started to go down.
It wasn’t dark yet, but it was clearly getting late.
This would have been fine if we were here to have fun, but we were here to do a job.
The herbs still hadn’t been picked yet…
So I couldn’t help saying, “Shouldn’t we go and pick the herbs before it gets too dark? Our clothes are close to dry, so we should go now.”
The princess didn’t seem willing to move as she just sat there by the fire, looking in my direction.
I couldn’t help feeling awkward seeing her look at me like this, but I didn’t turn away as I waited for an answer.
But it was the butler who gave me one.
“Count Zwein, there’s no need to worry about this.”
After he said this, the butler raised a sack that he had brought over from the side before continuing, “The herbs have already been gathered, so there’s no need for you to do anything.”
I couldn’t help being shocked when I heard this before reaching out for the sack.
The butler just gave it to me without a single word.
I opened the sack and looked inside to find that these were indeed the herbs that we needed. There wasn’t a single one of them missing and there was even more than we needed gathered.
After seeing this, I couldn’t help looking at the butler with a very strange look.
If he had already gathered everything, why didn’t he tell us already?
If he had already gathered everything, we could have already gone back to the city instead of wasting our time here.
But the butler didn’t care about the way that I looked at him.
Instead, he went over to the princess and said, “Young miss, shall we spend some more time here? There’s still some time before sunset, so we can stay here a bit longer before heading back. We shouldn’t have a problem making it back to the city before the gates closed.”
The princess just gave a casual nod in response to this.
There was a bitter smile that appeared on my face when I heard this, but there wasn’t anything that I could say.
After all, it was the princess that said this…
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