Herald of Steel

Alexander kept the presumed use of his new machine to himself for now, not knowing how applicable the contraption would truly be.

He had no idea how deep the mines were or if the machine would even be able to perform as expected under real life conditions.

It was still in the prototype phase after all.

He did not want to let his promise get Lady Miranda's hopes up, only to fail later.

Thus keeping that option to himself for now, Alexander moved his back forward from the sofa to at last ask the all important final question, "So what does my lady want me to do now exactly? Force Miss Linda to give up her claim and convince your family to support you? Or share power with her?"

Alexander clasped his hands as he posed.

"Force Linda to abdicate please." Came the instant answer, Lady Miranda clearly revealing she did not have the slightest intention to share power, warning, "My lord does not know Linda. Sharing power with her would be like putting an axe to one of my own feet. She will be nothing but a hindrance."

Alexander however was not impressed by this answer.

Because according to what he came to know, Miss Linda held all the cards while Lady Miranda had nothing.

No army, no supporters, and no money.

So what the eldest daughter of the house was basically asking of Alexander was to turn a pauper like her into a king almost overnight.

A very, very hard thing to do in the best of times.

Alexander might have actually considered it even then if all Miss Linda had was the Margraves family because he thought he was much more powerful than them.

That way, once he was successful, he could have made Lady Miranda and by extension the Margraves family into his puppet.

But the slight hiccup here was that Miss Linda was not alone.

Instead, she had the backing of a power similar if not stronger than Alexander.

Thus to depose Miss Linda Alexander would need to engage in a full fledged battle with those 22,000 men standing only a short distance away.

And with only 5,000 actual soldiers of his own, that would be nothing but suicide.

Alexander would not face them in battle unless absolutely, positively forced to.

Thus with that simplest option out of the way, Alexander frankly asked the next natural question, "So how would you like me to do it?"

Because Alexander did not have any idea.

"...." And neither did Lady Miranda, seeming to be in the same boat as Alexander.

The task of dislodging her very firmly entrenched sister from her throne appeared very hard, at least without a bloodbath.

Or perhaps she did know it would require a bloodbath but was too embarrassed to say those exact words.

Thus next, Alexander stepped in to help her with that, asking, "Then, how far is my lady willing to go against your sister? Will you object if I kill Miss Linda? Or her son?"

Alexander slanted his eyes in a cruel, cunning fashion as he made the inquiry, seemingly determined to make the move if Lady Miranda had no problem.

While the lady in question visibly shook at the revelation of such scandalous thoughts hidden deep inside her heart.

She would never admit it, but the thought of killing her sister and newborn nephew had indeed crossed her mind.

That seemed like the easiest solution.

However it was too shameful to ever say it out loud- her family, or for that matter any family would never condone such killings among next of kin.

Lady Miranda was also very afraid that by committing this act, her path to the throne would forever be lost as her family would never accept a person who had done such a heinous act.

And the same rule applied to Miss Linda too, which was the primary reason why Lady Miranda was still alive, despite being turned into an abandoned puppy.

But just because Lady Miranda could not do it did not mean Alexander could not do it either.

After all, the latter was his own man, and what could Lady Miranda do if Alexander chose to what he thought was right?

If he did it, all the blame would fall on him, while her hands would be clean.

Thus Lady Miranda was actually glad that Alexander had brought it up.

Although with a tiny speck of guilt in her heart, she also rebuked him internally, 'My lord, you really should not say those words so openly. Have a bit more tact.'

She found Alexander's use of the 'kill' too crude and wished he had used a much more flowery, euphemistic phrase to describe the deed.

"What… what are you saying, Lord Alexander? Have you gone mad? Restrain your tongue! You are in the company of civilized people. This is not something to even joke about!"

While this was, as you might have guessed was shouted out by the lord of the house- Lord Cassius, who had by now jumped up in rage at this mere mention, clearly showing that he stood in complete opposition to his wife and would not even consider such an act to be an opinion.

'Brother killing brother! Sister killing sisters! Aunts killing nephews! Have we fallen this low?' He could not help but mournfully cry out in his heart seeing that such filthy things were even being discussed, lampooning his wife's thirst for power.

Personally, Lord Cassius was not as much interested in the Margraves family's seat as his wife was, and not even that against Miss Linda taking the seat.

As long as he could lead his life peacefully, the genteel man really did not care who ruled the family.

Thus he was mainly here because Lady Miranda had dragged him into it.

"You cannot be serious Miranda!" Hence, sensing Lady Miranda was about to do something that there was no going back from, he finally turned to look to at his wife with a furious glare, clearly showing his vehement opposition.

This was perhaps the first time Alexander had seen the portly man act like a true man in front of his wife.

And facing her infuriated spouse, Lady Miranda in a very rare instance prudently decided to take a step back instead of trying to cajole her husband into the plan, thus reassuring him with a comforting smile "Of course not, dear. Lord Alexander was just jesting. We both know no one in the family will ever accept us if we did such a thing. We are just throwing out new ideas here."

Lady Miranda knew that although most of the time her other half had a weak spine and bent whatever way she asked him to, even he had his limits.

And this was one of them.

Lord Cassius was a good man by nature and would never sanction such an act against one of the members of his family.

Something which caused Alexander to sneer in his heart describing the man, 'An honorable fool. Fit to be a great steward but a rotten candidate for a lord.'

In Alexander's opinion, a truly skilled lord was one who was an upright gentleman under the sun, yet unscrupulous and cruel under the moon.

Not rigid and inflexible like the one before him.

Thus given Lord Cassius's absolute veto on the matter, both Lady Miranda and Alexander decided to pretend to drop the idea, with Alexander also quickly chiming up to buttress Lady Miranda's claim that they were just spitballing here.

It was unknown how much of that bluff Lord Cassius actually bought. But he did slowly take back his seat, so that was reassuring.

From this, the duo of Alexander and Lady Miranda understood that if they did truly go ahead with this clandestine plan, it would have to be done unbeknownst to Lord Cassius.

As for the resulting fallout, well that was indeed one of the determining factors that the pair would have to analyze before truly committing the act, should they choose to.

But even without Lord Cassius's objection, Alexander doubted he could actually do it.

The reason?

The Heeat family.

Miss Linda's son, Quentin was likely the son of the successor to the ducal family and the grandson of the current head.

Killing him would not be prudent- the Margraves already had enough enemies.

Thus this was really just Alexander poking to see Lady Miranda's resolve.

And the lady's cold heart ready to do whatever it was necessary to win her the throne did manage to adequately impress Alexander.

She had come a long way from that naive, inexperienced girl he had met almost 5 years ago.

The trio was unable to come up with any strategy on how to remove Miss Linda without force for the moment.

Thus Alexander shifted to the reason why they were not able to do so- The Heeat family.

"How much my lady want to deal with the Heeat family? Fight them? Or cut a deal with them? Such as give them a cut of my market and work with them to stop the piracy and get a better rate for your routes from the council."

"We already did. But they want to eat us whole and not even leave scraps." The acrid tone told volumes about that idea's feasibility.

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