Herald of Steel

If Miss Linda really went through the act of poisoning her husband and having him killed, instead of being awarded the reins of the ducal family like in her dreams, the most likely outcome for her and her son would be getting pushed aside to a far away manor way off in the countryside and then be asked to live out their lives peacefully there in relative obscurity.

And this type of arrangement from the Heeat family's perspective made perfectly good sense.

After all, who in their right mind would choose to hand over the workings of their family to a nobody coming from an island a thousand miles away? Not to mention that nobody was a woman!

Just because she bore the son of their blood?

Joke!

If things were threaded so simply, the Heeat family would have long eaten from the inside from the many venomous daughter in laws they had over the centuries.

Thus even if Duke Heeat did not suspect his daughter in law of killing his son, he would be sure to remove her from all matters of the family, and then either choose to groom Marcus as his heir himself or if he changed his mind or his health turned worse, shift his favor to Lord Parker's younger brother and the man's progeny.

Both of which were bad news for Miss Linda and her love for power.

She did not just want her son to rule. She wanted her to do so too.

But her simple identity by birth meant that her plans were dead in the water even before it got the chance to float, much less swim.

No matter how strong of a contender her son might be, just by herself Miss Linda could never ever hope to contend with the succession laws of Sybarsis.

And if Miss Linda had discussed any of her plans with anyone and sought their opinion, they might have been able to advise on all of this and help her see reason, thus letting her back on from such a suicidal action.

But since the single minded lady had thought of the plans on her own and decided to act on it by herself, she possessed no such luck.

Of course, it was also unknown whether Miss Linda would have shelved the idea of assassination even if she had been informed of the risks.

Miss Linda usually tended to be very boorish once she set her mind on something.

She also had a bad habit of overestimating her scheming abilities and might have simply argued that she would be able to swerve her way through all the political machinations by herself and achieve triumph despite it all.

Perhaps such as by re marrying into the Heeat family, this time taking her current younger brother in law as her new partner, one who would be chosen to be the future Duke Heeat.

Miss Linda had enough narcissism in her to believe she would be too beautiful for the man to resist and might have even proudly declared,

"They will have to marry me if they want the loyalty of the Margraves family!"

There was indeed some truth to that.

If the Heeat family really wanted to swallow half of the island of Galiosos and not have it turn into a fishbone that was stuck in their throat, they would need Miss Linda's help.

Only she, or someone with blood as thick as her could give legitimacy to this blatant land grab by the Heeat family and not cause a ruckus in the Sybarian Confederation council.

So perhaps the superbly ambitious lady did have some tricks in her sleeve and could somehow make it work.

And even if she did not, well given how Lord Parker had treated her, the prideful woman would have sought revenge in other ways.

She was not willing to put the lives of her or her son in the hands of this half insane man.

Having decided what her next move was going to be, she then got to thinking how exactly she was going to do it.

Because believe it or not, assassinating someone like Lord Parker was surprisingly hard even in ordinary times. There were numerous checks by alert guards to catch any poison attempts

And it was a hurdle that was greatly compounded by the fact that they were inside a military camp in the middle of a campaign.

It would have been very hard for Miss Linda to get away with it even when Lord Parker had been infatuated with her and followed her almost like a puppy dog.

As for now, with their drifting apart and Lord Parker's self isolation, the idea to poison her man was looking more and more perilous.

Miss Linda might be able to still slip something in under the guise of visiting her husband just as a filial wife should, but the occurrence of such opportunities would really have to depend on her good luck and its success without detection upon a great deal more of it.

All the rare subtle poisons she would ordinarily have access to were also back at the Margraves's manor, a place quite out of her reach at the moment, leaving her able to summon only the most common ones, making them very unsuitable and too easily countered.

Miss Linda would likely get caught carrying them well before getting any chance to administer them.

All this made Miss Linda feel very gloomy about this route's prospects, and for an absolutely insane moment even made her half contemplate whether to ask her elder sister for help, to let her get access to the 'stuff'!

It might have sounded crazy at first, but Miss Linda reasoned Lady Miranda had to every reason to hate Lord Parker just as much as her. So surely she would be happy to see him bite the dust.

Of course, that thought was only a fleeting whisper in Miss Linda's mind, and trashed it almost as soon as it was born.

Not only was it too impractical, such as there being the question of how exactly they were going to communicate and get the poison to her, but also killing Lord Parker in such a way would only truly benefit Lady Miranda, leaving Miss Linda with nothing.

For example, if her elder sister and by proxy Alexander were to learn of her plans, they could then try and think of a way to try and take advantage of the ensuing chaos that was most certainly to follow.

And if the Heeat forces were to be somehow defeated in the process, well then Miss Linda would truly be the bull tilting his rival's soil.

All her ambitions would go down the drain with that.

And all this was not mentioning the ever present risk of her elder sister simply ratting her out and causing an irreparable divide between the families.

Given how tenuous their relationship already was, if such words were to reach Lord Parker, no matter how unsubstantiated, Miss Linda would surely see her and her son's heads rolling at the hands of this unhinged crazy.

So she wisely decided against informing their most hated rival of the cracks in the two family's alliance and tried to solve her problems on her own.

After shelving the poison route, the lady then thought of hiring an assassin to do her dirty deed.

But like the idea of getting Lady Miranda involved, this too was stamped out almost the moment it sprouted.

Because just ask yourself, who the hell was she going to find to try and infiltrate that heavily guarded tent? It would be suicide.

If Lord Macht had not dismantled the Margraves army, Miss Linda might have been able to somehow convince a naïve Margraves officer with a bleeding heart for the family to try and do the deed.

She knew there were plenty of men among them who salivated at her even till now and would gladly be willing to die. A few minutes of pleasure would be all they ask for.

However, the catch now for Miss Linda was that all the best warriors the Margraves family had to offer were already under arrest and strict surveillance. They could not even leave their tent without permission.

And in that same vein, even the chance of causing a riot using the dissatisfied grunts of the family to try and create an opening was neutralized by Lord Macht even before Miss Linda decided on her move.

All this left Miss Linda with a whole lot of desire but not a lot to wood to work with.

'Dammit! Is there no way?" Thus after racking her head for three days, the frustrated lady finally cursed out like so, and for a moment even wondered, 'Should I look for a new man and just run away?'

Of course, this was way too impractical.

Not to mention her face was too eye catching, but the lady also demanded a certain level of lifestyle that was impossible for any normal man to provide. Finding a noble that was willing to take her in in such a short amount of time was hard, to say the least.

"Whatever! I will just wait!" So giving up trying to escape, the lady decided to just lie in ambush, looking for an opportunity to kill her husband to present itself.

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