Count Goran And The Chocolate-Covered Cherries (1)

First came the appetizers.

Mushrooms were usually associated with autumn, but delicious mushrooms could also be gathered in the mountains at this time of year. I arranged an assortment of spring dishes on a large platter: terrine made with freshly picked spring mushrooms and chicken, goat cheese that was in season in spring, and a spread made with ramsons, a spring herb. I served them with thinly sliced bread.

Next came the fish course.

Today, I’d managed to get my hands on some excellent trout caught in a local lake, so I’d marinated it.

I cut the trout into thin, diagonal slices, added sliced onions and celery, and scattered plenty of dill over the top.

And for the main course, I served rabbit stew with asparagus.

Alvin and his brown-haired companion, Dennis, wolfed down every dish, but it was Alvin’s next words that gave me a particularly satisfying sense of accomplishment.

“That was delicious. Everything was delicious, but the rabbit stew was absolutely outstanding.”

“Thank you very much.”

I replied as though it were nothing special, but I was actually quite delighted.

It was early afternoon, and the lunchtime rush had already subsided.

On sunny days, young couples often came to enjoy desserts, but perhaps because the sky was overcast today, there were no other customers in the dining room.

On days like this, Cassie and the others usually attended to other work. Cassie’s health had improved considerably, and today, the entire family was busy working in the fields.

“Could I have some coffee?”

“Certainly.”

With an additional order placed after their meal, I prepared the coffee beans and all the necessary equipment.

Alvin took the bag of beans from me.

“You’ll have some too, won’t you?”

He poured enough beans for three people onto a plate with a clatter.

“…………”

Alvin examined each coffee bean intently, carefully sorting through them one by one.

He looked so serious that I couldn’t help watching him.

Without taking his eyes off the beans, Alvin asked me a question in an unusually hesitant tone.

“…Lydia, did you go to the spring festival in Fus?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You went?”

Alvin turned toward me, looking surprised.

“Yes. The weather was lovely that day, and there was an enormous crowd.”

“I see…”

Alvin seemed lost in thought. For some reason, Dennis, his companion, also held his breath and stared at me.

What was going on?

“Is there something wrong?”

“…No. Did you… see the lord?”

His voice was so quiet that he almost seemed to be forcing the words out.

“No, unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to see His Lordship.”

When I answered,

“I see.”

Alvin wore a strange expression, looking somehow both relieved and disappointed.

“By any chance, were you and Dennis accompanying His Lordship as well?”

The lord had been surrounded by knights providing security. Perhaps these two had been among them.

Alvin looked up at the ceiling.

“…Well, something like that.”

“I see. It would have been nice to see you there. Noah and Mirei were there too, you know. We had a stall in the square that day.”

“I heard about that at the town hall. Apparently, they asked the popular restaurants to set up stalls. Were you invited too, Lydia-san?”

Dennis, who was evidently well-informed, joined the conversation.

Around the time Alvin had started calling me by my given name, Dennis had also begun addressing me as Lydia-san.

Commoners generally didn’t have surnames, so it was customary to address them either by the name of their business or by their given name.

Most of my regular customers called me Lydia-san or the innkeeper.

So there wasn’t anything particularly significant about Alvin calling me Lydia… or at least, there shouldn’t have been.

“Yes. Fortunately, they specifically invited me to participate.”

“Oh, what a shame I missed it! I would’ve loved to try your food. What did you serve? Since they were giving away meat, was it something like a fish dish?”

“No, actually, they asked me to sell sweets.”

“What? Sweets? Well, I suppose the sweets here are delicious too.”

Dennis was such a nice fellow that he even went out of his way to say something encouraging.

“Would you like to try some? As it happens, I’ve just finished baking another batch of the sweets I sold at the festival.”

I returned to the kitchen and prepared the sweets.

The first was a batch of freshly baked madeleines that I’d left to cool on a wire rack. They were still slightly warm.

Madeleines became moister if left to rest for a day, but when freshly baked, their exteriors were slightly crisp, which made them delicious in their own way.

Then I took those out of the insulated cooling box I’d borrowed and placed one on each plate.

By the time I returned to the dining room, the coffee was ready.

“Here you are.”

When I offered them the sweets, Alvin and Dennis reacted enthusiastically.

“Delicious.”

“These go really well with coffee.”

Alvin brought a madeleine to his nose and gave it a sniff.

“There’s some kind of fragrance. Is it lemon?”

“Yes, it’s lemon.”

“It’s wonderfully refreshing.”

“So you can use it like this, too.”

“And this seashell shape is quite unusual. I imagine these would be popular with women.”

The madeleines received an extremely favorable reception.

The two men then gazed curiously at the other sweet I’d prepared.

It looked like a small, round, black object about the size of a thumb. To make matters worse, a thin, stick-like thing protruded from it.

I was the one who’d made them, but even I had to admit they didn’t look particularly edible.

“Lydia, what’s this?”

“Chocolate. I managed to get my hands on a little cacao.”

“…Cacao?”

Alvin furrowed his brow, but Dennis apparently understood immediately.

“Ah! Lydia-san, don’t tell me the town asked you to make sweets for the lord’s birthday?”

“The lord’s birthday?”

Alvin gave Dennis a suspicious look as he questioned him.

“Yes. Alvin-sama doesn’t like receiving gifts that are obviously expensive, so lately, most of the offerings have been local specialties. Food in particular.”

As befitted a knight who served among the lord’s closest retainers, Dennis referred to the lord by his given name.

The lord’s name was Alvin, and the knight sitting here was also named Alvin.

Alvin was a name frequently given to boys in families that valued martial prowess, after the famous hero Alvin, renowned for slaying monsters. I imagined there must be quite a few knights with the same name in the order. That must make things terribly confusing.

Incidentally, Lydia was also the name of a famous saintess. There were plenty of people who shared my name, which could be rather confusing, so I deeply sympathized with Alvin.

“We close retainers get to share in the gifts too, so we always look forward to the lord’s birthday!”

Dennis said this with obvious excitement.

“Really? His Lordship sounds like a very generous person.”

Dennis nodded with a beaming smile.

“Absolutely! So we’ll get to eat Lydia-san’s madeleines this year, huh? I can’t wait!”

“…I’m not giving you any.”

Apparently, Alvin, Dennis’s superior, intended to keep them all to himself, but Dennis immediately retorted.

“If you do that, the knight order won’t stand for it. Everyone’s already looking forward to them!”

The Goran Knight Order certainly seemed to be a close-knit organization.

“Guh…”

Alvin made a disgruntled noise and changed the subject.

“Are you giving this chocolate to the lord as well?”

“Yes. As I’m sure you both know, I made it using cacao beans produced right here in the territory.”

Goran’s cacao beans weren’t yet available to the general public because production hadn’t reached a stable level.

The cacao I’d obtained had come from a batch distributed to the town on a trial basis.

Chocolate itself was still quite rare in our country, and cacao beans were so incredibly expensive that they were said to be worth their weight in gold.

They were so expensive that the town hall, which had received a supply of them, had been completely at a loss as to what to do with them.

Back when I was a royal palace magic knight, I’d had the opportunity to eat chocolate once, when it was presented to me as a reward.

I’d been astonished by its delicate, exquisite flavor, which was entirely unexpected given its appearance.

When I casually mentioned that I’d like to try making chocolate sweets once cacao became more widely available, the young man at the town hall had spoken to his superior and arranged to give me some cacao.

At first, I’d declined, reluctant to risk ruining such an expensive ingredient if my attempt went wrong. However, apparently every chef they’d approached had felt exactly the same way, and they hadn’t been able to find anyone willing to work with it.

Chocolate melted very easily.

“I’ll need an insulated cooling box with an ice magic stone to store it, though…”

When I mentioned that, they even lent me one along with the cacao beans.

It was certainly very considerate of them, but… frankly, I couldn’t help feeling that they’d rather foisted the whole thing on me.

“I thought chocolate was supposed to be a thick, liquid drink…”

Alvin murmured as he examined the small, round piece of chocolate.

He wasn’t wrong. Chocolate had originally been introduced to our country as a hot beverage made by adding sugar and milk to refined cacao. However, the chocolate I’d eaten had been this solid variety.

I intended to select twelve of the best-shaped chocolates I’d made, arrange them in a glass container, and present them as a gift.

The ingredients were locally produced, and the container was the work of a glass artisan from the town. Surely a lord who actively encouraged industry within his territory would take an interest in such a gift.

…At least, that was what I hoped. Given their rather peculiar appearance, though, I wanted Alvin and Dennis, who were close to the lord, to understand what they were.

“Please, try one first.”

With that, I offered them the chocolates.