The Knight's Mysterious Maid-Chapter 318: Family dinner (4)

"Would you look at that? He solved the problem without having to speak. Let the children sit beside each other, Phillip. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to stop what happens between them. It won’t be long before she leaves us and starts living with him. What?" Celeste asked, wanting to know the reason behind Phillip’s frowning. "It is the truth."

"It is since I will be leaving with Rafael so I can reason with the king for peace. While I am away, I want a house to be built for me. It is time my parents are free from taking care of me. Maybe I should move right next to grandmother," Annalise said, turning to her grandmother for an answer.

"And what will happen to him?" Celeste asked, pointing at Rafael. "Will you see each other every other week or month? Is his home nearby?"

"We have not thought about that yet. What’s important right now is ending this feud so Rafael is free to visit as much as he wants, and I can travel to see him without having to hide who I am," Annalise answered. It was an important conversation she needed to have with Rafael one day, but not right now. Not when she didn’t have an answer for how they would get around that.

"You two plan to do the back and forth? I would have thought you would have him live near here-"

"Mother! This does not need to be discussed at dinner," Phillip said, interrupting before he could hear of a house being built for Rafael nearby. "He has responsibilities somewhere far from here. He can’t just up and live here."

"What exactly do you know about his responsibilities, father? Suddenly you know a lot about him," Annalise said.

"He’s a commander of knights. He has a manor full of knights he has to command. I might be here all the time, but you are forgetting that I send out groups to collect information on people like him. It would be a hassle for the two of you to go back and forth, so you might want to consider putting an end to it before you get so serious," Phillip suggested, hoping it would hit them how far away they would be away from each other.

Leaving home to go to where the guards roamed most days had Phillip missing Celine, so he couldn’t imagine being a few days travel away from her. Eventually, the two would get bored of having to travel to see each other when their life was full of having to lead others, and then their attention would turn to other people who were closer to them.

Phillip smiled, imagining Annalise becoming interested in someone else, but soon his smile fell as he thought of Rafael becoming interested in another woman and potentially hurting his daughter. No matter what solution he came up with it didn’t seem good the more he thought about it.

On the other hand, Rafael seriously considered the offer to move here to be closer to Annalise. The manor was meant to be expanded to shelter for knights who had nowhere to go and for training. Expanding to the land behind the manor should soon be starting, but he could stop that and have a new manor built here so his knights would be here to keep the peace.

Rafael was willing to give away the manor he spent years in and when asked what he wanted for ending this war, he would ask for nearby land Tobias had rule over. He didn’t have to worry about his parents since his mother would follow him and have a home built close to a new manor.

Beatrice would take any offer to get away from where Travis was.

"I will take care of it," Rafael said, causing everyone at the table to look at it.

Annalise was curious how Rafael planned to solve the two of them having to go back and forth, but instead of asking him now to have her father try to put a stop to Rafael’s idea, she was going to ask him later. She was glad Rafael came up with a solution since she had no idea how they were going to work that out.

Annalise wanted to be near her family since she had to take after her father as leader, but she also wanted to be near Rafael. She hoped she wouldn’t be made to pick between leader or Rafael in the future because she wanted the two.

"Phillip, you need to move faster with setting up the table. The food will be cold by the time you are finished," Celine said as she walked to the table with two more dishes to put down. "If you spent less time trying to ruin their relationship and put down the plates, you would be finished. I don’t want to hear any more of what they should and shouldn’t do."

"Threaten him that you’ll spend the night somewhere else and he will listen. It always worked on his father whenever I did it. Then again, I didn’t have to do it often because your father didn’t annoy me like this. What went wrong with you?" Celeste wondered.

"Mother please," Phillip said, leaving the table where he wasn’t appreciated to get the plates and forks before Celine would get angrier with being slow setting up the table.

It wasn’t his fault that everyone came to the table before they were called for dinner. If they were good guests, they wouldn’t have sat down until they saw that he had finished setting the table or like he requested, Rafael would have gotten up to help him. They were treating Rafael like he was some sort of king.

"I wonder if your father would have been this way if we had a daughter. Do you think you will be this way if you have a daughter, Rafael?" Celeste asked, testing to see if he wanted children one day. She couldn’t keep cheering him on for Annalise if she wasn’t going to get great-grandchildren in the future.

Life could be over for her any day now even though she took care of herself. Celeste wanted to be able to keep up with her great-grandchildren like she did with Annalise in the past.

There was a lot of running around trying to find where she lost Annalise in the past. A couple more years and if she lost sight of children, they would stay missing since her feet wouldn’t be willing to keep running around looking for them.

Rafael didn’t mind the way Phillip acted because he thought he might be the same in the future. To have a man he didn’t know suddenly showing up before him and his daughter ready to leave with him would be hard to get used to at first.

His mother acted the same as Phillip and his father might not have realised it, but River had been a bit clingy after they moved out to leave the manor to Rafael. After a few months, River lost interest in keeping up with what Rafael was doing and enjoyed being alone with Beatrice. Beatrice was still not ready to be away from him.

The end result was his parents living really close. Unlike Phillip, Beatrice and River were more open to accepting anyone Rafael introduced them to in hopes he would get married and start his own family.

"I will be the same for a daughter or son when I realise they are of age to marry, but then I will let them go," Rafael answered. His relationship with Annalise required too much attention for him to worry about someone else. It was inevitable that children would grow up and start their own families.

"You should hope you live long enough to have children," Phillip muttered under his breath. Rafael could have children in the future, but not with Annalise. Why should his grandchildren have to be ruined by Rafael’s looks? Why should he share grandchildren with River Callahan?

Phillip stopped moving around, wondering if he had somehow died and if this was his torture. It couldn’t be possible that his daughter was with River’s son.