The Knight's Mysterious Maid-Chapter 249: Late night talk (2)

"Siena spoke to me about your uncle. Warning me to look out for him because he will be after me for ruining your engagement. Have you ever come face to face with your uncle?" Annalise asked, curious about his family.

There was so much to know about Rafael and his family ties. From his grandfather Nicolas to the Normans.

"No, I have not. He has not shown himself in my youth. It is only now that the Callahan name means something in his eyes that he has come to be near us but he has not shown himself. He truly believes we will follow his command," Rafael answered.

His mother spoke of her family in the past. It was obvious that she missed her family despite the fact they didn’t try to save her from ridicule or reach out to her over the years. There seemed to be many reasons why she never made an attempt to return to her childhood home and try to make amends with her parents that she and his father kept hidden.

Rafael only heard happy stories about his grandparents, but he always thought since they turned their back on his mother, they could not be good people. He was still trying to figure out if his mother’s fears only had to do with his uncle.

Beatrice tried her best to hide it, but Rafael had sneaked out of his bed one night and heard his father trying to calm her down when Travis sent a letter to her.

"He is quite stupid," Annalise noted.

He was stupid when it came to not properly planning to kidnap her and now showing up thinking everyone would do as he said.

"He is spoiled," Rafael corrected her. He wouldn’t exactly call Travis stupid. That would be underestimating him.

"Say the word and I will kill him for you. Pay me and I will torture him first. There are a few lessons he needs to be given like how to kidnap someone," Annalise said, unable to get over Olivia’s depressing attempt.

"I would never send you to fight this battle for me, but I appreciate that you are offering your help. He will come after you if he catches on to the fact I have feelings for you. You need to promise me that you will not go looking for a fight," Rafael said, holding up his right pinky finger for Annalise to make the promise.

Annalise stared at his finger and then turned to face Rafael. "We both know that we won’t do anything. I would go looking for a fight, but if it comes to me, I am going to kill everyone. The fights these days have been a little boring so I am hoping for some excitement. Anyone looking to hurt your mother deserves to die."

"And what about me?"

"You can protect yourself. I don’t need to worry about you getting hurt in a fight," Annalise reminded him. Annalise rolled onto her side to back Rafael and looked out the open window. "Beatrice reminds me of my mother sometimes. I don’t want something to happen to her."

"And nothing will," Rafael answered, turning on his side to lie in the same position as Annalise. "I would die before I let something happen to her or you. You don’t need to worry about him as I plan to get rid of him when we return, but there is a chance I must go to the palace after this trip. You can join me and see Lockwood."

"The king might not be pleased to know that you have brought a woman along on a trip to see him," said Annalise.

Rafael doubted that since Tobias was nosey. The moment Tobias learned there was a woman travelling with him and suspected she was his lover, Tobias would call her to the palace to see if he liked Annalise for Rafael. As if that mattered.

From Tobias’s letters, it appeared that he didn’t like Edgar’s marriage at first since he didn’t like Edgar’s father-in-law. Rafael thought Tobias would be happy since he had been plotting for Edgar to get married from the moment he married his wife, Hazel Castro.

"No one close to the king cares about his opinion," Rafael replied.

"Doesn’t the king ever get angry that you speak of him as if he were a regular man? Sometimes it feels like you are insulting him," said Annalise. The relationship Rafael had with the king was intriguing.

Before working at the manor, she didn’t think he was close to the king as the rumours said. She thought the king was just close to Rafael since he was a talented knight to protect him and they spent their youth creating that bond so Rafael would be more loyal to the king.

"Unless we are in an important meeting that concerns the kingdom, I see him as a friend more than the king. He never acted like the other royals. His mother wasn’t too happy with our friendship until my father’s great victories," Rafael said, remembering her dismay when he was introduced as the son of a knight she could not remember.

His father was well-known around then and earning good money, but his father was yet to impress the queen. When Rafael visited the palace now as he had carried on letting the Callahan name be well-known, whenever he crossed paths with the queen, he didn’t think much of her compliments since he wasn’t something of value in her eyes at one point.

"So what you are saying is that I should plot to kill the former queen?" Annalise asked, almost serious about it.

"No. I’ve done well in listening to her compliments and moving on. She doesn’t stay in the palace so it is not often that I see her," Rafael replied, amused by how Annalise wanted to kill everyone she considered a threat to him.

"Still, I don’t like that the queen also stuck her nose in the air and looked down on you only to compliment you now that you are a great hero. Shouldn’t a queen love everyone with and without a title?"

"In a perfect world, yes," Rafael honestly replied. He knew the queen had been trying to push Tobias to be friends with young boys from great families so they would support him in the future.

The son of a knight would have to support the future king regardless if he wanted to be a knight, but getting nobles to support him was hard. It was why when Edgar said he was not staying in the palace to play with Tobias if Rafael could not, the queen panicked.

"I thought this kingdom was already perfect? Everyone acts as though it is. Tell me about your grandfather, Nicolas Callahan. Stories about his family if you knew any," Annalise said. She was still stuck on the sign she saw and curious about what he knew of her people.

Thelma said it wasn’t made by one of the children and the only two people to be close to the border as far as Annalise knew were River and Nicolas.

"He didn’t speak about his family much. I used to think that he was actually an orphan like my father and made up stories here and there about a family. No one with the Callahan name has ever sought us out. Maybe we are the only four," Rafael replied.

Rafael then remembered something. "There was a woman he loved. I was only a boy and thought I would have a grandmother, but she just vanished and never returned to him. My grandfather moved on as if he expected she would leave him and never tried to look for her. I have never crossed paths with her again."

Annalise found it to be odd. There was something odd about the orphanage and Rafael’s answer led her to be more suspicious. To end the conversation for now she asked, "Why do all the Callahan men seem to have complicated relationships?"