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‘Get out.’
If I didn't leave this place, I felt as though I would hear things I had no business knowing—things I shouldn't know. In truth, discovering the private lives of others wasn't a huge issue. However, if today's events caused me to drift apart from Duchess Illyn or make her wary of me...
“Theresa... Theresa? Are you leaving already? My child. Are you going to Makhachkala already? I have to keep an eye on you this year... I worry that you might set your sights on another strange fellow.”
Duchess Illyn, rising with a stagger, grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into an embrace. Perhaps because she reminded me of my mother, it was difficult to push away the woman who was staring into my face with vacant eyes, fumbling to touch me.
“...Looking at you now, you really do resemble Princess Tatyana.”
“You mean Larissa, not Tatyana. Let go, Duchess Illyn. I hope you don't make any more slips of the tongue.”
“Ah... right... Princess Larissa. She's staying in this castle these days. Count Valentin, that man... he's been so bothersome because of a single princess... I never dreamed in a million years that the Count of all people would be a man obsessed with women...”
Count Valentin is obsessed with women?
Ahem. I let out a small cough and asked subtly in a low voice.
“...Do you mean he's obsessed with Princess Larissa?”
“Of course!”
Her affirmation was so thunderous that I thought my eardrums might burst.
“That shameless, insidious man! I thought he only cherished her like a younger sister when they were children... A brazen fellow with no sense of professional ethics. Just thinking about the things he babbled while entrusting the princess to me makes my head... Sigh... Still, do not distance yourself from him. Hehe... He is a remarkable man. Extraordinary. As I told you, our family also received grace from him...”
I felt strange. The way Duchess Illyn described Valentin made it sound as if—as if—it wasn't familial love, but something more special...
“Theresa. Seeing you reminds me of your late father... There were no embarrassing romantic feelings between us, but there was a firmer bond of faith and trust. Heavens, can you believe it? That a man as high as a Duke of Illyn would take a pregnant woman as his spouse...”
Once again, only one course of action dominated my mind.
‘Get out.’
They say a mother's strength is great. I struggled to peel Duchess Illyn off me, but her body, which had been limp with intoxication, refused to budge when it actually mattered.
“Hehehe... The reason he chose me is quite amusing. He said I looked pious while praying in the holy hall every morning... At the time, I was just a foolish woman captivated by Libertan, praying that I would receive his proposal...”
No, don't say any more. I'm not the least bit curious about the secret history of the Illyn family! As I struggled, a warm hand pulled my face closer.
“Your father entrusted you to me, Theresa.”
The expression on Duchess Illyn's face as she whispered this was one of immense happiness. As if she were wandering through an ecstatic dream.
“That was the condition... That I would protect and love you, who had lost your mother... Because of that one promise, he accepted me and your sister, who had been abandoned. He truly is a wonderful man. He longed for your mother until the very end...”
“...”
“So, bear with it even if it's tedious. I have a duty to pair our daughters with wonderful men... But why is it, Theresa? You aren't saying it's tedious like you usually do... Hm? Have you finally come to understand this mother's heart? Have you finally accepted the divorce from that wicked fellow?”
Suddenly, the nickname this woman had in social circles came to mind.
The hunter who seeks three men.
Duchess Illyn, who lost her husband four years into her marriage. The eldest daughter, Theresa, who divorced after one year of marriage. The second daughter, Oksana, whose engagement was broken before her coming-of-age ceremony.
The news of the mother and daughters' tracks had spread as if they were mistakes, failures, and stains.
‘Now, I can't just laugh while hearing those stories.’
[That's great. I have a list of unmarried men in Ohala that I secretly obtained from Duchess Illyn; it'll be very useful.]
Furthermore, the reliability of that list had just doubled.
However, the Duchess's circumstances were her own, and I had my own.
“Duchess Alexandra Andreyevna Illyn. Let go before you do something you'll regret later.”
“Strange. My child never calls me by my name...”
It seemed she had run out of steam after saying her piece. I sat her down in a chair as she began to slide away obediently. Since she seemed to be falling asleep, it looked like I could leave through this gap.
...Just one thing.
“By any chance, did Count Valentin propose to Oksana?”
“...Hmm.”
“Hello? Duchess Illyn?”
“Ah, Count Valentin... a scary man... But do not distance yourself from him...”
Despite rambling incessantly about private lives I hadn't even asked about, why did she fall asleep at the most important question?
With a sigh, I left the office and swallowed the painkiller Valentin had left behind. I thought I was doing alright until a moment ago, but dealing with Duchess Illyn had made me rapidly exhausted, and my shoulders began to ache.
The next day.
Duchess Illyn caught a cold. ...Suddenly?
Oksana, who had heard about the Duchess's antics from the previous day, told me:
“She's probably hiding because she's embarrassed that she showed herself while drunk.”
“Hiding?”
“Yes, she... remembers everything... I think she couldn't tell you apart because Your Highness's stature is exactly like Theresa's. When I went in, she never once recognized me as her sister...”
Indeed, it was worth hiding.
I laughed cheerfully and looked at Oksana with complicated emotions as she opened the first chapter of 《Madame Pompadour's Men》.
‘That... wasn't a story I should have known.’
Instead of coming to silence me, she hid in her bedroom out of shyness. Does she trust me that much? So easily?
In the peaceful noon, while I was debating whether to visit her first, the castle—which had been as quiet as a lone sheep on a deserted plateau (since Oksana's chatter from morning to night no longer registered in my ears)—regained its vitality with unexpected visitors.
“Princess Larissa. You've become quite close with Miss Oksana in the meantime.”
“You've lost a lot of weight, Lara. It's too pitiful to look at. Eat more.”
Valentin, Ivan, and...
<The legitimate head of the Novarov Imperial Family is Duke Libertan, and Emperor Nicholas is the bastard child of the previous Emperor.>
A crumpled flyer.
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