“Haha.”
“Haha.”
Ernhart and Karun laughed aloud at my bewildered expression with wide eyes. Standing in a circle with the two large knights and a small cat in the middle, the awkward tension disappeared, and I suddenly felt a natural sense of familiarity with them. The thought that I was laughing and enjoying myself with the characters in this novel made me feel a little strange.
The bathroom inside the office was filled with white steam, as if in a mist. Water dripped from his wet, slicked-back black hair, tracing down his bulging veins and sliding onto his chest. Ricardo used both hands to wipe the water from his face and gave his wet hair a shake.
He had ridden his horse from dawn to a dilapidated monastery in a coastal village not far from the capital. He had a reason for riding to the remote monastery that no one ever visited: he had to see with his own eyes if the information he had been investigating was true.
Marco, the empire’s revered elder who had even served as an archbishop, was using the monastery—still under his influence—as a base for his evil deeds. Vile, subhuman acts were being committed inside the monastery, such as exploiting the labor of war orphans to make and sell illegal liquor and molesting women who had nowhere to go under the pretense of caring for them.
That wasn’t all. The donations that came into the monastery went straight into his coffers, while people were left to die from disease and starvation. After receiving a secret letter about Marco’s evil deeds, Ricardo had been discreetly investigating and had just found a crucial piece of evidence. That’s why he had to leave his mansion at dawn.
What he had discovered today was not just the bodies they were carelessly burying in a patch of land near the monastery. The underground cellar was filled with a mountain of weapons he had been secretly and illegally purchasing. While he might be able to make an excuse for the bodies, stockpiling weapons was Marco’s biggest mistake and a fatal blow. At a single word from Ricardo, he could be executed in the public square for treason.
‘Please, just this one time, look the other way. I could become your backer, couldn’t I? After all, you hold the key to my life.’
The old man’s neck, which had always been held stiffly, was now bowed at Ricardo’s feet, trembling like an aspen tree. Seeing the old man, who was unnervingly quick at assessing a situation, change his demeanor so abruptly, Ricardo let out a hollow laugh in disgust.
This was the same man who had used his wily words behind the Empress’s back to drive a wedge between them and used his influence in the Council of Elders to push him into the jaws of death on the battlefield. He had not hesitated to use his long tongue to paint an image of Ricardo as an evil seed who should never have been born into the imperial family. He was a man whose neck he would not feel satisfied with even if he cut it with a sword right now. The day would come when he would personally cut his neck, but not yet. As the old man said, he was still useful. There was no more useful weapon than a man who would do anything to beg for his life, so he could just use him and then throw him away.
Having finished his bath, Ricardo loosely wrapped a robe around his still-damp body and exited the bathroom. However, as soon as he opened the door, he sensed an unfamiliar presence. It was late at night, and although some of the steam had escaped through the crack in the door, the hallway outside the open door was a hazy dark. Just as he felt this presence, he heard a muffled thud in the darkness, and something small and soft bumped into his body. Ricardo instinctively reached out his hand and pulled what was about to fall sideways toward him.
“Ah!”
A sharp cry and a sweet scent he had never smelled before filled his nostrils. His senses were already heightened in the dimness, and his eyes narrowed at the unfamiliar sensation that muddled his rationality. His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and he saw a woman.
“What in the…”
Ricardo couldn’t understand why she had appeared in his office at this hour. Was she sneaking in like a stray cat again to find out something from him? He couldn’t understand why she would do something so absurd when she was already under suspicion of being a spy for the Empress. The expression on the woman’s face as she looked up at him with wide eyes was utterly laughable. Her face, feigning innocence, surprise, and confusion, made his frozen heart even colder. To the point where the consistently fake Empress seemed better.
Should I just strangle her?
His cold eyes lowered, as if he was looking down at prey caught in his hand. He assumed his body was heating up because he had just come out of the bathroom, not because of the soft sensation he felt in his hand. The slender shoulders and the curves below the collarbone held in his arm were rapidly rising and falling. The only sound in the silence seemed to be the irregular thumping of her heart.
That was a truly unexpected accident. The shock of bumping into something in the darkness made my mind go blank for a moment. When I opened my eyes, I was being held against Ricardo’s bare chest.
Here’s the situation. I had been waiting all day for him to return so I could tell him that I would be attending the hunting competition. When I heard he had arrived, I immediately ran to his office. I confirmed with his subordinate, who was standing guard on the office floor.
“Is the Grand Duke inside?”
“Yes, he just went in.”
After hearing that, I straightened my clothes and walked to his office, where I knocked on the door. I was in a hurry, wondering if he had already sent word to the Imperial Family about my absence. But there was no response from inside when I knocked. I looked at his subordinate with a puzzled expression, and he looked back at me with the same puzzled expression. His eyes were asking why the Grand Duchess was standing in the hallway, looking at him, instead of entering the room.
‘Could he already be asleep?’
I knocked on the door again, but there was no sign of him. Just in case, I quietly pulled on the doorknob. The inside of the slightly ajar office was strangely darker than the hallway. I wondered if he had really returned.
“Grand Duke?”
I mustered up the courage to call out to him, but all that came back was the sound of a whooooshing wind. My trembling voice mixed with the eerie sound of the wind coming through the open window and scattered into the air. The window rattled, adding to the unsettling atmosphere. It hadn’t been raining a moment ago, but raindrops began to fall and streak down the glass.
‘Why are the lights off?’
Perhaps due to the wind from the open window, the candles on the table were all out, and only the candles on one shelf and the sconces on the opposite wall were dimly lit. If his subordinate wasn’t dozing off in the hallway, Ricardo should have been inside, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Are you in here?”
I called, but there was no answer. I saw two small doors inside the office, and if he hadn’t gone outside, he must be somewhere behind those doors. One was probably the bedroom connected to his office. Was the other a bathroom, then?
“Ahem. Ahem!”
I pretended to cough loudly to make some noise, but there was still no response.
Shhh—
It sounded like it was coming from inside, but it could also be the sound of the rain outside, so I carefully walked over and put my ear to the door. My heart went thump-thump. I wondered if I should just go back for today and talk to him tomorrow morning instead, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep all night.
‘Let’s just get some light first.’
I picked up an unlit candle from the table and lit it with a candle from the shelf. Just as I turned around, the door opened. I was so startled that I dropped the candlestick straight onto the wooden floor.
Clank!
The candlestick rolled across the floor, and the flame I had just lit immediately went out, making the room dark again. I thought my body would fall right onto the candlestick, but at that moment, a large hand pulled my waist toward him. My body, which had been about to fall, landed against something large and firm.
“Ah!”
The person I instinctively held onto tightly so I wouldn’t fall was Ricardo. He was the only person who would be in here. I put one arm around his neck and gripped the front of his robe with my other hand. I was surprised that I had such quick reflexes. Even during the moment when the horse was going wild, if I had fallen where Ricardo was, I wouldn’t have been hurt at all.
I slowly opened my tightly shut eyes, and through the gap in his robe, I could see his bare, muscular chest. I couldn’t help but wonder how it could be so perfectly shaped and proportioned. If the situation were different, I felt like I could admire it all day without getting bored.
‘Hah. His body is really my type.’
That was when I was still lost in my primal thoughts.
“How long do you plan on staying like this?”
His voice was low, and my gaze shot up from his firm chest to his face. As soon as my eyes met his incredibly cold ones, I was sobered up as if hit by cold water.
