Chapter – 12
The marquis continued spouting nonsense.
“Real-life love is always more exciting than the love in books, and sweeter than any dessert.”
“…Pardon?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
What kind of shameless, intrusive question was that? I held back my irritation and answered.
“I have.”
“May I ask what kind of love it was?”
“No.”
The expression on the marquis’s face after hearing my reply was truly something.
That smile… yes. That was blatant mockery.
“I only said so because you don’t seem like someone who’s ever been in love. Once you fall in love, those corny romance novels stop being entertaining.”
What a load of garbage. My head started pounding.
How dare he act like he knows my heart. Does he know the heart of a fangirl? He doesn’t!
He started this, so he can deal with it.
Eventually, my annoyance won over my patience. I fired back at the marquis.
“You keep hearing whatever you want to hear. And for the record, love is love, and my passion for romance novels is something entirely different.”
“I see.”
“You haven’t believed a single thing I’ve said since earlier. If you weren’t going to believe me anyway, why did you bother asking?”
He simply gave me a quiet, faint smile in response to my snappish tone.
“And what about you, Lord Orellno? Have you ever been in love? Are your claims based on personal experience? If not, then giving me unsolicited advice like this is extremely arrogant. Are you one of those people who think age alone is a badge of honor?”
“Haha.”
Whenever the topic touched on himself, his answers became vague—scattering like mist, impossible to grasp. He smoothed everything over with lukewarm silence or a laugh.
So that’s the kind of person he is.
I let out a short, disbelieving scoff, then turned toward the approaching Loire family carriage. Without even a token farewell, I got up and left the Marquis Orellno behind.
I heard Tasha hurrying after me, her footsteps stumbling to catch up.
What an absurd man. To think I’m actually older than him, and yet he tries to lecture me? The irony was almost funny.
The air inside the carriage back to the villa simmered with my pent-up frustration.
As I fumed, I recalled Susan’s reaction yesterday when the marquis had been mentioned. If everyone’s opinion of someone is that consistent… it’s worth paying attention.
Only then did I ask Tasha,
“I overheard Susan-aunt and the maids whispering about Lord Orellno. Is there some issue with his family or something?”
“To think you, my lady—who never cares about other families’ scandals or gossip—are curious enough to ask… He must’ve made quite the impression.”
Seeing her chance, Tasha straightened her finger and began explaining one point at a time.
“It didn’t matter back when you lived on the Reddel estate, but now that we’re in the capital, and since you’ll likely run into him often at the Safranette Theater, you need to know his background!”
“…It’s that serious?”
“Of course! Lord Orellno is one of the most talked-about men among the ladies of the capital! If you attend a social gathering, he’s guaranteed to come up—he’s easily in the top five most gossiped-about noblemen.”
So he’s high-ranking on the noble society rumor charts…
Considering how he acts, I can see why.
Naturally, the category of gossip Tasha began with was none other than “Tragedy.”
Originally, the Orellno marquisate was a royal cadet branch—a family of frontier margraves guarding the northern border.
The current Marquis, Shane de Orellno, had a grandfather named Marshal de Orellno, who had two sons.
The one chosen to inherit the title was Shane’s father, Adrian de Orellno.
Unlike the upright and well-raised eldest son, the second son, Kayron de Orellno, was greedy and utterly reckless—always causing trouble the family had to clean up.
Those around the family feared that such a man, once denied the inheritance, would rebel. But when Kayron accepted his older brother’s succession without complaint, they all breathed a sigh of relief… for a brief moment.
Shane was about ten years old at the time.
A neighboring kingdom—one of the fractured remnants of the fallen Kartsha Empire—launched a sudden invasion, claiming they would “restore” the empire.
Because of this, Adrian de Orellno had to lead most of the family knights to support the western border of the Aizar Kingdom.
Despite his title, he was still a knight, and since a legitimate heir existed, he could not refuse deployment.
Seizing that moment, the second son—thought to have retired to a monastery—returned with mercenaries and took over the Orellno estate.
“…Good grief.”
I hugged my arms, shuddering at the horror of it.
I’d heard plenty of stories about siblings shedding blood over inheritance.
Even as an only child, I wasn’t immune to such fears.
In fact, Father and the vassals of House Loire found the mere idea of passing the title to a distant, illegitimate relative—Sonnier Loire—so horrifying that they could barely speak of it.
Which is probably why they’re secretly giving me heir lessons.
They never taught the original Liberita any of this, yet now that I’ve possessed her body, they suddenly sensed the need? What, are they intending to risk their precious house on a soul from another world?
Still frozen with disbelief, I continued listening to Tasha.
Adrian de Orellno heard of the crisis while at the war front.
Kayron had long planted his people throughout the castle. Half the Orellno knights sided with him, and his agents stirred up chaos internally, mixing lies and conspiracies into the conflict.
In the end, blood was shed when they forcefully tried to remove the usurping younger brother from the mansion.
The Aizar royal family could have intervened—after all, the Orellnos were distant royal kin—but they were on the brink of a lengthy war with the Dehate Kingdom, and with this sudden invasion from a minor western kingdom, they couldn’t spare attention.
“At that time, the marchioness and the young lady were the only ones not held hostage. The current Marquis, Shane, was taken captive.”
“At least… they treated him decently, right?”
“I don’t know about that. Anyway, after rushing to end that absurd war waged under the pretext of restoring a fallen empire, Adrian returned—only to be killed by his younger brother. Kayron then inherited the title and married his sister-in-law, the marchioness.”
I was horrified.
“Tasha… is that a common thing?”
She sighed.
“It varies by family. But in this case? It’s… unsettling. People talked for ages. ‘The greedy brother who stole everything from the elder brother,’ and so on. The marchioness eventually lost her mind and passed away young.”
The eldest daughter was forced into marriage with a wealthy foreigner, while Shane was sent from one boarding school to another until Kayron—cursed by heaven—died in a sudden carriage accident. Only then did Shane return to inherit the title.
“Given all that, the current Marquis probably has… a lot of anger. There was even a rumor that he killed a classmate at one of the schools and got expelled.”
That was the most shocking detail yet. That angelic face… killed someone?
“No one knows the details. Since it involved nobles, they hushed it up. It’s just a rumor.”
“…”
“And now he lives alone in that blood-stained, cursed estate. The rumors are wild—some say he goes mad and roams at night, or that he inherited the same murderous impulses as Kayron de Orellno and secretly kills people to sate them.”
Everything she listed was exactly the kind of gossip I’d ignored as childish nonsense. I had scoffed and tuned it out—without realizing they were all about him.
