Chapter 47
“Your Excellency. Something happened downstairs. Assistant Gary asked me to bring you.”
Even though the soldier sounded urgent, Ricardo looked calm. With his usual relaxed attitude, he said while looking at the marquis.
“I should go downstairs first.”
As he turned to go down the stairs, his gaze briefly stopped on Stella before leaving her.
She was standing motionless against the wall, and confusion was clearly written on her face. She looked at him with eyes that couldn’t believe what had just happened. Her slightly swollen pink lips caught his attention.
Ricardo’s lips formed a faint smile that disappeared as he went down the stairs. His eyes became cold again as he remembered what happened earlier.
When he entered the marquis’ office, he found evidence of the marquis secretly communicating with Elaine as expected. But just as he was about to leave the office, he saw the doorknob slowly turning.
Hiding behind the curtains, he watched. The person who appeared was Stella.
Like a small stray cat, she shrank her body even smaller and looked around as if searching for hidden treasure.
She opened desk drawers, touched the walls, and even lay on the floor to look under the desk. At one moment, she almost made eye contact with him who was standing right behind her.
‘What is she doing here?’
He could understand that she didn’t ignore what the dancers said and reported it to Gary.
But he couldn’t understand why she would appear in such a dangerous place and act suspiciously.
Curious about what she was trying to find, he watched her silently.
Then he realized it.
She was searching through the letter bundles.
They were looking for the same thing.
His eyes turned colder again.
Ricardo didn’t delay any longer and walked toward her.
When he grabbed her hand that was searching in a hurry, Stella screamed.
“Mom— ugh!”
He covered her mouth so no one could hear and turned her around. Her eyes grew even wider, as if she had seen a ghost.
“Are you looking for this?”
She couldn’t answer properly, but her trembling purple eyes were enough.
He wanted to watch that confused face a little longer, like someone caught doing something bad.
But footsteps were heard from outside, breaking their private moment.
She grabbed his hand first, as if she must not be discovered, and tried to move him.
No, he moved as she wanted.
He watched the small back trying to escape quietly while holding her breath.
It was hard for him to suppress the smile rising on his lips.
“What should I do… What should I do…”
Muttering to herself, the woman panicked as the footsteps came closer.
Finally, he turned her toward the wall.
In another meaning, she was like a mouse trapped in a jar.
Because he had no intention of letting her go obediently.
He kissed her.
Seeing her surprised face, a mischievous feeling rose from deep inside him. He opened her lips and kissed deeper.
Driven by uncontrollable instinct, he soon regretted it. The sweet sensation was too short to enjoy.
If no one had disturbed them, he might not have stopped in the middle.
Reluctantly pulling his lips away, he gave a cold look to the marquis beside them.
The marquis was flustered and apologized.
He received the report from the soldier about the situation downstairs, then turned around.
The woman’s face that passed by for a moment still seemed confused.
That sight somehow pleased him, and a faint smile appeared.
But only for a moment. He soon thought about how to deal with that cunning marquis.
After Ricardo went downstairs first, the marquis came back to his senses and rushed into the office past me.
He was so anxious that he didn’t even notice the door was open. He pulled a thick book from the shelf.
When he couldn’t find what he was looking for, he even turned the book upside down and shook it, then opened all the other books.
But it was useless.
What he was looking for was already in Ricardo’s hands.
Realizing he had been tricked, the marquis angrily swept everything on the shelf aside.
“Damn it!”
With the sound of objects crashing and breaking behind me, I went down the stairs.
When I reached the hall where the banquet was held earlier, Ena ran toward me while jumping.
“Where have you been? I searched for you so much! Something big happened here…”
Even without Ena explaining, I could understand the situation at a glance.
The frightened dancers were sitting together. Musicians and the marquis’ servants were also crouching like criminals and lowering their heads.
Ricardo stood at the front, holding the document taken from the marquis’ office.
His expression was terrifying as he read it.
After finishing reading, he crumpled the paper in his hand.
Assistant Gary’s face also stiffened.
Not to mention Carun, who had become the target of these dancers.
I could even hear the sound of him suppressing his anger.
“Bring the marquis.”
At Ricardo’s order, the soldiers moved.
After seeing that, I left the place.
The heavy rain was still pouring, and the night seemed like it would be long.
Anyway, unlike the original story, we avoided the trap set by Marquis Zilan, so I felt relieved.
“What happened? Suddenly everyone drew their swords at once. I was so scared earlier. I couldn’t find you anywhere, madam, and my heart almost stopped.”
Ena trembled as she remembered what she saw.
I comforted her, then returned to my room and lay down, but I couldn’t fall asleep easily.
My heart was still beating fast because I felt I had interfered too much with the original story, and I was afraid of the consequences.
The kiss I shared with Ricardo in front of the marquis’ office also kept coming to my mind.
The moment he kissed me was so clear that I couldn’t breathe normally.
Honestly, that kiss shocked me more than breaking the original plot by knowing the marquis’ scheme.
At first, I thought Ricardo did it to avoid the marquis’ misunderstanding.
Fake affection acting was a common cliché, so I could just laugh it off.
But after I calmed down, it felt strange.
Ricardo already had the letters exchanged between the marquis and the third prince.
So he had no reason to act like that just to escape the situation.
Besides, not long after he went downstairs, he told the soldiers to bring the marquis.
Did they really need to act like a loving couple secretly in that place?
No.
‘Then why?’
I couldn’t read his mind, so it was frustrating.
I covered myself with the blanket and closed my eyes, but the tingling sensation on my lips came back.
The strong feeling of their tightly pressed bodies and the hand pulling my waist were too vivid to forget.
Just remembering it made a strange warmth spread through my body.
What would it feel like to kiss or sleep with Ricardo?
It would be a lie if I said I had never been curious.
After all, he was the reason I opened the original novel.
There was no reason to feel guilty about having such erotic thoughts while looking at the male lead.
But experiencing it in real life made me wonder if this was reality.
‘Stop thinking. Don’t give it meaning.’
Maybe he just did it to get through the emergency.
The more I thought about it, the more complicated my head became, so I had to let it go quickly.
But it wasn’t easy to make that determination, and I finally fell asleep at dawn.
The next day, the sky cleared blue unlike the day before.
The troubling thoughts from last night felt like a dream, and my head felt fresh.
I wondered what happened overnight between Ricardo and Marquis Zilan.
‘They didn’t… cut his head off and hang it somewhere, right?’
Imagining the worst, I went downstairs.
Unexpectedly, the marquis was unharmed without a single scar.
Except for dark, sunken eyes under them, there were no signs of harsh torture or interrogation.
‘What happened?’
The weather became good, so everyone was busy preparing to leave earlier than planned.
I tried to find Gary because I was curious about what happened last night, but I could roughly understand the situation just by reading the atmosphere.
The marquis, who behaved humiliatingly even to Gary, the assistant, showed many things.
Like Marco, he had decided to become Ricardo’s dog in order to save his life.
