Who would dare use the chamber of the Duchesses of old without the Duke’s permission?
Walter stuck his hands into his pockets, walked to the window, and looked out. He could see the Marquis’s faction crossing the garden. The Marchioness, walking beside her husband, kept glancing toward the Chandelier Room. Even from a distance, he could feel the anger etched on her face.
Grace, who had approached Walter’s side, also gazed out at the distant scene with him.
Unlike the Marquis’s faction boldly crossing the main garden, the heads of the knightly houses who had shared Walter’s hardships until now were nowhere to be seen. None had been granted permission to enter the castle. It was all the handiwork of the Marquis, who had acted as regent while the Duke was away. The only one able to come and go from Richmond Castle was Joseph Rexton, Walter’s adjutant.
The expressions of the man and woman standing side by side before the great window had become very similar. Walter glanced at Grace’s face reflected in the glass and spoke as if muttering.
“How long have you practiced acting like that?”
“It’s not the product of practice.”
“……?”
When Walter stared at her, Grace shrugged her shoulders slightly.
“I simply think that, in that moment, I really fell in love.”
“…….”
“Your Highness… no. Someone might overhear, so I shall call you ‘Your Grace’ unconditionally. You should hypnotize yourself as well. That you fell in love in that moment.”
“Is that easy?”
“There’s nothing difficult about it. And Your Grace, you were quite good at it yourself, weren’t you?”
Perhaps it only seemed so because his partner’s acting was superb. When Walter let out a short laugh, Grace smiled too and changed the subject.
“The Dowager Duchess is nowhere to be seen.”
At that, Walter’s smile vanished. His jet-black eyes sank in an instant.
“She’ll be in the annex.”
Grace’s expression also flipped like the turning of a hand. Walter thought she looked like a warrior selecting her blade. And that impression was likely not wrong.
Grace smoothed her skirt with neat hands and asked softly.
“Where is the annex?”
Grace Taylor’s target after Walter, and the reason she had to come directly to Richmond territory even by becoming Walter’s lover. That was none other than Eliza Richmond.
* * *
Thirteen years ago, when the Duke and Duchess of Richmond passed away at once, ten-year-old Walter Richmond ascended to the position of the next Duke according to the law of succession.
Until then, people had believed without a shred of doubt that the Dowager Duchess Eliza would help her young grandson and protect Richmond.
However, the trusted Dowager Duchess had lost her mind. Was it from the shock of losing her son and daughter-in-law at the same time? Fearful that even her grandson Walter might come to harm, she had shut herself away in her bedroom with the young Duke. Moreover, excluding Mrs. Isaac the maid, she refused to show Walter to anyone, and posted guards around the bedroom so that not even an ant could slip through.
The void left by the young Duke threw House Richmond into chaos. The loyal retainers cherished by the previous Duke tried to fill this gap, but packs of jackals eyeing the succulent prey were certain not to miss this golden opportunity.
Marquis Rinco, who held the highest rank within the house after the Duke, drew in even the Empress’s faction along with his following.
The Empress made a favorable proposal to Marquis Rinco. She asked if House Richmond would take charge of guarding the Wall of Death, the Empire’s greatest headache—and for a full ten years at that.
The Wall of Death was a long fortress wall built at the western edge of the Empire, beyond which an enormous number of demon beasts emerged. It was such a perilous place that even lasting a mere year was difficult, so much so that prisoners were stationed there instead of ordinary soldiers. Yet ten years? That was no different from a death sentence.
Using the Empress’s proposal as a pretext, Marquis Rinco schemed to send the followers of the previous Duke, and even the young Duke—claiming there needed to be someone to lead them—to the Wall of Death. No matter how much the Dowager Duchess tried to protect him, she could not defy the Empress’s command.
His efforts ultimately succeeded.
The Duke, seen again after three years, had grown beyond recognition. Still, he was young. The Marquis stood on the drawbridge to send off the young Duke and his knights.
Don’t ever come back.
With that thought, he waved his hand. Then, after thoroughly isolating the Dowager Duchess, he drove out all remaining forces of the previous Duke and filled the castle with his own followers.
He had waited every day for news of the Duke’s death in battle, and had even sent assassins from time to time, yet contrary to the Marquis’s wishes, the boy did not die.
The boy Duke had become a man of towering stature and returned with five hundred knights. Contrary to the hope that he would have lost all dignity as a noble in his desperate struggle to survive, an aristocratic loftiness befitting a great noble overflowed from him, visible even at a glance.
And, a woman was with him. A woman dressed in a neat cream-colored gown stood so naturally right beside the Duke, who was intimidating enough to make one’s knees buckle at the sight of him. It strangely grated on the Marquis’s nerves.
The Marquis forcibly pushed aside the lingering image of the man and woman standing side by side and opened the conference room door himself.
Beneath the wall adorned with the blue eagle coat of arms sat the Duke’s seat. Though he had seized everything in Richmond Castle, that seat alone he could not claim. The Marquis’s seat was prepared immediately to the right of the Duke’s seat. He plopped down into the seat that did not satisfy him and roughly ran his hand over his face. The gathered people stared at him intently.
Soon, the Marquis finished his thoughts, pointed at one of the nobles, and ordered.
“First, find out that woman’s background. From her appearance alone she seems to be nobility, but if she is wandering about clinging to a man’s arms without any attendants, she must be from a fallen house practically no different from commoners. Search thoroughly from the regions near the Wall of Death. The Duke was cooped up there for ten years straight, after all.”
“Yes, understood.”
Then the Marchioness who had followed him trembled with rage.
“The vicinity of the Wall of Death?! Can those who have settled near that place even be called nobles?! She does not even properly reveal her name, which must be because her family is disreputable! The Chandelier Room for such a woman!!”
“That’s my room!”
One noble, eager to look good before them, slyly chimed in.
“Bringing such a woman into Richmond Castle is unacceptable from the very start.”
Those who had not dared to open their mouths before the Duke’s cold gaze were now speaking up, one and all. Among them was Count Rowen, Flora’s father.
“I cannot fathom what he is thinking, but one cannot allow just anyone by his side. I believe it is right to formally protest to His Grace regarding this matter. To carry out such deeds without a word of consultation with us.”
Then the silent Marquis gazed at the gathered individuals one by one. The room fell quiet. The Marquis spoke in a grave voice, like one who had made up his mind about something.
“We are the ones who have protected Richmond, which was once shaken, until now.”
“That’s right.”
“It seems the Duke has forgotten that fact. We must remind him that Richmond is not his alone.”
That’s right. Whose Richmond is this, after all?
The Marquis constantly repeated these words inwardly, like a creed.
* * *
Walter Richmond.
Flora dazedly pronounced that name over and over.
Never in her life had she seen such a man. Jet-black hair, sharply tapered eyes, a jawline both angular and sleek, and a physique so taut and robust it seemed almost elastic. Despite his simple attire of a cloak draped over his uniform, the dense golden insignia upon his broad shoulders and chest proved he was the master of this place.
Though numerous nobles, including the Marquis and Marchioness, had been waiting for him, Walter passed by them without a word and crossed through the door. What words are needed when the master enters his own house? The nobles standing on the bridge scrambled frantically to clear the way. Among them was Flora.
‘Who is she?’
Someone’s voice was heard amid the commotion. Flora’s gaze flowed from Walter to the woman standing beside him.
A graceful woman with rare golden hair elegantly pinned up. Flora’s eyes, which had slid down her straight neckline, halted between the two. The Duke was holding that woman’s hand tightly.
And that wasn’t even all! He walked a few steps, then stopped and looked back at the woman, then walked a few more steps and looked back at her again. Each time, the woman wagged her tail at the Duke.
Flora’s eyes saw through it all. Pretending to be innocent, pretending to be elegant, pretending not to know! The Duke had fallen for that woman’s snare. It was as though those statue-like, taciturn features of his softened ever so slightly only in the moments he turned to her.
Recalling that sight, a thousand fires blazed within her. It was then that Flora bit her lip hard.
“Miss!”
The two maids who had guided the Duke and the woman to their room came to her.
“Did you find out?”
They scurried over to the sofa where Flora sat, then lowered their bodies and opened their mouths.
“That woman, she seems to be a completely fallen, name-only noble. Practically no different from a commoner.”
“The Marquis has also ordered them to thoroughly search the houses near the Wall of Death to find out her identity.”
The moment she heard those words, warmth seemed to spread through her chest that had frozen and constricted like ice. Flora snorted and shook her head.
“A name-only noble? How absurd.”
As if thinking this was their chance, the maids spouted words trying to get on her good side.
I absolutely cannot miss the position of the next Duchess’s confidant!
“That girl she brought along like a maid, right? I somehow felt like she even smelled.”
“The Chandelier Room too was surely something that woman begged the Duke for.”
Flora listened to the maids’ vitriol like music and put on a deliberately sad expression.
“That woman… truly pitiful. The Duke, bewitched by such a woman, is also wretched.”
“Miss… you truly seem like an angel.”
“The Marquis and Father will not let this situation pass. How could such a woman become the Duchess of Richmond?”
“Of course.”
Flora smiled faintly and gave the maids a gold coin each.
“Keep watching. Come again if you have anything to report.”