Chapter 77
#077. Who is the Master of Tiaje Palace
A corridor in the Crown Prince's Palace.
Having received a new report, Count Hagis hurriedly ran towards the Crown Prince's office. Before he could even catch his breath, he knocked on the office door, and a brief permission was granted.
Almost simultaneously with him opening the door, a moment of bewilderment flickered across Count Hagis's bright face.
"I greet Your Highness. But,"
Leopold wouldn't know,
"...What brings the young Duke Conrad Madeleine here?"
Just enough for Conrad to notice.
Conrad pretended not to notice Count Hagis's bewilderment and pointed to the documents he was holding.
"Since you asked me to receive the report on the previous invitation to the Heferti Delegation, I came as a proxy for the Minister of Foreign Affairs."
"You must be busy. Thank you for your hard work."
Perfunctory greetings were exchanged. Meanwhile, Leopold, having checked the list of the delegation, listlessly raised his pen.
"By the way, when did they say the delegation would arrive?"
"Yes, Your Highness. We have received confirmation that they will arrive the day after tomorrow, on the first day of the Summer Ball."
"One day late."
It was a nonchalant rebuke.
It was a remark that didn't consider the time it took to travel from Heferti to the Empire, but Conrad, instead of pointing out the fact, silently lowered his head.
Leopold, who was inadvertently looking at his face, tilted his head.
The coolly falling silver hair, the somehow aloof face. Conrad's face, at first glance, reminded him of someone.
It was something that could be erased, but an unidentifiable, hazy afterimage stirred in his mind.
Jade Madeleine is his sibling, so they are naturally alike, and he doesn't know about the youngest Princess since he hasn't seen her properly.
As he gradually narrowed the scope, one name clearly came to Leopold's mind.
Olivia Madeleine.
As the vaguely spreading face became clearer, Leopold's face slowly hardened.
The Olivia who suddenly came to his mind was not the one who always craved his love like a puppy.
"Olivia Madeleine, I will soon greet you again as Grand Duchess Bikander. Please."
It was Olivia who had turned her back on him and disappeared from Tiaje Palace.
"...I hope you are well until then."
With his brow furrowed deeply, Leopold lightly shook his head.
It was his delusion that Olivia felt similar to the young Duke.
The ever-taciturn young Duke and Olivia, who pitifully desired his affection, could not be alike.
Leopold covered the approval documents as if to dismiss the thought. His coolly sunken, handsome eyes flicked towards Conrad.
"Then the matter of the delegation is settled..."
Taking advantage of the moment Conrad paused while gathering the approval documents, Leopold spoke his true purpose.
The real reason he had called Conrad, even making excuses about the delegation that he would have handled well on his own.
"It's been a while since the Duke said he would contact the Princess, so naturally, the young Duke, as her brother, would know the Princess's news, right?"
The intentional words were directed at Conrad.
But what made Conrad uncomfortable was not the criticism of his father, but the name Olivia itself.
"...I am sorry, Your Highness."
Leopold's face, which had been smiling languidly as he waited for an answer, contorted.
Sorry.
"Has it been confirmed that she is coming to this Summer Ball?"
"...I am sorry."
"Has she even been contacted?"
"...I am sor-"
He couldn't bear it. At the same moment his vision turned red, Leopold grabbed whatever he could and threw it.
A harsh cracking sound echoed through the office, and the document cover thrown against the wall fell haphazardly. When someone seemed to gasp, Leopold chuckled and muttered as if to himself.
"...Well. It's ridiculous to even ask like this."
Unlike his quiet voice, his fiercely sharpened sea-blue eyes relentlessly pressed Conrad.
"If you were sending messages asking about her well-being, or if the young Duke had even worried about his sister in the first place. You wouldn't have sent the Princess to the Territory of Vikander so easily."
Who is blaming whom now?
The whole Empire knew that the Crown Prince had scorned Olivia and brought his lover to that position.
"I didn't expect you to say that, Your Highness."
Unable to suppress his seething emotions, Conrad muttered through gritted teeth.
Sparks flew in his usually cold amethyst eyes.
It was actually ridiculous. Conrad Madeleine, who had been more hostile to Olivia than anyone else, was taking Olivia's side.
The corners of Leopold's tightly closed lips twisted upwards. His fiercely raised eyes blatantly scanned Conrad. Soon, a hollow laugh escaped his lips.
"Now. Is the young Duke criticizing me?"
Leopold said in a low, subdued voice. A threatening atmosphere enveloped the office.
It was absurd.
The next head of House Madeleine, a Duke family loyal to the Emperor, was being sarcastic to him because of Olivia.
Leopold, who had been leaning back languidly at the absurd situation, paused for a moment as he rose. He continued to feel a strange sense of déjà vu from Conrad today.
The face that coldly looked at him, and the words that blamed him a moment ago.
It was just like...
But Leopold didn't continue the thought.
The two tall men did not hide their animosity towards each other. A sharp energy to overwhelm the other was tautly opposed.
"Your Highness, Your Highness! I, I just confirmed that the Grand Duke's carriage has entered the city gates!"
Count Hagis, who had briefly retreated from the fierce atmosphere, hurriedly said. No sooner had Count Hagis finished speaking than the heavy energy that had filled the office dissipated.
"Olivia."
At Leopold's question, which he asked without even taking a breath, Count Hagis repeated the facts he had been reported.
"The Princess has also entered the city."
Just hearing that Olivia was in the same city, Leopold's brow, which had been hardened, gradually relaxed.
It felt as if the tension that had been tightly compressed was slowly easing.
"Where is she now, no."
At this moment, Conrad, who had been waiting for Olivia's whereabouts to be identified more than anyone else, clenched his fist tightly.
"The young Duke may leave."
Conrad hesitated at the expected order to leave. But that was all.
Only after Conrad, who had precisely observed etiquette until the very end, had left, did Leopold turn his displeased gaze to Count Hagis.
"Olivia, how did she look?"
Olivia. Just four syllables, it was strangely awkward to call that name.
Come to think of it, he hadn't called the Princess Olivia very often. Is that why it felt unfamiliar? Or was there a word he wanted to add after that name?
Suppressing his complicated feelings, Leopold lumped together all the words he wanted to ask.
But Count Hagis lowered his head.
"Ah, I am sorry, Your Highness. Since she was in the same carriage as the Grand Duke, it was difficult to confirm the Princess's current state of health."
"The two of them were in the same, carriage?"
"Yes."
Thump-.
At the sound of a fist suddenly slamming on the desk, Count Hagis keenly observed Leopold.
An inexplicable anger surged in Leopold's chest. Despite slamming the desk with force, his fist didn't hurt.
The same carriage. The small space that is a carriage!
Leopold knew very well that anything could happen in that carriage.
This was a different matter from Olivia dancing with the Grand Duke. He had already conceded a significant part to Olivia. He had tied her chastity with a one-year grace period, but he didn't know what might happen again.
"Bertin."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Go to where the Princess is right now."
.
.
.
When Leopold went out to the palace's entrance, a carriage was already prepared. One of the servants in front of it saw Leopold and quickly bowed in surprise.
"What is the Princess's current location?"
Leopold said as he got into the carriage. Count Hagis hesitated for a moment about what to answer. The only place the Princess could go in the city was Grand Duke Bikander's Residence. But his gut feeling was telling him that if he said the Princess was at the Grand Duke's Residence, the Crown Prince would be furious.
In the silence, Leopold's brow furrowed. He couldn't wait even a moment. At the same time, the servant next to him was hesitating.
"By the way, why is the palace so noisy today?"
Leopold spat out a testy complaint. He could hear loud crying from somewhere in his usually quiet and leisurely palace.
When he looked towards the source of the crying, the Chamberlain, who was standing far away, seemed to notice his gaze and quickly approached.
The Chamberlain glanced at the servant standing next to the carriage and said.
"Your Highness. Are you perhaps going to Tiaje Palace?"
"Tiaje Palace? Why there?"
For a moment, a look of having made a slip of the tongue flashed across the Chamberlain's face.
Could it be that Olivia had come to Tiaje Palace?
At the thought that suddenly crossed his mind, Leopold shook his head. Even if it was the Olivia without pride, she wouldn't have come to Tiaje Palace so quickly.
But soon Leopold's lips curved loosely upwards.
Come to think of it, it was a woman who had devoted herself to Tiaje Palace. He couldn't say for sure that she wouldn't.
Now, instead of the image of Olivia that had ruined his mood earlier, the face of Olivia that Leopold knew well came to Leopold's mind. The image of Olivia Madeleine smiling and endlessly circling around him.
But when the troubled-looking Chamberlain began to speak, Leopold was momentarily stunned as if he had been splashed with cold water.
"...What? Maria is injured?"
Olivia hadn't returned?
At the thought that suddenly surged up, Leopold was dumbfounded by himself. His lover, Maria, was injured, but he was thinking about Olivia.
The Chamberlain, feeling that his frowning face was because he was angry at his lover's injury, began to explain in a flustered manner.
"That is, she spilled tea on her arm."
"Spilled? What does that mean? Explain it so I can understand properly."
"That is."
It was then. The crying grew louder, and a plump-looking woman ran crying from afar. As the servants who had missed her were about to say "Oh no," the woman knelt down and prostrated herself as soon as she saw Leopold.
"Oh my. I greet the small sun of the Empire, Crown Prince Your Highness."
"...Isn't that Maria's nanny?"
It was a face he had encountered whenever he went to Marquis Etel's Residence. The nanny's wailing grew louder at the sight of the Crown Prince gloriously calling her out.
"Yes! Your Highness! Our young lady was burned because of the maids of Tiaje Palace."
"Hey, who does this person think she is!"
The Chamberlain stopped the nanny with a greater start. But Leopold had already heard everything.
"...Wait. Burned because of the maids. What does that mean?"
It was a terribly indifferent voice. The nanny felt a chill down her spine at the voice that was so low that it didn't sound like he was worried at all.
His blue eyes stared at the nanny as if piercing through her inner thoughts. The nanny instinctively straightened her shrinking body. At the same time, the words that her young lady had said earlier came to her mind.
Kyaaak-!
When the scream erupted, the nanny ran straight into the drawing room. She couldn't repeat what had happened at the Imperial Princess Palace last time.
But the scene that unfolded before the nanny's eyes was different from her worries.
"Plea, please save me, Young Lady."
The young maid holding the teapot trembled and knelt before Maria. The maid seemed to have dropped the teapot once, as her front was soaked.
On the other hand, Maria, looking down at her arm with only a few drops of tea splashed on it, frowned and clutched her arm. When Baroness Sophron, flustered by the sight, was about to call the Imperial Physician, Maria secretly said to the nanny in the room where only the two of them were left.
"Nanny, go to Crown Prince Your Highness urgently. Remember the servant you bribed before? The one who delivered the letter instead. That's right. Have that servant somehow tell His Highness that I was injured."
Even in the midst of the chaos, the nanny calculated quickly.
"If that's not possible..."
"If that's not possible, Nanny, somehow bring Crown Prince Your Highness to this Tiaje Palace."
When Maria, who had sighed lightly while gazing into the distance, looked back at the nanny, that doll-like beautiful face was colder than anyone else's.
The nanny remembered exactly what the young lady had muttered at that time.
"...Because of Crown Prince Your Highness, you should know what kind of treatment this Maria is receiving. Leopold should at least make it clear who the master of this Tiaje Palace is."
So the nanny could only plead with the most desperate and sad face she could make.
"The maids of Tiaje Palace have been looking down on and insulting our young lady for a long time. This time too, they are messing with the palace that our young lady decorated for Crown Prince Your Highness!"
But the nanny, who had lowered her head, didn't know. The face of Leopold, who had been filled with questions, had turned cold the moment he heard the last words.
"...I should stop by Tiaje Palace first for a moment."
The nanny was just happy that she had achieved her goal.
* * *
And at that moment, in the deepest bedchamber of Tiaje Palace.
Maria Etel was lying on the bed in the Crown Princess Consort's bedchamber, where only the Crown Princess Consort could enter.
Baroness Sophron looked at Maria Etel with a stiff face. Maria raised the corners of her lips lovingly.
"If you had done this sooner, I wouldn't have had to question that child's sin."
Her knife-like gaze was directed towards the hallway. The young maid kneeling in the hallway trembled.
A low-ranking maid with no title or wealth. This mess was bound to happen from the moment she brought the teapot.
Today was a very lucky day.
Maria smiled brightly.
