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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 34
Chapter Title: The Duke's Heir
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Robert spoke with a laugh, as if he were enjoying the situation.
“I’m heading to the North, risking my life for this country. You could at least offer some encouragement. Besides, an adventure in the North is too much for your delicate constitution, isn’t it? Such grand endeavors are meant for men, sister.”
Ella’s anger surpassed its breaking point, and she became strangely calm. She smiled brightly, her face a mask of astonishment.
“Wow, how truly magnificent, Your Majesty. I go to the North, endure hell and back to secure the mithril mine, and based on the very treaty I established between the North and the royal family, you give the Prince a mission that is so obviously just a cushy assignment? He’ll be sitting in a tent at the rear, calling it a ‘battle command post,’ enjoying the sweet life under the protection of the Grand Duke’s soldiers?”
Ella glared at the king with blazing eyes. The king looked away, feigning indifference as he gestured to a servant.
“This glass is emp…”
“Father!”
Ella slammed her hand on the table again.
“Enough! You’re being loud. Your brother is about to depart for the cold northern lands to face hardship. The least you could do as his sister is offer him support!”
The king scolded Ella. She rose from her seat. Robert flew into a rage at Ella’s insolence, but the king’s expression remained placid.
Ella felt the urge to expose Robert’s embezzlement of the state treasury right then and there.
She quietly studied her father’s face. But what if her father already knew everything, even about the embezzlement?
What if he was willing to cover it up? No, what if it was his will to place a prince, not a princess, on the throne, even if it meant covering up such a crime?
Damn it.
Ella felt like a general sent into a war she was predestined to lose.
“…If this was how it was going to be, why didn’t you just kill me when I was born?”
“What are you saying in front of your father…!”
The king’s composure finally shattered.
As the king’s face turned crimson, worried servants rushed to his side. Robert, too, ran to the king, a look of concern on his face.
“Father…!”
Ella glared back and forth between Robert and the king before storming out of the dining hall.
Just before the door closed, the king’s voice echoed from within.
“That, that brat! That temper of hers…!”
Ella walked a few paces down the corridor with brisk steps before stopping in the middle.
She had only taken a single sip of wine, but her stomach felt like it was churning inside out. A familiar pain stabbed at her stomach, and Ella spoke to the attendant following her.
“Fetch a physician.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
As one attendant quickly disappeared, Ella staggered forward. Her steps were unsteady, but she didn't stop until she reached the end of the cloister and confirmed no one was around.
Then, she violently emptied the contents of her stomach.
After she had been retching for some time, Ella lifted her head. She saw that the pillar she was vomiting on was trembling violently.
*…A pillar is trembling?*
Ella blinked, bewildered. Soon, she realized what she was holding onto wasn’t a pillar, but a person.
White hair, pale skin, and black eyes.
The boy, dressed in a rabbit-fur vest and thick leather clothes, was trembling, covered in Ella’s vomit. As an added touch, sweat was pouring down his forehead, thanks to his unseasonable attire.
*He just stood there and watched me throw up…?*
Ella was dumbfounded. She asked the boy, “Who… are you?”
The boy didn't answer. Instead, he leaped back like a rabbit.
Ella watched his escape attempt calmly before pulling a pistol from her bodice. The moment the boy’s hand touched the garden wall, she fired without hesitation.
*Bang!*
The boy froze. He looked at Ella, his face stricken with terror.
Ella disliked physical exertion, but her pistol was modified for extreme accuracy, and the distance from where she stood to the wall was not great.
“I asked who you are. In this palace, there is no one who can ignore me.”
Except for Robert and the king, that is.
Ella didn't bother to add the last part.
The rabbit-like boy looked at Ella with sad eyes.
There was a more important reason Ella had stopped him than the fact that he had ignored her.
The silver necklace around the boy’s neck. That dog tag, made of mithril, was something the Grand Duke gave to his northern warriors.
*Which means he’s one of the Grand Duke’s warriors who will be departing with Robert today.*
Ella spoke again, her eyes cold.
“Answer me, or I’ll shoot. Insubordination is grounds for execution.”
It was only much later that Ella learned the boy could not speak.
✵ ✵ ✵
Eric and I were currently in the same carriage, heading to the royal palace.
The carriage carrying Baldeck Orleans, my mother, and Philip followed behind us, as if to guard… or perhaps to watch over us.
All that talk about living a long and happy life together. There was no time to question my mother about why she had said such a thing. Baldeck Orleans had insisted that Eric immediately go before His Majesty the King to confirm the validity of this marriage.
*‘If my grandchild is in that belly, then it is my duty to take them in as well…’*
Baldeck had added, glaring at me. At his icy gaze, I wrapped my arms around my stomach and tugged on Eric’s hand.
*‘I feel like I need to protect Rose, even if it means conjuring her out of thin air.’*
My mother had looked back and forth between Eric and me, then quickly pretended to faint, allowing herself to be carried away in Duke Baldeck’s arms.
*What on earth…*
I looked back at the carriage where my mother and Philip were, my head spinning as I tried to think.
Grow old together? She knew Eric was my partner? Since when!
But there was no way to find an answer.
I looked at Eric across from me. The area around his lips was red and swollen. It was because Philip had snuck up to Eric as he was about to board the carriage and landed a punch on him.
*‘No matter what happens… I hope you never forget that I am her older brother, Young Lord Eric.’*
The moment Philip spat out that cringey, melodramatic line and punched Eric, I had smacked Philip on the back of his head.
*‘Ack!’*
*‘Are you crazy? Do you actually think Rose is in my belly right now?’*
After watching Philip fall to the ground, I had climbed into the same carriage as Eric.
Seriously, what was all that about…?
Just then, Eric spoke in a sullen voice.
“You’re not actually starting to think there’s a little kid named Rose or something in there, are you?”
“…?”
I snatched my hands away from my stomach. I must have been fiddling with it unconsciously.
“I guess I got a little too into character…”
This is why giving things names is so dangerous. See? I’m already getting attached to Rose.
“…Anyway, since I’m supposedly pregnant, we can just skip over the whole wedding night business, right? Right?”
I asked desperately.
*Say yes!*
I shot Eric a look that conveyed that very message, but he turned his head with a less-than-bright expression and gazed out the carriage window.
“If you can prove the pregnancy is real, then yes.”
“Isn’t that something a bribed physician can just whip up for us?”
My eyes went wide. What about all that money we spent bribing the Central Temple!
Eric stared at me as if I were an idiot.
“Sometimes, Imeline Wedgwood, I can’t tell if you’re worldly or just clueless. We are heading to the royal palace. Do you really think a physician affiliated with the royal family can be bribed as easily as a corrupt priest?”
“Then what do we do?”
I looked at Eric, my voice trembling. My mother and Philip were in on my scam now! We had to get married, no matter what!
Eric pressed his temples firmly and said, “…For now, we just have to hope they arrive before we do.”
Who?
My eyes widened.
My heart pounded at the fact that our ‘first’ marriage had not even begun.
✵ ✵ ✵
…But that anxiety lasted only a moment.
“The pregnancy is confirmed.”
The physician, who had pressed a magical device with a 99.9 percent accuracy rate for pregnancy confirmation against me, went before the king and bowed his head.
At that, the princess standing to the king’s left gave Eric and me a wink. Behind her stood Sir Lily, sweating profusely.
It seemed Lily had ridden at a tremendous speed to arrive before us. Either that, or she had used some other means.
In any case—
*Her Highness the Princess managed to pull off the difficult task of bribery in the palace…*
I clutched my chest in relief and met the eyes of Eric, who was standing behind me, an arm wrapped around my shoulders in the perfect posture of an expectant father. Eric fiddled with his lip, which was now even more swollen than in the carriage, and let out a short sigh.
Hey. You’re supposed to smile brightly. Brightly. You’ll upset our Rose!
“Well, well… This is… This is quite an astonishing turn of events, is it not!”
The king exclaimed, shifting in his throne. He turned his head and cleared his throat several times, and each time, I could see the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.
“…Weren’t you just smiling?”
I whispered in Eric’s ear. He squeezed my shoulder a little tighter, as if to tell me to shut up.
It seemed the king had been rather skeptical about the Duke’s marriage.
I would later learn that the late queen’s family had protested loudly, claiming Eric’s inheritance would diminish if the Duke of Orleans remarried. Incidentally, the late queen and the Duchess of Orleans were from the same family, making Ella and Eric cousins—
*So, cousins are doing… that sort of thing?*
Well, cousins get married all the time. I decided not to dwell on it.
At the time, however, I didn’t know this, so I waited with a trembling heart as the king, seated on his throne with a solemn face, deliberated. But the question that came at the end of his deliberation was this:
“So… is it a boy or a girl?”
The court physician, who had been trembling, perhaps from a guilty conscience, lifted his head at the king’s words and asked with a puzzled expression.
“Your Majesty?”
“A boy or a girl, I asked!”
At the king’s roar, the physician looked at the princess with startled eyes.
The mood was clearly shifting in our favor.
The physician quickly prostrated himself and said, “A-a son, Your Majesty!”
Hearing the physician’s words, I patted my belly with a satisfied expression and muttered to myself.
*A son, our Rose…*
Huh? Wait a minute. His name is Rose, but he’s a boy?
While I was flustered, my mother pretended to faint again, falling into the arms of a knight standing next to the Duke. The knight fanned her with a concerned look and supported her.
*This is a complete mess…*
The king spoke with an expression of unconcealable delight.
“The next heir but one to the House of Orleans has been conceived! What is to be done…! The birth of a precious life is a blessing, so we cannot nullify a marriage consecrated in the temple…!”
*It’s so obvious you don’t want to nullify it.*
While I was thinking this, my mother, still in the knight’s arms, brushed past me, tapping my shoulder. I glanced back at her.
“You ungrateful wench…!”
My mother stomped her foot as she spoke, discreetly dropping something under my voluminous dress. Realizing she was only pretending to be angry, I quickly played along, gazing at her with sad eyes.
“My daughter… no, my grandson will hear you!”
As I said this, I used my foot to push the object that had fallen under my dress deeper into its folds.
Once she confirmed the item was well hidden, my mother feigned another dizzy spell and sagged against the knight’s shoulder. Philip then rushed to her side.
“Mooom! Are you okay?”
“Don’t shout! You’re making it worse!”
After my mother and Philip had made their exit, Baldeck finally withdrew his intense gaze from Eric and me.
As if realizing he could no longer deny the situation, Baldeck knelt before the king.
“…Then… please announce the marriage of my son and Lady Imeline, Your Majesty. Of course, it is not without its regrets, but what father can win against his son, and what mother against her daughter? I will take Lady Imeline…”
Baldeck, still kneeling, glanced back at me.
His eyes were as murderous as when he had pointed a rifle at me. A gaze dripping with the same contempt and disgust one might have for a cockroach.
But I imagined the look in my eyes as I stared back at Baldeck was not much different.
*…You psycho.*
That’s what I was thinking internally.
Baldeck slowly averted his gaze from me and continued.
“As my daughter-in-law, and as a member of my house, Your Majesty.”
The moment I heard those words, I felt a sense of unease.
When you thought about it, if a daughter-in-law’s family and her husband were out of the picture, wouldn’t all her assets become his?
*I can practically hear the gears turning in your head from here.*
I thought to myself, clenching my fists.
But I had no intention of dying so easily.
Before you take the Mermaids' Tomb—or whatever fish grave it is—I'll be the one sending you to yours, Baldeck Orleans.
