Chapter 6
Repelled at the Door
Marquis Lev recalled that terrible day and met Klaud's gaze, then lowered his eyes again with a heavy heart.
Klaud chuckled at the sight of his gaze slowly falling to the floor.
"Thank you for your answer."
"Who else would understand Your Highness's pain? Just don't forget that there are still those who follow you, like me."
Klaud turned away from Marquis Lev's earnest voice and staggered to the bed in the darkest corner, collapsing onto it.
He hadn't slept all night, writhing in pain, so this was the only time Klaud could even close his eyes.
"On your way out, tell my ninth wife that returning now is her only way to survive. Consider it my first and last piece of advice as her husband."
"Your Highness."
"She's just another woman who'll either die or run away on her own anyway. Why would I bring an outsider into my house?"
Klaud snapped, turning away.
His golden hair, shadowed by the gloom, softly scattered across the white pillow.
"Why do I have to watch someone else die before my eyes again?"
His voice, almost a soliloquy, came from the back of his golden head, still facing the wall.
"...I'm sick of that."
Marquis Mosan Lev left the Black Manor with a heavy heart.
A carriage, denied entry, stood forlornly at the entrance.
And in front of it stood a small girl wearing fur earmuffs and a thin fur cloak.
Her face, red with cold, stared at him from beneath her neatly arranged black hair.
Her posture and facial features were mature, but her plump cheeks and the drooping corners of her eyes beneath her thick eyelashes still betrayed a youthful innocence.
She looks much younger than I thought.
It was a situation that made him sigh involuntarily.
"May there be eternal glory to the great Euphris."
Even as a Deposed Emperor, Klaud was undeniably a direct descendant of the imperial family.
Marquis Lev bent his knee and bowed his head before the Deposed Empress, Yuan, then raised it again.
"I am Mosan Lev. Please, call me Marquis Lev."
Lev.
The family name of the late Empress Dowager.
Yuan mentally retraced the name she had seen in the newspapers she had picked up and read.
Lev was one of the most respected families in the country.
Just and upright nobles among nobles.
Founding contributors who helped the first Emperor start this country.
A prestigious family that had produced several Empresses throughout the centuries-long history of Euphris.
Marquis Kompani, who had received a message bird, had told her to wait a little longer and someone would come out, before hurriedly leaving.
And the person who came out after so long was not a butler, but the Deposed Emperor's uncle.
The head of the Lev family.
Yuan looked up again with a nervous expression at the Black Manor beyond Marquis Lev, a sight that was breathtaking.
Finally, she was seeing it.
The man who had watched Louise's last moments.
The person she wanted to ask about Louise's death, which no one had answered, was there.
And he was now her only family.
"Um... am I going in now?"
"I'm sorry, Your Highness, but it would be best if you returned to your parents' home first."
Yuan held her breath for a moment at the sudden rejection at the door.
Sorry. Parents' home. Return.
She rolled the three words around in her head and mouth before finally exhaling.
"Why?"
Return? Return where?
Marquis Lev quickly scanned his surroundings as her dark eyes shook violently.
He was briefly flustered when he confirmed that Pellieresse had not provided her with any attendants or maids.
From the start, no parents would send their precious daughter to this place.
His heavy heart grew heavier.
"I am well aware of the rumors circulating about His Highness Klaud. But His Highness is not a monster or a lecher, but simply a sick patient. He is not in a normal state to receive a partner, so it would be wiser to wait until the imperial family has something to say separately."
The Marquess watched as the woman's complexion grew darker and darker with each word he spoke.
Usually, it was the opposite.
There had been several similar situations, but all of them had returned to their parents' homes in a procession, as if they had been waiting for it.
The woman was already terrified, even though she had not yet seen Klaud, and looked as fragile as if she would collapse at any moment.
"...What if I don't want to?"
But the voice that came out after a long tremor was quite firm.
Holding her red, frozen hands together, the woman clearly expressed her will.
"I'm not going back. I'll stay here."
Marquis Lev was so taken aback by the unprecedented reaction that he could only gape.
The woman continued quickly, as if not wanting to give him any leeway.
"I didn't have a wedding ceremony, but I heard that the imperial family has already designated me as the next bride. Then that black... that Black Manor, isn't it a place I can enter? Isn't that going to be my home now?"
What the woman said was true, but the most important fact was that the owner of this Black Manor was Claude Euphris.
Which meant that common sense did not apply.
Marquis Mosan Lev was beginning to genuinely worry about this innocent and seemingly timid young lady.
"I'll wait until he... until my husband comes out himself."
With those words, Yuan firmly closed her mouth. The small jawbone beneath her ear pulsed and returned to its place.
She stubbornly looked straight ahead, pretending not to notice Marquis Lev's worried gaze.
Either way, if she went back, she would either be in excruciating pain or in so much pain that she would want to die.
Anything would be better than that hell.
Even if it was in front of a strange Black Manor, rejected at the door by her husband.
At the sight of Yuan's seemingly desperate appearance, Marquis Mosan Lev gestured towards the entrance of the Black Manor with a troubled expression.
A servant ran towards them from afar.
Mosan Lev told him to call for Klaud, without taking his eyes off Yuan.
And he immediately told another servant to bring his carriage.
He felt sorry for the new Deposed Empress, but he had no intention of joining the innocent young lady on her stubborn journey.
The ninth bride, Yuan Pellieresse, would also run away because she was afraid of Klaud, and the imperial family would soon find and send Klaud's tenth bride.
If Klaud came out himself and showed his face, she would run away in such a panic that her shoes would fall off.
'Just like it's always been.'
Marquis Lev bowed his head, feeling a slight pity for the fragile-looking new bride.
Yuan pretended not to notice him paying his respects and retreating until the end.
She simply waited with her hands neatly folded for someone else to come out of the Black Manor to take her away.
"What are you waiting for? It's driving me crazy, so sit down."
"How can I calm down after several days? To go out like that in front of so many people and not even contact us. What kind of disgrace is this to the family!"
"She'll come back on her own. I'm not going to let this go this time. I'm going to make her kneel in the snow until her joints are frozen solid and she can't walk on her own, so she won't even think about running away again. Where does she think she's going, following him?"
"Right, right? Maybe that weak little thing is scared and has already turned the carriage around and is running back here!"
"Do you think I'll forgive her easily if she does!"
Count Pellieresse said to the Countess, but he was sitting on the drawing-room sofa, tapping his legs.
He had been like this for days.
At Yuan's escape, which had turned the house upside down and caused such a disgrace, the whole family was initially furious.
It was humiliating that Marquis Kompani's soldiers had ransacked the house, but they couldn't protest.
Moreover, unlike Regina, who was laughing as if a thorn had been removed, and Frederick, who had been angry along with his parents but was no different from Regina, the Pellieresse couple, who had been handling the family affairs with Yuan's help, gradually became anxious after four days without any contact from their niece.
"Ah, I did it all for her own good. Didn't I? Where is Rockenhardt? Where is that Black Manor? The winters are long and there's a desert right next to it. How is she going to live as the bride of that monstrous Deposed Emperor in that poor and remote territory? She can't even think of her sister going there as a stroke of luck, what's wrong with her?"
Count Pellieresse fanned his face, feeling more and more angry as he mulled it over.
Frederick, who had been indifferent, thinking that it wasn't worth getting so angry over the departure of one insignificant girl, soon began to blurt out without any tact.
"The Deposed Emperor is still a member of the imperial family. If we become family with the imperial family, we can get in line and get ahead, can't we? Anyway, that territory, Rockenhardt or whatever, will be the Deposed Emperor's share, so maybe he'll give us something."
Frederick drank the liquor he had brought from the wine cellar straight from the bottle.
To him, Yuan was nothing more or less than an annoying cousin.
If that cousin's marriage could help him get ahead, there was no reason not to accept it.
"What's so different about Yuan and Louise? It's good to send her off in marriage. If that girl is lucky, we can get in line. Right, Regina?"
Count Pellieresse swallowed his groan, unable to shout that Yuan had the Pellieresse ability, so what kind of stupid thing was he saying?
That ability was a secret known only to himself and Yuan, except for the deceased Louise, so he was driven to the point of madness.
Due to Yuan's absence, he was unable to receive the visits of guests who came to Pellieresse with gold.
He was currently blocking visitors under the pretext of taking a break, but what if, just in case, Yuan did not return home?
Just thinking about how much protest would come from the investors who were scheduled to come in and the influential people who had been waiting for 'special' medical appointments for years made his spine tingle.
