RAMHM Chapter 70

To the Beloved Young Duchess of Pirreta

The standoff with the frozen Annie didn't last long. Annie, who'd already learned fear once, couldn't utter a word and just gaped, and when my gaze thoroughly swept over her, she couldn't endure it and silently lowered her head.

"I don't have time to waste, Annie. I'm too busy covering up all your past transgressions and telling you what you'll gain by moving as my person from now on."

"You'll cover... you'll cover them up?"

Her voice creaked like a wooden door that hadn't been oiled. I nodded with a deep sigh. Annie glanced up at my cold, downward gaze, then trembled. I knew what my eyes looked like right now. With Doris's voice—so easily trying to drag Rhodness into this dogfight—buzzing in my head, there was no way my gaze could be normal.

"I, I..."

"Don't make excuses. Just hand it over. Or would you prefer to run to the postal service again and send another letter to Castagna?"

Her roughly heaving chest stopped moving, and Annie clutched at her apron. Even so, one hand kept pressing against her bosom, so I reached out.

"Is it here?"

I felt her flinch beneath my hand. Arrogant as she was, she seemed clumsy at lying skillfully. Still, she must have been a noble young lady who'd grown up quite prettily in her youth—she'd have no experience crawling along the ground. Just like me. After pausing for a long while, Annie seemed to make a great decision and put her hand inside her bosom, then looked up at me desperately.

"If I become the mistress's person... if I work for the mistress, what can I gain?"

"Do you want something?"

Annie hesitated for a long while. When her murky violet eyes, which had been shaking aimlessly, finally stopped, she answered while pulling out the seal from her bosom.

"Even if it's just as His Grace the Grand Duke's mistress, please let me stay by his side. If not as a mistress, then just as his dedicated maid would be fine."

"......"

I stared at Annie without answering. Her posture—eyes squeezed shut as if braced to be struck—looked quite pitiful. I placed my coldly chilled hand against her cheek. Annie, who'd flinched greatly, looked up at me.

"Unthinkable... I'm not asking for the Grand Duchess's position. I couldn't have it anyway. Just, just let me stay nearby. Let me serve him... If I give you this seal, I'll be severing my ties with the west. Please..."

Far from striking her, I stroked her cheek as if she were precious.

"As much as you want."

I lightly pinched her cheek as if she were adorable, then took the seal from her now-limp hand. The seal I'd never stamped more than a few times was originally mine, yet felt unfamiliar. As I turned to go back to the desk, Annie grabbed my sleeve. It was feeble strength.

"Really, really His Grace the Grand Duke..."

I patted her shoulder affectionately.

"Yes, you take him. As long as I can have the Grand Duchess's position, I don't care who he meets."

You'll fall into the abyss holding Novian Trovika. Fall together. Annie, completely unaware of my true feelings, bowed her head deeply with a genuinely moved expression.

It might have been the most respectful posture I'd ever seen from her. I couldn't even muster a sneer at how she'd tormented me with Duke Castagna's backing just for that worthless position. After Annie left, I slowly looked around the now-silent office.

Memories of dragging my sick body here to become a wife Novian could be proud of flashed by like a revolving lantern. Unlike the Grand Duchess's bedroom—always swept and polished clean—this place was covered in dust. It had probably been in this state since I'd been too ill to even sit in this office anymore when I'd lived as Adrienne.

I blew thoughtlessly on the dust I'd wiped with my index finger, then sat down and continued what I'd been thinking about before Annie was summoned.

The high-quality stationery stacked high on the desk. The same design as what was in Novian's office, but the pale beige color was a device to separate the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess's work. Just as Doris had recognized Novian's stationery and realized I wasn't spouting nonsense before running to me immediately, the person who would see this stationery and come running was obvious.

Bianca Pirreta.

My only older brother, Gregory Pirreta's wife and my sister-in-law who'd been like a real sister to me. My family member who would rage more than Gregory himself upon learning that Novian Trovika had brought a new woman into the Grand Ducal Estate before the funeral had even ended.

「To the beloved Young Duchess of Pirreta.」

I'd only written the first line, yet tears threatened to pour out. The first day of the funeral—Bianca's voice, wailing together with Gregory, was still vivid. I'd wanted to resolve everything without catching their attention as much as possible, but there was no help for it.

「Do you know that the Grand Duke of Trovika designated his next Grand Duchess before the funeral even ended?」

In front of the tent of the capital guard stationed before the Grand Ducal Estate. I came here telling Gaspar I'd order them to take down the tent immediately. The reality was that I'd come out to borrow their carrier pigeon.

At the Grand Ducal Estate, all correspondence coming through carrier pigeons or the postal service had to be inspected. Novian had confined me to the Grand Ducal Estate specifically to cut off my connections with the Crown Princess and Duke Castagna.

Fortunately, since Neil or Vincento guarded this place, I could occasionally come out under the pretext of complaining and secretly borrow a carrier pigeon like this. I stared blankly at the carrier pigeon leaving my hand. The letter stamped with the Grand Duchess's seal had finally flown to my homeland, Pirreta in the east.

Knowing my family would despair upon receiving this letter, yet having to drive a spike into their hearts with my own hands—the reality struck cold. It would be best to avoid meeting them if possible, but that would be difficult.

If only I could run away at least during that time. If I had to face them as Novian's mistress and the next Grand Duchess who looked exactly like Adrienne, one of us—them or me—would surely go mad.

I could feel the tears flowing down my cheeks slowly freezing in the winter wind. I'd barely gathered myself and was turning to leave when—before I knew it—Rhodness was there, having seen it all.

"Rho... Your Imperial Highness."

"Why are you crying?"

He didn't even accept my greeting. Rhodness sent Neil—who'd been startled by my tears—far away and hurriedly brought me inside the small tent. He grasped both my shoulders lightly and thoroughly examined me as if searching my body for injuries.

"I have something to tell you, Your Highness."

Rhodness's face, which had shown a fierce look, darkened instantly. An intuition that what came from my mouth wouldn't be good news.

When the strength left his hands, this time I gripped both his arms tightly. Rhodness's arms—clad in armor like he was on a battlefield—were too thick to wrap around with my small hands, so it was almost like just placing my hands against them.

The metal armor beneath my hands was cold as ice. Evidence that he was rolling around on a case he hadn't even wanted to take, having declared he'd petition the Emperor for me. How long had he been wandering outside in this cold? What had he endured those battlefields with for the past two years, facing rebel forces and monsters whose very names made my flesh crawl? How much had he suffered after being stabbed in the back by his first love and uncle?

When I grasped his large, scarred hand past his cold arm, Rhodness flinched. He'd sensed something ominous.

"...Don't say you're giving up."

"Your Highness...?"

"Looking at me like I'm pitiful. Looking at me like you're going to leave. Don't look at me like that."

I was sucked into that vast, cold embrace in an instant. I tried to pull away, startled by how cold it was—but Rhodness held me tightly.

"I know you're struggling. I said I'd be your friend like you wanted. I said I'd wait, whether it's when things are over or whenever. So why are you crying?"

The voice whispering in my ear seemed fierce at first glance, but was terribly low and pitiful.

"It's not that, Your Highness. There's something you absolutely must know."

I finally escaped from his embrace and looked around. No one guarding the tent entrance, no shadows nearby either.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"You looked like you wanted to run away."

"Me?"

"You did. Like you wanted to abandon everything and run away because it's too hard."

I looked up at Rhodness's anxious face, briefly stunned. I couldn't bear how pitiful he looked—reading my desire to run away accurately yet thinking it was from him.

"I won't run. Not before the truth is revealed. Not before Your Highness is happy."

"I don't need to be happy, I just wish you'd stay where I can see you."

At his words casually abandoning his own happiness, my heart sank with a lurch even as a hollow laugh escaped. The villain's role of telling him the truth. The days I'd agonized over not wanting to play that villain felt like nothing now.

I reached out to Rhodness's disheveled hair from rushing over. Rhodness, who'd flinched momentarily, lowered himself and bent toward me. Though I was arranging his hair rather than stroking it, he closed his eyes as if being petted. Like when I'd stroked Cowan's head—I felt my fluttering heart gradually calming.

A strange conviction settled that even knowing the truth, Rhodness wouldn't despair miserably or want to run away like I had. Was it because of his height—seeming two heads taller than mine? Because his torso, bent down toward me, looked thicker than anyone else's? Or was it because of the recklessness of stating something absurd like if you're just in my sight, I don't need to be happy as if it were an absolute principle?

With a complicated expression, I finished arranging all his hair, then opened my mouth—heavy as if weighted down—when he blinked his eyes open, feeling bereft.

"The monsters and rebel forces on those battlefields where Your Highness rolled for nearly two years... apparently they didn't originate in the west."

"......"

"They were all deliberately created by Novian to keep Your Highness tied up. To prevent the Second Prince Rhodness from even setting foot in the capital. I found evidence of that order. And that's probably..."

"It's not because of you."

"He deliberately drove Your Highness—who would have been His Highness the Crown Prince's greatest strength—into a deathtrap. How is that not because of me? Even His Highness the Crown Prince didn't know about it."

"It's not because of you. It's because of that dog... Novian Trovika. Nothing changes."

"How can you say that so casually? Your Highness's precious time, for such a trivial, such a trivial reason..."

Not even a trace of anguish showed on his utterly calm face, which made me anxious instead. If he'd raged and cried out about the injustice, I could at least comfort him—but seeing him comfort me, saying it wasn't because of me, left me frustrated.

"To whine over killing a few thousand measly monsters..."

His hot hand pulled at my cold hand, which had been suppressing my fury.

"The reality that Adrienne Pirreta married some other man instead of me was more hellish for me."

"...!"

"So a few years without you by my side being gone from my life—that's no problem at all."

His voice wasn't blaming me at all—yet that tone, that expression stating it so matter-of-factly was so excessively calm that I couldn't even shamelessly feel guilt. His enormous heart, which had once seemed like it would suffocate me, instead cooled my complexly boiling head.

"...Me too."

I stared down at the hand gripped tightly and opened my mouth.

"Me too—to whine about running away in a situation like this... I have far too much to do."

To Rhodness, who said suffering was natural, I wanted to give certainty.

"I just sent a letter to the east. That Novian Trovika brought another woman into his house before even finishing his wife's funeral."

Rhodness, who'd been indifferent to his own pain, grimaced as if he were in agony at just those words. Only then, as if he understood the meaning of my tears, did he slowly gather the welling tears with his finger.

"I won't run away. I knew it would happen eventually anyway, so I'll make sure all the condemnation directed at me becomes Novian's instead. So no one remains by Novian's side. As lonely as Your Highness was on that battlefield with no one there. As much as I suffered alone at the Grand Ducal Estate."

Rhodness's words were right—knowing the truth changes nothing. At this point, why bother dwelling on just how much more of a bastard Novian is? What I'd feared was my beloved family being hurt, and them hurting me when I was already exhausted. My heart would ache, but I had no choice but to face it head-on.

"Even if the whole world curses and condemns you, I'll block it all for you—so just do as you want. If you want to end it all with your own hands like that, then do it, Adrienne."

If only I could end it all with my own hands, if I could destroy Novian who'd embraced even my family's despair—what would it matter if a few hellish months disappeared from my life?

"Ah..."

Rhodness embraced me like a mother bird. Held in that hot, solid embrace like a massive pillar, I couldn't stop thinking—if I could compensate this foolish man's time, if I could make this man happy, if I could atone that way—I felt like I could do anything.