A late night with the bright moon hanging high.
Natasha was trying to sleep in a room deep inside her office.
It had been a week since Jeanette disappeared. In that time, Jeanette hadn’t returned, and Natasha had come to accept this silent farewell.
Soon, she would be looking for a new tenant.
Suddenly!
Natasha’s eyes opened abruptly. She quickly reached for the dagger on her bedside table and gripped it tightly.
Moving cautiously, she pressed her back against the wall and slowly, very slowly, approached the door.
Thump, thump. Her heartbeats were all she could hear in the still of the night.
Bang! The door suddenly swung open.
Whoosh!
The dagger flew swiftly toward the intruder’s neck but changed its trajectory midway.
Thud!
Natasha embedded the dagger into the unlucky wall without changing her expression. She greeted the figure standing in front of her.
“I thought you had returned to your homeland. I guess I was wrong, Jeanette.”
A sliver of moonlight illuminated her visitor.
With light reddish-brown hair braided down one side and eyes that now held a determined strength, Jeanette gazed back at Natasha.
“I’m sorry for the late visit. I came because I had something to say…”
Jeanette’s eyes flicked toward the dagger.
Natasha calmly pulled the blade from the wall and slid it back into its sheath.
“Go ahead.”
Though Jeanette seemed to have a lot to say, she let out a long sigh and tried to dismiss it.
“I’m sorry for disappearing without a word. Something urgent came up, and I’ll need to move to another country. I didn’t even have time to properly clear out the house, though I should have.”
Natasha had somewhat expected this.
“I left some emergency funds in the house, which should be enough to hire people to clean it out and still have plenty left over. I’m really sorry for leaving so suddenly without settling things… But I wanted to say goodbye properly, so I came by.”
“It’s hard to explain what’s going on, right?”
“…It’s personal.”
With Jeanette’s evasive response, Natasha simply nodded.
“I figured. Don’t worry about the house. I’ll take care of it. I’ll just tell the townsfolk that you returned to your hometown.”
“…Could you? Thank you.”
Jeanette’s expression darkened as she thought about the people in the town.
Few had integrated into the community as well as Jeanette had.
The townsfolk, sympathetic to the young woman raising a child alone, had always helped Lowell from a young age.
Many even treated them as if they were family.
Holding back her tears, Jeanette gave her final farewell.
“Thanks to you, the two of us—Lowell and I—were able to live here peacefully. I’m so grateful that you took us in and gave us a place to live when we had nowhere to go. I’m leaving without properly repaying your kindness, and it troubles me deeply…”
“It’s alright, Jeanette. I understand that it can’t be helped.”
“…Please give my regards to Ivan as well.”
“I will. Oh, right.”
When Jeanette mentioned Ivan, something that had slipped Natasha’s mind suddenly came back to her.
Natasha asked Jeanette to wait for a moment and retrieved a letter from the back of a desk drawer.
The letter was still sealed with wax, unopened.
“What’s this…?”
“A letter for Lowell. The mail carrier has been making some mistakes lately, and sometimes it gets mixed in with our mail.”
“A letter for Lowell? But he doesn’t…”
Jeanette trailed off, eyes widening in realization.
“Oh…”
Her hands began to tremble.
“Jeanette?”
“I—I’m sorry. It’s just… this is overwhelming…”
Jeanette wavered and had to lean against the wall for support before she took the letter from Natasha.
“How can this insignia be here…?”
Her fingers traced the wax seal on the envelope.
The image of a two-headed bird in flight was imprinted on the wax, clearly marking it as the crest of a noble house.
Jeanette had seen this same insignia on a letter before.
Rustle.
Jeanette tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside.
The script was elegant, written in an old-fashioned hand, and the paper had a subtle sheen, indicating it was expensive.
As she read, Jeanette’s face grew paler and paler.
“Oh… How can this be…”
Even after finishing the letter, Jeanette couldn’t seem to regain her composure.
Thud.
Natasha gently guided Jeanette to sit on the office sofa and brewed some tea for her.
“Jeanette. I don’t mean to insult you, but you know Lowell is a smart and capable boy. I’ve always had a feeling he might end up causing some kind of trouble.”
Natasha spoke with a serious expression.
“What exactly happened?”
The question was posed with the assumption that Lowell had already caused some kind of accident.
After a long moment, Jeanette, who had been shaking, finally lifted her head.
“Attorney… What am I going to do?”
“Please explain calmly. If there’s anything I can help with, I will.”
Jeanette hesitantly began to speak.
“As you might have guessed, I’m not originally from the Illyhad Empire. I’m from the Kingdom of Hamond.”
Natasha nodded silently.
“My real name is… Jeanette Verben. I’m the second daughter of the Marquis Verben.”
“The marquis?”
“Of course, the status of a marquis in the kingdom isn’t quite the same as in the empire…”
Even so, this revelation was completely unexpected. Natasha had always assumed that Jeanette was some village girl who had been offered up to a cruel lord.
“Sigh… As for Lowell’s father… It’s Ludwig Müller.”
“The Duke Müller?”
“Yes, that Duke Müller.”
This time, Natasha was unable to hide her shock. Was Lowell’s biological father really Ludwig Müller?
Ludwig Müller, the only duke of the Kingdom of Hamond, had led the kingdom to victory in the war with Termund, a renowned war hero.
His reputation extended even to the neighboring Illyhad Empire; there wasn’t a person who didn’t know the name of Duke Müller.
“He doesn’t even know he has a child. It was just one night… right before he went off to war. It happened during a grand party, where we both drank too much and… things got out of hand.”
These days, the noble society is remarkably open. How could there be so many one-night mistakes?
“Then, at the Marquis of Verben’s estate… some incident occurred, and I ended up running away. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I found out much later.”
“…So, the Grand Duke of Müller doesn’t know, but Lowell is his son, which means… Lowell is, um, a prince of the Hamond Kingdom?”
“He doesn’t have a claim to the throne, but technically, yes.”
My goodness.
The arrogant boy from the house downstairs turns out to be a prince of a neighboring kingdom? The kind-hearted baker downstairs is actually the Grand Duchess of a neighboring kingdom?
What kind of absurd situation is this?
“But I have no intention of going back to the Hamond Kingdom. I just want to raise Lowell… normally. I thought it would be far better for him to live quietly with me than grow up as a prince there.”
Natasha didn’t know much about the Hamond Kingdom, but she figured that whatever had happened at the Marquis’s estate must have been serious if it left Jeanette this shaken.
“But after receiving this letter… I don’t know what to do.”
“What does it say?”
“It seems Lowell sent a letter to the Grand Duke of Müller.”
The two-headed bird symbol was the emblem of the Müller family.
“He wrote that he’s his son and asked him to come and find him.”
“Is he out of his mind?”
Natasha blurted out without thinking, shocked.
“Ahem. Is he… mentally stable?”
“Exactly the same as you, lawyer.”
That wasn’t the important issue anyway. Natasha quickly shifted the conversation.
“How did Lowell even find out?”
“I don’t know. But ever since he was very young, he was always curious about who his father was. He also seemed to sense that he was someone special…”
Perhaps it was because royal blood flowed through his veins.
Maybe Lowell was so sharp that he had realized early on that he was a bit different from other children.
“…I was never formally married to the Grand Duke, and he already has a fiancée. What if he meets Lowell and… things go wrong?”
Jeanette was trembling, her face pale with fear.
“The Hamond Kingdom also follows the Varada religion. They don’t acknowledge illegitimate children. What if he kills Lowell to silence him? Or worse, takes Lowell away from me…!”
“Calm down, Jeanette!”
Jeanette was so agitated that she was clawing at her arm, leaving red marks as her nails dug into her soft skin.
“I’ve been so terrified lately, seeing Müller’s men sporadically in the village. I was about to run away. But to think this was all orchestrated by Lowell…”
She hugged her knees, tears welling up.
“What should I do now? That smart child couldn’t have done this without thinking.”
Both Jeanette and Lowell were standing at a crossroads.
“Should I send him away so he can grow up in a better environment…?”
Jeanette asked, her voice hollow with despair, like a mother on the verge of losing her child.
“Jeanette. No matter how smart he is, Lowell is still just a child. I doubt he thought through everything before acting.”
“….”
“Maybe he was just curious. He might have simply wanted to see the father he’s never known.”
“Do you think so?”
Natasha wasn’t sure what Lowell’s true intentions were, but she nodded for Jeanette’s sake.
‘If it’s that kid, maybe he really did plan everything, but…’
Surely, Lowell wouldn’t do anything to hurt the mother he cared for so deeply.
“You can’t blame him for wanting to meet his father. Of course, it would have been better if he had discussed it with you first.”
“I… don’t ever plan to return to Hamond.”
Her voice was resolute.
“Everything that happened there was nothing but terrible. I thought I’d forgotten most of it as I started a new life, but… facing it again like this is unbearable.”
Natasha gently pulled Jeanette into a hug, patting her on the back as Jeanette began to sob loudly.
“Sob… If only he could forget me forever…”
“….”
“And now, after all this time, he wants to find Lowell…”
Jeanette cried for a long time, and once she had somewhat calmed down, Natasha carefully suggested,
“Only Lowell knows what he was hoping for when he sent that letter. Where is he now? It might be best to ask him directly.”
“…He’s staying at an inn on the outskirts of the village for the time being. I left while he was asleep, so he’s probably still sleeping.”
The two exchanged silent glances before quietly heading out together.
• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •By Esraa• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •
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