Chapter 15 Deceive Me?
It wasn’t until the evening that Kuhn’s letter arrived. It had been arriving at the same time for weeks, and she hadn’t heard back from him.
She wondered if he was particularly busy.
Chloe grew sullen after days without a letter.
Today, the letter didn’t arrive until the afternoon, so she didn’t expect it, but by nightfall, there was a familiar envelope in “the spot”.
The gloom that had been hovering over her all day was gone. Chloe tore open the envelope, flushed as ever.
“I’m sorry it’s late, I didn’t have time to send it.”
He’d been so busy, he’d left out his usual affectionate greeting.
The letter was short, only half a page long.
‘… If you’re really busy, I’ll take it as a sign that you’re even bothering to write.’
In fact, the shortness of the letter didn’t matter. It was only natural for two people who wrote to each other almost daily to run out of things to write about.
What really bothered Chloe was the subtle change in his tone.
His blunt, nervous tone was new to her, and she found it disconcerting.
“By the way, I saw your newspaper, Chloe, and I’m glad to see that you’re living a happy life.
Yes, indeed.”
And a sarcastic postscript.
He’s not going to do this just because he’s busy. Chloe was the real cause of this…
‘Did I do something wrong?’
She thought about it, but she couldn’t come up with a good answer.
It wasn’t that Chloe was stupid or insensitive.
She had never had a deep interaction with the opposite sex before, and she had never had a rational relationship before.
She had never encountered the unknown, and no amount of reasoning could lead her to the right answer.
“To my pouty friend.
Are you upset about something?”
Chloe did the best thing she could do.
She went straight to the source.
After writing the letter quickly, Chloe went downstairs and started an early dinner. She wasn’t really hungry, but she felt like she needed to eat something to stop her mind from wandering.
She usually ate a regular meal, but tonight she specifically asked the chef for a different menu.
The chef looked dissatisfied and started cooking.
The food came out just as the delicious smells were tantalizing her nose. It was a soup and panero, a creamy crab meat soup served in a panero.
She scooped up the crumbled bread filling into the soup. The bread was softened by the creamy sauce and melted in her mouth.
‘By the way, what if you don’t write back, don’t you think I’m being too rude?’
Clutching her stomach to distract herself, Chloe was still thinking about her friend.
In hindsight, she might have been too playful in her reply.
Maybe the other person was angry, and she should have been serious.
The spoon plunged into the bread, warmed by the heat. One after the other, her fingers burned as she gripped the spoon.
Alarmed, Chloe quickly released the spoon.
“Helena?”
The empty seat was suddenly filled. It was Helena who sat down.
A woman with bushy hair and a pale complexion. She had the color of a ghost.
Helena’s eyes were dotted with black marks. Her eyes flipped upside down and she spoke up.
“You must be enjoying your meal, Princess?”
With that, Helena scrambled to her feet and came to Chloe’s side.
“What good is food in your mouth!”
A booming voice assaulted her eardrums.
Clang!
It was followed by the sound of breaking glass. It was the plate Chloe had been savoring a moment ago.
Shards of glass ricocheted across the floor, and the soup in the bread scattered everywhere.
She could vaguely see the reason for Helena’s anger. Perhaps she had seen the newspaper Chloe had been reading.
Chloe stared at Helena in confusion, then sighed.
“I’ll let this one slide.”
Not wanting to argue with Callis, Chloe was willing to let it go.
Helena, however, was more insistent.
“Shut up. You have no right to be so noble when you covet what belongs to others!”
“Covet. Don’t go around saying things that aren’t true.”
“The sword is mine, and one day your place will be mine, too; do not interfere with our love, but stay here and parasitize on favors!”
“If you say I’m interfering, then I’m very much in favor of your love.”
“Talk is cheap! Callis refused your hand, refused to dance with you! You dared to seduce him! You said you loved him, that you still haven’t forgotten!”
Love him? Can’t forget?
Not even a line from a farce would be so outrageous.
Chloe’s face contorted into an amused expression.
“I wonder where that came from.”
“Why? Are you afraid to pretend it’s not true, and then prove it? Where, my husband told me!”
“No, Your Excellency, no. You mean Callis?”
“Yes!”
She sketched out the story.
He’d offered Chloe as a ransom, an excuse for his lover to question why they were together.
Callis makes up stories for excuses, or Helena believes them.
Only Chloe is left to suffer the consequences of their foolishness.
“Ha…”
Chloe’s reply, which began as a sigh, quickly degenerated into laughter.
“Listen up, Helena.”
Now that she thought about it, she’d only ever expressed her position to Callis, never to Helena.
She decided to repeat her thoughts to Helena, so that the loud woman would shut up.
“I don’t love him.”
“… What?”
“If my presence bothers you so much, perhaps you should accompany the Duke in the future, for I am not afraid of being overshadowed by a concubine and unable to show my face in society.”
***
When Callis returned from his outing, he was tired and embarrassed.
Helena’s unilateral announcement.
She would be attending all future banquets instead of Chloe.
This was unacceptable to Callis, who had secretly dismissed Helena’s origins and low class.
He acted quickly to shield Chloe, but by the time he realized what they had talked about, the lie had been discovered.
He got in trouble with the love of his life for it.
Helena sobbed with shame at her own behavior.
Helena was the love of his life, but she hadn’t been the springboard to help him succeed.
‘That damned woman must have screwed me over on purpose.’
He hadn’t liked Chloe’s shamelessness ever since she’d returned from the royal court. She’d always kept her head down, and now she’d come out and talked down to her husband.
‘Did the Emperor really promise you something?’
Chloe’s parents were the only people he could trust to back him up. If so, did they really grant their daughter’s request for a divorce?
Perhaps they resented their daughter’s terrible treatment at the ducal estate.
‘I should have been more careful with Helena!’
Callis had forgotten all about the atrocities he had committed and began to blame Helena for his behavior.
‘If… Staying quiet, I might actually get a divorce.’
In anguish, Callis called for a servant.
“You asked for me, Your Excellency.”
He tossed the pouch to the servant, who shook his head. The servant checked the pouch carefully, then looked up at his master with wide eyes.
“Take that money and sneak into the royal court.”
“Yes…”
“The day the Duchess left for the palace. Find out what she said to her family. Find out and report back to me, word for word.”
Callis then ordered the servant to work as quickly as possible.
The servant promptly resigned, and a few days later, under an anonymous name, wrote to the Duke.
“Ha ha, Chloe, you damned woman!”
With the good news that “the Emperor and Empress have stubbornly refused her request for a divorce.
The servant returned to the mansion three days after the letter arrived. He was disheveled from running from place to place.
Callis quietly handed him his pouch. Inside were a dozen gold coins.
When the servant had been paid, he cleared his throat, which had become raspy from lack of moisture, and explained what he had seen and heard.
“The Duchess has confessed her situation to her family and demanded a divorce from the Duke. However, both the Emperor and Empress have refused her request…”
“So, both the Emperor and Empress are aware of the Duchess affairs?”
“Yes.”
“But they don’t approve of divorce?”
“Yes.”
After receiving a firm answer, Callis burst out laughing.
For a moment, he felt sorry for the obnoxious woman, realizing that her noble pretense was actually a swan song.
“Yes. She lost the only thing she had left, her backside.”
Callis muttered, his voice mingled with boos.
Alone, he wordlessly swiveled his chair around. When it reached the wall, he pulled it back toward the road. The creaking of the chair drowned out the sound of his pondering.
‘Well, I guess I’ll go check out the unscrupulous stranger now.’
There was only one thing for a man who knew the truth to do.
To punish the woman who had bared her claws without knowing the subject, and to teach her a lesson so that she would not speak against him in the future.
