Grand Duke, Please Stop Obsessing Over Your Wife! - Chapter 3

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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3.

‘Gasp.’

Annelize unconsciously drew in a breath.

Cold sweat broke out involuntarily.

Her body instinctively froze like a mouse before a lion.

Annelize barely managed to collect herself.

‘Get it together. This isn’t the time for this.’

What kind of look was the Duke giving her?

She had received plenty of ‘lovestruck’ gazes to the point of being sick of them.

It was the consequence of living as a beauty with looks that could make someone fall in love at first sight.

If the Duke’s gaze was exactly like the Crown Prince’s, she planned to run away without looking back.

So if you were to ask what Duke Aperhis’s gaze was like.

It was strange.

‘Can human eyes really be like that?’

How should she describe it? If she had to compare, it was like a doll’s eyes.

The Duke before her was definitely a living person.

‘But somehow there’s a sense of alienation. It’s like looking at a completely different being in human form.’

His gaze was completely different from other men. She couldn’t carelessly predict his emotions.

No, did he even have emotions?

While she was thinking, he shifted his gaze.

Annelize’s eyes tensely followed the Duke’s line of sight.

‘Why is he glaring at my wrist?’

Bang. A loud sound was heard. It seemed the reception room door had closed.

The two were left alone in the quiet corridor.

“…Um, Your Grace?”

Sorry for asking on our first meeting, but do you have some grudge against my wrist?

Either let go of my hand or stop glaring. I’d appreciate if you’d do just one.

It was the moment Annelize put strength into her captured wrist.

The Duke finally opened his mouth.

“Hand.”

The Duke’s thick eyebrows rose diagonally as if puzzled.

“Why is your wrist so thin? It’s like holding a tree branch.”

“Excuse me…?”

Not a speck of emotion was mixed into his low voice.

There was no trace of affection or fondness.

It was simply a voice genuinely puzzled about why it was so thin.

Annelize examined the Duke in bewilderment.

Bare skin glimpsed between leather gloves and sleeves. Smooth bronze skin and veins standing out vertically.

The Duke was clearly a young man around her age.

And what such an adult man of marriageable age said while holding a strange woman’s wrist was.

‘Why is my wrist so thin.’

Well, because my parents made me this way?

‘More than that, is it right to ask such a question out of the blue to someone you’re meeting for the first time, not even a greeting? Are Northern customs very different from here?’

The instinctive fear she had felt when meeting his eyes had long since vanished.

Duke Aperhis continued speaking, unconcerned by her silence.

“Your skin is also excessively pale.”

The next target was her skin.

After pondering briefly, the Duke added with an expressionless face.

“Make sure to get sunlight regularly. Photosynthesis is beneficial for humans too.”

Now he was even providing unsolicited solutions.

Annelize answered reluctantly.

“Ah, yes. Thank you.”

The Duke stared at her hand as if looking at something bothersome, then released her hand as if there was nothing more to see.

‘What’s with this guy?’

Annelize had absolutely no idea how she should deal with the Duke.

It was bewildering, and in a way, refreshing.

‘At least one thing is certain. Whatever his intentions, he doesn’t seem to have romantic interest in me.’

Especially those dry, emotionless eyes. A man with feelings for someone couldn’t possibly look like that.

‘Men, at least human men, don’t act that way.’

Annelize had received courtship from men around her all her life. She could be confident about that much.

‘And what about that ridiculous conversation we just had?’

By anyone’s standards, it wasn’t behavior toward someone you liked.

‘This person might not love me.’

Annelize’s heart swelled with hope.

‘I’ll never encounter such dry, emotionless eyes again. I need to catch him right now.’

Annelize followed after the Duke who was walking away.

“Your Grace! I’m Annelize of Solariccen County. If it’s not too rude, I’d like to ask you one question.”

He stopped walking.

The Duke turned his head toward Annelize as if to say go ahead and speak.

She didn’t know what country’s etiquette it was to look at someone’s hands instead of their face when they were speaking.

Anyway, it worked out well.

“Do you happen to have someone in mind as a duchess or someone you’re planning to marry?”

“No.”

She had even prepared to be ignored since it was a rude question to ask upon first meeting, but fortunately an answer came back.

The Duke seemed as tolerant of others’ rudeness as he was lacking in manners himself.

Annelize’s face brightened at the clear answer.

“Then—”

“You’re being long-winded. Didn’t you say you’d ask only one question?”

If this was how it would be, she should have asked if she could ask five thousand nine hundred and fifty questions.

The Duke didn’t seem inclined to invest more time in her.

Annelize racked her brains to arrange another meeting with Duke Aperhis.

“The Aldeon relic shown at the Imperial Palace is fake. I have the real relic.”

It was effective.

The Duke, who had been staring only at her hands while she spoke, raised his head.

The atmosphere felt strangely heavier.

“How did you know I was looking for that?”

There was no need to be so wary. Annelize stepped back and thought of an answer.

The Northern Autonomous Region was a closed place that Empire citizens couldn’t enter freely.

The reason why the Duke, who had chosen isolation while cutting off all exchanges from such a place, came up to the capital just once.

‘It was because Kukseo put forward Aldeon’s relic as a trading condition.’

In the end, it was revealed to be fake and the deal fell through.

Kukseo probably didn’t know either.

The fact that the treasure said to have disappeared hundreds of years ago was with the Solariccen family.

“I heard it from His Highness the Crown Prince.”

Since she couldn’t say she knew thanks to memories from before her regression, she threw the Crown Prince under the bus.

The Duke also seemed convinced by the mention of the Crown Prince.

“So if you want Aldeon’s relic, you should deal with me, not His Majesty. I’ll be waiting at His Majesty’s birthday banquet.”

“A banquet.”

The Duke tilted his head. As if examining her carefully.

Waiting for an answer, Annelize met his eyes.

A gaze that passed by Annelize indifferently, like looking at fallen leaves on the street.

‘Dead fish eyes.’

No, beyond dead fish,

‘Dried flounder eyes.’

He wouldn’t look out of place standing in a seaside dried goods market.

‘So utterly dry that I want to spray him with water from a mist bottle.’

While she was thinking this, those indifferent eyes disappeared beneath a mask.

A black mask covered his entire face.

“Understood.”

Annelize’s eyes widened.

‘Did he just answer “understood”?’

“Thank you, Your Grace. Then I shall see you soon. Please take care.”

No response came to Annelize’s greeting either.

The Duke strode away with his long legs and quickly disappeared to the far end of the corridor.

When the Duke was no longer visible.

‘I did it…’

Annelize slowly leaned her tension-released body against the wall.

* * *

“Have you returned?”

His master, who had gone to the Imperial Palace, had returned.

Isaiah lined up the horses and opened the carriage door.

Drawing back the heavily draped curtains, his master climbed into the carriage.

As soon as he sat in the carriage, he removed the mask that had been cumbersomely blocking his vision.

In the dark space without light, only his golden eyes gleamed ominously.

“Yes.”

Though his attitude was as emotionless as always, today his master was somehow different from usual.

‘His mind seemed elsewhere, his response came a few seconds late.’

Isaiah noticed that subtle difference.

‘What could he have experienced at the Imperial Palace to be like this.’

Curiosity arose at this unfamiliar reaction. Isaiah opened his mouth to ask the Duke about the whole story.

Never dreaming that he would spend the next five hours listening about some woman’s first impression.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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