I Thought It Was the Monster Duke's Fake Sedative - Chapter 32

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 32
“What?”
Even as Lucy’s eyes widened, Clara didn’t stop talking.
“Regardless of Miss’s ambiguous position, how can you starve a person like this?”
……
“Even if everyone speaks ill of Miss, at least food should…—Oh! I’m terribly sorry!”
Clara’s eyes darted about as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
Lucy, who had been staring at her fixedly, opened her mouth slowly.
“Speak ill?”
“Well, you see… they all say the Duke picked you up from the streets, like some vagrant.”
Mm.
“They gossip that a person who ought to be in the Outer City’s vagrant shelter is using a better room than the steward.”
“It is a nice room, I suppose.”
Though it was supposedly the Duke’s storage room, it was far larger and finer than most ordinary hotel or inn chambers.
While Lucy nodded in acknowledgment of the plain facts before her, Clara continued without pause.
“In any case, even if everyone’s only interested in picking sides, surely they shouldn’t treat someone the Duke brought here directly with such….”
As Clara grumbled so openly, she glanced sideways as if searching for Lucy’s reaction.
“Clara.”
“…Yes?”
“You ought to be more careful how you pass along such things.”
At Lucy’s words, Clara fell silent, taken aback.
Lucy’s expression was quieter than usual as she regarded Clara.
Her face looked far more mature than her customary youthful appearance.
“If you keep relaying unnecessary talk like this, you may find yourself in an awkward position.”
As she spoke, Lucy recalled the maids who had been uncomfortable around her.
They would chatter and whisper readily among themselves, but whenever they encountered Lucy, their faces would flush with confusion.
‘They all seem uncertain how to treat me.’
But whether they would actually gossip about her like that was another question.
‘Rozendale wouldn’t have hired maids who do that in the first place.’
Regardless of the target, servants who spread gossip were clearly the sort Edward despised.
Rozendale, who understood Edward’s preferences better than anyone, would never have employed such servants.
‘And yet she says the factional conflict has been difficult.’
Clara had been speaking poorly of only one side since the beginning.
The servants who worked for Edward.
To belittle the Duke’s loyal retainers and relay their words to Lucy already served to take someone’s side.
…The Dowager’s faction’s side, for instance.
Rather than pointing that out, Lucy stared directly at Clara, and Clara flinched, searching Lucy’s eyes for signs.
As though this measured tone were the last thing she’d expected from the scatterbrained-seeming Lucy.
The fearful, timid appearance others saw wasn’t entirely false, but….
Lucy was, after all, someone reincarnated into a second life who had weathered all manner of trials.
‘If I were truly suffering from hazing, I wouldn’t speak so one-sidedly like this.’
It was a thought born from having actually lived through hazing in the Shelter.
‘If it were me, I’d have cursed both sides of whoever was hazing me.’
For some reason, the Sandwich the knights had given her was far too large and delicious.
And meeting her here didn’t seem like mere chance.
It felt as though she herself had been caught in the factional conflict.
‘What should I do?’
She didn’t want to be tossed about by such affairs….
It was just as Lucy held back a sigh.
“I’m—I’m so very sorry.”
……
“I’m still so inexperienced….”
Clara’s voice wavered, fear creeping into her tone.
The moment Lucy saw her face, she was reminded of children she’d known in the Shelter and the Temple Underground, their faces trembling with the same timid sorrow.
‘…She does look young.’
Moreover, when Lucy glanced down at Clara’s hands, they were covered in cuts and welts as if she’d been beaten.
Lucy fell silent for a moment, then nodded.
“Just don’t do it again.”
At her matter-of-fact words, Clara’s face brightened again.
Immediately after, she gripped Lucy’s hand tightly.
“For you to teach even a stranger like me—you truly are a kind person.”
“Someone that kind….”
“You’re kind to me. I want to stay by your side always… Oh!”
Clara, who had been rambling on, suddenly looked up as if she’d realized something.
“Come to think of it, don’t you still not have a personal attendant?”
“Hmm?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to serve you!”
Lucy blinked slowly.
…Setting aside how abrupt this was.
She’d already grasped the other woman’s purpose.
‘Besides, I’m only here on a contract basis, and now she wants to make me a personal attendant.’
Lucy was about to refuse outright.
“How could the future Mistress of the House of Tesseron not have a personal attendant?”
“Cough, hack, cough!”
At the words that tumbled out so suddenly, the sandwich she’d swallowed moments before came back up, and she choked.
Lucy beat at her chest and tried to cry out.
“Edward and I are not, we’re not like that…!”
But the words caught in her throat as a sensation thrust itself unbidden into her mind.
Things she’d tried so hard to forget, pretending they meant nothing.
The softness of his lips and tongue. The warmth of the bathwater, splashing pleasantly around her.
Hands that looked so fierce they could shatter anything they held, yet had touched her thigh with unexpected tenderness.
“…Damn it.”
In that low curse, muttered as if grinding her teeth, lay an excitement she hadn’t managed to hide—she remembered that now.
‘…Are we really like that?’
Honestly, even she had to admit it was terribly improper behavior.
If she hadn’t lost consciousness right then….
The thought had barely crossed her mind.
Clara attacked again with her words.
“Since the two of you bathed together, it’s already being whispered that the Duke will soon be taking responsibility for you.”
“No, I mean, we did agree to take responsibility, but we’re not like that…!”
She was trying to object, her voice uncertain now, when—
“We are no such thing, Duke of Tesseron!”
As Lucy’s voice rang out, another shout echoed through the corridor at the same moment, and she lifted her head, unable to finish her sentence.
And froze.
…….
…….
Bang.
Their eyes met directly across the corridor’s far end.
Flutter, flutter.
With a face flushed furious red, swirling the Red Vestment that symbolized the Temple—
“The Priest…?”
The Temple’s priest.
Soon the priest’s eyes began to widen slowly.
“…You!”
* * *
A few minutes before Lucy and the priest met.
“This makes no sense!”
Bang!
Tepe shot up from his seat and slammed his fist on the table, trembling.
“Compose yourself, Tepe.”
“But how can we, in this situation…!”
“We mustn’t give them any opening.”
…….
“If the Priest of the Temple waiting outside that door finds out we’re furious, it will be troublesome.”
At Rozendale’s words, Tepe’s eyes turned toward the door.
The special envoy and Priest sent by the Temple was standing just outside in the corridor.
“Duke! Duke of Tesseron!”
…….
“We must discuss this at once!”
And he was shouting in such a vicious manner while doing so.
Under any other circumstance, even a priest of the Temple would have lowered his stance and watched Edward’s mood carefully.
That he carried himself so brazenly today meant he had backing he could rely on.
“Damn it.”
Tepe couldn’t suppress the curse and bit his lip with a grim expression.
Gorgo, standing nearby, wore a similarly grave face.
“What shall we do, Your Grace?”
Rozendale, who had recovered his composure fastest among the three, bowed his head toward Edward, who was now surrounded by them.
Edward’s mouth curved upward in a crooked smile.
“Yes, surely.”
……
“I didn’t expect him to bring an Imperial Edict like this.”
Swish, swish.
A thin sheet of paper spun across Edward’s fingers, rolling over them in circles.
It was a document stamped with the imperial seal.
“Word came from the Capital just moments ago….”
Right after Rozendale had rushed in like that.
Edward was able to hear the full account in Lucy’s absence.
“…His Imperial Majesty, residing in the Capital, has sent an Imperial Edict.”
When he first heard those words, Edward’s reaction was dismissive.
“Merely?”
It was as if to say, why all this fuss over such a trivial matter.
Others would have been scandalized to hear someone treat the Emperor’s edict so lightly, but Edward was an exception to such concerns.
‘The old woman grows senile, and her temper just quickens.’
It was hardly the first or second time the Emperor had whined to Edward about something.
Her words were grand and honeyed, but in the end, what she wanted to say always boiled down to one of three things.
‘Do it for me.’
‘Help me.’
‘Resolve it for me.’
Immensely bothersome and tiresome, every time.
‘Left it all to me, hasn’t she.’
When that phrase crossed his mind, Lucy appeared in his thoughts unbidden.
Standing boldly before him, the image of her crying out to others, ‘You left it all to me?!’
In the moment Edward’s gaze—now softened—swept across Lucy standing vacantly in the distance.
“The edict didn’t come alone… it arrived with a special envoy.”
“A special envoy?”
“A special envoy sent from the Temple.”
Rozendale opened his mouth with grave weight.

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