Lady Cinderella - Chapter 16

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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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Lady Cinderella, Episode 16

The bell above the door chimed, and an attendant came looking for Mary. New orders always came through Mary herself, so she set her worries aside for the moment and greeted the customer as she always did.
“You must be Countess Olga Lobina, the one who made the reservation? I’m Mary Rose Gold, the owner of this shop. How may I help you?”
“I’m Olga Lobina, from the Grand Duke’s Residence in Wellington.”
The moment she heard the name Grand Duke Wellington, Mary was too stunned to speak. Above all, what troubled her most was that there was no real reason for the Wellington household and a dressmaker’s shop to have any dealings at all.
Mary’s little dress shop depended mainly on regular customers, so it was bound to be slower than the large boutiques that had been supplying the Grand Duke’s household these past few days. As far as Mary knew, there were no women in that house. Naturally, there had never been any reason for it to do business with a dressmaker.
“My household wishes to commission a gown for a very important guest, so I came in person.”
“A very important guest, you say…?”
Olga only smiled at Mary’s question. Lady Elladis’s identity was still a secret, and Olga had decided to save the surprise for later. Yet Olga, who managed the inner affairs of the Grand Duke’s household, could not simply stand by and watch the Lady sink into despair.
By pressuring the Intelligence Department, she had learned that the persecuted Lady had hidden her identity and taken on sewing work at this very shop. Olga was capable enough to oversee every domestic matter in the Grand Duke’s residence. Merely by reading the expressions of her superiors, she could grasp the full picture. The Lady wished to keep working even after becoming the Grand Duke’s fiancée. The Grand Duke himself, by contrast, did not seem at all pleased by the idea.
‘Now that she’s become such a precious person, she could simply rest in comfort.’
No shop owner would be bold enough to entrust work to the Grand Duchess. If this shop truly had such close ties with her, then the matter could be settled simply by ordering the gown she would wear from here. Since the Grand Duke had not permitted her to go out, the shop owner would just have to be brought to the Residence.
“If she finds it to her liking, it could turn into a rather large commission. I’ve long heard of your shop’s reputation. Countess Bardam especially recommended it to us as an excellent establishment.”
“You’re too kind.”
Upon hearing the name of a regular customer, Mary’s guard visibly loosened. Taking the measurements of the woman known as the “very important guest,” Mary began altering a gown that would be taken to the Residence as a sample one week later.
“These measurements look so familiar.”
Mary felt a strange sense of déjà vu. There was the guest from the Lloyd Count Family who had come earlier, and now this talk of the so-called very important guest from the Wellington Grand Duke’s Residence, who had shown up out of nowhere today.
‘Still, I wonder if Elladis is truly all right.’
She hadn’t taken a single coin yet, so the girl would surely come back someday. If Elladis did return, and if she had been thrown out of the Lloyd Count Family with nowhere left to go, Mary was prepared to hire her gladly as a full-time employee.
She began carefully decorating the bodice of the gown with the intricate embroidery Elladis had stitched. If the troublesome very important guest liked Elladis’s needlework, perhaps she could use that person’s influence to find her. For now, all Mary could do was wait.
* * *
Patricia, too, was coming up empty-handed in her search for Elladis. She had been keeping watch for several days, but apart from the Wellington Grand Duke’s Residence guest having stopped by the dress shop, nothing of note had turned up.
‘Where on earth has she run off to?’
Her good-for-nothing husband, Baron Lloyd, was making do with vague excuses for their daughter’s absence. As far as Patricia was concerned, a clean report of death would be easier to bear than her disappearance. If Elladis had truly lost her life, the inheritance rights to the Trust Fund would revert to Baron Lloyd.
And then the right to dispose of the Trust Fund, which would become an estate, would pass to the stepmother entrusted by Elladis’s birth father. Since searching for several days had brought no news at all, Patricia decided to resort to a scheme.
If the girl was never going to come back, it would be better to make her a dead person. Without telling Baron Lloyd, Patricia had a certain official draw up a forged death certificate for Elladis.
“Are you Countess Patricia Lloyd?”
The Trust Fund Management Bureau was an impartial agency that not even the Emperor could treat carelessly. It had grown into one of the pillars driving the nation’s economy and carried such authority that Patricia had gone so far as to don mourning garments, dab at her tears, and hand over Elladis’s death certificate.
“My daughter, Elladis, has… passed away.”
“Elladis? Are you referring to Lady Elladis Lloyd?”
“Yes. She died at such a young age, so it’s only proper to settle the Trust Fund matters along with the funeral.”
Patricia had no idea how the Bureau knew Elladis’s name, but she put on the act of a tragic heroine and eagerly poured out a lengthy string of excuses.
“Even though she was so young, she always worried about the family’s hardships. And since that good child left this behind as her last wish, I, too, have…”
“Just a moment, Countess Lloyd.”
Hezel Mason, the examiner at the Bureau, adjusted his glasses and carefully studied Elladis’s death certificate.
The date of death was recorded as ten days ago, the day after the Emperor’s Birthday.
“I realize this is a truly rude question, but is it certain that Lady Elladis Lloyd has actually died?”
Caught off guard by the sudden question, Patricia burst into tears rather than answer. She wailed loudly instead of responding at all, and Hezel was genuinely at a loss.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Actually, a few days ago, our office received an application to change the guardian of Lady Elladis.”
“A change of guardian, you say?”
Patricia had never heard of such a thing. If the guardianship really were transferred, then all of Elladis’s Trust Fund would pass into someone else’s hands.
‘What if she fled to Marquis Ruth?’
Her father’s side held the upper hand over her uncle’s, so there might still be a fight to be had. Baron Lloyd loathed his first wife’s brother, Marquis Ruth, with a passion, so he would certainly step in and overturn things no matter what. Yet Patricia had no desire to openly clash with Marquis Ruth, a powerhouse of the capital. Just as she was racking her brain for a way to quietly smooth things over, the examiner let slip something unexpected.
“It states that she has a fiancé. Were you not aware?”
“A fiancé? That girl?”
She had considered keeping the girl around for a few more years, then pocketing the Trust Fund and selling her off to some suitable house with a dowry attached. But there had been no talk of any fiancé whatsoever. Even as Patricia, the girl’s legal mother, stiffened in alarm, the examiner was in no hurry to reveal anything about Elladis’s partner.
“A notice of change of residence for Lady Elladis has already been filed.”
“Where is that girl now? I must see her in person!”
At Patricia’s agitated display, the examiner let out a sigh. Thanks to every sort of person who came seeking answers about inheritance disputes, this kind of scene had become routine for him.
“Countess Lloyd, allow me to ask once more. Where exactly did you obtain this death certificate?”
“We truly believed that child had died.”
“Please confirm with the relevant department once more. If you bring something like this again, you will not escape punishment for forging an official document.”
Patricia was struck speechless by the sudden news. Even a minor, once formally registered through an engagement procedure, could be recognized under national law as holding a quasi-marital relationship and be legally protected, even without an actual marriage.
She had not anticipated in the slightest that her address had been changed. The seasoned examiner left without so much as a word about Elladis’s fiancé. Patricia crumpled the forged death certificate and headed straight for the government office.
“You aren’t even her birth mother. It’s a bit much to go poking into her personal information like this…”
“I’m her guardian!”
“A formal engagement document has been filed, so the current guardian of Lady Ella is… Eek!”
The official in charge checked the magic screen and went pale in an instant. Patricia returned from the government office empty-handed. Who on earth was Ella’s fiancé, that a clerk would react like this?
‘What on earth is going on?’
The next day, the moment dawn broke, Patricia sent word to the clerk who had forged the death registration papers for her.
“Well, that is…”
“He was disciplined? Already?”
Scarcely a day after the forgery, the clerk was dragged off to prison on charges of falsifying an official document. From the Trust Fund administrator’s reaction earlier, to the civil servant at the government office, and now the clerk’s swift punishment, this was clearly no ordinary omen. Without any backing from the Marquis Ruse House, what sort of talent could that girl possibly have to pull off all of this? Just as Patricia was struck speechless, Baron Lloyd returned, furious.
“What on earth have you been doing out there!”
Having received word from the government office that they would overlook the document forgery this one time, out of consideration for Count Lloyd’s standing, his anger had risen to the very top of his head.
“You, go to the government office right away and get Ella’s family register first.”
“What?”
While the two of them went on talking over each other, Patricia tugged at Baron Lloyd’s arm.
“Can’t you handle even something this simple? Calling people here and there like I’m your errand girl?”
“I’m not her real mother, so they say I can’t look it up!”
Only after the Baron came in person did the official, still wearing an uncomfortable expression, issue Ella’s family register.
The couple first looked at the name Elladis Millenia Lloyd, then at the guardian’s name written beside the notation that she was a minor.
“What is this…”
“What is this.”
Her fiancé: Grand Duke Carlisle Jeremiah Wellington. Seeing that his residence was plainly listed as the Grand Duke’s Residence, the couple could not contain their shock and collapsed right where they stood.
“Why would Ella be with Your Grace the Grand Duke? When did this happen? This is absurd!”
“You can’t carry on like this here, Count.”
At government offices, there was no distinction between nobles and commoners. This was possible only because the current Emperor tolerated no tyranny from anyone but himself. Knowing that making a scene would only land them in trouble, the couple stumbled out clutching the documents, their faces blank with bewilderment.
“Could this really be true?”
“What else would it be? How did you raise that girl that she’d end up causing such a mess!”
“Keep your mouth shut. So that girl is going to become the Grand Duchess?”
Hearing that Grand Duke Wellington had attended this ball, Patricia, who had two grown daughters of her own, had eagerly looked for an opening, hoping the Duke might take a fancy to one of them. It was all in vain. By the time Baron Lloyd’s party arrived, the Duke had already paid his respects to the Emperor and hurried out of the ballroom, they were told.
“Then could it be that the man Ella was with was actually…”
“You go home! I must see Your Grace the Grand Duke at once.”
Sending off Patricia, who was making a fuss, Baron Lloyd headed straight for the Grand Duke’s Residence without any appointment. Even if he is a Grand Duke, an engagement without the parents’ consent? That simply did not make sense.

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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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