Lady Cinderella - Chapter 25

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

Lady Cinderella, Chapter 25

“Hmm.”
Ella paused for a moment, then broke into a sweet, bashful smile, as if recalling a candy she adored. With the smoothness of a flowing stream, she recited the passage.
“A sovereign need only keep to the proper way of things. Whenever I behold Your Majesty, that line is the first to come to mind.”
“So you mean a court in a doomed kingdom has no men of worth?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
While the Empress was still struggling to grasp what they were saying, Carlisle strained to dig up a memory of a text he had read long ago. Ella had mentioned a fondness for such matters, but he had never imagined she had actually waded through a book that difficult.
“When principle vanishes, ministers devote themselves to climbing higher for their own gain. That happens because the sovereign fails to follow the proper way.”
“But I read in a book that a wise sovereign sets aside personal feelings and follows the law. I’m afraid it’s still too difficult for me, and I couldn’t grasp every meaning, but that line has stayed with me in particular.”
Stressing ‘I know nothing at all,’ she praised the Emperor, famed for his rule of law, as a wise sovereign. Watching Ella still beaming so sweetly, the Emperor finally burst into laughter.
“Naturally. It’s no easy passage. For someone so young, you’re quite something.”
The Emperor’s smile was pleased, yet it carried an undercurrent that gave Carlisle pause. Praise, when excessive, can do harm. For once, Carlisle played the humble one in front of the Emperor.
“My fiancée is still young and knows little of the world. Her words come from a shallow understanding, so I beg Your Majesty not to take them to heart.”
“Shallow understanding? I have never once seen a child as amusing as this one.”
Carlisle deliberately belittled Ella first, and the Emperor rushed to her defense. This too was a calculated move. Ella, for her part, pretended to sulk and gently nudged Carlisle’s arm away.
“You always treat me like a little child. How unkind.”
They bickered back and forth yet also showed a fairly tender side, and Ella came up with her own justifications for why their paths had crossed. Had Ella been a man, the Emperor might have deemed her words impudent and handed down a severe punishment.
Yet by exploiting the prejudice that treats a woman as harmless, Ella was able to protect herself. When someone unexpected does something unexpected, even an Emperor who would ordinarily be on guard lets his guard down. The same act draws a different reaction depending on who performs it.
Ella mustered everything she had learned in the past. The atmosphere had grown quite cordial, and the Empress, left out of the warmth, stared at Ella’s gown with a displeased expression.
“So. When do you intend to hold the wedding?”
At the Empress’s sudden interruption, Ella, who had been chirping like a lark, could not bring herself to answer. Their engagement was, after all, only a temporary arrangement, and this charade would come to an end in the year Ella turned twenty.
‘What should I say?’
Ella had managed to smooth things over with the Emperor, but she was still inexperienced at lying. There were things about the Emperor she genuinely felt grateful for, so she could keep flattering him with sincere-sounding praise, but this question was not one she could answer easily.
“For now, we have only agreed to the engagement, and we intend to hold the wedding once she comes of age. She is still young, and simply being able to see you both has her so giddy with excitement. Please forgive her if she seems a bit childish.”
Carlisle, who had never once bowed his head, now lowered himself for once. Neither the Emperor nor the Empress had ever seen him ask for such understanding. Watching Carlisle, who had barely turned eighteen, present himself as the guardian of his young fiancée, the Emperor let out a snort of amusement. Throughout Ella’s speech, Carlisle’s gaze never once strayed from her.
Even as he mocked the insufferable second cousin for starting to do things he never used to do, the Emperor himself found it hard to tear his eyes away from Ella.
“Perhaps it’s because she’s still young, but that color suits her beautifully. The embroidery is quite lovely, too.”
“Thank you.”
The Empress was mocking Ella even in this, calling her still a child, yet Ella was genuinely delighted that her embroidery had been praised. Even amid the nitpicking, her work had been complimented, so Ella shrugged her shoulders and openly beamed with pleasure. When someone is this guileless, there’s nothing even to scold.
Ella used her youthful age as a shield, returning to the self of her childhood, when she knew nothing, and kept smiling throughout. Much of the pain and the suffering had been erased as if they had never happened. When she thought about how many more chances there might be to stand this close to the Emperor and Empress, even this moment would become a memory she would write anew.
“Come to think of it, Yohan, that boy is about due to marry now.”

The Crown Prince’s name came up out of nowhere, and the Empress’s lovely brow furrowed.
This was why the Empress disliked the Grand Duke. The more merit the Grand Duke earned, the more the Emperor would put forward the Crown Prince, the most useful of the weapons he held, to pit him against the Grand Duke.
‘Insufferable thing.’
As the Crown Prince’s shoulders grew broader with such favor, the Third Prince, the Empress’s own son, was naturally pushed behind in the race for succession.
“Your Majesty?”
“He is the same age as Carlisle, is he not?”
The Emperor, whom she had expected to throw a spanner in the works, was gazing at Ella with rather gentle eyes, and it was the Empress who was truly losing her composure. Watching her poker face crack, Carlisle marveled sincerely at Ella’s skill.
“Stop by sometime and show me the fruits of your studies. None of my children has ever taken up such a pastime. Do you happen to know how to play chess?”
“I only know the basic rules, Your Majesty. I have never actually played a game.”
“What use is knowledge that lives only in the head? The Founding Day Banquet falls in about four months. Come to the palace around then and build your skill so you can play a round with me.”
“Only four months? That’s far too short!”
Being handed such an assignment out of nowhere, Ella made a show of pulling a long face and glanced at Carlisle. She was openly making a child’s expression before the Emperor. Though, surely, her dislike of studying was genuine.
“I shall teach her well, Your Majesty.”
“Very well. You must be tired by now, so you may take your leave.”
Contrary to what they had expected to be a rather bloodcurdling affair, the atmosphere concluded on a cordial note. Ella had spoken so glibly that Carlisle had even wondered how bold she really was. But when the Emperor proposed a game of chess, she began to whine with a face of true dismay, as a girl her age would. The Emperor, not knowing it was an act, gazed steadily at the fresh young girl and found it hard to look away.
“Are you going to simply let that go?”
“Where did she come from, that strange girl? Philip.”
No sooner had the two departed than the Emperor summoned Philip, his most trusted aide. Above all, he needed to determine how much of what the audacious girl had said was true. She was Marquis Ruth’s niece, so her status was certain, but there was still something he wished to confirm with his own eyes.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Investigate every detail of their relationship. She mentioned the library, so the records there should reveal the truth soon enough.”
As the Emperor issued his orders, the Empress could not stop thinking about Ella’s gown. She had heard the rumors that the wealthy Grand Duke Wellington was buying up gowns by the dozen from the most renowned dressmakers in the capital.
Yet the gown Ella had worn today felt somehow different from the ones seen in the Imperial Palace before. Moreover, the delicate embroidery across the bodice was work that even the palace’s own artisans would find hard to imitate. The Emperor and the Empress each set about looking into the matter in their own way. Unaware of any of this, the two of them climbed back into the carriage, hand in hand.

4. A Shy Confession

“I was scared!”
No sooner had we returned from the audience than Ella kicked off her heeled shoes and flopped face-first onto the bed. Once the tension drained out of her and she went limp as wet cloth, Olga and the maids hurried to pull her upright and strip away her finery. Watching her unpin one ornament after another, Calaile turned the Emperor’s manner over in his mind. He knew full well the Emperor and he were not on good terms, and it grated on him more than he cared to admit that she had sung the Emperor’s praises the whole time.
“You talked a good game earlier.”
“It wouldn’t do to get on his bad side, would it? Still, I don’t think I made any real mistakes, did I?”
“You were so good at it it was almost infuriating.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
While she changed out of her gown, Calaile sipped his tea and kept chewing over her words. She said such nonsensical things that even he sometimes forgot to take her seriously. Yet Ella had a strange knack for it: she had matched every detail of the current state of the Gordon Great Plains, right down to Oberon’s raid.
Things he had wanted to dismiss as coincidence had hardened into certainty after today’s conversation with the Emperor. Ella was keeping a secret. That she could not reveal it yet troubled him, but what grated most was the way she had seemed so unusually fond of the Emperor.
‘Why am I like this?’
Yes, she had praised the Emperor, but her words had also carried a defense of Calaile. When the Empress criticized his conduct, Ella had brushed it off as a rumor blown out of proportion, and when the Emperor found fault with trivial matters and sent him back to the front despite his service, she had delivered a pointed jab, calling him a wise and discerning sovereign. The Emperor and Empress simply took her for a naive young girl and never saw what lay beneath her words. Only he knew her secret.
“El.”
“Yes?”
Once Ella had changed into her everyday clothes, Calaile, without a moment’s hesitation, pulled the pins from her hair. Strands of silver light slid loose and fell in soft, rippling waves.
“Everyone out.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Once the attendants had withdrawn to leave the two of them alone, Calaile faced her with a rigid expression. Her easy, unbothered manner toward the Emperor had somehow unsettled him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tell me honestly. Are you on my side or not?”
With a face set hard, he pressed her back against the wall once more. Trapped in the shadow cast by his broad arms, Ella rolled her eyes, not understanding in the least.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You said you’d always be on my side, didn’t you?”
Ella was flashing smiles and playing up her charm in a way she had never once done in front of him, and Calaile glared at her, sulky and resentful. He had gone out of his way to do something he never did, and all for her sake. Meeting his irritated gaze, Ella counted off on her fingers each thing she had said.
“Calaile, don’t you really understand that everything I said, I said for your sake?”
“I understood well enough.”
“And yet you still act like this?”
He was a clever man, so it was impossible he hadn’t understood. Yet he feigned innocence and grew angry even though he knew perfectly well, and Ella could make no sense of it at all.

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