Lady Cinderella - Chapter 26

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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, Chapter 26

“I’m not teaching you chess. Figure it out on your own.”
“Ah, wait a moment!”
“And you can’t even brew a decent cup of tea.”
“No matter how hard I try, that just isn’t something I can do.”
Olga had sighed that no matter how earnestly Ella tried, she seemed to lack any feel for it, and her hands were somehow gifted at steeping every cup until it turned bitter. Ella had meant only to needle the irritating Emperor, but instead they kept trading words back and forth as if they were enjoying themselves, and that only stoked the fire rising inside him.
‘Why, of all things?’
The Emperor that Calaile knew was a selfish man who cared for no one but himself. If he set his sights on Ella, he might move to take her into the Imperial Concubines, even if it meant breaking off her engagement.
Even if Ella kept insisting that everything would be fine, Calaile had to consider what would happen after their relationship ended. However brilliant her embroidery and however sharp her learning, it would hardly be easy for a woman to fend for herself alone. And if she was the former fiancée of the great Grand Duke Wellington, that alone would be reason enough for wicked men to toy with someone as innocent as her.
“If I’d known this would happen.”
I should never have agreed to an engagement. The words nearly slipped from his lips, and he swallowed them back, pressing his mouth shut. His restless heart was clouding his judgment. Only now did it feel like his reason was slowly returning.
From the very beginning, this engagement had brought him nothing useful. Perhaps it was the unusually bright moonlight, or perhaps it was the moon’s mischief that had made him fall for the empty words of a soot-streaked girl in a dirty maid’s uniform, damp with soapy water. The excuses he had hastily come up with had all been nonsense.
There was no point in clashing with the Emperor, and if he refused to confess where the classified information had come from, he could always just have him interrogated until he talked. But Calaile didn’t really want to go that far.
A question he had never bothered to ask before now rose to the surface. Why on earth had he accepted this absurd engagement? Within his heart, a strange new feeling that had only just bloomed began slowly to raise its head.
“Calaile, are you really angry?”
Just as he was striding out of the room, he halted, and Ella seized his arm with all her strength. She couldn’t let things end on such an unsettling note, and besides, one look at his stiffened face told her something was clearly wrong.
“It’s nothing.”
“Then what exactly is the matter? Did I do something wrong?”
The more that strange feeling stirred, the more bewilderment crept over him. Seeing Ella smile at the Emperor made his blood boil.
‘She’s my fiancée.’
Whenever the Emperor looked at Ella with unusually gentle eyes, Calaile felt uneasy, as though something precious were about to be snatched away from him.
“I told you, it’s nothing.”
His tense body instinctively pushed away the hand that reached toward him. Caught off guard by his reaction, Ella lost her balance and landed hard on her bottom with a “thump.”
“Ouch…”
Her tailbone throbbed, so Ella busily rubbed her backside. Seeing her small frame topple backward in an instant drained the color from Calaile’s face.
“Ella, are you all right?”
Ella glared at him, her face flushed with fury. Far from praising her for doing well, he had gone and treated her like this, and that was simply too much.
Only yesterday he had been so kind to her. Ella couldn’t make any sense of Calaile’s sudden change of heart. She ignored the hand he offered and got to her feet on her own.
“I’m sorry, truly sorry.”
“…It was my own mistake for lunging at you so suddenly, Your Grace.”
Ella said only that much and turned away, cold as ice. It had truly been her own fault. Unable to let her go like this, Calaile caught her wrist firmly at once.
“Let go.”
“I was wrong.”
She could hardly be angry over a simple fall on her backside. He had been the one at fault, petulantly sulking without a thought for how she felt. Ella’s wrist trembled in his grasp as she stood there, on the verge of tears.
“You’re always praising the Emperor, and he doesn’t like me, so it upset me. That’s why I did it.”
“Why would that upset you?”
“Well, obviously that’s because…”
Before he could even finish, the words caught in his throat. The loose puzzle pieces he had been holding began to slide into their places one by one, slowly forming a picture.
His true feelings, painted across those scattered fragments.
‘I… I’m…’
Perhaps it was the magic of the moonlight that made even her face, flushed with unreserved anger at his rudeness, look lovely. Perhaps it was the same magic that had made him accept this absurd arrangement, and why he now clung so helplessly to this small woman, doing things he had never done before.
“Because you’re my fiancée.”
That was as far as he could go. That was all he could say for now. Before the shape of this feeling, which he still could not put into words, became clear, it was hard to express it so easily.
“Is that really all?”
Disappointment was plain on Ella’s face. Calaile knew he had said something he himself thought was ridiculous, but with nothing more to add, he carefully let go of her wrist. In the moment he faltered, Ella gathered her skirt in both hands and ran off.
Calaile could not bring himself to stop her and could only watch her endlessly receding figure. If their false engagement ended, she would spread her beautiful wings like the butterfly embroidered on her handkerchief and leave his side.
“No.”
He felt as though he had been caught in a trap. Uncontrollable emotions tangled together and churned through his mind. Unlike when he had stood alone against the Emperor, she had protected Calaile splendidly in her own way. Sometimes fiercely, sometimes gently, sometimes with the composure of an adult, sometimes like a child. She was impossible to pin down, and like a butterfly, she flitted freely through the depths of Calaile’s heart.
“Your Grace.”
“…Kevin.”
“That’s exactly why I tried to stop you, isn’t it?”
Despite Olga’s plea not to interrupt the two of them, Kevin had come up on the pretext of an urgent report and ended up witnessing everything that had just happened. While the Lady stormed back to her room in anger, his master stood there vacantly, rooted to the spot where she had left him.
At first, Kevin had simply assumed it was a joke. Seeing the Grand Duke take an interest in her as though she were a cute younger sister, or a newly acquired toy, Kevin had found it difficult to intervene. He had found his master’s behavior suspicious, changing by the day, but he had never imagined it would come to this.
“I’ve heard what happened at the palace.”
Kevin had wanted to fix the Grand Duke’s precarious attitude, the way he openly bristled at the Emperor at every turn. That the Emperor had taken a liking to Ella and the mood had turned pleasant was something he hadn’t expected.
Just as he was wondering whether he should finally give up, an unexpected stone that had rolled in solved his dilemma in an instant. It was strange at first, and suspicious, but her identity was certain, and above all, everything she did worked in the Grand Duke’s favor.
Shortly after the two of them left the palace, the Emperor sent men to the Imperial Palace Library with orders to investigate the full circumstances of the incident, but since all of Ella’s actions had been true, there was no problem.
“I…”
“It isn’t time yet. Don’t rush. Since His Majesty has accepted this engagement, at least for the time being there will be no military expedition.”
“Kevin?”
Kevin had looked upon Ella with nothing but distaste, but when he weighed the matter with cold practicality, he found that this fake fiancée was more useful than he had expected. Not only would she keep his exhausted master from wandering the frontier, but since she had no proper family backing, there was no room for interference either.
Still, there was no denying that something about her was suspicious. Should Ella show any sign of stabbing them in the back later on, then Kevin himself would step in and deal with it. Simply saying no would get him nowhere, since his master wouldn’t listen, so Kevin decided to change tack and try coaxing him instead.
“Weren’t you the one who kept opposing Ella’s presence?”
“You’ll have to marry and have children someday, so whether she suits my taste or not, there’s no helping it.”
“Are you serious?”
Of course it was a lie. He didn’t trust Ella in the slightest, but since his master wanted her this badly, there was simply nothing to be done about it. And should the lady so much as pull one suspicious stunt, he would never let it slide. Kevin told the lie without even wetting his lips.
“It wouldn’t be a bad thing to strengthen our ties with the Ruth Marquis family while we’re at it, and as long as the lady is here, Your Grace will attend every event the Imperial Family hosts without fail.”
At Kevin’s point-by-point reasoning, Calaile let out a hearty laugh before he could stop himself. It sounded like a stretch, yet now he could finally admit it to himself.
“How am I supposed to explain this?”
“Go ahead and agonize over it. A woman who’s angry is not someone you want to provoke, so leave her be for today, and later on, beg her until your hands and feet are worn out.”
Watching his master nod, Kevin clicked his tongue. Only a moment ago he had been spouting nonsense about love, and now he had gone mute and was acting like a complete fool.
‘Why does a man in love turn into such an idiot?’
Since the man himself seemed to lack any real awareness of it, Kevin led his dazed master down the stairs. There was a mountain of work still waiting, yet he had been indulging in idleness for quite some time, lost in his fiancée. Now the time had come to drag him back into the sea of documents.
“Speaking of which, I have some bad news.”
“Bad news?”
“I hear that Baron Lloyd turned the Trust Fund Management Bureau upside down today. An inspector will be visiting in five days.”
Baron Lloyd’s protests, which included furious accusations that the matter had been carried out without parental consent, were so fierce, and the Trust Fund Management Bureau, which enjoyed guaranteed independent authority, had no reason at all to fear the authority of a Grand Duke who had already fallen out of the Emperor’s good graces.
There was truth to the fact that the affair had grown tangled and troublesome, with all sorts of strange rumors swirling about. On top of that, whenever a beneficiary’s guardian changes partway through like this, an investigation is required at least once, so it seemed they would be coming to inspect far sooner than anyone had expected.
“Dear me.”
“If the lady doesn’t cool her temper within five days, we’ll be in serious trouble. That bureau is every bit as capable as our Intelligence Bureau.”
Half-hearted acting wouldn’t work in front of them. If he had intended to shake Ella off, this might have been a golden opportunity, but it was already too late. Before his mind could even grasp the situation, his heart had already begun to move on its own, recklessly.
“Let’s go to the study.”
If he did not prepare thoroughly, he might well lose Ella, a truly desperate situation. He had to soothe Ella’s anger while also beginning, properly, the legal battle against Baron Lloyd. A fine bait had come rolling in, which made handling his master that much easier.
Kevin had no intention of lowering his guard, yet he shrugged and glanced up the stairs once more. If his master’s mind was elsewhere, then it would fall to him to stay watchful. Thinking that he need not simply oppose everything, he followed his master down the stairs.

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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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