Lady Cinderella - Chapter 34

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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 34

It was a blessing that the civil servants working inside didn’t catch on to what was happening. Sending frontline intelligence openly by letter, and as Registered Mail no less, and then asking him to trust it was reckless beyond words. Looking back, it was an outrageously bold thing to do, but once the blinders of infatuation had settled over my eyes, even that seemed endearing.
Amid the endless stream of insults written there, the long-awaited day of the Ball had finally arrived. It was the night every noble in the land had been counting down to, and given the rumors swirling that the Crown Prince would choose his bride there, I had no doubt that Countess Ella would be attending as well. Looking back now, it’s clear Kevin had deliberately hidden the news of Ella’s absence so that he would be the one to go.
[‘I wish I’d gone to the Ball after all.’]
Ella, unable to attend the Ball where everyone was laughing and reveling in splendor on her own, seemed busy with laundry even on that night. Thinking of how she had scolded me for not coming to fetch her sooner, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Of course, of course. The fault was mine, Calaile’s. Had I known earlier, I would never have let her be left in such a state.
Crowned with a glittering tiara and with her silver hair cascading in rippling waves, my fiancée, the most beautiful woman in the world, would undoubtedly have outshone everyone present. Just imagining Ella’s figure gleaming beneath the chandeliers of the Imperial Palace, renowned for their elegance, made my heart flutter at the mere thought.
Until now, I had never once wished to go to a Ball of my own accord, yet now things were different. Having someone I wished to be with brought forth all sorts of things I wanted to do.
“What are you looking at?”
“Ah, well, you see.”
“You can’t do that!”
Ella, her face drained of color, began pummeling Calaile in a frenzy. Though her blows only hurt her own hands, she struggled desperately to reclaim the diary.
“Give it back!”
“I was wrong. I was just too curious.”
For the crime of peeking into a young woman’s secrets, Calaile begged and pleaded until his hands and feet went numb, but it was no use. Ella, her anger reaching its peak, glared at him, her expression still far from softened.
“If you peek at it even once more, I’ll be truly furious.”
“Understood. I won’t do it again.”
“What on earth do you think you’re doing here?”
Calaile, who had slipped away from his work midway, was dragged back to the study by Kevin’s hand. As he was hauled off, Ella’s gaze happened to meet Kevin’s. She, too, found Kevin difficult to deal with, as he still regarded her with wariness. Behind those clear-lensed glasses, his eyes were unmistakably full of suspicion.
It was only natural that he would find her suspicious, a woman who knew the future inside and out. In any case, Ella was well accustomed to being disliked by others, and since his suspicion was reasonable, she resolved not to dwell on it emotionally. Showing Calaile the diary, too, was a sign that her guard had truly grown lax lately.
‘Looks like he didn’t see that.’
After sending Calaile away, Ella first checked the diary he had touched. Her diary was structured in two parts. Events taking place in the present, from the moment she had awoken, were recorded steadily from the very first page onward.
The records of the future, or more precisely, the events that had unfolded before she returned to this point in time, were written from the back. Beginning from the last moment she remembered, they were packed densely in tiny script, in sentences resembling a cipher that only she herself could decipher, so there was no fear of discovery.
It had been a mistake to let her guard down, if only for a moment. Hiding the diary somewhere he would never think to look, Ella picked up her needle once more.
* * *
In the secluded Rear Garden, Kevin once again summoned Miro and pressed him for every detail of Ella’s daily routine. The Lady’s days were remarkably simple. She rose early, finished her toilette, took her meals, and then did little more than read, embroider, or take a stroll. During the day Miro stood watch at Ella’s side, and at night Olga kept her company, leaving not a single gap through which she might communicate with the outside world.
“It’s suspicious. I’m telling you, it’s suspicious.”
“The Lady hasn’t asked His Excellency for anything. Why are you so overly suspicious of someone who couldn’t be caught with so much as a speck of dust on her?”
“That’s exactly why it’s suspicious.”
Nothing Ella had said was false. Her account was so flawless, as if she had rehearsed it in advance, that it only stirred Kevin’s suspicions further, and he pressed Miro with flaring temper, demanding to know whether he had observed her properly.
“You may not want to admit it, but isn’t it our lord who’s the one hanging on the Lady’s every word?”
“Hanging on her every word, indeed!”
Kevin alone refused to accept what everyone else already knew. Perhaps it was because he knew the engagement was time-limited, but in Miro’s eyes, Ella’s words and actions lined up precisely.
“I hear her trust fund is quite substantial. Even if you don’t worry about it, once she turns twenty she’ll be cut loose anyway, so I can’t understand why you’re so wary of her.”
“A woman like that is dangerous for His Excellency’s first love. What if she’s scheming with her parents and this is all part of it?”
“I can vouch for her, and she’s truly not like that.”
The exchange between the two of them had been downright vicious. Had the Grand Duke not come running to rescue her, the Lady would likely have had her hair seized and dragged about. If Kevin had heard the words the stepmother and stepsisters had spat, he surely wouldn’t have said such things, Miro thought, yet to Miro’s eyes Kevin looked no different from those stepmother and stepsisters, hearing only what he wanted to hear.
Kevin, who had graduated top of his class at the Academy and whose talent alone had won him the position of chief secretary to the Grand Duke, was nonetheless prone to losing his composure the moment his master’s affairs were concerned.
Of course, given all the schemes the Emperor had pursued to eliminate Calaile, it was hardly surprising that Kevin had grown so sensitive. Even so, watching him cling stubbornly to his suspicions, when this time it really didn’t seem to be the case, Miro could only sigh.
“His Excellency is hardly a child. If any sign of suspicion appears, that’s when we can step in, and it won’t be too late.”
“You don’t understand. That cunning woman has already bewitched His Excellency’s heart, and firmly at that.”
“Isn’t that a bit excessive?”
“Don’t let your guard down in your watch. Even if she’s not a spy sent by an enemy, who’s to say she didn’t approach with an eye on His Excellency’s fortune?”
With no contact with the outside, the conversation had now veered off in that direction. No matter how Miro protested that the words were too harsh, Kevin paid him no heed at all, and it was pointless. Once Kevin had returned to the Main Building, Miro, too, was about to head back to the Inner Residence to keep watch over Ella. Then, through a gap between the buildings, the hem of a dress came into view.
‘I’m done for.’
Every word of their exchange had reached the very person it concerned.
The water had already been spilled. As Miro approached as quietly as he could, Ella stood in the garden gazing blankly at the flowers, her expression unchanged.
‘She must have heard everything.’
The insulting accusation that she had approached for the Grand Duke’s fortune had been heard in full by the very person it concerned. Thinking that if she went straight to the Grand Duke and told him everything, things would become quite tangled, Miro cleared his throat deliberately and made a sound to announce his presence, hoping to smooth things over.
“Are you finished with your conversation?”
“I’m sorry, my Lady.”
“What Kevin said does have a certain logic to it. He must have seemed very suspicious. I understand.”
“Do you truly mean that?”
Ella, in her dress, sat down quietly on the ground and gently stroked a single flower blooming in the shade. Gazing at a nameless flower wilting for lack of sunlight, Ella turned the question back on Miro instead.
“Why did you take my side, Miro?”
Despite how I look, I do have a reasonably good eye for people.
It was meant as a casual remark to soothe the lady’s wounded heart, but the moment she heard it, Ella burst out laughing. Understanding a thing doesn’t mean it can’t still sting. Miro, knowing she was already troubled, had deliberately put on a bit of a show.
“Our lord does make the occasional blunder in front of the lady, I’ll admit, but he’s not so careless as all that. He chose this himself, so I’m content to take his word for it.”
“Miro, you’re a good man.”
Even as she offered the praise, a faint loneliness and worry seeped into Ella’s expression. Then again, being called a good man doesn’t always amount to a compliment. Miro simply shrugged and fired back with a joke.
“They say good men don’t live long, so I’m not sure that’s a very welcome thing to hear.”
“You will live a long life. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Hm?”
Miro asked what she meant by such an abrupt remark, but Ella wouldn’t answer him at all. Her expression was so earnest that the air turned strange, too heavy for him to brush off with a joke. Perhaps this is why Kevin suspects her. She is an odd girl, impossible to read, yet not really the sort who seems likely to do any harm.
“Well, I’d like to live a long time myself.”
Not knowing what lay behind those golden eyes, Miro only laughed it off, assuming it was just a passing remark.
* * *
On the long-awaited day of the inspection visit, Hezel Mason, the investigator in charge from the Trust Management Bureau, arrived at the Wellington Grand Duke’s Residence carrying a file of documents concerning Lady Ellaedis. A few days earlier, Lady Ellaedis’s father, Baron Lloyd, had openly overturned the Trust Management Bureau, and now pressure had come down from on high, with a powerful figure making no secret of his interest in the matter.
The unspoken instruction from his superiors, the so-called “use your head and handle this well,” left a salaried man like Hezel with no way out. He had sat that brutal examination and made it this far, which was fine enough, but once he was actually thrown into the work, reality was nothing short of a government slave’s lot.
‘Why of all things did I have to get tangled up in this?’
Complaints came at him from here and complaints came from there. On the surface, even nobles couldn’t flaunt their authority carelessly, and they couldn’t do direct harm either, yet they were hardly easy to ignore outright. For Hezel, this matter was exceedingly difficult, for it might well involve a count, a grand duke, and even someone above the grand duke, a figure whose name he dared not speak.
“Let’s see…”
On the day after the Emperor’s Birthday, which had been a public holiday, a formal engagement document with Lady Ellaedis was filed in the name of Grand Duke Wellington. It was filed by a proxy, but since all the supporting documents were in order, the civil servant in charge processed it that same day. Barely had the formal engagement procedures been completed when the Grand Ducal Family began the process of changing the trust fund manager, that is, the guardian of the minor recipient, to the fiancé, Grand Duke Wellington.
This was where the trouble began. Not only commoners but nobles too had endured countless massive lawsuits among relatives over their parents’ estates. Since disputes over property had spilled over into cases of child abuse, the Imperial Great Code, newly revised after the current Emperor’s accession, spelled out this point clearly.

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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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