Lady Cinderella - Chapter 44

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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 44

But it didn’t go the way he’d expected. The Lady rushed straight to the Grand Duke, stricken, and begged him to banish her parents from the capital instead. Miro, for his part, gave Kevin a sharp scolding for going too far on that one count.
“This was entirely your fault.”
The Grand Duke covered for Kevin, knowing that even this had been done for his sake. Ella, too, said she understood Kevin’s concern and didn’t hold it against him. With both of his superiors taking this stance, Kevin finally regretted his rashness. No matter how much he disliked someone, he shouldn’t have acted that way. Rather than venting her anger on Kevin, Ella chose to earnestly draw up a plan for how to deal with Stevens Bank. He no longer had any reason to resent her.
“I’m entirely on your side, Your Grace. If it helps you, there’s no reason I should oppose it or dislike it out of personal feelings.”
“No, seriously. What exactly is it that’s supposed to help me?!”
Yohan’s bullheadedness was old news by now and no longer surprising, but Seth found Kevin’s visibly changed attitude curious.
“Remarkable. I thought you’d dislike her for resembling Lizbeth-nim.”
At the mention of the name Lizbeth, both Yohan and Kevin stiffened. It was a name no one would bring up anymore, yet it was one neither of them could ever forget.
“What?”
“Resembling?”
“It’s more like the atmosphere was a bit similar. Was it only me who felt that way?”
Seth had sharp eyes and had thought of Lizbeth the moment he first saw her, but it seemed no one else, including the Grand Duke, had noticed it.
“Resembling how? In what way?”
Assuming everyone would already know, he hadn’t bothered to mention it, but Yohan, who had yet to meet Ella, demanded to know with fire in his eyes. Kevin also looked incredulous, so Seth haltingly explained what he had felt.
“How do I put it? Rather than her appearance, it’s that particular air about her. I assumed that was the reason the Grand Duke treats the Lady with such special regard, though.”
Kevin was stunned by the bombshell Seth had dropped, and Yohan lost his words. For well over ten years, Lizbeth’s name had never been spoken within this mansion. The Grand Duke, who had been such a mischievous child, had lost his smile after that day. It was also the reason he had been persistently disliked by the Emperor. Could that really be why the Grand Duke had shown such particular goodwill toward Ella?

23 ‘No way.’
‘No way.’
Kevin, who had looked after Calaile since childhood, had also been acquainted with Lizbeth, but since he had seen her so long ago, he couldn’t recall her clearly. Still, if it were true, it would explain why the Emperor looked so favorably on Ella. The Grand Duke himself might not have noticed, but the Emperor surely had. Faced with this unexpected obstacle, Kevin clenched his fist.
* * *
The Emperor brooded as he read the report that had been submitted. Since his last audience, Philip, the Emperor’s capable attendant, had mobilized every means at his disposal to uncover all the facts surrounding Ella. At first, the Emperor had assumed Calaile had brought her in deliberately to provoke him. Her features were certainly different, yet her quiet yet refined bearing and the way she openly expressed whatever she wished with such guileless brightness bore a striking resemblance to Lizbeth.
“Now that’s a thing of the past.”
Lizbeth had been the half-sister of Rivera, the Crown Prince’s mother and the former Empress. The two sisters were the imperial descendants of Romain, one of the Empire’s vassal states. When the elder sister, Rivera, miscarried and fell ill, Lizbeth, though betrothed, gladly stayed in the Imperial Palace to nurse her. She was not as eloquent as that silver-haired girl, but Lizbeth neither feared nor was intimidated by her brother-in-law, the Emperor.
After completing his purges and setting the legal code in order, the Emperor had reigned as a formidable ruler for quite some time, and to him, Lizbeth had been a remarkably refreshing companion to talk to.
―”Yohan and Cal are such crybabies, honestly.”
―”Aunt Liz!”
This was around the time Yohan and Calaile had barely turned ten. Even after an unfortunate incident, the Imperial Palace had regained a fair amount of liveliness since Lizbeth’s arrival. The Grand Duchess, Calaile’s mother, also stayed at the palace to tend to the Empress, and young Calaile, who had followed his mother in, hit it off with Yohan and turned the palace upside down every day. Looking after the palace’s little troublemakers also fell to Lizbeth.
Lizbeth, having only just passed twenty, cherished the two boys as if they were her own younger brothers. Unlike the Empress, who grieved over the loss of her child, Lizbeth never lost her characteristic brightness. That was what clouded the Emperor’s eyes. He dreamed of being a perfect emperor, but at the same time, he was an arrogant one.
He was only satisfied when he possessed everything he wanted, even if it was his wife’s younger sister. Lizbeth was on the verge of her wedding, but there was indeed a precedent in ancient history of sisters being wed to the same emperor. By the time he realized it, it was already too late. The Emperor’s will was strong, but Lizbeth was anything but easily swayed.
―”You can’t do this, Your Majesty! Taking me into the harem? I’m to be married!”
―”Lizbeth, this is a command.”
―”Then kill me instead!”
In the empty hall, the Emperor tried to persuade Lizbeth, but she flatly refused, saying she could not betray her sister’s trust. Even setting aside her sister’s situation, the Emperor’s harem was already filled with daughters from the most prominent noble houses.
―”You dare defy my word? I have already set you in my heart!”
Along with the Emperor’s thundering voice, a suspicious sound came from near the door, where not even an ant should have been able to approach. Footsteps, far too light to belong to an adult, quickly receded into the distance. The Emperor, leaving Lizbeth where she stood, hurried toward the doorway and caught sight of a shadow slipping away.
The hair of the well-dressed little boy was black. Among the Emperor’s children, none had hair as deep a black as that. Among boys around Yohan’s age, black hair belonged to only one person: Calaile, the son of Grand Duke Wellington.
―”I shall pretend I did not hear Your Majesty’s words. I will return to my homeland as soon as possible, so I beg you, Your Majesty, to consider my sister’s position.”
Disgust was already plain on Lizbeth’s face. Soon after, she returned home, and her marriage was hastily arranged. Rumors spread that the Emperor’s gaze toward Lizbeth was not quite proper, but the adults all tried, one way or another, to hush it up and let it pass quietly.
But young Calaile was the cause of the trouble. Held in the arms of his mother, the Grand Duchess, who had been nursing Empress Rivera, Calaile went and asked Rivera point-blank.
―”Your Majesty the Empress, if Aunt Lizbeth enters the harem, will she be able to stay with us all the time from now on?”
―”Cal, what on earth are you talking about all of a sudden?”
―”You said so the other day, Your Majesty. That you’d take Aunt Lizbeth into the harem.”
Calaile was too young to understand what it truly meant to enter the harem. The Grand Duchess hurriedly took her son back home, and Rivera, left alone, summoned her half-sister and asked for the full story.
It is said that Lizbeth, in front of her sister, who had yet to recover from the loss of her child, wept openly as she confessed everything. The Empress, not yet fully recovered herself, took it upon herself to prepare Lizbeth’s return home. Her wedding was hastily arranged six months earlier than planned, and the Empress, consumed by a sense of betrayal, turned her resentment toward the Emperor.
―”Your Majesty is worse than a beast!”
Bearing the full weight of a mother’s resentment for her lost child, the Emperor said nothing at all. And so Lizbeth was married off to Obelia, a small kingdom in the Northwest.
‘Lizbeth.’
Blood cannot be denied, and just as Calaile was, the Emperor too was only satisfied when he obtained everything he desired. Having taken the Gordon Great Plains, he intended to launch a full-scale campaign into the Northwest Region.
‘Naturally, I’ll have that boy lead the vanguard.’
After his parents’ deaths, he should have surely secluded himself in his territory. The Emperor had planned to use some convenient pretext to brand him a traitor and reclaim his lands, but Calaile cleverly remained in the capital and volunteered to serve as the loyal sword of the Emperor.
Because of that, the pretext for a purge had vanished. The Emperor had thought he would humbly keep his head down, yet he had suddenly announced an engagement, and the Emperor had grown suspicious of his motives. The one he had brought in was the insignificant daughter of a Count’s house, who somehow resembled Lizbeth.
‘That boy Calaile seems not to be aware of it himself…’
He had deliberately shown no sign of it during their meeting. It had been well over ten years, and Rivera, the former Empress, along with Romain, her native land, had long since been purged under the pretext of curbing the rise of maternal relatives.
Judging from Calaile’s expression and conduct, he had not brought her in knowingly and on purpose. The Emperor had suspected some scheme, since she was the niece of Marquis Ruth, but the investigation’s results had been so simple they nearly drew a laugh. That precocious child seemed to have used Calaile to escape a miserable home life.
“Well, that explains it.”
I hadn’t looked into the details, but after the mother of Marquis Ruse House, their last bastion, died, that precocious child sent Calaile a letter requesting a meeting. On the night of the Ball, Calaile brought Ella into his residence, away from prying eyes. She was a doll-like girl with silver hair and golden eyes, a rare sight, perhaps inherited from the blood of the Ruse family.
She pleased him so much that he thought, were she not Calaile’s fiancée, he might well have taken her into the Imperial Concubines as an ornament. And on top of that, she was bold. She didn’t so much as flinch before the Emperor himself, and she flattered him with remarkable skill.
The Emperor had long since grown weary of empty, insincere praise, yet this girl’s words struck him as both hollow and sincere at once. She was a curious one. Rumors had been circulating that Calaile had already lost his head over his fiancée, so for the time being, there was nothing he could do.
“Summon Marquis Ruse.”
At the Emperor’s command, Philip bowed his head and left the Audience Hall. Alone on the throne, the Emperor set aside the report that had been brought up and recalled the bold young girl who had dared to discuss the Way before him. He found himself curious to see how Calaile would respond.

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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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