Lady Cinderella - Chapter 5

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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 5

“Your Grace!”
Thanks to his master, who had long since given up on the idea of marriage, Kevin pounded his chest and vented his grievances. He was only twenty-three. Unlike the golden-haired, blue-eyed members of the Imperial Family, he had inherited his mother’s dark, blue-black hair.
Unlike the rather flighty Crown Prince Johannes, his appearance, which reflected a steady and thoughtful character, was more than enough to set young ladies’ hearts fluttering.
Of course, his true charm shone on the battlefield. There were even times when enemy generals were so awed by Calaile’s graceful bearing as he drew his sword that they lost their heads without ever lifting their own blades. In the capital, it was treated as a city legend, but among the soldiers, the accepted wisdom was that the enemy had frozen in place from the sheer force of the fighting spirit he gave off.
“Your Grace needs a wife to support you at home. I can’t always be the one to step forward, can I?”
“…Even so, I trust you quite a lot, you know?”
At the mention of needing a wife to support him, Calaile fixed his subordinate with a look of arrogant amusement. The moment the word “trust” came out, Kevin was left speechless. As expected, this man understood other people’s hearts all too well. A single line from his lord, “As long as you’re here, I’m fine,” was enough to make Kevin, the loyal retainer, pledge his loyalty once more from the depths of his heart.
“Ah, Your Grace. I’m sorry, but a guest has arrived.”
Despite the busy schedule, a visitor who had been politely turned away had still made it all the way here, which most likely meant it was Crown Prince Johannes, whom even the lower-ranking staff could not stop. Before the Duke’s expression could sour, Kevin stepped forward first.
“Is it the Crown Prince again?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Then have them come in.”
That it wasn’t the Crown Prince was, at least for now, enough. The door opened, and the one who entered was, unexpectedly, an official from a department they had never seen before. The man stood before the Duke, trembling with fear, holding nothing more than a shabby envelope.
“G-greetings to His Grace the Grand Duke.”
The messenger wanted to weep at the sudden duty handed to him. Under the Imperial Edict, all nobles were bound by the articles of the Imperial Great Code, and messengers, too, were required to act in accordance with that law. But the moment he knelt before Duke Wellington, his legs began to tremble on their own.
“Where are you from?”
“I’m a messenger dispatched from the Imperial Library. I’ve come to see you regarding a Registered Mail matter.”
“Registered Mail?”
For a Duke with no property disputes to speak of, Registered Mail was a word with no connection to his life at all. Kevin took the envelope in place of the Duke. The messenger fumbled through his papers and asked the Duke to sign them personally.
“Lady Lloyd… of the Count’s family?”
It was a name he had never heard before. Not knowing the circumstances, but seeing that the messenger before him was trembling so badly, Calaile signed lightly with the pen in his hand, then pressed Duke Wellington’s Seal onto the paper. Kevin, rather than Calaile, broke the seal on the letter. As he looked at the neatly written letter, Kevin’s expression hardened.
“What is it?”
“I think you should take a look at this, Your Grace.”
It contained details of the battle at the Gordon Great Plains, along with the current military situation, which he had yet to properly organize since he had been busy dealing with financial matters first. The clerks were likely copying it all down frantically at this very moment.
[If sparrows cause a hole in the nest, the eggs may be lost.]
“Sparrows” was military slang for allies who talked too much, and a “hole in the nest” referred to internal division within one’s own forces.
Given how freely it used terms that only insiders would know, this was no ordinary hand. Why it had been delivered under the name of some insignificant countess from the capital, he could not say. Calaile read through the content quickly and checked the final part.
[Please beware of the crows that live in Oberon Gorge. They are fond of gold and may attack people. I wish to tell you the details in person.
— Ella Millenia Lloyd, with respect.]
The word “crows,” which referred to enemies, troubled him, but what was even stranger was that anyone living in the capital would know of the existence of Oberon Gorge at all. Oberon had long been an enemy territory within the Gordon Great Plains, so few people even knew it existed. Through this expedition, they too had officially located the area and brought it under Imperial territory.
“If it’s gold, is this about the spoils of war?”
If the enemy truly meant to target the spoils, then Oberon Gorge was indeed a fine choice. From his position of knowledge, he could make such a guess, but the real problem was the identity of the person who had sent this message.
At first, he had assumed she had merely borrowed someone’s title, but the sender’s name and the signature at the end of the letter all consistently identified her as the daughter of the Lloyd Count Family.
“Could she be a spy?”
“That’s possible.”
If an enemy spy had infiltrated as far as the capital and ensnared the daughter of some unlucky noble, the most likely scenario was that she had used her standing to contact the Duke directly. For a spy to roam freely in the capital was something the guardian of the Empire could never tolerate.
“Assign people to her right away. I want every move she makes tracked and reported.”

There was no need to hurry in writing a reply. Calaile also added an order for the local garrison to tighten their defenses against remnant forces, and to mount a thorough search of the entire Oberon Gorge area in case of a surprise attack.
Though it sounded far-fetched, if this were true, it would be troublesome indeed. If they were ambushed and lost the spoils, he would be thrown back onto the battlefield without a moment’s mercy.
He had patrolled the front lines for two full years, so for the time being he wanted to rest, catching up on piled-up paperwork and tending to the affairs of his territory. Perhaps because he had cut back on sleep, his already dry eyes stung even more. Calaile leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes.
It wasn’t as if he had clung to bachelorhood from the very beginning. But he had learned, all too young, what a misplaced love could lead to. A lady who could share his troubles while also having her own sphere, that was the ideal. Had he spoken such an ideal aloud, even Kevin, his loyal retainer, would surely have scoffed at him, saying no such woman existed in the world.
He was an utterly pragmatic realist, and at the same time an extreme idealist. Dreaming of what could never come true, even knowing it, is simply human instinct. If such a woman truly existed in this world, he would gladly consider marriage as well.
“It’s just that my standards are too high.”
For now, the most important thing was to find out where the information had leaked. The contents of this letter were mostly top-secret intelligence known only to Duke Wellington and the other senior leadership.
Even if reports had gone up the chain, at this point the fact that a mere countess’s daughter knew what amounted to state secrets was something that could not possibly be dismissed as trivial.
“Ella Millenia… I’ve never heard that name before.”
Since the number of women he knew by name was limited to begin with, he examined the letter carefully. The curves of the strokes suggested it had been written in haste, and a slight tremor revealed the writer’s deeply anxious state of mind.
Moreover, seeing that similar words had been repeated three or four times, it seemed the writer was probably not someone who wrote letters or such things often. Who could this lady possibly be? He spread the letter out on the corner of his desk and sank back into his work.
* * *
“I’ve found her.”
Within just a few hours, the capable secretary Kevin had identified the lady in question.
“Oh? Already?”
“She’s eighteen this year. From the handwriting and the way she phrased things, I’d assumed she was a bit more mature, so that was unexpected.”
Kevin’s report on the lady’s background went as follows. Her name was just as they’d known. Her mother had been the youngest daughter of the Marquis Ruth household, but she had already passed away, and now the lady lived with her stepmother and two stepsisters.
“Eighteen years old…”
Calaile had assumed she was at least in her mid-twenties, so the lady’s youth came as a shock. He dismissed the possibility that the young noblewoman had written the letter herself.
“She’s supposedly a lady, but her situation is strange.”
“Strange, you say?”
“I hear she’s being treated worse than a maidservant in her own house.”
Ella herself may not have known it, but ever since Baron Lloyd had remarried Patricia, rumors had spread through high society that Ella, the daughter of his first wife, was being mistreated.
On top of that, the Ruth Dowager had been sending for her again and again, yet the baron refused to let the girl go. Worse, the rumor went that he had flown into a rage when his daughter returned from paying respects at her maternal grandmother’s funeral and treated her like a servant. Baron Lloyd, already known for his foul temper, was branded with the nickname “the Troublemaker Count” and drew the full weight of public scorn.
“So such things really do happen.”
It was a tragedy for a noble lady to be worked like a servant under her own father’s hand for no reasonable cause. At least a true servant would receive wages, but to be treated that way by one’s own parents left her with no one to turn to, a pitiful state indeed. Yet the tragedy did not end there.
“The former Marquis Ruth’s wife, the only one who had been on the young lady’s side, also passed away a few days ago. It seems the Marquis Ruth, having already lost his younger sister, wanted nothing more to do with the Lloyd Count Family. They say he only let his niece, who appeared looking like a beggar, pay her respects at the funeral before throwing her out.”
In short, she had not a single place to lean on. For a lady with nowhere left to go, only her title remained. Calaile turned the possibilities over slowly in his mind as he listened to Kevin’s report.
“…And?”
“I suspect the enemy’s spy approached the lady while her circumstances were so precarious. That is at least the conclusion the Intelligence Department, myself included, has reached.”
“Her circumstances are rather pitiful.”
It was an expected outcome. Put another way, it was a story as common as dirt. A woman could hardly survive alone, so she must have been bitten by someone’s venomous fangs. At Calaile’s listless remark, Kevin checked once more for anything he might have overlooked. Since the letter had arrived, they had kept watch on her, and in case of trouble, they were tracking everyone who came and went from the Lloyd Count Family.
“For now, begin a close investigation. Assign people to her, and find out by what route she’s been contacting them. Gather every scrap of information you can.”
“Understood, Your Grace.”
Staring at the lady’s troublesome letter while he was already swamped with work, Calaile fell into thought. Hurried as it was, the core points the lady had picked out in her letter were rather convincing.
If she had not been prompted by a spy. A one-in-a-million chance. But what if this lady had pieced all of this together entirely on her own judgment? An absurd inference lodged itself in Calaile’s mind. It might simply be his own delusion, so he folded Lady Ella’s letter neatly and put it in a drawer. There was no harm in confirming it with her in person once he had grasped the detailed circumstances.
For now, he had to sort through the mountain of documents piled before him, so he let out a sigh and launched into the work and battle in front of him.

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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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