Lady Cinderella - Chapter 8

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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 8

I was sick of the waltz drifting softly through the air and the loud bursts of laughter. All I wanted was to escape this chaotic ballroom as quickly as possible.

The party under the glittering chandeliers went on, full of pretentious nobles.
“Kal!”
As I hurried along, trying not to draw attention, Crown Prince Yohan happened to call out Carlisle’s name without any shame. Because the Grand Duke of Wellington rarely showed himself, the ladies who had failed to approach the dark-haired beauty could not work out who he was until the prince said his name.
“Are you the Grand Duke of Wellington?”
“It’s been a while since I last paid my respects, Your Grace.”
The hopeful gazes of the ladies, who had swarmed him in an instant, were so burdensome that he gave a perfunctory wave and bolted straight for the terrace. Coming to a place like this had been a mistake. As soon as he leapt from the terrace down to the ground floor, Kevin spotted his cloak and came running over.
“Your Grace!”
“Kevin, where on earth is that cursed lady?”

I had only come to this tiresome ball to meet Ella, yet no matter where I looked, the girl from the portrait was nowhere to be seen. Watching his master grow irritated and sick of the noisy crowd, Kevin hesitantly forced out his words.
“Well, it seems she has not come tonight.”
“What?”
“The rest of the Lloyd Count Family all attended, but I was told the youngest daughter could not come because she was ill.”
“Ill?”
“Of course it’s a lie.”
“Damn it all.”
Since they could not go after the Crown Prince, the crowd had turned to hunting for the Grand Duke of Wellington as a second-best prize, and the ballroom was quite chaotic. He had already been refused, though he had offered congratulations on the Emperor’s birthday and presented a gift, so there was no more business for him here. He frowned.
“Then where is that lady now?”
“Well, about that…”
Kevin had known from the start that she would not attend. But had he said so beforehand, the Grand Duke would never have come to the ball. Kevin disliked how his master fixated on that girl with suspicious intensity. Should he tell the truth now, or make up some excuse? Kevin sank into thought, avoiding his master’s gaze.
* * *
The moment the day of the ball arrived, Patricia showed her true colors. Because she had kept saying for days that she would take Ella along, Ella had borrowed a dress from Rose Gold just in case. When Ella asked, Mary was overjoyed and even altered one of the sample dresses she kept on hand to fit Ella’s size.
If things went this way, at least she could not use the excuse of having no dress. But above Ella stood her stepmother, who seemed to exist only to make her life miserable. Just before they were about to leave for the ballroom, Patricia suddenly clasped Ella’s hand as though the sky itself were about to fall.
“Ella, what am I going to do? I have a favor that only you can grant.”
“Me?”
“The dresses Kate and Anastasia were supposed to wear tomorrow have torn, you see. As you know, there’s no one in this house with the embroidery skill to mend them but you.”
Looking at the clean edges that anyone could tell had been cut with scissors, I was too disgusted to even smile. Ella silently looked at Baron Lloyd. He avoided her gaze altogether, like a scarecrow. Their father-daughter relationship had been terrible to begin with, and after the matter of their maternal grandmother, it had collapsed completely, so he was of no help at all.
She had never believed she would be allowed to go in the first place. Ella accepted the torn dresses and simply laughed.
“I suppose so. I’m the only one skilled enough to mend these.”
“You’ll fix them, won’t you? Thank goodness. You’re such a good girl, Ella. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me.”
As I listened to that hollow laughter, Ella gritted her teeth inwardly. She was not her mother. Ella had expected nothing, yet when she feigned disappointment for Patricia’s sake, the woman laughed openly and mocked her. Why had she not realized sooner what kind of person this was? Still, she had learned one thing: people like them never change, no matter how hard you try. Ella spat a curse under her breath and took the dresses.

The moon was unusually bright tonight. Not only had she sewn two dresses from start to finish, but they had also been smeared with all sorts of stains, so Ella now found herself doing laundry under the moonlight. Soaking her feet in the icy water and imagining the dresses to be her stepmother and stepsisters, she stomped on them with all her might, scrubbing them clean.
“Just you wait.”
At first I had thought it would make no difference. Still, just in case, I asked Mary whether I might borrow a dress from her.
―If you need one, you may have as many as you like.
When Ella asked what had led Mary to lend a dress so readily, Mary gave an unexpected answer.
―Because you will not betray my expectations.
I could not understand why she had been so kind, yet even with the dress, I could not go to the ball. The Grand Duke would not come anyway, and even if Ella went, she could never become the Crown Prince’s bride.
Knowing all of this, why were the tears welling up so painfully? Ella’s eyes, as she stomped on the dresses, filled with tears before she even realized it.
“Hic…”
I had not cried on the way back from returning the dress, yet now, without my noticing when they had formed, dewlike tears slid down Ella’s rosy cheeks.
Would there truly ever come a day when I could be happy? All Ella wanted was one thing: to regain her peaceful daily life from before. Nothing more, nothing less. Ella wiped her tears away with effort. Even if she was tormented by her stepmother and stepsisters for now, she had to focus only on gathering the necessary funds and becoming independent as quickly as possible. Though she tried to soothe herself this way, the bitterness in her heart would not fade.
“Why is it always me…”
Having been ignored even by the Grand Duke of Wellington, my last hope, the single thread of hope I had held in my heart shattered to pieces. No matter how firmly I resolved to endure bravely and tell myself I was fine, my wounded heart showed no sign of healing.
I could endure it, I supposed, but when I thought of spending a year and a half under my stepmother, the world went dark before my eyes. Though I knew everything, having to repeat that miserable past again brought a flood of grievance and sorrow. I wiped the tears streaming down with my sleeve and, filled with resentment, stomped on the dresses over and over.
I hated everyone. I resented my father Baron Lloyd, who turned his back on his own daughter, and the scheming stepmother Patricia and my two stepsisters, and even the Grand Duke of Wellington, who had ignored my letters.
“The Grand Duke of Wellington is a fool!”
In the moonlit backyard, unable even to curse other people, Ella shouted her resentment at the Grand Duke of Wellington instead.
“Who are you calling a fool?”
Suddenly hearing a strange man’s voice, with a splash of water, Ella lost her footing for an instant. She sat down heavily in the large wooden washtub, water flew in all directions, and she became a drenched mouse in every sense of the word.
Someone came walking in from beyond the garden. She tried to rise hurriedly, but the soapy water made her slip, and she could hardly get her body up. A strange man came walking in from beyond the shadow of the mansion. Seeing the sword at his waist, Ella asked, frightened.
“W-who are you?”
“Are you Lady Elediss Millenia Lloyd, the daughter of Baron Lloyd?”
Instead of answering who he was, the man spoke her full name, something no one had called her in a very long time. Ella nodded, her voice trembling as she replied.
“And if I am?”
The clouds drifting over the moon parted, and in the clear moonlight the man’s face came into view. Ella covered her mouth with her damp hand without quite meaning to. The handsome man with flowing black hair whom she had seen in the newspapers time and again. Grand Duke Carlisle Jeremiah Wellington was looking down at her, his face thick with irritation.
“Duke Wellington?”
“How do you know my face?”
It was because she had stared at his photograph on the front page of the newspaper until it had nearly worn through, back when he returned victorious two years ago. She could never admit that, so Ella covered her mouth again. Looking down at her, plainly flustered, the Grand Duke let out a sigh first.
“Shall we get up first?”
Ella carefully took the large hand that was extended in front of her. The sharp line of his broad shoulders and the body that formed a golden ratio, like a living work of art, matched exactly what she had heard of the Grand Duke himself. She had never imagined that a man who hadn’t so much as replied to her letter would come to see her in the dead of night, alone and without a single attendant, even climbing over the wall to do so.
“How on earth did you get in here?”
He could no longer hold back his curiosity about her identity, yet the woman in question had not come to the ball. Rumors could be troublesome, so he had come to meet her in a daring frame of mind, precisely when all the other nobles had gathered in the ballroom.
Though it was fine that he had come to meet her, when she asked him why he had come, he too was left at a loss for words.
“So you did read the letter I sent?”
Before Carlisle could come up with some excuse, Ella was the first to take his hand firmly and smile brightly. Unlike the melancholy man in the photograph, she was smiling dazzlingly in the moonlight, and seeing her face, Carlisle was momentarily struck speechless and pointlessly looked away from her gaze.
“Shall we talk after you let go of my hand?”
“Ah. Forgive me, Your Grace.”
Feeling that her hand, which she had held so tightly without thinking, had become a burden, Ella stepped back, lifted her skirts, and bowed first. Her clothes were shabby beyond measure, but the decorum and bearing ingrained in her still carried the unmistakable poise of a count’s daughter.
Rather than being frightened by the sudden visitor, she greeted him as if overjoyed, and the Grand Duke still could not read her intentions. He coughed pointedly and faced Ella with composure. Just as he was about to say something, she spoke first.
“An ambush is about to take place in Oberon Valley.”
“An ambush?”
“Why did you come so late? If you don’t send troops at once to stop it, all the spoils will be taken from you!”
At her resolute words, Carlisle signaled with his hand toward the Intelligence Department waiting outside. Judging by her manner, as though she knew something, he felt he ought to hear her out a bit more.
“How did you come to know the top-secret affairs of the battlefield? Even in the Capital, few know the name of that gorge.”
“That’s… well…”
Faced with the Grand Duke’s blunt question, Ella was momentarily at a loss. She had had much she wanted to say once she met him, but how she should answer his question of how she knew remained a worry she had not yet resolved.
‘If I tell him I came from the future, he won’t believe me, will he?’
Even Ella herself could hardly believe it, so there was no way the Grand Duke would. After hesitating for a moment, she clenched her teeth and answered.
“I can’t tell you that right now.”
“What?”

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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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