Rewriting the Trash Ending - Chapter 63

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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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63.

For the old woman, only one thing mattered: that her son return safely.
Whether the Grand Duchess Consort played mistress of the household or not—what did it matter?
“I’ve no patience for word games. State your business.”
“Do you know how the Lifetime Labor Sentence for Baron Luan was determined?”
“Well…….”
The old woman’s mouth fell silent.
Not long ago, a judgment notice bearing the Grand Duke’s Household seal had arrived at her home.
It contained nothing but a chilling notification: her son had been sentenced to Lifetime Labor in the Mine for the crime of Embezzlement of Subsidies.
But to go to the Grand Duke’s Palace and appeal—she dared not even entertain the thought.
So she had planned to coerce the women who now controlled the Welfare Foundation into drafting a petition for clemency.
Even those who had benefited from her late husband’s favor had turned their backs; the only ones she could count on were those weak-willed creatures.
It was then that the Mysterious Woman’s voice drew her from her thoughts.
“There was no trial. No State Council Meeting. The sentence for Baron Luan was determined by a single word from the Grand Duchess Consort.”
“…….”
At those words, the old woman gripped the armrest of her chair so hard it seemed it might splinter.
“The reason is the Welfare Foundation.”
“I know that much. They say my son… did something there. Though I don’t believe a word of it, mind you.”
“That’s not it. The Grand Duchess Consort means to use the Welfare Foundation as the headquarters for the Relief Fund Association she plans to establish.”
“What? Then…….”
“She had Baron Luan sent to the Mine to seize the land.”
“That……!”
So the Grand Duchess Consort, for all her pretense of nobility, had given in to greed—and her son had become condemned to a lifetime of swinging a pickaxe.
“His Grace the Grand Duke remains at the Fortress, unaware of the full circumstances. That woman has acted unilaterally, keeping the truth hidden from him.”
“And what good does that do me?”
The wrongs her son had committed could not be denied.
“Many nobles will gather for the inauguration. If you kneel before His Grace and appeal to him for mercy in their presence, there will be nothing the Grand Duchess Consort can do.”
“Will His Grace truly listen to the words of an old woman like myself?”
“How could he turn away from the service Baron Luan has rendered to the Grand Duchy for twenty years?”
The old woman’s wrinkled mouth tightened.
To beg the Grand Duke for mercy before so many nobles would be to declare to all the realm that the Grand Duchess Consort’s judgment had been unjust.
If the Grand Duke accepted her plea, it would spread that he had rejected his wife—but if he refused, her own life might hang in the balance.
“But…….”
“Will you simply surrender everything to the Grand Duchess Consort and step back?”
The old woman recalled the Grand Duchess Consort’s warning.

“I only wish to preserve your late husband’s honor, so spend your remaining days in peace.”

…Her late husband’s honor?
She had lived twenty years in poverty for the sake of that meager honor. Now she was to abandon her son and her land to protect her husband’s memory?
If she was to lose her son anyway, there was no point in living.
The old woman’s eyes burned with a terrible resolve.
“But what is your mistress truly after?”
“That may not be the important thing.”
“True. It’s no concern of mine.”
What mattered to her was only her son’s welfare and the land that had been taken from her.
“With this, you should be able to enter the Grand Duke’s Palace.”
The Mysterious Woman slid a gilt-edged card across the table toward the old woman.

[Relief Fund Association Inauguration Invitation Card]

“…….”
The old woman gazed down at the ornate card, lost in thought.
How fiercely noblewomen—especially those of such apparent virtue as the Grand Duchess Consort—clung to their reputation, as if their very lives depended upon it.
Why, the moment her son had given her money, she herself had purchased this expensive mourning dress.
But if she were to appeal there, tears streaming down her face, pleading her grievance…….
The old woman’s eyes glimmered with the light of a firm resolve.
“Right, madam. It would be best if you kept what I’ve come to tell you today in confidence.”
“Surely you’re not trying to threaten me?”
“Nothing of the sort. If word of this meeting gets out, I won’t be able to help you later, no matter how much I wish to. That’s all I mean to say.”
The elderly woman studied the Mysterious Woman for a moment, then gave a slow nod.
The Mysterious Woman held her gaze a moment longer, then slipped quietly from the room.
She changed hired carriages several times over, winding through the streets in long, deliberate circles.
And at last, she arrived back where she had started.
Pendro Manor.

***

Several days later, deep into the night before the inauguration.
A cool breeze tapped against the bedroom window.
Lumiere had finished reviewing the Relief Fund Association documents in her study and dragged her weary body back to the bedroom.
Her eyes felt gritty and heavy from days and nights of relentless work.
‘Just get through tomorrow, and things should settle down for a while.’
She rolled her stiff neck side to side, patted her shoulders, and stepped into the room.
Then.
“Mm…?”
In the darkness, a large black silhouette lay sprawled across the settee.
It was Axid.
Lumiere approached him carefully, her footsteps light and measured.
He lay with one arm propping up his head, his other hand covering his eyes.
It had been four days since his return from the Fortress.
For all four days he’d been consumed by State Council meetings late into the night, and it seemed he’d simply collapsed into sleep the moment he bathed.
‘Even if the room is warm, there’s no excuse for this.’
He lay without a single blanket, his collar carelessly loosened.
She muttered in gentle reproach.
“You fuss over my health endlessly, yet you don’t lift a finger for your own.”
She knew full well whose careful hands had been tucking blankets around her every morning and night.
Yet he lay there leaving himself to the cold without so much as a throw—it was really too much.
Lumiere let out a soft laugh, then fetched a blanket and draped it gently over him.
Her hand traced lightly across his broad chest.
“Thank you, Grand Duke.”
She knew—sensed, rather—that he looked after her unseen.
Like how the Welfare Foundation, now part of the Grand Duke’s Household, had been designated as the Relief Fund Association’s headquarters within days.
Or how he’d assigned skilled lawyers and administrators to help launch the fund.
It was thanks to his quiet, steady support from behind that she could finally breathe.
He helped without drawing attention to it, and she found it frustrating that so many failed to appreciate the Grand Duke’s kindness.
‘Strange, isn’t it.’
Yet part of her felt a peculiar satisfaction knowing she alone understood his true worth.
What was this possessive feeling?
She tilted her head briefly.
‘There’s too much to do tomorrow. I should get some sleep.’
She was rising to her feet to head to bed when—
Thud.
In the darkness, her leg shot out carelessly and struck the corner of the table.
“Ah!”
Sharp pain lanced through her knee as she curled forward, her body tilting backward.
Thump.
“…!”
Her entire body went rigid.
It wasn’t the floor.
Beneath her was the hard muscle of her husband’s thigh.
No—not just his thigh.
She realized with sudden mortification that something had made contact that absolutely should not have.
Heat flooded her face in an instant.
“…!”
She sprang up reflexively.
In her haste, her body pitched forward instead this time, and she tumbled to the ground.
‘Oh…!’
She squeezed her eyes shut, but the impact she’d braced for never came.
Instead, a firm arm hooked around her waist and drew her close.
In the silence where even breath seemed suspended.
His solid chest pressed against her back, and thump-thump—his heartbeat resonated through the place where their bodies touched.
She couldn’t tell whose heart was racing.
“…Your, Your Highness. You were… you were awake?”
She stammered the question, her voice faltering with awkwardness, but instead of answering, he tightened his grip around her waist.
She wondered if he was simply afraid she’d fall again, but the breath against her nape was unusually rough and hot.
“I…”
She’d opened her mouth to say something, anything, to break through the tension that seemed to squeeze her chest, when—

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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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