Standard Contract Guidelines for a Fraudulent Marriage - Chapter 43

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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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Episode 43

Adelia stared at her, her expression saying she’d heard wrong.

“I beg your pardon?”
“What do you mean you didn’t see? She’s sitting right next to Princess Claria. It seems the Princess has chosen him as her partner for today, so you’ll need to attend to her until the party ends.”

What on earth?!

Adelia brushed her off with a trite excuse about suddenly remembering urgent business.

Elbowing through the crowd, she finally reached a vantage point where she could see the raised platform at the center. Her shoulders sagged; the energy drained from her face.

The unknown woman’s words were true.

The moment she saw Loarston sitting beside Princess Claria, an odd, unsettling sensation twisted through her stomach.

The two of them…….

‘They look perfect together.’

Claria, smiling brightly as she conversed with the guests, and Loarston beside her wearing a faintly detached expression—they looked like a pair destined from birth.

Adelia’s gaze dropped to the dress she wore.

It was the dress Loarston himself had called beautiful, yet suddenly it seemed shabby and plain.

And at the same moment, another thought emerged.

‘What am I even doing here?’

It was true she had to play the role of Duchess until the contract ended, but was socializing in a place like this even part of their arrangement?

It wasn’t.

In truth, her role as Duchess was only necessary when Loarston was at her side.

Right now, standing alone without him, she was nothing.

They all called her Duchess, but what good did that do?

She wasn’t real.

‘I want to leave…….’

Retreating back into the crowd, Adelia felt all her strength evaporate.

She wanted to sit down anywhere. She wandered between the balconies until she found an empty spot and sat.

Being nearly in the middle, this couldn’t be the second balcony, but what did it matter?

“Sigh…….”

She exhaled, but it did nothing to ease the discomfort in her chest.

Should she just leave right now?

‘If he has to stay with the Princess all evening, then…… I could go home, couldn’t I?’

Glancing at the atmosphere, people still lined up to give gifts to the Princess with no end in sight.

The first dance hadn’t even begun yet, so the party had barely started. She didn’t have the courage to wait alone through those long hours.

She should leave. That’s what Adelia decided.

Loarston nagged at her mind a little. But she didn’t want to be among people while feeling like this.

Strangers approaching to chat made her uncomfortable.

‘He’s not an idiot—he’ll find his way back to the Mansion. He will.’

She was just pushing herself up from her seat to leave when—

A tall figure strode onto the balcony and abruptly sat beside her.

Startled, Adelia turned to look and her eyes widened in shock.

“Master?!”
“What are you doing here?”

Adelia, who’d been about to ask what he was doing, simply plopped back down into her seat.

The sight of a familiar face was such a relief.

“Just resting.”
“Seems you’ve had quite an ordeal.”

Adelia’s eyes widened as she looked at Sierne.

“How did you know?”
“Simple deduction. The veiled Duchess of Icel appears at a grand party where virtually every Capital noble gathers. Don’t you imagine they’re curious? They swarm like locusts asking nosy questions.”

……That mouth of his was absolutely incorrigible.

“They weren’t all that nosy. Well, some tried, but……. Anyway.”
“Your husband handled them well, then?”

When that Duchess or whoever had come at her with her daughter, he certainly had.

But after that—well, you know how it went.

At the thought, something sharp pricked inside her chest.

Adelia tapped her small foot—barely visible below the hem of her dress—against the floor as she spoke.

“He’s busy with other matters.”
“Indeed. He’s sitting next to Claria. Not that it’s my business, but what’s he thinking?”
“I don’t know either.”

Sierne looked skeptical, but what could she do about the truth?

Adelia let her shoulders droop and sighed once more.

“Princess Claria seems to like him very much—just as you mentioned before.”
“Like?”

At Sierne’s scoff, Adelia looked at him.

“It’s not like, it’s obsession. Since your husband—Loarston, was it?—won’t fall into her hands, she’s lost her mind over it.”
“Lost her mind—Master, if anyone heard you…….”
“What trouble would come of it? Everyone knows. The Princess doesn’t love your husband. Though I’m sure she mistakes it for love.”
“I don’t quite understand what you mean…….”

Sierne turned to look at Adelia.

Half of his expression was amused, the other half tinged with cool pity.

“Have you ever been obsessed with something, Adelia?”

Adelia was caught off guard by his sudden question.

The immediate answer that came to mind was no.

One might wonder if anyone lives their whole life without becoming obsessed with something, but for Adelia, such a thing was in another world entirely.

She was accustomed to giving up.

When her father, lost to drink and gambling, squandered the family fortune and their house collapsed, she’d accepted that she had to leave school without a word of protest.

If not for the Duke of Icel, she would have been cast into the streets, struggling to survive.

After graduation, she’d wanted to enter the research institute, but she’d accepted that too was impossible.

There was nothing she wouldn’t give up on—she’d understood long ago that clinging to such things only made her look pathetic.

“No.”
“I thought not.”

Sierne answered with surprising casualness, then turned to her with a somewhat mischievous expression.

“But not research, at least. Isn’t that right?”
“Well…….”

After pausing briefly, Adelia looked straight at Sierne and spoke.

“Are you saying that being obsessed with something simply requires the circumstances to allow it?”
“Quite perceptive. I’m gratified I took you as my student.”

Sierne adjusted his posture slightly as he continued.

“You’re right. Those without the means to cling to anything find it difficult to hold onto what they want, even if they desire it. There are exceptions, perhaps, but one in a hundred or one in a thousand—those odds hardly merit consideration, don’t you think?”
“I suppose…….”
“That headstrong Princess is no different. She does it because she can. People and animals alike instinctively find where they can stretch their legs. She has the status of a Princess, an environment where she can act as she pleases, and your husband’s certain…….”
“……?”
“Shall we say, naive side. With every condition in place, she presses on without restraint.”

His last words struck Adelia’s chest like a needle.

Naive? Him?

‘No, that’s not what he meant by naive.’

Adelia supposed Sierne meant Loarston’s kindness—something like his effort to treat even strangers with the same human consideration.

She appreciated that side of him, but she sensed that admitting as much to Sierne would only invite criticism.

……

“So what I’m saying is.”

At the sound of Sierne’s voice, Adelia snapped back to attention and looked at him.

“You need to keep your wits about you.”
“Keep my wits……?”
“Yes. You don’t want him stolen from you, do you?”

The word stolen made her eyes go wide. Sierne laughed softly at that.

“So you hadn’t even considered it. That expression says it all.”
“I hadn’t considered it because it didn’t occur to me.”
“Do you know what the odds are that Claria will become the next Queen?”

Adelia hesitated whether to nod or shake her head.

She’d heard rumors once—that the King favors Claria so much he might pass over the Prince, who’s abroad studying, and make her his Heir…….

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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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