The Military Doctor Excels at Being a Contracted Duchess - Chapter 70
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 70】
This is the story of a pathetic man.
Seeing the woman shining brilliantly in her rightful place made him suddenly afraid. Afraid she might disappear from his arms like sand.
Outwardly, he acted as if he would grant everything Ebel wanted, but that was only when she remained by his side under the name of Grand Duchess.
Though he had boasted that he could let her go if she wished to leave, Victor knew himself well.
If Ebel were to disappear somewhere, he would calculate her expected route and place eyes on every path she might take.
If she settled in some village, he would ‘create’ her closest neighbor.
The bakery owner she frequented, the child who delivered milk, even the woman her age she often encountered on walks she took for a change of mood.
So that everyone would be watching you.
So that there wouldn’t be even a single second when he wasn’t protecting her.
Though he would be despised if discovered, Victor von Bayern—that terrible man even by his own estimation—
was confident he wouldn’t be caught until the moment Ebel drew her last breath.
Ah, his love was so cunning and sinister.
Since even he hadn’t known he would become like this, an unfamiliar indigestion settled in his chest and wouldn’t go down.
What good was being obedient in front of her?
When his shadow was this dark.
‘I don’t even know if this kind of thing deserves to be called by the word love.’
A whisper came asking what wouldn’t be acceptable.
On the way back to the manor.
Victor gazed at Ebel lying with her head on his lap and recalled her in Tarifa.
How many times had he stolen glances at her profile as she closed her eyes, basking in the sunlight? When she felt his gaze, she would look straight at him and smile, and each time his heart rang strangely.
If Lucas, who had expertise in love, had heard this, he would have said, ‘You’ve caught a terrible fever!’ But his old friend was currently on a ship heading to a distant country.
To change fate.
‘That old woman said not to try to greatly change what was already decided.’
Even if war breaking out was destiny, did that mean the fate of each individual sacrificed to it was also confirmed?
But Victor had never learned to give up without even trying.
‘Persistently, with long patience.’
For that is what hunters do.
To mount the beast’s back when the opportunity comes, one must wait accordingly.
He gently stroked Ebel’s hair, which seemed to have grown comfortable with his touch.
The sight of her leading the doctors without showing any sign of fatigue suited her so well.
That’s why it was even more frightening.
What if the position of Grand Duchess made her lose her radiance? He had confidently spoken of bigger pictures, but was that truly for Ebel’s sake?
‘Still, even so, I have no intention of letting her go.’
So please, may Ebel be happy in Bayern.
He would grant her everything she wanted, so he hoped she wouldn’t go beyond his name.
How was this different from what the Queen used to do?
Wasn’t it just the difference between hiding it well and not being able to hide it?
“Since you said you would stay here of your own accord.”
If this petty and base thing was also love, then he was indeed experiencing love.
His obviously excessive first love was now blooming in full.
* * *
Meanwhile, in the capital Yolden, far from southern Tarifa.
As the heart of the powerful nation of Richter, the streets were clean and the people were lively.
However, today was a day when autumn rain drizzled down, so it wasn’t as bustling as usual.
Don’t people usually feel excited by spring rain but dejected by autumn rain?
This rule applied similarly to the royal palace, especially severely to the Queen’s Palace.
Crack, crack.
Seeing such bizarre sounds flowing from a palace where there shouldn’t be even the slightest unseemly noise, one might say it was bewitched by the rain.
“Her Majesty the Queen is having another fit.”
“This is driving me crazy, really. I’d like to work somewhere else.”
“I know His Grace the Grand Duke is extremely handsome, but… isn’t this too much?”
The servants’ tongues weren’t properly controlled either, as the maids whispered with disgruntled faces.
Their anxious gazes were fixed on the Queen’s bedroom.
No, more precisely, on a room that the Queen pretended to use as a bedroom while collecting all sorts of miscellaneous things.
“He should have been my man. He was definitely mine. We almost got engaged.”
Queen Minuette Friederike Roseveil Richter.
She who was called the noble rose by the world, and the mad puppet by those who knew the truth, possessed delicate silver hair and rose-like pink eyes.
“How could he take another woman as his wife, leaving me behind? How exactly?”
Queen Minuette, who had been muttering the same words repeatedly saying she couldn’t understand, grabbed her own hair.
“Is it because of the silver hair? Was blonde actually his preference? But he said silver hair was beautiful…”
In fact, what gentleman would make such comments about a lady’s hair color?
If he were a gentleman with proper common sense, only compliments should come from his mouth.
So Victor’s casual remark was merely courtesy, but Minuette had been attributing great meaning to it.
For fifteen years now.
‘I could have been Victor’s wife! Father’s greed ruined everything. Ahhh!’
Thud, thud!
The sound of her banging her head on the floor echoed through the walls, but no maid came in.
There had been an incident where a maid who tried to stop her was carried out with both legs completely broken.
The Queen wasn’t particularly sane normally, but when ‘Victor von Bayern’ was involved, she knew no limits.
“The hunting festival you attended was the only time I could breathe… but how could you get a wife… how.”
The sight of the Queen alone in her hatred, resentment, and loathing was quite a spectacle.
Even more so considering this room was entirely filled with portraits of Victor.
Minuette had met Victor when she was young.
“Looking at you reminds me of my sister. She’s delicate like you too.”
When Minuette sneezed, the young boy casually took off his coat and gave it to her.
The two children spent a season together in the Imperial Palace garden where chrysanthemums were in full bloom, and Minuette was overjoyed when she learned her father was considering an engagement with him.
Childhood friend was a nice title, but ‘fiancée’—how sweet that was.
But Minuette’s expectations were shattered around age fifteen.
The girl who had cultivated herself solely for Victor was beautiful enough for anyone to covet, and her modest character was already renowned in high society.
It was natural for insects to be drawn to roses, but she didn’t know that.
Her father weighed the royal family against House Bayern, then sold her off to the prince.
The position of Queen Mother!
Someone might go mad wanting that, but Minuette was not that someone at all.
The family that locked up their daughter who struggled and tried to escape for the first time managed to present Minuette as the finest product on the wedding day.
Spouting nonsense that there was no problem since only talks about engagement had occurred with House Bayern anyway, and nothing had actually proceeded.
On the day when everyone smiled plausibly.
She fell miserably to the bottom and shattered completely.
Later, when she learned that the prince kept several courtesans around, she was so dumbfounded she had nothing to say.
“Why must only I be so unhappy? Why only me… What’s so great about the woman beside you? Victor, ah. Victor…”
Tears spread like water spray across her still lovely face.
It was the maids who had been watching nervously that moved the Queen after she sobbed and fainted.
“Oh, the Queen finally fainted?”
“Yes.”
And not far from the Queen’s Palace, in the Main Palace Gardens.
The man sitting on the Garden Settee with his front garment carelessly undone had dark red hair.
With his bewitching face that made one feel sticky just from meeting his gaze, there was no one in this palace who wouldn’t know who he was.
The young King of Richter.
Nicholas Theodor Richter.
He was taking a brief rest while playing hide-and-seek with the maids while blindfolded.
“How unfortunate.”
When she said this with a completely unsympathetic expression, the maids seated around her giggled.
“Now then, shall we leave the Queen to figure out matters regarding Bayern’s mistress on her own?”
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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