The Slave Is Too Handsome - Chapter 19

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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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The slave is far too handsome!
019.
While Eloise conferred with the Duke, Mary and Lucian waited quietly outside the door for their mistress.
Lucian leaned against the wall at an angle, turning over in his mind how he might rescue Brick.
That was when it happened.
“Well, well! I was just looking for Eloise, and here you all are.”
At the unpleasant voice, Mary turned her head. Lucian’s gaze naturally followed toward the sound.
George was climbing the Staircase with a lazy swagger. He recognized Mary at a glance—Eloise’s personal attendant.
“Hey, is Eloise in there?”
George asked after confirming that Mary stood before the Duke’s Study.
“I, I cannot tell you, sir.”
“What?”
“I said I cannot tell you, sir!”
When Mary answered sharply, George’s face darkened.
Lucian observed the two’s quarrel. Despite her biting tone, he caught the subtle trembling in Mary’s small shoulders.
“Has she picked up her master’s stubbornness and gone mad? How dare a servant be so insolent!”
“Eek!”
George could not contain his sudden surge of rage and raised his thick hand high. Startled, Mary froze in place and squeezed her eyes shut.
‘…Wait?’
By now her cheek or head should have been stinging. Had she perhaps lost consciousness?
Mary slowly opened her eyes, suppressing the tremors running through her body. A broad back appeared first. Her eyes widened in shock.
“That’s quite enough.”
Lucian, who had stepped in front of Mary, held George’s arm—the arm of someone shorter than himself.
***
“…What?”
The Duke, for all his shock, did not show his alarm openly.
Before the Duke could respond, Eloise pushed forward with her argument.
“Exactly. George is good at nothing. He only knows how to squander the family fortune, not how to grow it. He hasn’t the learning for it, nor the respect of subordinates to lead them properly.”
The Duke reached out with slightly trembling hands and picked up his teacup. Even after drinking several sips of the now-cold tea, his turbulent emotions would not settle.
“If you entrust the house to that boy, the La Croix Ducal House will vanish into history before long.”
“Which is precisely why I am educating him now. Given a little more time…”
“It has been over ten years! For all that time, he has not proven himself even once. That is entirely his failing!”
Speaking to the wall felt despairingly futile. The Duke was as stubborn as Eloise. He regarded her argument as the petulant grievance of a fool.
‘Do not waste more effort. This seat is mine regardless.’
Eloise gathered her distorted expression, rose slowly from her seat, and curtseyed. Then she turned toward the door.
“Eloise, do you think I favor George alone?”
At his measured tone, Eloise halted her steps.
“No. It is all for you. You cannot know how difficult it is to carry a title. Your father wishes for you to live in beauty, cherished and seeing only good things. For a noblewoman, that is the highest life a woman can have, Eloise.”
Eloise turned back, laughed hollowly, then added her final words in a flat voice.
“Forcing upon someone what they do not wish for is also a form of violence, Father.”
***
“Let go of me!”
George’s face flushed red and then blue as he stared at the arm pinned by Lucian. Easily subdued, his thick belly twisted in fury, and he roared.
“As you wish.”
Lucian released the arm he’d been holding with an impassive face.
“Wh—whoa!”
Unable to overcome the recoil, George’s body lurched backward. He flailed both arms wildly, trying to steady himself.
Wheeze-wheeze-wheeze.
Just as George managed to regain his balance, laughter echoed from a distance. It was the servants who had been watching the scene, snickering.
Those wretches—I’ll just—
George glared at them fiercely, and the servants quickly fled, pretending they’d seen nothing.
“Pfft—ah, I apologize.”
Even Lucian could not contain himself and burst out laughing, sending George’s fury shooting through the roof.
“You, you bastard!”
George hurled his fist at Lucian’s composed face.
Thud—a dull sound rang out.
The punch, missing Lucian’s face due to the height difference, struck his shoulder instead, and he tumbled down the Staircase.
“Lu, Lucian!”
Mary cried out in alarm and rushed toward him, but George was faster.
His heavy body landed on top of Lucian. Crushed beneath the weight, Lucian’s face contorted.
“How dare you mock me?”
George seized Lucian by the collar.
He surrendered the grip without resistance. There was a faint hope that Eloise might take pity on him for his suffering at George’s hands. He even allowed the punch he could have easily dodged to strike him for the same reason.
‘Maybe then Brick…’
While Lucian’s mind wandered, George paused, his fist clenched again.
“Wait… you…”
George, squinting for a moment, let out a bitter laugh.
The man before him was the one he’d been searching for all this time. The one who’d humiliated him that night!
“Found you at last.”
“…”
“You’re done for today!”
“Ugh!”
George drove his fist into Lucian’s solar plexus, and a reflexive groan escaped him.
Emboldened, George drew back his fist for the next blow. That was when—
“What on earth is happening here?”
A sharp voice cut through the air. Both George, poised to strike that handsome face, and Lucian, docile beneath him, looked up toward the Staircase.
“Y-Young Miss!”
Eloise stood at the top, her expression cold as she looked down upon the two.
‘Did she hear something unpleasant from the Duke?’
Lucian felt his skin prickle. A dark, heavy atmosphere seemed to cloud around her like a brooding storm.
Mary approached her mistress, her voice wavering.
“Young Miss, you see, George tried to hit me, and when Lucian stopped him, they… they ended up like this…”
As Eloise patted Mary’s shoulder and stepped toward the two men, George’s body instinctively trembled. But then he gathered himself and put on an air of false bravado.
“Eloise, how exactly are you managing your servants? Let me discipline them on your behalf—”
“Get lost.”
The crude words—so unlike Eloise—made both George and Lucian’s eyes go wide.
“Y-you, what did you just…”
“Get away from my Knight.”
George flinched under Eloise’s fierce glare, scrambled to his feet, and Lucian rose with him.
“Hand over my Knights.”
“Wh-what?”
Cowed by her intensity, George backed away until his lower back hit the railing. His face went pale.
“You took my Knights without permission!”
To recover Fin, Ned, and Gabe—those whom George had dragged away on a whim. Eloise recalled her true purpose.
“Y-yes, yes, yes! Come on, f-follow me!”
Face drained of color, George turned and hurried down the Staircase, nearly stumbling comically.
Heh. Lucian barely managed to cover his mouth to keep from laughing.
“Let’s go.”
Eloise led the way, with Mary and Lucian following behind.
***
“M-Mistress?”
“Mistress!!!”
Damn. When the four arrived at the corner of the Training Ground, Lucian’s handsome face screwed up.
Three men dressed like beggars waved frantically at Eloise from a distance.
“…”
Save for George, the three were left speechless.
For reasons unclear, the three sturdy men’s faces were grotesquely swollen. Their bodies, apparently engaged in labor until moments ago, were caked in dirt, sacks still in hand.
“Fin, Ned, Gabe. Come here.”
At Eloise’s command, the three men exchanged hesitant glances, set down their sacks, and shuffled toward her.
“Explain. Why did you drag my Knights away and torment them?”
George thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and began frantically searching for something. In the meantime, the three men hid their battered bodies behind Eloise.
“Remember? That night when I paid a visit to your room—my watch was shattered because of your Knight!”
Thinking he’d found a way to turn the tables, George triumphantly withdrew a Pocket Watch with its glass face broken.
“To damage the property of the young lord! I felt entitled to compensation, so I made those fellows work—why, yes!”
“Stop making excuses. You wouldn’t have broken in if you hadn’t entered my room in the first place.”
“But now that I think back clearly—the one I saw that night wasn’t one of those three…”
George smiled wickedly and turned his head slightly. His cunning eyes fixed precisely on Lucian’s face.
“It was this one.”
“…”
“Word is you arbitrarily brought in these fellows with no proper lineage?”
George pointed openly at Lucian while addressing Eloise.
‘At least they don’t know he’s of enslaved origin.’
As the argument wore on, Eloise grew not merely calm but utterly cold.
“So you beat and tormented people all over a watch?”
“What? Over a watch? You ungrateful wretch! If you’ve done wrong, shouldn’t you apologize first?”
George stamped his feet and raged on.
“You should apologize for failing to manage your servants! Before I inform Father of their very existence!”
The absurdity deepens, Lucian thought, watching the spectacle. Watching the two unable to stop trying to devour each other, he doubted they were truly brother and sister.
“Hurry!”
“Lucian.”
When Eloise called his name, Lucian gave a hollow laugh. It seemed she was demanding an apology from him, the source of all this trouble. He stepped forward to face George.
‘Should I just kneel outright?’
Nobles were always this way. They shed all their dignity in normal times, yet in critical moments they thrust their inferiors forward as sacrificial pawns.
‘Eloise, in the end you’re no different…’
But Lucian’s own ears doubted what came from Eloise’s next words.
“You should be the one apologizing properly to Lucian.”

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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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