The Villainess Duke Lady Hides Her Identity - Chapter 13

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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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Chapter 13

Pelrens arrived at the Duke’s Study with Reponya still dangling from his arms.
As they drew near, the sound of Craietan’s indignant roar reached them.
“I thought the old man had lost his mind, but he seems sharp enough still.”
Pelrens chuckled and set Reponya down on the floor. He’d been worried about carrying her like that in front of so many people, and he was glad he’d made it this far.
Reponya patted the wrinkles from her clothes and surveyed her surroundings.
The Duke had apparently forbidden anyone to enter the Study — the corridor was lined with people.
The steward, the head maid, and several knights.
Burdi and Beki, who had ventured out to assess the situation.
And behind them, a few retainers held by the knights.
‘They’re in the Study,’ she thought.
Lined up like that, they seemed to be waiting for their turn at something.
‘Wait.’
Reponya’s anxious gaze turned toward the Study, now seething with anger.
Then who was inside right now?

—I’m demanding to know who dared set fire to my home! Who threw that incense?!

From within came the sound of something shattering, punctuated by the Duke’s furious voice.
Close behind it, someone wailed in protest, begging for a proper investigation.
‘Oh no.’
One of the retainers must be inside. It looked like the Duke was pressing them relentlessly, trying to force out the perpetrator’s name.
This was the worst-case scenario.
‘I have to do something — settle this somehow.’
Reponya’s face went rigid as her mind raced.
“Move.”
Pelrens, who had been watching her back, stepped forward.
“Oh! Young Lord Pelrens?”
And he yanked open the Study door that no one else had dared to touch.
“Who is it?! No one enters without permission—!”
“Father.”
“Pelrens?”
This was her moment. Reponya scurried in after Pelrens.
The Study was a wreck. Several pieces of furniture lay broken, and there was even a sword on the desk.
“When did you— how did you—”
Pelrens glanced at the retainer cowering in the Study, then spoke with measured calm.
“I understand you’re angry, but this isn’t the place. The child’s frightened.”
Where on earth was this frightened child?
At Pelrens’s words, Reponya looked around for the frightened one. But no matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find anyone who fit that description.
She turned her head forward again, and her eyes met Pelrens’s. He was looking directly at her.
‘…Me?’
Reponya blinked. Craietan, following Pelrens’s gaze, spotted Reponya.
“Reponya!”
Like a wild beast, the Duke rushed forward and swept the startled Reponya into his arms.
“You’re awake. How do you feel? Any pain anywhere? The doctor said you inhaled too much smoke and your throat isn’t in good condition — how is it now? Let me hear you speak. No, wait, you should be resting in bed if you’ve come to. Why did you come here? I’m certain I ordered you to call for the doctor the moment you woke.”
Reponya swallowed dryly beneath the barrage of breathless questions.
Even when she’d suffered burns so severe that flesh had wept and blistered, no one had ever worried like this.
‘He was worried about me?’
Reponya studied the Duke’s face. It was the same expression she’d glimpsed before losing consciousness.
She’d thought then that she’d been mistaken in her delirium.
It looked like the face of a father worried for his daughter.
‘…No.’
Reponya forced herself to stop that line of thinking, lowering her gaze.
‘I’m not his daughter. I’m someone else. He couldn’t possibly worry about me.’
The Duke’s concern was not for Reponya. She mustn’t deceive herself. What he worried about was the “Noble Daughter of Craietan” whose place she occupied.
The replacement. A stand-in for the true daughter.
So when Reponya was hurt, his guilt spiked sharply.
Reponya gathered her emotions and answered.
“I’m fine. …Are you, Duke?”
“I’m fine too. A mere fire like that means nothing to me.”
“Mm.”
“Reponya. You needn’t worry. An assassination attempt in my own estate—it’s unthinkable. Whoever hurt you, I swear I will find them and-”
“About that.”
“What?”
“Can we forget this ever happened?”
The Duke’s face crumpled in bewilderment. He wasn’t alone. Of course, he wasn’t the perpetrator, but the retainers who’d devised the assassination plot, Pelrens who’d been listening, and the household staff all stared at Reponya in shock.
“Reponya. You want us to spare the ones who tried to kill you?”
The Duke didn’t even know if the culprit was one person or two, yet his use of the plural “ones” already revealed that he’d decided his retainers were guilty.
“Yes. Don’t look for whoever tried to kill me.”
Duke Craietan’s jaw went slack, as if his words had abandoned him.
“You’re… why are you so kind-”
“It’s not kindness.”
If it were kindness, she wouldn’t have thrown herself into harm’s way from the start to create a trap that would seem unjust.
“First… sit down, Reponya.”
……
“Your body needs rest.”
The Duke made a strangled sound in his throat as he dismissed his retainers and knights, then closed the Study door.
Only Pelrens, Reponya, and the Duke remained in the Study.
After sending everyone out, the Duke approached the sofa where Reponya sat and knelt on one knee to meet her at eye level.
“If they frightened you, don’t worry, Reponya. I’ll ensure they never threaten you again.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“It won’t help you if you become their enemy.”
Reponya spoke with eerie calm, as if discussing someone else’s affairs.
“I know those people follow you.”
It isn’t easy for a five-year-old to understand the bonds between lord and retainer. Even if she spoke intelligently, she’d invite suspicion. Reponya glossed over it tactfully.
“There’s no evidence, right?”
Of course not. Since Reponya had orchestrated it herself, there couldn’t possibly be any evidence incriminating the retainers.
“…Why do you think that?”
“If there was evidence, the Duke would have caught whoever did it instead of just shouting about who set fire to his estate.”
The Duke closed his mouth. Beside him, Pelrens sat with his arms crossed and legs folded, listening to their exchange.
“If you keep blaming those people, they’ll grow angry too, Duke.”
“That’s not for you and me to worry about, Reponya.”
“Think about where that anger will go, Duke.”
In truth, it wasn’t a problem that required much thought.
“Let’s end this here. You scolded them thoroughly, so they won’t do it again.”
Reponya spoke composedly, then smiled.
“Reponya. You almost died.”
“But I didn’t.”
“It was a close call.”
“Still, nothing happened.”
At Reponya’s words, the Duke’s face crumpled again. Pelrens beside him did the same.
“It ended well, so we’re fortunate. …Oh. If that Bedroom burned and caused financial loss, then I should request separate compensation-”
“Such things matter little to me, Reponya.”
Reponya let out a breath of relief. She’d worried that if financial damage occurred, it might become a serious problem, but true to his station as a great nobleman, the Duke seemed indifferent to it.
“Phew. That was nearly a disaster—I’m glad it wasn’t.”
“Now you’re relieved about that?!”
Duke Craietan fell silent and clenched his teeth. He managed to speak again with effort.
“Those things are hardly worth worrying over.”
Ignoring the Duke’s words, Reponya hopped down from the sofa on her short legs.
She’d said all she needed to say.
“I hurt. I want to go rest. Is that all right?”
Having made her point this clearly, surely he understood. Staying longer would only make things worse. She needed to leave at the right moment so that even Duke Craietan couldn’t insist she stay.
‘And I really am exhausted.’
Her young body had struggled more than expected to endure the fire. In truth, her throat burned now as if it might incinerate, and she felt as though she might die from the pain.
“…Very well. Call for the physician. We must check your condition again.”
The Duke could not hold back Reponya, who wished to rest because she was unwell, and so he nodded in acquiescence.
‘So be it.’
Reponya, supported by Burdi and Beki who had been waiting outside, returned to the Bedroom.

Click.
After Reponya left, the Study door closed.
“Hah.”
Pelrens, hearing the soft patter of footsteps fade into the distance, laughed as if in disbelief and swept his hair back.
“What an extraordinary con artist has taken root here.”
“Watch your tongue with your sister, Pelrens.”
“Sister? What sister do I have?”
Pelrens laughed carelessly, as if the notion were absurd.
“Does Father think that’s normal? Even to my eyes, who’ve never raised a child, it looked abnormal.”
Pelrens stretched his long legs across the sofa table and swung them idly.
“She didn’t cry when she woke up. Five years old, they say? Shouldn’t a child her age cry if she’s in pain or scared? Not a single tear streak on her face. But that’s not all—when I crossed paths with her and gave her a proper scare—”
“Pelrens.”
Duke Craietan called his name in a low, warning tone.
Pelrens merely laughed, as if accustomed to such reprimands.
“She wasn’t even frightened. People my own age, even professors, run away terrified when they see me, yet she met my eyes without a shred of fear?”
……
“You heard what she said earlier, didn’t you? She didn’t die, nothing happened. And then she says it’s fortunate that there was no financial loss. It gave me chills.”
“The physician mentioned she has a tendency to be indifferent to her own circumstances. He called it a Defense Mechanism of sorts.”
“If she shields herself twice more, she’ll collapse entirely.”
Pelrens stood and approached Craietan’s desk. On it sat a small Frame containing a family portrait painted long ago.
A time when the Duchess was still alive and his youngest sister had only just been born, mere months old.
“She’s been deliberately conditioned to become a Noble Daughter of this House. There’s no way a five-year-old could possess that mode of thinking without having undergone meticulous training from very early on.”
Pelrens looked at the portrait, then turned the small Frame face-down.
“Pelrens. I think there’s been a misunderstanding—I was the one who first proposed the adoption.”
“You orchestrated the circumstances to leave yourself no choice, Father. Did you see her face? I thought Mother had returned to us alive.”
……
“If I was shaken to this degree, you and the household staff must have been far more confused. You must have taken some measure.”
Pelrens turned and sat on the edge of the desk, fixing his gaze upon the Duke. His pale blue eyes held the coldness of one regarding a stranger, not a father.
The two resembled each other plainly enough, yet something about them was subtly, fundamentally misaligned.
“Did you wish to play house, Father? Or did you lose yourself to impulse and bring her here simply because she bore Mother’s likeness?”
“Pelrens. I will not tolerate insolence beyond this point.”
“No, that’s right. We were never a family, so this isn’t family play. I have no memory of you ever being a father to me.”
“Pelrens. Even now—”
“If you wish to play father and daughter with her, do so after you’ve passed the title of Head to me, Father. Don’t introduce this strange child to the House and provoke conflict between your sons as an afterthought. Be grateful it was I who came, not my brother. Had he come, she would have died on this spot.”
“Mind your words, Pelrens.”
Pelrens merely shrugged and crossed his arms.
Yet the thought of that reckless five-year-old with her mother’s face dying stirred something strange in his chest.
The moment he witnessed that face leaving the Bedroom, his heart had lurched and swelled in a way that felt almost foreign—as if his senses had opened wide, much as they had when he first awakened his Aura.
His gaze had lingered on the cottony silver hair that stood in adorable tufts in every direction, and on those round, luminous crimson eyes that gleamed like two perfectly ripe cherries.
As though he had at last encountered something he had long sought and wandered searching for.
But his lost younger sister could not have been five years old.
“Perhaps it’s because she resembles Mother so closely.”
Pelrens clicked his tongue and swept the thought away.
What was the point in dwelling on such things? The child would be sent away soon enough.
“I’ll talk her into leaving, so understand it that way.”
“Pelrens. If you lay a hand on that child, not even your status will spare you from consequences.”
Pelrens, unmoved by the Duke’s warning, strode roughly from the Study.

And the next day.
“Hey, runt. Eat up, would you.”
What’s wrong with her.
“I’m keeping watch right now, so don’t worry and just eat.”
Pelrens spoke while scanning the Garden from side to side, standing guard.
Reponya gazed down at the Chocolate and Candy heaped in her palm with an expression of bewilderment.
‘Is he trying to torment me, or is he trying to be kind?’

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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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