The Villainess Duke Lady Hides Her Identity - Chapter 23

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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 23

A voice of salvation drifted through the open bedroom door. Reponya turned her head.
“Senior.”
It was Pelens. He strode into the room and snatched Reponya from the duke’s arms, cradling her instead. His body was warm—wherever he’d been running, he’d just arrived.
“Little one. Are you all right? When did you wake?”
“Just a—”
“You really are something. Gods, do you have any idea how scared I was? Really, truly scared. I thought my heart would stop.”
“Thank you for—”
“Father told me the Wooden Horse is precious to you, and I should respect it, not speak about it like that. But I think differently, little one. Listen to me carefully.”
Let me say this.
Before she could finish her earlier reply, Reponya simply nodded instead.
“Remember what I’m about to tell you.”
Reponya nodded again.
“There is nothing more important than you.”
She started to nod once more, then hesitated.
“No matter what gift you received, no matter how much you cherished it—”
“…….”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be more precious than you.”
Reponya fell into thought. Then, slowly, she parted her lips.
“Even if it’s incredibly expensive?”
“Yes. Even if it’s incredibly expensive. Even if it costs enough to buy the entire Imperial Palace.”
Pelens brought his forehead down to meet Reponya’s.
“Don’t compare yourself to mere material things.”
Mere material things. Yet she had suffered for years without those material things, and wept.
After a moment of looking down, Reponya’s eyes lifted to meet Pelens’ directly.
“Were you trying to cast me out?”
“Yes. I was.”
“Then…….”
Reponya tilted her head in confusion.
“Shouldn’t you have just let me die?”
Both Pelens and the Duke of Kraitan drew in sharp breaths at her question.
But wasn’t that the logic of it? If he’d suspected her of being a fraud and wanted her cast out from the family, simply letting her die would have been one solution.
“I believe you.”
“What?”
“I believe what you said. That no one sent you, that Father saw you as you were and offered adoption first.”
“How… why all of a sudden?”
“I changed my mind.”
But what was the reason for that.
Reponya furrowed her brow, tilting her head in bewilderment. She couldn’t fathom why Pelens had suddenly changed his mind.
‘Had I done anything worthy of earning his trust?’
Recently, all she’d done was follow him around pestering him to escort her and then fell into the lake.
‘I didn’t save Pelens and fall in the water myself—I fell by accident, so that doesn’t count.’
She couldn’t figure it out.
‘Or is he letting me relax my guard to extract information about me?’
The duke and both his sons had said they were sick of all the frauds constantly approaching, so they wouldn’t change their minds this easily.
Trusting another person and changing one’s heart—that wasn’t a simple thing.
In fact, the Pope’s lessons had included a unit on acting as though you trust someone in order to gather information.
‘If only I could see who trusts whom with my own eyes.’
Seeing Reponya lost in thought, Pelens smiled and asked her.
“Any other pain? Really nothing else?”
“I’ve already checked everything.”
It wasn’t Reponya who answered Pelens’ question, but the duke. Having had Reponya taken from his arms, his expression was impassive.
The two men discussed seriously whether they’d consulted a physician, whether trusting just one doctor wasn’t enough, and other such concerns.
“But what did you mean just now? Weren’t you supposed to be at the Academy? Pelens, when you disappeared shortly after Ponya fell in the water, I thought you’d simply gone back without a word.”
“I did go and come back.”
So he had been to the Academy. Was that why his body was so warm, as if he’d just rushed back?
“Left… and came back?”
The duke’s eyes wavered with disbelief.
‘Pelens said he hated returning to the estate.’
Yet here he was?
“Not going back to the Academy. Staying here to babysit instead.”
“What?”
“Huh?”
The duke and Reponya spoke at once. Pelens brushed off the duke’s words and turned to Reponya with a question.
“Little one, why the look? You were pestering me relentlessly to guard you—now I’m offering and you don’t want it?”
“Oh, no. Um, well, that’s not… it’s not that.”
She’d thought she was hearing things, but it seemed she wasn’t.
“Didn’t you say you didn’t like it? That you had to go back to the Academy soon—”
“I submitted a Leave of Absence Permit until the day before the Graduation Exam. I’ve met all the attendance requirements and have extra leave days anyway.”
…….
“And when I said I’d take leave until the Graduation Exam, the academy director threw open both arms to welcome me.”
Who wouldn’t welcome a reckless fossil who never graduates returning from outside the Academy?
“But are you sure it’s all right?”
“What is?”
“The guarding… isn’t it…”
You said it was difficult.
Nestled in Pelens’s arms, Reponya glanced sideways at the duke, unsure whether she could speak of it in front of him. When her words trailed off, Pelens laughed wickedly.
“Little one. A five-year-old worrying about me? You said you needed me.”
His light tone and casual manner were exactly as before, yet somehow he seemed lighter.
So her gaze lingered longer than usual on his smile.
“You said it wasn’t scary and felt good when I guarded you rather than that man. Or do you prefer that one guarding you to me?”
Reponya shook her head frantically.
“No, no! I prefer you, sir!”
Wasn’t that obvious? Better to have Pelens, who didn’t think of the duke as family despite being Kraitan Family blood, than that man who seemed ready to hand over his heart to the Kraitan Family.
“That’s right.”
Pelens patted Reponya’s head as if she’d done well.
“And stop with ‘sir.’ A five-year-old calling me sir—what’s that about? You’re my junior.”
“When I go to the Academy later—”
“Then call me senior when that happens. You’re not there now.”
Reponya closed her mouth. What should she call him then? Calling him by his name felt too intimate, so should it be “Young Master”? Or “Second Young Duke”?
As Reponya furrowed her brow in thought, a soft voice she’d never heard from him before drifted down over her head.
“Brother.”
“…What?”
Reponya looked up.
“Why the hesitation? Of course you should call me brother.”
Brother? But wouldn’t that mean taking everything from the real lady? Everything she should have had?
The real lady’s bedroom—burned to ash, erased entirely, replaced by me. If I called the family by those names now…
“Ponya.”
Reponya flinched at hearing herself called that way.
“I’ll call you by your proper name now too. Ponya, not ‘little one.'”
Enchanted by his downy-soft voice and the warmth of his smile like a winter hearth melting the frost, Reponya found herself nodding without thinking.
“…Brother.”
The unfamiliar term caught awkwardly on her lips.
She’d never called anyone that before in her life.
If I’m already a sinner beyond forgiveness, does it matter if I take more?

* * *

I have a brother now.
“Ponya. I won’t move until you give me a proper answer. I’m serious right now.”
“Move, brother.”
“Answer me.”
“I said move while I’m still being nice. Brother.”
“Is a Wooden Horse more comfortable, or am I?”
I have a brother who seems slightly mad.
“Move before I tell the whole world what you’re really like.”
“It’s more convenient for me to carry you around, isn’t it? What? You’re telling me I lost to a wooden horse? That’s a lie.”
“Your brother competing with a wooden horse looks more like the lie.”
“I should have left that wooden horse at the bottom of the lake back then.”
“Stop fighting a piece of wood so seriously. Honestly, moments like this make me wonder if I should even call you brother.”
“Wow. Reponya. Where did a five-year-old learn the word ‘wonder’? Huh? How are you so smart?”
He was her first real brother.
When she was younger, she’d sometimes wished for an older brother to look after her—though she’d quickly given up on that dream, knowing Reponya had no parents to give her one.
But was this really what having an older brother meant?
“Reponya. Eat this. And this too. And this as well.”
“Pelens. Stop sneaking vegetables onto Reponya’s plate. Haven’t you gotten over that picky eating yet? …Reponya, you don’t have to eat all the vegetables Pelens gives you.”
“If Reponya eats more vegetables, she’ll stay healthy—that’s a good thing. Father, you’re being awfully fussy.”
Reponya looked down at her plate, heaped high with vegetables, her expression utterly flat.
To be precise, the vegetables Pelens had refused to eat and pushed onto her.
‘Isn’t an older brother supposed to be someone dependable? Someone who protects you?’
Perhaps it would have been better to keep the idea of an older brother locked away in her imagination.
Reponya chewed through the vegetables on her plate methodically, her face expressionless.
For someone who had gone hungry for days at a time, picky eating was itself a luxury.
Except when sleeping, Pelens was always at Reponya’s side. Even when she was reading.
She’d expected it to feel suffocating—having someone cling to her like that for the first time—but it turned out to be less bothersome than she’d thought.
With Pelens there, he could help with whatever she needed right away, which actually made things easier.
Reponya read diligently every day. Eventually, as she studied the family’s histories, she could naturally ask what lineage meant.
A perfect plan.
“Reponya. You read a whole book every day.”
“That way I’ll become smart.”
“Smart for what?”
Reponya, sitting in the library with an oversized, heavy book that looked out of place in her small hands, tilted her head at his question.
Her expression suggested she’d heard something absurd.
“What I’ll do with it doesn’t matter. What matters is that people like smart children. They prefer quiet, intelligent children who go about their business properly to loud, troublemaking ones.”
He didn’t even know that?
Pelens, sitting across from her with his chin propped on his hand, simply nodded vaguely.
“Enough with the books.”
Then he snatched the book she was reading and tossed it over his shoulder.
“A five-year-old should be playing. Let’s go. The weather’s nice today.”

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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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