The Villainess Duke Lady Hides Her Identity - Chapter 42

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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 42

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Late at night, in the Billemen Duke’s Mansion.
Ludeum walked down the long corridor alone.
“I wonder when she’ll contact me.”
A week had passed since the Succession Celebration Party ended.
Still no word from Leponya.
Each day waiting for that contact stretched so long it had become tedious.
“…Hm.”
Ludeum cleared his throat and abruptly changed direction from the path toward his bedchamber. Walking alone, without attendants or knights trailing behind, he entered the waiting room where he had spent so long with Leponya that day instead.
A faint smile crossed Ludeum’s face as he sat on the same sofa where Leponya had sat.
Tilting his head back to gaze at the empty air, the memory of that day surfaced.
“She seemed to pity me, oddly enough.”
Ludeum raised his arm and rolled back his sleeve. The wound from his injury had already healed completely.
“She was even more shocked when she saw the wound.”
She seemed tenderhearted, and contrary to appearances, the type who couldn’t easily dismiss those in plight.
He recalled Leponya’s endearing expression that day, and how her clipped pronunciation would subtly soften whenever she spoke at length.
Ludeum pressed his left palm firmly against his face.
“…Heh.”
Laughter leaked through the cracks between his pressed fingers, struggling to escape.
Not knowing which of them was pitying whom.
“Not even knowing she’d nearly died.”
Ludeum muttered softly and dropped his clasped hands to his thigh.
“Since I told her I need her because she’s the Kraitan family’s daughter, she won’t suspect anything.”
In truth, what Ludeum needed was not the Kraitan family’s daughter, but Leponya herself.
But if he told Leponya that he needed her in earnest, doubt would surely flicker through those eyes, sweet as ripe cherries, so he had mixed in a measure of lies.
“Perhaps because she’s someone I saved.”
He couldn’t understand why it felt so unpleasant when suspicion crossed those eyes.
He’d worked so hard to save her, yet she doubted him.
The person I saved. And the person I must keep alive.
Ludeum furrowed his brow.
“After all, all that matters is that she survives.”
The memory returned to him—her voice declaring boldly that she had no expectations of him, and her worried question asking if there was anyone nearby to help her.
“…Peculiar.”
Most of the people Ludeum had encountered fell into two categories.
Those who sought to exploit him for their own gain.
Those who dismissed the prospect of his injury without concern and pushed only their own opinions.
But Leponya was different.
Even knowing who Ludeum was, she remained impassive, as though it had nothing to do with her.
“Perhaps because she’s the Kraitan family’s daughter.”
Rather than maintain the connection, Leponya had instead pushed him away and kept her guard up.
He’d mentioned needing her as the Kraitan daughter, yet there was no negotiation at all.
“Acting as though I don’t matter to her at all makes me want to get tangled up with her all the more.”
That was also why the foolishness of asking her to keep him by her side like a houseplant had escaped his lips.
His original plan had been to grow comfortably close to Leponya and watch over her so she wouldn’t die.
Not to ask to be kept like a flower.
“Asking to be kept like a houseplant—that was me throwing away even my pride and prostrating myself flat.”
It was his first time.
A person who needed nothing that Ludeum Billemen could offer. And yet someone who worried over his injury.
An inexplicable contentment rose quietly within him.
“But what’s so difficult about keeping a houseplant that she’d worry over something so trivial?”
Ludeum furrowed his face seriously, arms crossed.
“She’d find me plenty useful if she kept me close.”
He thought that next time they met, he’d have to ask her why she was fretting over it.
Ludeum, who had been lost in thoughts of Leponya all day, suddenly stopped smiling. The face that had gone cold and rigid was far too unsettling for the expression of a child.
It was an expression she had never shown before Leponya.
“Sigh.”
Ludeum exhaled slowly. At the same moment, the High-Grade Spirit he always carried with him—the Silver Wolf—materialized before them.
Not a phantom, but a true embodiment.
“Kill.”
Ludeum gave the command in a low voice without moving a single finger.
The Silver Wolf then moved stealthily from the window, lunging with sharp intent toward the shadow that had begun to slip into the waiting room.
Red streaks began to scatter across the previously pristine windowpane.
It was nothing like the moment before Leponya, when he had merely subdued the assassin into unconsciousness.
Ludeum drew his sword from his waist with perfect composure. The motion was deeply familiar to him.
Ordinarily, weapons could not be carried within a mansion, yet Ludeum had never once set his blade aside.
“What difference does it make from wartime, then.”
Ludeum murmured to himself, swinging his sword at the assassin lurking in the darkness. He parried the assassin’s blade with ease and dispatched him in a single, fluid motion.
The swordwork was brutal and absolutely flawless. A blade without mercy cut down those who came to kill, as if to prove something.
His technique was so refined it seemed impossible that a High-Grade Spirit had been summoned at all.
Ordinarily, a Spirit Master cannot wield a blade.
Summoning a spirit alone demands tremendous effort, but there was another reason—spirits were notoriously volatile.
They were creatures prone to jealousy, taking pleasure only when humans borrowed their power to resolve matters. They were bound by dependence.
So if a contractor drew a sword while summoning a spirit, that temperamental creature might well retaliate in fury, shattering the contractor’s heart in vengeance.
Spirit Summoning, after all, was a power that required the spirit’s cooperation.
Yet Ludeum, having summoned a High-Grade Spirit, wielded his sword with effortless perfection.
Slash!
Without burden or hesitation, even at his young age.
His form was far too perfect to claim he had never trained in Swordsmanship.
“Mm.”
Once he had sensed out every living presence, Ludeum flicked the blood from his blade.
“If I were wounded, would she worry for me again like that.”
Ludeum murmured, looking down at his own unscathed arm.
He had postponed killing the Grand Lady because the cleanup was tedious, but that delay had worked in his favor.
If Leponya pitied him, he could use his wounds as an excuse to receive her sympathy.
Ludeum glanced around methodically, sheathed his sword, and dispelled the spirit.
He pulled the bell cord, and moments later, the butler arrived at the waiting room.
Ludeum, who had been waiting with his back against the wall outside the waiting room, pushed himself upright as the butler approached.
“Clean it up thoroughly.”
The waiting room was covered in vivid red stains. But the butler was unsurprised—he had grown accustomed to such scenes.
Ludeum Billemen, the head of the Billemen Duke’s Mansion, faced assassination attempts from his grandmother, the Grand Lady Billemen, every single day.
No one in this household was unaware of it.
“Yes, sir.”
And just as certainly, no one was ignorant of who the true master of this mansion really was.

About a hundred days prior.
Since that one morning when the young duke’s personality had reversed completely.
The true master of the household had changed entirely as well.
The Grand Lady Billemen, frightened by her grandson who swiftly resolved everything and quietly cultivated his power behind the scenes, had barricaded herself away, holding her breath and sending only assassins.
Of course, those ignorant outsiders pitied the young Ludeum, tormented by the assassins his grandmother dispatched.
The butler bowed deeply to Ludeum, who had survived another day.

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The Succession Celebration Party for the Billemen Family had concluded without incident.
Pellence, frustrated at having failed to capture the Silver Wolf’s form, devoted himself to training in Aura and Swordsmanship the moment the party ended.
It seemed he trained mainly during the deep hours of dawn when Leponya slept, and in the late nights.
Once the party was over, various rumors circulated through society.
Most of them concerned how Ludeum Billemen, the youngest duke, was far less of a pushover than expected, and how Leponya of the Kraitan Family was even more adorable than anticipated.
Moreover, there was talk that Duke Kraitan and Pellence, the second son of the Kraitan Family, doted on the princess with exceptional devotion.
Society found itself swept up in a new current—the tale of Ludeum and Leponya.
And as this rumor circulated and circled back,
“Sigh.”
The eldest son of the Kraitan Family and its official heir.
It reached the ears of Havelian Kraitan.
“You should know when to stop playing around. Father’s getting on in years—no need to make a fool of himself.”
Havelian stepped down from the carriage and brushed the creases from his crumpled uniform with sharp, precise taps. Once every button was fastened neatly up to his collar, he turned to regard the Kraitan Estate.
His platinum hair was swept back with pomade so flawlessly that it seemed to forbid the slightest disorder.
His sharp crimson eyes, inherited unmistakably from the Duke of Kraitan, held a blood-red sharpness, and the high, severe angle of his nose made his expression all the colder.
His lips pressed into a thin, unyielding line—as if he had never smiled once in his entire life.
“Nothing’s changed here.”
The mansion stood exactly as it had on the day he’d left it last. Havelian felt his stomach churn, and he pressed his lips shut harder.
When the butler’s letter first arrived announcing that Father had adopted a child, Havelian had dismissed it as merely another passing fancy among the nobility—a game they’d soon tire of.
It had become something of a trend among the aristocracy recently, so there seemed no reason to react.
“But if it’s reached the point where the child shows his face at official gatherings and rumors are spreading, that’s a problem.”
Pellence, impulsive and willful as ever, would have rushed back to the mansion and caused a scene upon hearing of the adoption—so Havelian had chosen not to intervene directly.
But when he heard that not only was Pellence indulging the child, but he’d even bought gifts at a general store, Havelian realized something was genuinely wrong.
So, as soon as word reached him, Havelian submitted his resignation from the Military Academy where he’d been serving.
Unwilling to return, he’d enlisted with the Knight Order the moment the Academy term ended and patrolled the borders; then, claiming he couldn’t bear facing death and needed rest, he’d thrown himself entirely into the Military Academy.
Yet here he was, forced back in such a manner.
“I never thought Pellence would be taken in too, whatever Father’s excuse might be.”
This was clearly a proper con artist at work. Havelian’s brows drew together.
“I won’t allow such a filthy stain to be left upon the family that will soon be mine.”
Havelian gazed at the mansion in silence.
The eldest son, Havelian, had returned at last—following his younger brother Pellence.

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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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