IDSTD 04

Chapter : 04

‘What just happened?’

I stared blankly up at him.

I was so stunned that I could only blink, and in my dazed field of vision, I saw his clear eyes smiling brightly at me.

They looked almost excessively innocent, completely at odds with the way we’d been intimately tangled together just moments ago.

“W-Wait a moment, Your Grace.”

I finally came to my senses and held out a hand toward him.

The man’s brow furrowed slightly.

I wondered if he had taken it as though I were about to blame him for what he’d just done, but—

“Senior.”

“Yes?”

“I told you to call me ‘Senior,’ didn’t I?”

“Ah, yes. Senior.”

I immediately nodded and said it, and only then did his expression relax.

“I’m really sorry, but I’m just so flustered right now…”

“You said you needed time to think.”

“Yes, yes.”

“You’d better make your decision quickly. Unfortunately, I used to have quite a lot of patience, but I don’t intend to anymore.”

As he said this, the Grand Duke reached out and ran his thumb lightly across my lips—the very lips he’d been teasing just moments ago.

That simple gesture made me feel as though my lips were burning.

“Well, it’s not as if you can run away even if I don’t rush you.”

“……”

“Then, I’ll see you again soon.”

With an indescribably radiant smile, he brushed past me.

Even his retreating figure, leaving the drawing room with a graceful yet perfectly measured stride, was flawless enough to belong in a painting.

Normally, as the hostess of the house, it would have been proper etiquette to see a guest out—

But the strength drained from my legs, and I simply sank to the floor.

My body slumped onto the sofa like a thoroughly soaked piece of laundry, while my consciousness slowly began to drift away.

……What?

What on earth just happened?

‘Why does everything keep getting so hopelessly tangled up?!’

“My lady? What’s wrong? Why did His Grace come here? Huh?”

Laura came rushing over and asked, her face filled with concern.

Why was I sitting there like this? What had the Grand Duke said to me? She bombarded me with question after question.

Somehow managing to pull myself together amid the whirlwind, I grabbed her shoulders.

“Laura.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Something in my serious voice must have alerted her, because Laura’s eyes grew tense as well.

I stared at her silently for a moment before taking a deep breath.

“Pack your things immediately.”

“Pardon?”

“We’re going down to the estate. As quickly as possible. Hurry!”

“W-Wait a moment, my lady. Why are we suddenly going to the estate…?!”

Why?

Because it was dangerous to stay here, obviously!

‘This really won’t do.’

I thought I’d better hole up at the estate for a while.

***

The next morning.

After waking up, I stared blankly at the ceiling of my bedroom.

Blink, blink.

I thought perhaps something might change if I closed and opened my eyes, but everything remained exactly the same.

Damn it.

“It wasn’t a dream.”

Holding my throbbing forehead, I got out of bed.

Perhaps because I hadn’t managed to sleep properly the night before, a headache was already pounding away at me.

There was a very simple reason I hadn’t been able to sleep.

“How could that crazy woman possibly choose the Grand Duke of all people to mess with?! And not just the Grand Duke, but the Grand Duke’s chastity! Are you even in your right mind?!”

Gaaah!

Unable to actually scream, I buried my face in my pillow and kicked my feet furiously.

Of course, that wasn’t going to solve anything.

“The Grand Duke, too! He’s supposed to be a devout servant of God, right? A man who knows nothing but God!”

What a liar!

My anger quickly expanded until it reached the Grand Duke as well.

Sure, the person who did the seducing was at fault, but wasn’t the person who gave in to that temptation at fault too?

Especially a man who had already been tempted by countless women over the years.

He should have refused. He should have resisted.

He should have smacked me on the head and shouted, “Are you out of your mind? I don’t care if you get hurt!”

“And yet he skipped right past all those perfectly normal reactions and actually accepted it?! What happened to all that chastity?!”

At this point, I was beginning to wonder just how exactly our dear Miss Park Sumin had managed to seduce him.

How devastatingly seductive must she have been to make even an ascetic man completely give in?

And how had the Grand Duke reacted to it?

‘The only thing I know about is that one kiss…’

A thought suddenly struck me, jolting me fully awake.

Come to think of it, there was another reason I hadn’t slept well last night.

I habitually bit at my lips as I absentmindedly ran a hand over them.

My mouth was still tingling, as though the sensation remained.

Even the tremor I’d felt when I was held by him and kissed—

‘Wait, but… what kind of priest is that good at kissing?’

And not just good.

How could he be that wickedly good at it?

The moment our lips touched, my mind went blank and my heart began pounding like crazy.

The kiss had started gently before gradually deepening, sweet enough to leave me breathless and dizzy at the same time.

As if it were pushing its way inside without leaving even the slightest gap.

The fingertips gripping my shoulders had been hot against my skin, while his breath brushing past my ears had tickled my heart.

And then there had been those deep, intense eyes staring straight into mine.

For just a moment, I thought I could understand why people became so blindly obsessed with this man.

‘Wait. What am I thinking right now…?!’

“Aaaaaah!”

Flap, flap.

I threw myself back onto the bed and began kicking and flailing around all over again.

My face felt like it was on fire. If I stayed like this, something was seriously going to go wrong.

“Haaah. This is no time to be acting like this.”

After finally stopping my furious kicking of the blankets, I managed to get out of bed.

“Besides, I can’t actually take responsibility for this.”

Marriage to Leon Obsidian.

Even thinking about it for a brief moment made me instinctively shake my head.

Putting aside how awkward the picture would be, he was someone far beyond what I could possibly handle.

“Let’s just hold out for now. If I keep holding out, I’ll come up with some kind of solution eventually.”

At least there was one thing in my favor.

He was a priest.

If this became known to the outside world, it would be the same as publicly exposing the fact that he was unqualified to serve as a priest.

No matter who he was, there was no way he could go around spreading this information himself.

“Even if he is the Grand Duke of Bernstein, what can he really do? In the end, it would just be spitting in his own face.”

That had to be why he’d come to see me in secret.

The demand that I take responsibility.

And even the mention of marriage.

Perhaps he was simply laying the groundwork, suggesting that because this was such a serious matter, I would have to provide him with proper compensation.

Thinking about it that way made me feel much better.

Of course, the warning he’d left me with at the end—“It’s not as if you can run away”—did bother me a little.

And I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that he’d taken a kiss as his so-called advance payment.

But I was too panicked to think properly, so I decided to interpret everything in the most favorable way possible.

“Eventually, this will all just fizzle out. So I’ll stall for as long as I can, then later we can negotiate something that will satisfy both sides…”

That was when—

“My lady!!!”

Bang, bang, bang!

The door flew open along with a thunderous knock, and Laura rushed inside with a pale face.

“What is it this time? Why are you making such a commotion first thing in the morning?”

“B-Big news!”

“Big news?”

Laura came rushing over in a panic and thrust the newspaper in her hand toward me.

It was the most influential daily newspaper in the Empire.

“My lady!”

Just as I was trying to figure out what was going on, the butler of the marquis’s household, Valen, came running in as well, his mustache practically flying behind him.

“Y-You need to see this. The entire capital has been turned upside down, and there’s absolute chaos everywhere right now… Huh? Laura?”

“Gasp. Butler, you too?”

The two of them froze at the sudden encounter.

Then they noticed the newspapers in each other’s hands and exchanged a strange look.

As though their faces were saying,

‘You too?’

‘Yeah. You too?’

‘What on earth is going on?’

I quickly unfolded the daily newspaper.

The moment I saw the article splashed across the front page, I froze.

“W-What… What is this?!”

My hand trembled as I gripped the newspaper.