RGBR 04

Chapter 4

[Oh, right! His Highness is waiting in the dining room, Miss!]

[It’s already so late. Has Mother still not eaten?]

[Yes. His Highness said he wanted to eat with you, Miss. Goodness, what was I thinking? I completely forgot!]

After hearing that, Elener hurriedly changed her clothes and came outside.

Although many years had passed, her room—which she had never once forgotten—was exactly as she remembered it from the distant past.

Elener was excited.

At the same time, she was so deeply moved that the tip of her nose stung.

After marrying Joshua, she had immediately moved into the Imperial Palace, and after that, it had been difficult for her to even briefly leave the palace.

Only after repeatedly begging Joshua had she been allowed to visit her family home once a year at most.

Joshua had disliked her maintaining contact with her family from the beginning.

Elener was overwhelmed with emotion.

She had thought she would never be able to return to her family home again.

And yet here she was!

Once again, tears began to well up in her eyes.

But Elener soon composed herself.

Now that she was certain this was not a dream, her rationality was gradually returning.

This really is a chance God has given me.

But there are still things I don’t understand.

“Miss, please raise your arms.”

Elener obediently raised her arms.

Standing in front of the mirror, she looked down at the dress Hin was helping her put on, her eyes shining sharply.

How did I return to the past?

She simply could not understand the reason.

Suddenly, the final scene she had witnessed in the mirror flashed through her mind.

The half-ruby necklace that had fallen from Charles’s arms.

There had definitely been a burst of light from that necklace…

“Miss?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Mother must be waiting. Let’s hurry.”

“Yes.”

Hin nodded and took the lead, pulling Elener out of her thoughts as she stood looking around the room.

When Elener descended the stairs and entered the dining room, she saw the Grand Duchess Frihosen already seated there.

She was wearing a blue A-line dress, with several strands of hair naturally falling beside her neatly pinned-up hairstyle.

Pearl earrings as pale as her face swayed lightly from both ears.

At a glance, she looked every bit the elegant and beautiful noblewoman she was.

The moment Elener saw her long-missed mother’s face, her eyes immediately reddened.

I always thought Mother didn’t consider me her true daughter because I wasn’t Father’s biological daughter…

But it was all a misunderstanding on my part.

In the past, Elener had distorted her mother’s true feelings and refused to believe them.

Yet even in the final moments when her own life was in danger, her mother had told her that she absolutely had to live.

The image of the Grand Duchess that Elener had seen at the very end of her life overlapped with the mother standing before her now.

I should never have believed those rumors circulating throughout the Grand Duke’s household in the first place.

The Grand Duchess had been watching the maids carry dishes with an expressionless face.

At the sound of someone approaching, she turned her head.

Her gaze fell upon Elener as she entered the dining room.

After looking Elener up and down, the Grand Duchess’s gaze eventually settled on her flushed face.

Her expression became slightly strange.

Not understanding why, Elener blinked and met her mother’s eyes.

Ah!

She had been so overwhelmed by the joy of returning to the past that she had cried her heart out only moments ago.

Her eyes must have been terribly swollen.

Elener hurriedly raised both hands and pressed the backs of them against her eyes.

The Grand Duchess’s eyes lingered briefly on Elener’s reddish eyes.

They narrowed for a moment before immediately relaxing again.

After looking at Elener for a while, the Grand Duchess spoke expressionlessly.

“You’re finally here?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I’m late, Mother.”

“You seem to know that you’re late.”

Even though she heard a small reprimand accompanied by a click of the tongue, Elener wasn’t offended.

Instead, regret surged through her.

Because she suddenly remembered the Grand Duchess as she had been in her final moments—wearing a tattered dress, kneeling at Joshua’s feet and desperately begging him to spare her daughter.

Elener’s face crumpled.

She struggled to hold back the tears that threatened to spill again.

I was powerless back then, but things are different now.

I can set everything right!

The Grand Duchess sensed that Elener was behaving strangely today, but she deliberately swallowed her curiosity.

She soon stopped observing Elener and pointed toward the seat across from her with her chin.

“How long are you going to stand there? Come sit down. I already had the food reheated once. We can’t keep reheating it again and again.”

As she spoke, the Grand Duchess bit her lip and cautiously watched Elener’s reaction.

But Elener obediently sat down as though it were nothing unusual.

“Yes, Mother.”

The Grand Duchess glanced at Elener sitting across from her.

For some reason, Elener seemed different today.

Normally, she barely answered her mother and would make excuses to avoid eating with her even when summoned.

But today, what had gotten into her that she was willingly sitting across from her and eating together?

How strange.

Not long after the Grand Duchess had married her husband, he had suddenly brought Elener home from outside one day.

He had merely said that Elener was his daughter.

He had never mentioned who Elener’s biological mother was or under what circumstances he had brought her home.

Because of that, the Grand Duchess had been forced to suppress her curiosity.

Elener had been exceptionally beautiful from the moment she first saw her.

No.

There wasn’t a single part of her that wasn’t beautiful.

When Elener was young, their relationship as mother and daughter had been fairly good.

But at some point, Elener’s attitude changed.

It happened after she learned that the Grand Duchess was not her biological mother.

Despite having strictly forbidden anyone from revealing the truth, it seemed that someone in the Grand Duke’s household had told Elener.

At first glance, Elener appeared gentle and obedient toward her.

But the Grand Duchess knew.

As time passed, an invisible wall had grown between herself and her daughter.

That wall had gradually become stronger and more solid until there wasn’t even the slightest gap left.

That was certainly how things had been until yesterday.

But today felt a little different.

The Grand Duchess, who had been cutting a tender piece of meat with her knife, suddenly stopped.

She subtly raised her eyes and looked at Elener’s swollen eyes.

After moving her lips for a long while, she finally spoke quietly.

“Staying up late isn’t good for you.”

Elener paused and raised her head.

Then she obediently nodded.

“Yes. I’ll go to bed early from now on. Don’t worry.”

“Who said I was worried about you? I was merely stating the obvious. Don’t misunderstand me.”

“Yes.”

“……”

Normally, Elener would have gotten up and left the moment she had finished eating.

But today, she simply continued eating without any change in expression.

The Grand Duchess couldn’t think of anything else to say, so she closed her mouth.

Only the sounds of cutlery echoed through the dining room.

Then, when Elener took a bite of steak, the Grand Duchess spoke again.

“I have something to tell you.”

It seemed her mother intended to get straight to the point before they finished their meal.

Elener chewed and swallowed the meat in her mouth before speaking.

“Why don’t we finish eating first and talk afterward? We could have some tea together.”

The Grand Duchess’s eyebrow twitched.

The girl who normally tried to leave as quickly as possible whenever she was dragged to a meal with her was suggesting that they sit together and drink tea?

What on earth has gotten into her all of a sudden?

“Aren’t you curious about what I want to talk about?”

“You wouldn’t say anything that would harm me, Mother, would you?”

“……”

“And I want to spend time with you, Mother.”

The Grand Duchess stopped cutting her meat again.

Elener felt as though sweat were trickling down her back under the Grand Duchess’s intense gaze, as though she were trying to see straight through her.

Even now, whenever her mother stared at her like this, Elener had no idea what to do.

There was something unmistakable in her mother’s gaze—a clear desire to open Elener’s mind and find out what she was thinking.

Her throat went dry.

The Grand Duchess calmly lowered her head and soon put a neatly cut piece of meat into her mouth as though nothing had happened.

“Do you have anything else to do today?”

Elener blinked in confusion.

How was she supposed to know what she had to do today when she had only just returned from the future?

But she obviously couldn’t answer:

I died and then came back, so I don’t really know.

Elener subtly turned her head and glanced at Hin standing behind her.

Feeling her gaze, Hin lightly shook her head.

Elener swallowed nervously and shook her head.

“No. I don’t have anything planned.”

“I see.”

“……”

“What are you doing? Eat.”

“…Yes.”

Whether the Grand Duchess had nothing more to say, or whether she truly intended to continue their conversation after the meal as Elener had suggested, she didn’t speak again.

Soon, they finished eating.

The Grand Duchess elegantly wiped around her mouth with a napkin before looking at Elener.

The two women, similar yet somehow different from each other, stared silently at one another.

The Grand Duchess was the first to avert her gaze.

Then, as though merely mentioning it in passing, she said,

“I have a social gathering today.”

“A social gathering?”

“Yes.”

When she was living in the Grand Duke’s castle in the south, the Grand Duchess rarely attended even simple tea parties, let alone banquets.

But after accompanying her husband, Grand Duke Frihosen, to the capital, she had begun regularly attending one particular social gathering.

The only social gathering she attended, Rirangttli, was famous among the capital’s nobility.

It was renowned as a traditional, exclusive gathering attended only by noblewomen of count rank or higher.