Chapter: 157
I stared at the Lady with a helpless look in my eyes. I was angry and felt utterly wronged.
“But…!”
“That holy knight doesn’t seem to have any intention of backing down. If that’s the case, rather than continuing to make a commotion here, it would be better for me to quietly go with them.”
The Lady lowered her voice and whispered quickly.
“If I resist here, the Grand Temple will make it seem as though I insulted them.”
“But…”
“Rather than causing an unnecessary commotion here, it will be better for me to cooperate. It will also make things easier for my brother when he negotiates with them later.”
The Lady deliberately smiled even more confidently.
“Honestly, how could they possibly frame me?”
“Eva.”
“I’m the daughter of the Duke of Claudius. One of the most noble ladies in the Empire.”
The Lady spoke as though it were nothing important.
But I knew.
The Lady was acting like this right now… deliberately, just to ease my worries.
“Go back to the ducal residence and contact my brother. If you tell the butler, he’ll know how to get in touch with him.”
With those words,
the Lady stepped out of the carriage with an unwavering stride.
Her proud back looked exactly like that of the lofty Duchess’s daughter who held the entire social world in the palm of her hand.
“Let us go, Lady Claudius.”
“……”
The Lady obediently climbed into the Grand Temple’s carriage.
Just before the carriage departed,
the Lady turned toward the window.
When she spotted me, she gave me a slight nod and curved her eyes into a gentle smile.
‘Don’t worry.’
It was almost as if she were saying those words.
I stared blankly at the back of the carriage as it disappeared into the distance, then hurriedly urged the coachman on.
“Go to the Claudius ducal residence, right now!”
“Yes, understood!”
The coachman snapped the reins.
I desperately tried to organize the thoughts that were completely tangled in my head.
If it had really been so urgent to arrest the Lady, they would have come to the ducal townhouse from the very beginning.
And yet they had waited until we went out…
‘They deliberately waited until the Duke wasn’t there.’
So that the Duke wouldn’t be able to respond quickly.
‘…How cowardly.’
I bit my lip until it bled. There was no time to stand around in a daze.
A short while later,
the carriage stopped in front of the ducal townhouse.
“Butler! Butler, where are you?!”
I practically tumbled out of the carriage and immediately went looking for the butler.
The butler stared at me with his eyes wide open.
“Lady Ansi? What in the world is…?”
“Contact the Duke immediately.”
I shouted between ragged breaths.
“The Lady has been taken away by the holy knights!”
The butler’s face hardened instantly.
The logic presented by the Grand Temple was as follows.
There had been witnesses who claimed that the Empress’s health had begun deteriorating around the time the Lady gave her a rose sapling as a gift.
But the symptoms were exactly the same as those suffered by the former Duke and Duchess of Claudius before their deaths.
Unless the Lady was a witch, how could those strange symptoms, which had completely disappeared in the past, possibly reappear?
“Moreover… the former Duke and Duchess lost their lives almost immediately after the Lady was born, did they not?”
High Priest Evans fabricated a concerned expression as he spouted such nonsense.
I was simply dumbfounded.
‘Does he think he can say whatever he wants just because he has a mouth?’
If one wanted to be precise, the former Duke and Duchess died six years after the Lady was born!
‘What kind of curse takes six whole years to kill someone?!’
It was nothing but absurd speculation, yet the Grand Temple stubbornly repeated the same claims.
The Lady had never particularly enjoyed associating with other people.
So what could she possibly have been doing during all the time she spent alone?
Couldn’t she have been plotting against Her Majesty the Empress and thinking of ways to place a curse on her…?
That ridiculous argument nevertheless caused seeds of suspicion to quietly take root in people’s hearts.
“I heard the former Duke and Duchess of Claudius also suffered from high fevers and delirium, just like Her Majesty the Empress.”
“And apparently, the cause of their deaths has still never been discovered…”
An incident from more than fifteen years ago began circulating in specific detail, carried along by the rumors.
And at the center of it all was Marquis Evans.
“Her Majesty the Empress said that she saw demons and monsters, didn’t she? My elder brother was the same.”
Marquis Evans fanned the rumors while pretending to be heartbroken, his eyes glistening with tears.
“You have no idea how painful it was to watch my brother fail to recognize even me.”
“My goodness… So that happened…”
People could not hide their uneasy expressions.
“Eva being a witch? That’s absurd nonsense.”
The Duke desperately tried to calm the rumors.
But the conspiracy theory intertwining the illness of Her Majesty the Empress with the deaths of the former Duke and Duchess showed no sign of dying down.
Amid all those ominous rumors,
the Duke and I sat inside the bleak visiting room of Saint Alfred Monastery.
“The Lady is coming out.”
The Lady emerged wearing shabby clothes, her pale face breaking into a smile when she saw us.
“You all came?”
“……”
“……”
The Duke and I fell silent side by side.
The Lady who had once been like a magnificent rose.
The Lady who had always been bright and cheerful, without even the slightest crease marring her composure.
That Lady now looked like a withered rose, deprived of even a handful of sunlight and a sip of water.
“You must have had a hard time coming all the way here.”
The Lady chattered away, desperately pretending to be cheerful.
“I’m fine, really. It’s a little uncomfortable, but it’s bearable.”
“Yes, that’s a relief.”
The Duke forced a smile as well.
“But if there’s anything you need, or anything you want to eat, please tell me. We should at least send you some proper clothes.”
I also tried to reassure the Lady.
But she shook her head.
“No, don’t.”
“Pardon?”
I blinked in confusion.
The Lady hesitated before continuing.
“I’m suspected of being a witch right now, aren’t I?”
“Eva.”
“Even if I wear nice clothes and eat good food… it’ll only give people an excuse to gossip.”
“But…”
“This is a situation where we have to be mindful of the Grand Temple. I’m fine, really.”
Her voice scattered like a sigh.
“The more tired and miserable I look, the more pleased the Grand Temple will be…”
“……”
“……”
Neither the Duke nor I could hide our helpless expressions.
At the same time, the Lady furtively glanced between the Duke and me.
“More importantly, is it really okay for the two of you to keep staying with me?”
“What?”
“You know that too, brother.”
The Lady replied as though she were trying to pretend that nothing was wrong.
“Even if you stay with me while I’m suspected of being a witch, it’ll only damage the reputation of House Claudius.”
“……”
The Duke’s eyes trembled violently.
How should I describe that expression?
It was the expression of someone who knew that something precious was tumbling into the depths of a distant cliff, yet could not bring himself to reach out and catch it.
An expression of someone painfully realizing his own helplessness…
“……Eva.”
The Duke called the Lady’s name through clenched teeth.
“Don’t worry too much. I’ll find a way to resolve this somehow…”
“Brother.”
At that moment,
the forced smile disappeared completely from the Lady’s face.
Her complexion was deathly pale, not a trace of color remaining as she looked at us.
“……Could it be…”
Her voice trembled faintly.
A voice that could no longer even pretend to be composed.
“Could it be… because I’ve lived so arrogantly and selfishly?”
“What?”
“If I had behaved more kindly in the past. If I had listened to you better, brother. If I had treated other people more warmly.”
The Lady lowered her head deeply.
“Would I have been able to escape this completely absurd accusation of being a witch?”
