"If it was frustrating to stay only in the mansion, you should have told me at least. Didn't I promise that I will take care of you conveniently? I apologize if your life here has been boring. I'm ashamed to face you now."
Eun-woo smiled as if she didn't understand what he said.
No way.
Cold sweat ran through her back.
This person right now… he isn't upset, right?
As if fueling the fire, Ikshid tilted toward Eun-woo and whispered in a voice that everyone could hear.
"Elli, the Duke is upset. Please say something."
"Your Highness."
The Duke put his hand on his sword as if he would cut the prince this time around.
Eun-woo, who was on high alert, was relieved to see Tashian sighing with his forehead with one hand.
"…If you at least have conscience, it seems only yesterday when you petitioned about not calling for me in a while, but I didn't know that you would come this far in person."
Tashian glared at the prince, who chased him every day and dreamt of killing Ikshid inside his eyes. Ikshid was distracted and rambled.
"Ah, did I come here to make you work? I came here to see my sister's face, to give her a gift, and to relieve her boredom by teasing the Duke. Ahm. But still, you had endured for a month before going here. That is enough to be called as our Wise King."
In fact, Ikshid was quite conscious of the Duke now.
It was only three years ago that he was madly abused by the Great Genova War. No matter how much the relationship of the ruler and its vassal is, the Duke rolled around in a bloody battlefield during the three years for a change. He was a true Duke.
What Tashian needed now was a break. Even if he was called by the god of the underworld, and not the Crown Prince, he had the title to refuse.
'It's not enough to fight around in a foreign country for a few years, so I've left the mess for Diego… And I thought I would overturn the table at least once, even if I couldn't do it face-to-face.'
Ikshid had brought his knights twice as much just in case. However, it was a moment when his expectations were exactly wrong.
Ikshid's eyes turned to Miller's sister after a while.
'This was all because of this kid?'
The honey jar which the Duke tightly hid, was this woman who is in the right age to get married, and also the sister of Marquis Miller, who is well known for her flower-like appearance. Of course, it was the Marquis who had the most rumors here.
Ikshid clenched his fist for not being able to understand these people's work.
"So, Elli's escort at the banquet… Tashian, are you going to take over?"
Ikshid immediately regretted saying it. The two, Eun-woo and Tashian, were blinking as if they had never heard of it.
Could it be that this bastard, Tashian, who trembled in front of me and couldn't hide his heart, couldn't say a word now?
Ikshid almost grabbed the back of his neck.
Meanwhile, Eun-woo was puzzled as she was, and alternately looked at Ikshid and Tashian.
Banquet…?
"Victory Banquet… Are you talking about that?"
She asked with a nervous face. Ikshid answered in two tones, indicating why she was asking an obvious question.
"Then, in this garden, the people who won the battle against Great Genova, are there any other banquets to hold, besides the banquet to commemorate the victory?"
Come to think of it, Selena, the heroine, was remembered as a humiliation for attending the victory-ceremony banquet, without a partner to escort her.
Ikshid advised her with an ambiguous smile.
"If there is no one else, why don't you go with this duke here? He may seem very dubious, but even if he looks like this, he is the only duke in the empire, so if you go outside with him, something quite smooth will be useful."
It was a strange thing to say whether it was advice or a warning, but Eun-woo had no choice but to agree. The only men she knows in this world are the duke and prince in front of her, and she dared to be partnered with the next sun of the empire.
Isn't it impossible to step up?
If you appeared at the banquet without anyone escorting you, it would attract people's attention.
With Ikshid's performance, Eun-woo was suddenly escorted by Tashian. Ikshid, who completed the mission, shook off his palms and explained pleasantly.
"The escort in the first place is nothing more than or less than the opponent entering the ballroom together, so it doesn't matter much."
The crown prince's expression ahead of the banquet was confident without roughness. Eun-woo glanced at the Duke sitting next to her with an unknown expression.
Her mind has been disturbed by the indescribable anxiety. With the banquet, the beginning of the novel was approaching. She has to be more alert.
Eun-woo swallowed a sigh and looked simultaneously at the prince with a light face and the duke, with a calm face.
She racked her brain desperately. The male protagonist and his old enemy villain. How can these two be separated from the ending of catastrophe?
As expected, there was only one way. Soon after, Eun-woo, who made a decision in her heart, looked at Ikshid's golden eyes and apologized silently.
'I'm sorry, older brother Crown Prince, but as long as I'm there, I don't think the love between you and Selena will come true…!'
It was decided to create the love of Ikshid and Selena, whose for them, everything was like a gem, a fait accompli from the beginning. It was literally a sabotage.
On the other hand, Ikshid looked at her fierce fighting spirit, and wondered if a lie had been exposed when he said that the escort partner had no meaning.
•••
The Duke leaned obliquely against the railing of the stairs leading up to the second floor. The thick hair, which was always scattered over his forehead, had been neatly pushed back for today.
The glossy shoes, which could not find a single flaw, were tapping on the cold marble floor, revealing the owner's nervousness.
The collar of the tightly ironed white shirt was locked to the end of his neck. The suit was just black as if it had been boiled in rock.
He checked the time as he tucked the white gloves he had been holding in his back pocket into his jacket pocket. She was late.
Soon, however, Tashian found the contradiction of the words. For him, she had never been late. Rather, it was himself who was always late.
Of course, there was always only one person he was waiting for.
His heels again revealed anxiety without filtering and tapped the hard floor.
He was always anxious when he couldn't see her. It was like the heart of a child waiting endlessly in the field every night not to miss the sight of a meteor falling across the night sky once.
At that time, he heard the sound of the heavy door opening from the top, and heard the noise of stepping on the soft carpet with irregular beats.
Tashian quickly straightened his tilted body and looked up as if he was a regent, as if welcoming the royal princess.
It was always the same, but as he saw her slowly coming down the stairs, he felt like his heart was being trampled under her heels. If his chest was made of glass, the moment he looked at her, it was something that would split into thousands of debris and fly in all directions.
Until he stumbled down the last staircase, he forgot to show courtesy and had no choice but to stand in one place like a person who was slapped in the back of his head.
It was a thin voice from her neck that struck his spirit.
"I'm sorry… Tashian, am I too late?"
To the evidence that she was not a dream or fantasy created by his imagination, he opened his eyes like a burnt man and answered like a machine.
"No, not at all. You're not late."
His eyes narrowed as if not to lie, but he was only given a chance to see her rich eyelashes flapping over bright eyes in more detail.
Stuck in her eyes like such blue pieces of glass and distracted for a while, he could only turn to his clothes after he bowed his head with red cheeks.
She was dressed in a violet-colored evening dress presented by the crown prince. Two or three layers of loose veils were gently wrapped around her body. Gold hair rolled down and covered her straight collarbone.
Tashian blinked his eyes like a blind man who had just opened his eyes. She was as beautiful as the goddess of spring, protruding from a bunch of flowers at that moment.
The woman shyly raised her hand and touched her white neck. Only then did Tashian notice that her neck was empty. The skin of her neck without a single necklace was exposed.
He came to reason as if someone had poured cold water into him. After a little silence, he carefully opened his mouth.
"Didn't you like the accessories Johannes gave you?"
The whole story of the incident was like this.
Just now, someone knocked on the door while preparing a banquet in a simple changing room set up in the office he used as a bedroom. It was Johannes, the butler. It was news that there was an urgent message from the maid who served Marquis' sister. When Tashian said he needed her, she stopped buttoning his suit and asked what was going on.
〈 " It is said that the maid in charge of Lady Miller's accessories made a mistake of forgetting to bring back the necklaces and other valuables that she had left her work at the jewelry store. I asked everything to get other accessories in a hurry, but even simple shops on the streets were closed for the anniversary of the victory, and the restoration sent to the construction site seems to have not been heard so far. As the banquet time was getting closer, they asked duke if he could help." 〉
〈 "Isn't there a few jewelry boxes that have collected family gifts?" 〉
〈 "But they are valuables that belonged to the wife of the previous duchess. I don't know how many of them should I give to her…"〉
〈"Give it all to her." 〉
That's why Tashian wondered why her neck was still empty.
He couldn't hide his embarrassed look and asked her.
"They may be a little behind the times, but they are all rare treasures. Was there none of them that you really liked?"
At those words, Eun-woo dyed her cheeks red and waved her hands to the side.
"Never! All of them are picturesque. All of them are so beautiful, that is..."
"Then, what is it?"
Tashian hesitated and looked down at the woman who couldn't open her mouth easily, he couldn't stand it and urged her to answer.
Eventually, Eun-woo confessed with a grim face. It was a rat's-eye voice.
"That's… It's a precious object used by the previous duchess. The person who will be the wife of the Duke later will be offended. How dare I wear it… without permission from her…"
Her voice gradually crawled back in.
At first, when Johannes ordered his servants to hold three or four pieces each as big as a closet, Eun-woo and the maid breathed a sigh of relief. It was not only a banquet in time for the anniversary of the victory, but also a welcoming event for the Knights of the Imperial Kingdom, who returned after three years, so it was impossible to appear at the banquet hall bare-bodied and wearing only dresses.
However, Eun-woo, who was relieved, soon felt her sorrow cooled down in the patterns of the spruce tree clearly embedded in the jewelry. The same was true when Johannes carefully opened the jewelry with her hands wearing white gloves as if they were appraisal relics.
All of them were precious jewels that could not even be priced. However, while the maid was excitedly searching through the jewelry box, Eun-woo could not put a finger on the ark.
'Why is it that the Duke pattern was so clearly engraved on each and every ornament?'
No matter who she is, she could not dress up in public because the ownerless duke who has no wife brought it to her from the previous Duchesses.