21. He Left

Despite the late hour when she would normally be asleep, Adeline could not easily fall asleep.

The anxiety she had been trying to suppress in a corner of her heart gradually raised its head as time passed.

Throughout the night, the duke did not return to Adeline’s side. Adeline curled up in a corner of the bed and endlessly waited for him.

She could only wrap her arms around her trembling body filled with anxiety. There was nothing she could do now except wait.

After the long dawn passed, the morning sun finally rose.

Sunlight filtering through the window touched Adeline’s eyes. Adeline, who had briefly dozed off, woke up with a start.

‘Mel?’

The empty bedroom. She was still alone in this villa.

She couldn’t just wait indefinitely for the duke to return.

The anxiety creeping up was impossible to control. She needed to know what had happened.

‘Could his memories have returned?’

Adeline quickly headed toward town.

If the duke had recovered his memories and returned, wouldn’t it be prominently featured in the newspapers?

Heading to the center of town, Adeline approached a boy selling newspapers.

“Do you have today’s newspaper?”

“Of course! Which newspaper would you like?”

“Give me all of them.”

Adeline handed over a silver coin as soon as the boy gave her the newspapers.

She began frantically reading through the articles from all the newspaper companies. Contrary to Adeline’s expectations, there was no mention of the duke anywhere.

Unable to understand the situation, Adeline collapsed by the fountain, her mind in disarray.

‘What on earth is happening?’

Adeline began wandering around town.

She had no expectation of finding the duke who had suddenly disappeared, but she was grasping at straws.

Perhaps because she had poured all her energy into it, Adeline’s strength rapidly declined.

The quiet world felt exactly like the calm before a storm.

‘Right. Even if the duke returned, news wouldn’t travel quickly to this remote village.’

The duke might have concealed himself intentionally, but she hoped that wasn’t the case.

Adeline hurriedly returned to the villa.

She had a small hope that the duke might have returned in the meantime.

But the moment she entered the villa, Adeline’s face darkened at the cold air that hit her.

‘Did you really…… leave, you?’

If the duke were Mel, he wouldn’t make Adeline wait without saying anything.

The man she had been living with, who wasn’t Duke Torpeo, was kinder than anyone else.

A man who worried about Adeline’s well-being more than anyone wouldn’t leave her alone in this villa.

Adeline clenched her fist.

If nothing had happened to him, she had to assume the duke had returned of his own accord.

Adeline walked into the villa with hurried steps.

‘Please let it still be there……’

With an anxious heart, she headed to the bedroom and rushed to the bed.

When she reached deep under the bed, her expression relaxed as her fingertips touched something.

‘It’s still here!’

What she pulled out from the box was a seal. The seal of the Torpeo duchy.

Adeline preciously held the box containing the seal to her chest.

Since the seal represented the head of the family, it couldn’t be easily reproduced.

If the duke had recovered his memories and gone to the duchy, he would have immediately noticed this seal was missing.

Since it couldn’t be easily made, he would certainly try to retrieve it.

‘Thank goodness. Yes, if I have at least this……’

Perhaps she could demand something in exchange for saving the duke’s life. At worst, she could use it for negotiation.

Adeline planned to take the seal hidden in the bedroom and flee to Hailo.

If she hid in Count Lebrance’s territory, wouldn’t she be safe for now?

From the crown prince who was looking for her, and from the duke who had been completely deceived by Adeline.

Just as she rose to her feet.

— Clunk, clunk!

The sound of old door hinges rattling came from somewhere.

‘Mel?’

Could he have returned? Yes, something might have happened that prevented him from contacting her.

Only then did a faint color return to Adeline’s face.

She would give him a piece of her mind. To never leave without saying anything again.

Just as she rushed to the bedroom and placed her hand on the doorknob.

Heavy, unfamiliar footsteps echoed on the wooden stairs, growing closer.

It was a chilling sound of the wooden stairs sinking under the weight of whoever was coming up.

Adeline couldn’t move. Her two feet felt as heavy as if they had dozens of lead weights attached.

Because the approaching person wasn’t the duke.

In the suffocating tension, Adeline’s face turned deathly pale.

⁕⁕⁕

The duke arrived at the Torpeo duchy after riding his horse for three days and nights without rest.

In his urgency, Casis had forgone a carriage and ridden the horse himself.

He surveyed his surroundings as he walked through the castle.

Though he was returning to the castle after a couple of months, it was frighteningly unchanged from before he left.

He walked down the long corridor and went straight to his bedroom.

He opened the wardrobe and changed into a dress shirt that came to hand.

His glance fell on old clothes thrown over a chair.

It was one of the outfits Adeline had chosen for him when she had led him into town.

‘……How absurd. To think I wore something like that.’

It was clothing of such poor quality that even nobles from nominal frontier families wouldn’t wear it.

He fastened all the cuff buttons on his sleeves. Then, with elegant movements, he wrapped a black cravat around his neck and tied it.

After buttoning his jacket, the duke stared at his reflection in the mirror.

The clothes fit his physique perfectly, as if they had found their rightful owner.

Unlike the ready-made clothes that woman had bought him, no part was too small or too short.

The suit that fell perfectly from his broad shoulders, the soft silk fabric that wrapped around his body. Everything came together to enhance Casis’s appearance, but.

‘……Strange.’

Somehow it felt awkward. His reflection in the mirror.

Even though he had lived as ‘Mel’ for just one season, had he already become accustomed to that appearance?

When he swept his hair back, the strands briefly passed through his fingers.

His once long hair would have taken a long time to sweep back. But the hair that caught his fingertips was unfamiliarly short.

“Ha.”

That wretched woman. The thought of Adeline, who had changed everything about him, made him sigh involuntarily.

Just as he was touching his forehead.

— Knock, knock.

A short knocking sound echoed in the bedroom.

Where the duke turned, there was a middle-aged man bowing his head toward him. It was the butler who had served Casis his entire life.

“It’s been a while, butler. You seem to have more wrinkles than before?”

“Your Grace! How can you joke like that! Where have you been all this time?”

The butler approached with uncharacteristically hurried steps in response to the duke’s casual greeting.

Perhaps because the duke was greeting him as if they had seen each other just yesterday. The butler’s face, which would normally be expressionless, showed unusual emotion.

“Do you know how worried I’ve been? Your Grace went to the hunting competition and didn’t return, and there was no answer from the imperial palace when we inquired……”

The butler’s face visibly changed colors from red to blue.

The duke looked at him and smiled slightly. Then he approached and patted the butler’s shoulders, which seemed narrower than usual today.

It was clear how much the butler and the household staff had worried.

Perhaps because that feeling was conveyed, the duke’s sharp gaze softened slightly.

“I had my reasons. Was there anything unusual at the castle?”

“No. I said Your Grace was staying at the townhouse for a while. Occasionally, local nobles came asking about you, but other than that, nothing unusual.”

That makes sense.

Even the crown prince wouldn’t admit that the duke had gone missing during the imperial hunting festival.

Perhaps thinking of the crown prince, a shadow fell across Casis’s face.

He sat at the table in the center of the bedroom.

He tapped the table, flicking his fingers as if lost in thought, then.

“Is Eric outside?”

He called for Eric, the castle’s secretary and Casis’s trusted confidant.

“Yes. I’m here.”

Eric closed the half-open bedroom door as he entered.

He walked in with efficient steps, knelt on one knee before the duke, and saluted.

“I await your orders.”

“Sharp as ever.”

It was a natural action, as if he had known the duke would call for him.

The duke’s fingers stopped tapping on the table.

“I need you to gather men and go to the villa in Horn immediately.”

“The villa in Horn……”

The butler’s eyes widened.

This was understandable since Horn was not on the list of Torpeo family villas.

“Yes. My mother’s villa.”

A secret place deep in the forest, whose location no one knew.

Casis’s lips curved upward in a diagonal line.

“Eric, go and capture the woman there. A woman called Del.”