#33. Irresponsible and Cruel

Seeing the Duke’s reaction, Chloe thought it might be better to cleanly leave the Duke’s mansion, since she had been trembling with fear and guilt every day watching him search for her. Once she changed her mindset, her heart gradually calmed down.

“I apologize. If you don’t want me to return, I’ll quit.”

Finally, she was able to speak about resigning first.

“What?”

The Duke jumped up from his seat. Chloe was rather startled by his reaction and stepped back.

“I mean, if I make you uncomfortable, or if you don’t like me, I should quit…”

Her words kept getting tangled, instantly becoming frightened again despite having been calm before.

“Clyne Liden! Do you not know even the basic human decency! How dare you talk about leaving your master on the day he barely recovered from a near-death state. Do you have even a speck of responsibility or professional consciousness about your position as an attending servant! Damn it!”

Damn it?

“You really, you really are… disrespectful, irresponsible, and cruel…”

“Your Grace…”

Chloe’s mind became hazy from the Duke’s angry words.

Disrespectful, irresponsible, cruel? Who…? No, what exactly?

She was dumbfounded by all these unfamiliar adjectives the Duke was attaching to her.

Since he seemed displeased about her returning, she was volunteering to leave first, so why was he so angry? Ah! Could it be…!

“You…! You to me!”

It seems it wasn’t just ‘could it be’…!

Finally, Chloe understood how the Duke’s mind was working. He must have completely forgotten about the kiss due to his high fever.

Now the Duke’s attitude made sense. After being so sick, if a servant who had received a large sum and been shown favor suddenly said they were quitting, of course he would be displeased.

“I absolutely cannot accept this. If! If you quit, you’ll have to pay back all the medical expenses I paid for your mother too. I did it as employee welfare, not for an irresponsible guy who would swallow up the medical expenses and run away after just a few days.”

“What? Run away?”

Chloe’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

Separate from the Duke not remembering last night’s incident as she had expected, his words were too shocking.

The threat to pay back even the medical expenses if she resigned was so absurd that she could hardly believe this petty man was the same Duke Hughgray Wulfaz she had known.

He was so sick yesterday that his personality must have changed.

Moreover, ‘damn it’? Using such vulgar expressions…

These were expressions far from the Duke she had known until now.

Anyway, one thing was certain.

This man doesn’t remember kissing me.

“Answer me!”

“Answer what?”

“That you will absolutely not leave my si… quit being my attending servant.”

“……”

“Clyne Liden! Answer.”

Well, that’s not so difficult.

“Yes. I will not quit.”

Chloe, intimidated by the Duke’s attitude, smoothly said what he wanted to hear. It wasn’t a bad thing for her either.

“You said you’re going to Bergen?”

The Duke immediately asked about her vacation to the dumbfounded Chloe.

“Yes.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“What? Where? To my hometown… you mean?”

“Yes.”

“…Why?”

While it was fortunate she wasn’t being fired, this was another bizarre order. She couldn’t understand at all why the Duke wanted to go to her hometown with her.

“It’s not far from here anyway. Get ready to leave knowing that.”

“But…”

“I told you to get ready.”

It was a firm tone that left no room for further argument.

“Yes, I understand, Your Grace.”

What a strange situation, having to take her master to her vacation destination. Chloe, dumbfounded by the Duke’s incomprehensible thinking, trudged back to her room and stopped dead while packing her things.

Come to think of it, her mother didn’t know she was working in male disguise.

When her mother was bedridden, she had always shown her original appearance. Just as she had been before her mother collapsed. Even enduring the time and effort needed to stuff all her hair under the wig, she had kept her long blonde hair uncut.

It was because she didn’t want her sick mother to worry if she found out about her working in male disguise. But now she had to go home with the Duke. What if he were to be capricious enough to say he wanted to visit her house?

While it wasn’t common sense for a master to visit their servant’s home, since the Duke’s trip to Bergen itself defied common sense, it wasn’t a completely groundless worry.

Ah, the Duke has really gone strange!

Though she had escaped the danger of being fired and disappearing from this world, Chloe fell into deep thought once again.

* * *

This is strange, really strange.

Sitting in the carriage heading to her hometown in Bergen, Chloe felt like she was sitting on pins and needles.

The reason she was having such an uncomfortable journey in such a spacious and comfortable carriage was because of what Sir Joyce had done while away from the inn. Of course, Sir Joyce must have done it on the Duke’s orders.

Sir Joyce, who had been absent, had bought horses from Solaine city. Since they hadn’t ridden horses from the Duke’s mansion, he said they needed horses to ride here.

Why insist on riding horses now when there was a perfectly good four-person carriage? They could just continue using the carriage they had come in, it was truly an incomprehensible order. When he said the carriage was stuffy, it wasn’t just idle talk apparently.

He buys horses because he’s rich and feels stuffy. While rich people can spend their money however they want…

Actually, since he had been so sick all night that he wasn’t in his right mind, it would have been best to take the carriage regardless of how wealthy he was or how rock-solid his muscles were.

Well, going to Bergen was irrational to begin with.

Moreover, since the Duke had ordered Sir Joyce to buy a horse too, Chloe was the only one riding in the carriage.

With the master and noble knight riding horses outside while the attending servant rode alone in a four-person carriage, looking at the scene alone, it was like a noble lady making a procession with knights as escorts.

Meanwhile, Chloe, who was actually alone in the carriage, sat stiffly like someone being punished.

Though she could lie down comfortably since she was riding alone, the reality was not like that at all. Because the Duke would occasionally peer inside through the transparent window. Whether he was monitoring to make sure the attending servant wouldn’t lie down, or what.

Though she was sleepy from fatigue, she couldn’t even lean back comfortably for fear the Duke or Sir Joyce might look in through the transparent window.

Well, I just have to endure it since it’s only 2 hours.

Chloe repeatedly forced her drooping eyelids open with effort. But her eyes, which hadn’t gotten any sleep all night, finally closed drowsily after more than half an hour had passed since departure.

* * *

The thought that Clyne might disappear after going home, the anxiety that he might not return to Roizen, the worry about what might happen when he met that guy Kalkus, and the desire to not be separated from him all blended into one overwhelming feeling. As a result, Hughgray was now on his way to Bergen.

A master following his attending servant on vacation.

Though there probably wouldn’t be such a ridiculous situation anywhere else on the continent, he was the one doing that foolish thing.

While he couldn’t trust himself to be in an enclosed carriage with that guy when he had barely managed with suppressants without resolving his heat, he also had no intention of leaving him alone with Joyce.

If Joyce knew his true feelings, he would probably fall off his horse in shock, but Hughgray didn’t care about such things.

“Your Grace, are you alright? How about riding in the carriage now? I’m worried since it’s not James but a new horse. You probably haven’t fully recovered yet.”

Meanwhile, that Joyce was making such carefree remarks without knowing others’ feelings.

Joyce was someone who knew that Hughgray was a wolf beast-person, and even that he was an Alpha.

Though the current Joyce family no longer had strong beast blood flowing through them and no beast-persons were born to them anymore, the family itself had started from beings with wolf blood mixed in. From those ancestors, following the wolf characteristic of submitting to alphas, the Joyce family had lived for generations as vassals of the Wulfaz family.

Joyce, who knew everything, was truly his closest confidant. However, there was now a secret that he couldn’t reveal even to Joyce.

The fact that he had gone into heat for his attending servant.

Rather, because he was an Alpha, he especially couldn’t reveal it to Joyce who had offered instinctive loyalty.

Homosexuality was absolutely forbidden for the leader of the wolf beast-persons who had to produce an Alpha as the leader of the species. In fact, even saying it was forbidden was nonsense. It was unprecedented, without example.

To avoid revealing such a state, he had to ignore Joyce’s reasonable advice about the unfamiliar horse he was riding being dangerous.

Horses instinctively reject Hughgray with his wolf blood. That’s why he only rode horses he had spent a long time taming. Only after putting in effort to remove their rejection and convincing them that he was a human wanting to ride, not a wolf wanting to harm them, would he make them his horse.

However, today, there wasn’t even time to become familiar with, let alone tame, the suddenly acquired horse.

If it were his normal self, even with a hastily acquired horse, he would have spent at least minimal time taming it, but today he forcibly subjugated it with the message that he would kill it if it didn’t submit.

Because Clyne was waiting anxiously.