Chapter 5. Alone Together in a Cramped Secret Room

“My goodness……. Was she really the one who did that shameless act in the outdoor garden?”

As she stumbled out of the narrow secret room, the surrounding whispers receded like an ebbing tide.

In their place, words buried for ten years rushed in helplessly. Like sand slipping through fingers, they couldn’t be stopped.

— It was you. The only woman in the world who could turn the crown prince of Matila into a man blinded by fever.

— Marry me, my lady.

Lies.

— Lottie. People like you are called thieves. A petty thief who betrayed love with treachery, blinded by money.

How could I be a thief when all I remember is giving myself to you without reservation? How, why should I be called that when I’ve become a pauper without receiving anything in return?

Trapped in these sordid emotions, Lottie stood face to face with Patrick.

He was a prince who had consumed ten years’ worth of her soul without paying a price and didn’t even remember it. Yet his appearance before her was exactly as in her vivid memories.

That fact was infuriating. It was so absurd, so enraging that it brought tears to her eyes.

‘Why am I the only one who remembers? He’s the one who hurt me and dropped me into hell, so why only me……!’

Her tears were as good as a confession to the audience who knew nothing of the truth.

“Lo…… Lottie. You couldn’t have. How could you. How did Robert raise you? Knowing that, how could you smear your father’s face with such……”

Isabelle, who had been holding her grandniece like someone clinging to a cliff, belatedly noticed Lottie’s bare hand trembling weakly.

When she confirmed that Calyx had followed out of the secret room, the old woman’s wrinkled face turned so white that anyone watching would have felt sorry for her.

“You…… have finally…… done such a thing……!”

With a cry mixed with tears, Isabelle’s clenched fist struck Lottie’s shoulder. Though the old woman’s blow couldn’t possibly hurt, Lottie was pushed back with each shove from her grand-aunt.

“To be led astray by every man who seduces you. Oh, how disgraceful……”

“I told you. Country girls may look innocent, but they’re incredibly stupid. Just look at that rustic feather ornament……”

“By the way, that young man who came out with her, could it be…… him?”

The whispers of the audience, who had merely found an interesting spectacle, had already degenerated into personal attacks unrelated to the incident. There was also bewilderment directed at the uninvited guest who shouldn’t be here.

Lottie knew that if she remained silent without any defense, she would be branded as the greatest seductress in the history of royal balls.

Lottie inwardly calculated what that stigma would bring her.

As the only daughter of Count Ixe, she would not only be buried in social circles for causing a scandal but also be banned from entering the capital and the palace for life.

A woman whose honor had fallen to the bottom would be unable to find a suitable match, much to her parents’ sorrow, until finally, nearly thirty years old, she would barely become the second wife of an old wealthy man.

She would live a boring but comfortable life until she died of old age, without being falsely accused of adultery, divorced, or having all her property taken by her husband.

In that process, her soul would never be condemned as a petty thief.

‘Knowing this would happen, did I deliberately wear this feather, the root cause of everything?’

Her tear-filled gaze once again clung to Patrick. Despite the years she had spent remembering him with hatred, she couldn’t even control a single glance. She laughed at herself for being so pathetic.

‘Someone might think they’re immortal lovers reuniting.’

Watching Lottie’s regretful eyes fixed on Patrick, Calyx sneered inwardly. Since it was a story that had nothing to do with him anyway, he soon dismissed the thought.

A lady who had not only caused a scandal in the royal garden but was now misunderstood to have enjoyed a secret meeting with the troublesome deposed crown prince. Thus, a sacrificial lamb suffering a barrage of character assassination.

She must feel ashamed and wronged. Calyx’s sympathy, knowing the truth of the situation, ended precisely there.

He was sorry, but he had no desire to stand up for the pitiful woman.

Thanks to this unexpected scandal, he and his ‘real secret meeting partner’ had long been pushed out of the spotlight.

His conclusion was this firm. There was no value in reconsidering, nor could he find any reason to do so.

“……”

If that was the case.

Then what was this irritation now creeping up from the depths of his being, and how should he understand its origin?

“Say something at least……!”

“It would be better to stop now, Duchess of Dunchester.”

When Lottie, having made up her mind to some extent, avoided Isabelle’s reddened eyes.

And when Isabelle, her heart broken once more, tried to strike her grandniece with strong resentment, the prince intervened between them.

Here, the prince referred to Patrick, who had inherited the position of crown prince as a windfall due to his cousin’s great mistake years ago.

“After the lady disappeared so hastily, I was worried when she wasn’t seen for a while, but I didn’t realize she was suffering hardship in such a place. It’s my fault for being unworthy and lacking. Please don’t forgive me.”

At the crown prince’s meaningful words, both Isabelle who had been scolding Lottie and the audience who had been looking at Lottie with narrowed eyes opened their mouths.

Could it be.

Just as that word popped into Lottie’s mind, Patrick spread his arms exaggeratedly toward the audience. With a rather impressive, triumphant expression.

‘Ah.’

A smooth smile finally appeared on Calyx’s lips when he saw his face. It was a smile that completely washed away the earlier confusion.

There was only one reason for his irritation.

His cousin, who had taken everything from him, was smiling so shamelessly as if he owned the world.

“If there was another man in that place where only members of the royal family can enter, who could it be?”

“Me.”

Calyx answered in a crisp voice to the crown prince’s exaggerated question.

“Though I may have been stripped of the royal name, I suppose you wouldn’t say my birth is any different, Your Highness the Crown Prince.”

Standing in a thoroughly relaxed posture, Calyx gave a charming smile directed at his single audience member.

While precariously holding the white satin glove that had neatly wrapped the woman’s right hand.

“Your Highness seems to be under a great misunderstanding. This woman is not, to borrow your words, the woman who engaged in a shameless affair with you in the outdoor garden.”

Patrick’s face immediately hardened. He was trying to forcibly hold together muscles that wanted to contort on their own.

Lottie, surprised by the unexpected intervention, also looked at Calyx.

“Let me be clear, this woman has been with me the whole time. Alone together in a cramped secret room.”

Hoping to see his cousin’s face deliciously contort after their reunion of twelve years, Calyx spoke slowly and clearly.

“Do you…… understand what you’re saying right now?”

“It’s merely my loyal concern for the kingdom. I worry that a non-existent story about you having a secret meeting with the wrong woman in the outdoor garden might damage the honor of Your Highness or the royal family.”

“Non-existent story? What nonsense are you……”

Even at this moment, his cousin’s gray eyes were trembling pitifully.

That appearance of being unable to stay still, worried about what might come out next.

From that excessively fearful look for someone who merely had a woman he was trying to seduce taken away, Calyx instinctively realized.

There’s something here, you.

“Perhaps it was too dark for Your Highness to properly distinguish the face of the person with whom you shared body heat. Or……”

Calyx drawled the end of his sentence with a leisurely face. Patrick’s face contorted once more. He was remarkably unskilled at hiding his expressions.

“Perhaps you have some deep reason why you must forcibly create a connection with this woman.”

“……! Gu, guards!”

Patrick shouted as if trying to shut Calyx’s mouth.

He called two or three more times in succession, but the guards didn’t come immediately. Once again, the crown prince’s dignity was made a laughingstock.

Calyx, who had been lowering his head and laughing, suddenly strode forward. The two men stood facing each other with a woman between them.

‘Why is this man…… here.’

The question that had first struck Patrick when he encountered his cousin in the secret room arose again.

He was a man who had been stripped of his royal name for the crime of assassinating the previous king and was never to set foot in the palace again.

Yet there he was, in the secret room Patrick had opened just in case. Brazenly in a secret place known only to royal family members, with the woman who should have been the protagonist of the scandal.

“A patricide who deserves death…… knowing full well thanks to whom he survived.”

Patrick’s words flowed through his teeth as if he were spitting them out, so only Calyx and Lottie standing nearby could hear.

“And that ‘whom’ is preserving a position he doesn’t deserve thanks to that patricide, isn’t he?”

“……! You……”

“It’s been a long time. Your Highness Crown Prince Patrick Redbreeze.”

Calyx greeted Patrick with an exaggerated formal gesture.

Meanwhile, the guards who had belatedly arrived fixed their disheveled hats as they pushed through the crowd.

Lottie continued to think amid the commotion.

She couldn’t understand why Calyx was defending her innocence, but it was clear that the situation had been reversed because of him.

With both princes simultaneously claiming this woman was with them, the audience could no longer gossip about her being a promiscuous woman.

Not only that.

She would surely be seen as a capable woman who had captured two princes at once, rather than a stupid country lady.

Lottie knew well that she just needed to keep her mouth shut.

Do nothing, just let things flow and wait for everything to resolve itself.

At that moment, what appeared before Lottie’s eyes was her room in Polton’s old castle, where not even a handful of light properly entered.

It was the door of that place, which should rightly have been called a cell, that was always firmly locked, no.

It was the door that she had thought was locked and at some point stopped even trying to open.

‘Why did I.’

Why did I weakly wait for someone to open that door without even thinking of pushing against it myself?

Why did I only try to grab the hand extended by someone else, without even having the courage to say that what wasn’t true wasn’t true?

“Guards! Take this insolent man away immediately,”

“Just a moment.”