121. Major Scandal
The Grand Ducal couple left the waiting room and returned to the spectator seats after confirming their feelings for each other.
Somehow, the atmosphere in the arena had strangely changed from before they entered the waiting room.
Everyone seemed to be focusing on something other than the match.
Katya sensed the peculiar air while watching people whispering non-stop.
‘Why are they looking over there like that?’
Could someone have witnessed her brother-in-law courting her earlier and spread it around?
But Katya felt no guilt whatsoever.
If it came down to it, she could just truthfully reveal that Mikhail had spouted nonsense about becoming Nikolai’s concubine.
She was just keeping quiet because she worried he might terrorize his own brother like he had threatened to kill Ivan in the south.
‘I’m worried the Grand Duke might throw him out the window too, brother or not.’
That would lead straight to war with Oksana.
She didn’t want such matters to disrupt whatever plans Nikolai had.
Just like with Ivan, she didn’t want her husband’s hands to be stained.
Anyway, Mikhail would be properly scolded by his mother Oksana once today’s matches ended, without them having to do anything.
“What happened?”
“Grand Duke, look over there for a moment.”
Katya stuck to her husband’s side like a cicada on an old tree and pointed somewhere with her index finger.
This made him feel her soft flesh against his rock-hard body.
Nikolai forced down his rising smile as he turned his head following her finger.
“Don’t stare too obviously. Just glance quickly with your eyes and turn back this way.”
At his wife’s whisper, he swiftly shifted his gaze and turned back to her.
“Did you see?”
“I saw something, but I’m not sure what I saw.”
“Ah, what’s that! You didn’t look properly, did you?”
Katya grabbed Nikolai’s cheeks and pulled him toward her.
This lowered his upper body to roughly match her eye level.
Nikolai wrapped an arm around her slim waist to support her strongly, wanting to make it comfortable for her standing on tiptoes.
“Aren’t these eyes meant to properly capture only you?”
“Stop joking around!”
“I’m serious though?”
“Don’t you notice everyone looking around at something?”
“Now that you mention it, it does seem that way.”
“Could they be secretly looking at some banned book?”
Katya asked with a serious expression.
Each country had designated banned books for reasons like containing impure and immoral content that could disturb public sentiment.
Of course, curious nobles would pay money to obtain and read them through connections.
Though the banned book list was designated by conservative former Grand Dukes and there was an atmosphere of turning a blind eye if it didn’t greatly conflict with current sensibilities, it was different at such an official occasion.
Moreover, it wasn’t only Hersen nobles who were present here.
If it happened to overlap with books banned by the Charmente Empire, it could become an issue that the delegation could rightfully raise.
The Grand Duke should step in to prevent controversy in advance.
“First, without disrupting the match—”
“Let’s sneak behind and look, shall we?”
Nikolai smiled seeing his wife guess his thoughts before he could finish speaking.
Katya put her arm around her grinning husband’s neck in a side hug.
“This is trouble. How do we hide this bulk?”
“I thought you said you liked big men?”
“I never said that. Didn’t I say I liked strong men?”
“That’s my wishful thinking. Say you like that I’m big. Isn’t bigger better for everything?”
“Well, that’s not wrong…… But anyway, that’s not what’s important right now! Get lower, quickly!”
Nikolai suppressed his laughter and bent down following her.
In truth, his build wasn’t one that could be hidden like this.
With a back vast as plains, equally broad shoulders, and legs of extraordinary length,
The Grand Duke’s body had all the disadvantageous conditions for stealth.
“Won’t I stand out more like this?”
“Sigh, being too big is a problem too.”
“From a wife’s perspective, shouldn’t the advantages outweigh that? Well, it might be a bit inconvenient at night.”
At those words, Katya opened her eyes wide, wondering how he could say such things so shamelessly.
Her expression looked like a rabbit startled while grazing, making honey drip from Nikolai’s eyes.
“No lewd talk allowed!”
“What was so lewd about what I just said?”
“Are you really asking because you don’t know?”
“I meant the bed might feel cramped and uncomfortable. What else were you thinking of?”
The face of the rabbit living in Hersen Palace turned red as a carrot.
Am I the only one with a dirty mind?
Katya opened her mouth with an aggrieved expression.
“Can you put your hand on your heart and say there was absolutely no impure intent in what you just said?”
“Seeing your reaction makes me want to say it with impure intent though?”
She was dying of exasperation at her husband’s seductive gaze.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
“Then how should I look? You tell me.”
“Let’s not do this in broad daylight, and outdoors at that!”
“So you’ll allow it late at night indoors?”
At a loss for words, Katya finally huffed and stormed ahead.
Nikolai suppressed his laughter and followed, matching her pace.
Not knowing the two were approaching, the nobles, both men and women, were busily discussing something.
They were secretly passing around some paper that was tattered, either originally so or from being passed through many hands.
“How could something like this happen?”
“That’s what I’m saying. How should we handle this situation……”
“Better stay quiet to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Someone will surely report it. Let’s keep our mouths shut for now.”
“No, even if love is good, isn’t this too much?”
“Pass it here if you’re done looking. We’re curious too.”
“What are you talking about? I already gave it to you?”
“What do you mean? I haven’t received it yet.”
The nobles searched the floor and surroundings for the paper lost in transit.
“Is this what you’re looking for?”
Someone thrust their hand through the crowd from behind, waving the paper while speaking.
Though their face was hidden by people, the voice sounded young enough to make the older nobles laugh derisively.
“Oh my, miss. We agreed to look at it first, how can you cut in line like that?”
“She gave it back, what’s the problem?”
“Right. Let’s not make a fuss and quickly look and pass it on.”
People sitting in the lower seats reached back while shushing.
But before they could snatch the paper, the hand holding it pulled back.
“Come now, stop playing around and hand it over?”
“I do enjoy playing games.”
This time it was a male voice, different from the young lady who had been waving the paper earlier.
The noble who had reached out froze, turning pale.
The nobles waiting below turned around wondering what was happening.
Soon, everyone in that section blanched.
“Everyone seems to be having great fun, won’t you let us join in?”
Nikolai was standing there, though no one knew when he had arrived.
Katya, his accomplice who had hidden behind seats and snatched the paper while he stood behind a pillar, also stood up.
“Sorry. The Grand Duke seemed curious so I cut in line a bit. We can look first, right?”
Her triumphant expression as she unfolded the paper beside her husband gradually stiffened.
It was a love letter.
One containing the names of two people in an inappropriate relationship.
Where Katya stood was effectively the last section of this ‘pass around the love letter’ event.
This meant the rumor had already spread uncontrollably throughout the arena.
***
“How could this happen?”
Oksana shouted in outrage.
After the match ended, it was not her son Mikhail but her stepdaughter Klavdia who was summoned to the Summer Palace.
She had planned to punish Mikhail first for his advances toward Duke Smirnov’s daughter, but an even bigger problem had arisen.
The scandalous issue that had swept through the arena.
The protagonists were none other than Princess Klavdia and Duke Norbert.
“I thought Norbert might have come because he still had feelings for you, but this isn’t right, is it? If he knew you were about to be married, he should have given up, how could he cause such trouble?”
What Norbert had dropped on the court during the match was the letter Klavdia had sent him 13 years ago breaking things off.
Since the two had met secretly without the previous Grand Duke’s knowledge, no one in society knew about their romance.
Though Klavdia’s tone in the letter was ice cold, it referenced passages from his previous letters, making it possible to infer Norbert’s desperate feelings and their love story.
Though it wasn’t a letter written with love but rather their final farewell letter, it seemed he had preciously kept it close to his heart all this time.
“He must have done this deliberately to ruin you!”
Though Oksana ranted like that, Klavdia thought differently.
She thought only love and hate remained between them, but that wasn’t it.
Klavdia realized they still loved each other.
“Mother, I think he still loves me.”
“What? What are you saying? Even if that’s true, what difference does it make now? You have someone to marry—!”
“I don’t want to have this marriage, Mother.”
The princess finally found her courage.
For the first time in her life, she, who had always obeyed her stepmother’s words, was raising her voice in defiance.
