124. My True Ally
Oksana’s face turned red as her schemes were exposed.
Since things had come to this, she decided to go all out.
Klavdia remained an essential figure for consolidating her power base.
But her pride wouldn’t allow her to grovel before this dim-witted girl born to Grand Duchess Yevgenia.
Yevgenia was greatly loved by the people of Hersen during her lifetime for her gentle nature, and Yuri respected her as his first wife.
Oksana’s current public conduct was an imitation of her.
Though she couldn’t match her innate character, she could at least pretend and act.
While outwardly imitating her, she internally despised and mocked Yevgenia.
To Oksana, being kind was synonymous with being stupid.
Yevgenia’s body had weakened from the plague she caught while doing charity work while she was pregnant, which led to her death from puerperal fever after giving birth to Klavdia.
Yevgenia left this world without gaining anything in the end.
It irritated her how people packaged that foolish woman as kind-hearted, and it disgusted her how people continued to idealize her over the years.
Like mother, like daughter.
Whether she took after her mother in trusting people easily or was just slow-witted, she followed Oksana like a real mother without realizing she was being used.
She couldn’t bring herself to bow and beg to such a girl.
“It’s natural for a mother to care more for children of her own flesh and blood. You don’t understand because you’ve never had children.”
“I wasn’t your child, but I thought of you as my mother.”
“Is your foolishness my responsibility too?”
Klavdia, thoroughly sick of Oksana’s brazen behavior even after her dark intentions were exposed, left without another word.
Rain poured from the sky as she left the Summer Palace.
She ran alone in the rain, without time to grab an umbrella, evading the maids who tried to follow.
She cried.
But the human body couldn’t express even half of the betrayal, anger, sorrow and despair Klavdia felt.
It would be impossible even if she drained all the moisture from her body.
So it felt like the sky cried for her instead.
As she sat crying for a long while in the middle of some unknown forest path, the raindrops suddenly stopped falling from above.
More precisely, they stopped only above Klavdia’s head.
She looked up as a dark shadow fell over her.
“You’ll catch a cold if you stay here like this.”
It was Katya.
She seemed to have wandered near the Spring Palace without realizing.
Katya had seen Klavdia through the window just as she was preparing to go to bed.
She wore nightclothes with a shawl draped over them, having rushed out immediately upon spotting her.
“How can you wander alone dressed like this at night? What if something happened!”
Klavdia shouted without thinking out of worry.
Katya just smiled at her sister-in-law’s scolding.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Your Highness is one to talk, being out here without any maids or palace servants.”
“You really never back down.”
“It’s fortunate you met me. You’re safe now, Your Highness.”
Katya pointed behind her as she spoke.
Following her gesture, Klavdia saw Guard Captain Pavel and Katya’s lady’s maid Brunhilde sharing an umbrella nearby.
Behind them stood knights of the Grand Ducal family.
“How shameless to be in nightclothes with so many men around!”
“Saving Your Highness from danger comes first. My embarrassment is only temporary.”
“What danger……”
“I heard wild beasts sometimes climb over the walls to this area.”
“W-wild beasts?”
Klavdia shuddered as if getting chills.
Katya took off the shawl from her shoulders and draped it over her.
“What about you?”
She looked at Katya in shock, then was surprised again.
Her sister-in-law still wore a shawl.
It was a different colored one from before.
“I came wearing two, knowing this might happen.”
Klavdia burst out laughing at Katya’s triumphant response.
The two women laughed hysterically like young girls in the rain.
Katya took her crying and laughing sister-in-law’s hand and helped her up.
“Let’s go inside now. I’ll catch a cold trying to save Your Highness.”
“I don’t want to go to the Summer Palace……”
“I know. The Spring Palace won’t work either with all the prying eyes.”
“Then where are we going?”
“The Winter Palace, of course.”
Katya answered as if it was obvious.
Klavdia hesitated, uncertain.
Katya immediately understood what worried her.
“The Winter Palace is where the Grand Duke’s people stay. Your Highness is the Grand Duke’s only sister. You naturally have the right to stay there as family.”
“……Will he accept me?”
“He has no reason not to, but if he doesn’t, I’ll scold him.”
“What? Really now.”
Klavdia couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief.
This strawberry blonde woman was probably the only person who would casually talk about scolding a country’s ruler, especially one infamous as the ‘Bloody Grand Duke’.
“You’re quite insolent, aren’t you?”
“I hear that a lot!”
Katya said as she walked arm in arm with her sister-in-law.
“I even called the Grand Duke a dog once.”
“You’re just like Laika.”
“Who is…… that?”
“Our dog. You’re exactly like her—huge but afraid of baths.”
“Are you calling me a dog? How rude.”
“It’s a compliment! Laika is so cute and sweet.”
She had been so shocked later to learn that the man she stayed with at the inn was the Grand Duke.
She thought her heart would jump out of her chest.
Of course, Klavdia’s heart did the same hearing those words just now.
“Do you have two lives?”
“Just one, but fortunately, I still have it!”
“It’s lucky Nikolai loves you enough to let you be.”
“Lucky? You mean you’re glad I’m alive to be by Your Highness Klavdia’s side?”
“You never stop.”
“Come on, just admit it!”
“Can’t even punish this tiny thing……”
Klavdia clicked her tongue at her bouncy sister-in-law.
Perhaps because she had no younger sister, even this pushiness seemed cute.
She must have been thoroughly enchanted by the Strawberry of the South.
***
Nikolai came running when he heard his sister drenched in rain and wife in nightclothes had arrived at the Winter Palace.
“What happened? You went out like this?”
He exclaimed in alarm to Katya.
Though they hadn’t received the family’s approval, she was his wife who had completed the marriage registration.
No man would welcome his wife wandering outside in such attire.
Just as Klavdia was about to speak to stop her brother from scolding his wife,
“What if you catch a cold?”
So that was the issue.
Her mouth fell open seeing this doting side of her brother for the first time.
Nikolai worriedly took off his outer coat and wrapped it around his wife.
He seemed not to notice his sister who was actually soaked like a drowned rat.
“Quickly prepare hot water in the room. Tia, go in and warm up first.”
“Grand Duke, I didn’t get wet at all……”
“What do you mean? Your skirt is wet like this!”
Nikolai made a huge fuss over just the hem of her nightgown getting slightly wet in the wind.
Going further, he immediately removed her mud-covered and rain-soaked shoes, then lifted his now barefoot wife in his arms.
Katya’s face turned red as a ripe apple as she squirmed, asking to be put down.
“Stay still. I won’t put you down no matter how much you move.”
“Grand Duke, how can you act so rashly in front of your sister!”
“Sister?”
At those words, Nikolai blinked and finally glanced to the side.
Though he had heard his sister came, he momentarily forgot her presence standing right there after seeing Katya.
“I apologize. I didn’t realize you were here, Sister—”
“Enough. This is enough to understand your feelings for me.”
Klavdia snorted and went upstairs first, following the Winter Palace butler’s guidance.
“Ah, I finally got her to change her mind and you do this?”
Katya glared at her husband.
“I’ll handle it myself, let’s go for now.”
“Grand Duke, I have legs you know? Strong ones too!”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I just wanted to hold you.”
The Grand Duchess’s face turned pink again at his naughty response.
***
After bathing and changing clothes, Klavdia met Nikolai again in the study.
“Why did you call for me?”
“I think we need to discuss today’s events with you, Sister.”
She tensed unconsciously.
She had already been abandoned once by Oksana who worried she might become a rival to her son Mikhail.
If Klavdia became an Imperial Princess, the Empire might later claim she was the rightful heir above the Grand Duke and try to control the Western Continent.
‘You’ll be the same. You’ll try to stop this because you’re afraid I’ll build up my power base if I marry Norbert.’
But Nikolai shattered her expectations spectacularly.
“If you wish, Sister, I plan to push through your marriage with Duke Norbert by any means necessary.”
