128. The Villain’s Rampage
“Did Her Highness really say that?”
“You think I would have done this without any assurance? Her Highness the former Grand Duchess said she would take responsibility and push through the marriage.”
“Is that…… true?”
Lyudmila grabbed her sister’s shoulders and asked.
Her voice trembled.
“You’re saying Her Highness made you that absurd proposal!”
“Why is it absurd? His Highness Mikhail’s eyes are always looking at someone else. Marriage talks were possible when His Highness didn’t know love, but now! Now His Highness has learned what love is.”
“Who is it? We could have solved this by finding out who that woman is! Tell your sister now!”
“Sister doesn’t need to know. It’s an impossible love anyway.”
“Then why do something so reckless because of that woman?”
“When you fall in true love, you can’t marry someone else. Look at Prince Norbert! He hasn’t married until now because he can’t forget Her Highness Klavdia. What if His Highness Mikhail does the same?”
While Norbert’s pure love for Klavdia touched the hearts of women in Hersen, Irina felt suffocated.
What if Mikhail never forgets Katya for his entire life?
“Do you think he’ll ever look at me if I wait? No. I don’t think so. He’ll never give me even the slightest attention for the rest of his life.”
“You know that and still do this? Just give up on someone like that and find a man who loves you. Do you think you can hold onto a heart that keeps turning to another woman by forcing marriage like this?”
“Sister, you don’t understand because you’re lucky.”
“What?”
“It’s luck when the person you love loves you back. It’s like a miracle with unrealistically low probability. Not everyone gets that miracle.”
“So you’re saying what you did was right?”
Lyudmila’s heart swelled with emotion.
She hadn’t liked her precious sister’s one-sided love for someone like Mikhail from the start.
Besides being a Prince and having a decent face, he had nothing worthwhile as a potential husband—neither in personality, intelligence, nor physical ability.
Trying to look at it objectively, Irina deserved much better.
But Oksana had been a good mother-in-law.
Though she was her husband’s stepmother, she had treated Ruslan well when he was alive and warmly cared for her when she became a widow after his death.
After Grand Duke Yuri passed away, she had even embraced her, saying they should support each other as widows.
When she felt like an outsider living in the Grand Ducal household after her husband’s death, Oksana had always been there to comfort that loneliness.
She had been like a real mother to her.
She thought it would be nice to live together as sisters-in-law with her own sister.
But this was really not right.
How could Oksana do this to her?
How could she make such a proposal to her sister whom she claimed to cherish like her own child?
“Don’t you think Her Highness acknowledged me as the only match for His Highness Mikhail? She wants me as her daughter-in-law so much she’d go this far. Sister, can’t we think positively about this?”
Irina pleaded, holding her sister’s hands.
No, her sister was wrong.
Lyudmila now vaguely understood why Oksana insisted on having Irina as her daughter-in-law.
It wasn’t because she truly thought of her as a daughter.
If she had thought of her as her own daughter, she would never have sent an unmarried girl to a man’s bedroom.
She could never have suggested getting pregnant first.
Irina was just a piece on her chessboard.
Those who supported Klavdia had left the massive power base Oksana had tried to build.
That was why she was so obsessed with the sisters’ family.
Having reached this realization, the elder sister draped her shawl over her sister’s shoulders and slowly walked toward the door.
She needed to confirm something.
“Where are you going, sister?”
“I have somewhere to go. You go straight up to your room.”
The shawl was meant to hide that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday so passersby wouldn’t notice.
Even in this chaotic situation, Lyudmila worried terribly about her sister.
That’s how precious her blood relative was to her.
“Sister!”
She left her sister behind and rushed out of the room.
Her heart pounded wildly.
She couldn’t tell which emotion made her whole body tremble.
Anger? Betrayal? Humiliation? Disgust? Or was it fear?
Today’s events followed the same pattern as when Klavdia’s marriage to Duke Klebov was arranged.
Back then, she thought the former Grand Duchess had made a wise decision to hurry the marriage before rumors spread, believing her sister-in-law had really slept with the Duke.
Could the Princess’s marriage have happened the same way?
Was it a trap designed by Oksana to definitively draw Klavdia to her side?
She began to get goosebumps.
***
“Is what Irina said true?”
“Why ask when you already know?”
The palace had many watching eyes.
If someone had seen Irina coming out of Mikhail’s bedroom, she didn’t even want to imagine what would happen next.
The one who had nearly ruined a young girl’s life who hadn’t even shed her girlish innocence remained brazenly calm.
“I raised her like my own daughter after she lost her mother early.”
“I know. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure my son takes responsibility.”
“……”
“I know my son well. No matter how dissolute he is, he won’t make his child a bastard. He remembers the time he was treated as a bastard before becoming a Prince.”
“But Your Highness……!”
“Enough!”
Oksana cut off Lyudmila’s words with an irritated shout.
She pressed her throbbing temples while making all sorts of grimaces.
She was in a very unpleasant state right now.
She was already irritated that nothing was going according to plan, and had just caught her breath after finally solving one thing.
And now her only daughter-in-law came trailing along making complaints, which disgusted her.
“We have many tasks ahead, so don’t make me waste energy on such trivial matters.”
Oksana warned Lyudmila.
While the situation was similar to Klavdia’s case, the difference was that back then, they only pretended to have relations with Duke Klebov, but they made Irina actually sleep with him.
Her foolish son had embraced Irina thinking she was Katya while drunk.
If Klavdia had gotten pregnant with Duke Klebov’s child then, things wouldn’t have become so complicated.
That’s why she had encouraged Irina to get pregnant first.
“Are you perhaps doubting me?”
Oksana suddenly burst out in anger, turning the situation around.
“N-no way! Not at all, Your Highness! Your Highness has never been wrong!”
When she played her trump card, Lyudmila finally bowed her head.
But her face, hidden by her hair, bit her lip, unable to contain her anger.
She couldn’t bear the fact that even her young and naive sister had been used.
Oksana was running wild. Now that the imperial marriage was confirmed, she had no more time to wait.
She thought it was time to unleash her hidden claws and go hunting.
So she had no way of realizing first that she was making enemies without knowing.
Oksana, drunk on the desire for power, didn’t know that turning allies into enemies was the shortest path to destruction.
***
Katya sent Bianca back, saying they would put the marriage issue on hold for now and solve it later.
When she called Alyona separately to ask, she confessed that Bianca had actually had an ambiguous relationship with her tutor while in the South.
“I understand if she’s giving up preemptively since marriage to a commoner would be difficult.”
Katya headed straight to Nikolai’s office.
As soon as the door opened and his wife appeared, the Grand Duke jumped up from his seat with a bright smile.
“Tia.”
“I’m here, Your Highness.”
“I was just thinking of going to see you, our thoughts aligned.”
Nikolai deeply kissed his wife’s forehead and whispered while holding her tight.
Katya wanted to stay in his embrace forever because it was so warm, but she soon pulled herself together and separated from him.
When she looked up at him while holding his arms, he was looking down at her as if she were the most lovable creature in the world.
“I have something I’m curious about.”
“Ask anything. I’ll answer what I know, and if I don’t know, I’ll learn and tell you.”
“I want to meet the Tranov family.”
“Why Boris’s family?”
“Because I think Bianca likes that person Luka Tranov.”
Katya told her husband everything she knew.
That Marquis Menshikov’s son Olen turned out to be Bianca’s childhood first love whom she had been looking for, and that this led to the Marquis proposing marriage to Duke Smirnov’s family.
And that she wanted to talk to Luka because Bianca was rushing into marriage despite liking her tutor.
“If they truly love each other, I want to be on her side even if everyone else opposes it.”
“At least their social status won’t be what separates them.”
“How does Your Highness know that?”
“Tia, actually……”
Finally, Nikolai confessed everything honestly.
Luka’s true identity and why he had to hide it, and that he also loved Bianca.