56. The Face of the Enemy
As the connection between the carriage and horses came loose, the coachman showed quick thinking and barely managed to climb onto one of the horses that had been running straight ahead.
Katya’s carriage falling off the cliff happened in an instant.
“Tia!”
Due to the narrow path, Nikolai, who had been riding ahead, jumped off his horse and ran to the cliff.
Though he looked down the endless precipice, the carriage had already disappeared into the darkness.
Several knights rushed to stop the Grand Duke as he approached the cliff’s edge like he’s about to follow her.
“Your Highness! Please calm down!”
“You’ll fall!”
“Let go! That’s an order! Tia…!”
As Nikolai cried out in unbearable grief at losing his wife on their wedding day, footsteps echoed from inside the tunnel.
Everyone except him turned their gazes toward the source of the sound.
Soon, someone emerged from the passage of deep darkness.
“Her Highness the Grand Duchess!”
Nikolai, who had been sinking endlessly into the abyss of despair, turned at those words.
Somehow, Katya appeared before everyone’s eyes, alive and well.
The carriage that fell off the cliff had actually been empty.
She wasn’t alone.
She was with a man bound in ropes.
“Tia!”
Nikolai ran like a madman and embraced her in his arms.
The knights naturally caught the man who was pushed aside by him.
“I thought you had…! I thought something had happened to you…!”
“Your Highness…”
“I’m sorry for shouting.”
An apology soon flowed from his lips as he gripped her arms tightly while shouting.
His wife must be the most shocked right now.
Nikolai tried to calm his trembling heart as he spoke.
“Thank you… for being alive.”
Nikolai whispered like a sigh while burying his face in her shoulder.
His deep voice sounded drenched, as if it had been soaked by rain.
It was the first time Boris and all the knights had seen the usually cool-headed Grand Duke lose his composure like this.
What exactly had happened?
Why did the Grand Duchess appear from inside the tunnel instead of the carriage?
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you beforehand.”
Katya said while stroking his back.
She felt upset at this foolishly kind husband who apologized to her even in a situation where he should be angry.
“This is what happened…”
It started the day before the wedding ceremony.
At a time when everyone was asleep, the coachman of the Smirnov mansion, who had been tasked with safely escorting the Grand Duke and Duchess during their honeymoon, was busy cleaning the carriage inside and out.
Though the cleaning had been completed yesterday, when he tried to sleep, he felt uneasy about leaving the cleaning to other servants, so he came out again.
“As expected, they cleaned carelessly where it can’t be seen. Young people these days only know shortcuts and lack sincerity!”
The coachman grumbled while wiping dust off the bottom of the carriage with a dry cloth.
The white-haired man had worked at the Smirnov mansion for nearly 40 years.
Of course, he had watched Baptiski’s marriage, and the Smirnov sisters being born and growing up.
Though his family urged retirement as he approached sixty, he believed he was still healthy and capable.
Baptiski, knowing his desire to continue working, assigned him mainly short-distance trips that wouldn’t strain his health.
Originally, his son was supposed to drive for this honeymoon trip, but not quite trusting his son despite being his own child, he had asked the Duke to let him go along.
Though the gruff coachman grumbled while cleaning, he was actually overjoyed inside.
He felt happy to be part of an important moment for Lady Katarina whom he had watched since childhood, and moreover, serving the Grand Duke and Duchess was the greatest honor of his life.
As he hummed unconsciously while crawling out from under the carriage, he heard a very brief creaking sound from somewhere.
“Where did that sound come from?”
The coachman moved various parts of the carriage while listening carefully.
As he searched for the source of the sound, he discovered that the left rear wheel was slightly lower than the others.
Upon inspection, he found that the surrounding parts were fitted differently from the other three wheels.
This carriage was newly ordered by Duke Smirnov for his daughter and son-in-law, so the hypothesis that only that part was repaired due to wear was invalid.
“Someone must have deliberately tampered with it! What scoundrel would dare do this to Our Highness? They deserve divine punishment and more!”
Instinctively realizing this was no ordinary matter, the coachman called Alyona to relay that he had urgent news for the Grand Duchess.
Upon receiving the report, Katya didn’t seem particularly surprised.
As though she had anticipated something like this would happen.
Though she didn’t show it in front of Nikolai, she had been quite affected by the attempted assassination at the lake.
Though it was a time-limited marriage, she was now the wife of this country’s ruler.
She also knew that just because Nikolai loved her passionately didn’t mean their married life would be all rainbows and flower gardens.
For one year, she too had duties to fulfill as Grand Duchess.
“I’ll handle this matter, so pretend you don’t know. And call your son here right now.”
“What? Su-surely my son isn’t involved?”
The coachman, whose only virtue was loyalty, asked while pitifully trembling.
Seeing him like that, Katya waved her hands.
“No! How could your son do such a thing? I trust everyone who works in our mansion. That’s not it, I just have something to tell him beforehand. And you shouldn’t come on the trip.”
At those words, the old man was even more shocked than when he misunderstood his son was involved.
Katya consoled the disappointed coachman by promising they would travel together when going up to the capital and sent him away.
Her plan was too dangerous for the elderly coachman, so it couldn’t be helped.
Upon secretly calling a mechanic to check, they found the parts had been very cleverly manipulated.
The wheels worked normally when first riding, so no one would notice, but on long distances, especially when climbing rough mountain paths that weren’t well paved, the weight would naturally shift to the lower wheel, causing the parts to come loose.
Katya proceeded with everything as planned without repairing the carriage or replacing it with another.
‘If they know I’ve figured out their plan, they’ll try something else.’
Rather, resolving the immediate problem to eliminate variables was the best solution.
She decided to use this situation to catch the assassin.
The coachman’s son knew beforehand from Katya that there would be a carriage accident.
So when something went wrong with the carriage after exiting the tunnel, he loosened the connection between the carriage and horses as planned and climbed onto a horse to escape harm.
“I thought the person who tampered with the carriage would follow behind us to confirm the accident.”
When everyone was relying on small lanterns while passing through the dark tunnel, Katya jumped out of the carriage without anyone noticing.
She was fully prepared, having changed into men’s hunting clothes inside beforehand to avoid her dress getting in the way.
The unsuspecting assassin came out of the tunnel and watched the carriage roll down the cliff.
At that moment, Katya, who had been hiding in the tunnel, grabbed him from behind and gagged him with a handkerchief soaked in anesthetic.
During the confusion from the sudden accident, she tied the man securely with ropes.
“I stuffed a sock in his mouth for now. He won’t be able to commit suicide like the previous assassin.”
“From now on, tell me first no matter what, before things get to this point.”
Nikolai, still not fully calmed down, pressed his forehead against her round forehead as he spoke.
“You don’t tell me things either, Your Highness.”
Katya looked at him with reproachful eyes and pulled something out from her chest.
It was a letter found on the assassin.
With contents commissioning murder, at the very bottom was stamped the Borodin family crest.
The family of Oksana, the former Grand Duchess.
How could they be so careless as to send a letter with their crest stamped so openly?
They didn’t even try to hide that they had instigated the assassination.
“Has it been the former Grand Duchess targeting Your Highness all this time?”
Nikolai silently took the letter from her hand and burned it with a match.
The important evidence turned to ash and scattered in the wind.
“Your Highness!”
“Such things are useless.”
While Oksana had been the former Grand Duke’s mistress in Nikolai’s view, she had a good public reputation.
The virtuous Grand Duchess who stood by former Grand Duke Yuri’s side in place of the wicked former Grand Duchess Tatiana who led the rebellion.
Many citizens thought of Oksana that way.
“She’s not the only one targeting me. It’s no exaggeration to say most boyars in the North are my enemies.”
Though Nikolai ascended to Grand Duke with the support of officers and knights, most boyars were on Oksana’s side.
They were imprinting the image of a tyrant on the citizens by highlighting the incident where Nikolai was suspected of killing his teacher.
There were quite a few people who implicitly believed peace would come to the country if Oksana’s son, Mikhail, became Grand Duke.
To the ignorant residents of the territory, Nikolai appeared to be tormenting benevolent lords and great nobles, so if he pointed to his stepmother as being behind the assassination, the situation would obviously unfold as Oksana wanted.
Oksana would act pitiful and claim someone was trying to drive a wedge between mother and son, and she would gain the sympathy of the people, led by the boyars.
“The pitiful former Grand Duchess who lost her husband and is now tormented by her tyrannical stepson. That’s what they’ll think. That woman will cut off loose ends and escape somehow. As she always has.”
Oksana also knew well that she couldn’t kill Nikolai with such small fry.
Leaving evidence was a kind of warning.
To abdicate the position of Grand Duke to her younger son Mikhail and step down voluntarily.
Katya held her breath for a moment at the reality of an enemy that was greater than she had imagined.
Belying his title of tyrant, Nikolai was enduring each precarious day as if walking on thin ice amidst threats from boyars who only opposed his policies and his stepmother.
