Duke, Please Let Go of My Ankle! - Chapter 2 - 1. Audrey Doesn\'t Stop

“Hurry, Jena, hurry!”

“Hoho. It’s almost done, miss.”

Audrey impatiently tapped her feet, urging her maid. Jena secretly smiled at her mistress’s behavior.

Unable to move her face for fear of ruining her makeup, Audrey’s fidgeting hands and feet were truly endearing.

The usually late-rising young lady was, for some reason, up at the crack of dawn getting dolled up.

With the rather philosophical instruction to look “pretty but natural and lovable, as if not made up at all.”

Jena, inwardly guessing the reason, smiled meaningfully.

“It’s done. Ah, you look beautiful today as well.”

“Thank you!”

“Oh, miss! You’ll trip if you’re not careful!”

Audrey dashed out of the room the moment the maid’s hands left her.

She was furious at having spent so much time on her appearance.

‘A single spell would have done the job!’

But it couldn’t be helped.

To keep her identity as a magician secret from others, even her family, she had to endure such minor inconveniences.

‘What if Claude has already left?’

Her movements were hurried, taking two or three steps at a time under her voluminous skirt.

But at this rate, she had an ominous feeling that she would surely miss him.

‘No way!’

As the situation became urgent, there was only one thing she could rely on.

Even as she hurried along, Audrey carefully surveyed her surroundings.

‘No one around, right?’

And as soon as she confirmed that not even an ant was in sight, she cast a spell as if she had been waiting for this moment.

─Whoosh.

Wind began to blow from her anxious heels.

‘Faster! Even faster!’

The Magician’s Code of Ethics, supposedly revised after 10 years, briefly crossed her mind… but only for a moment.

Just as she reached about half a floor left, the wind that had been blowing only under her skirt slowly subsided.

Audrey took a final deep breath and cleared her throat.

And with her last step, she began to impeccably imitate a refined lady.

“Father, are you leaving for work already?”

“…Audrey?”

Count Kevelson, who was about to leave the mansion, turned around with surprised eyes.

He seemed both unfamiliar and pleased to hear his daughter’s voice at this hour.

However, Audrey, after giving a perfunctory greeting, immediately turned her head towards the person she wanted to see.

“Oh my. Claude, you’re here too! What a coincidence!”

“…Ahem.”

Her act of pretending to be surprised with wide eyes was quite convincing.

The Count, who had given her a heads up the day before, awkwardly stroked his beard, but Claude greeted her with his usual kindness.

“Audrey, did you sleep well?”

“Yes!”

“To see your face first thing on a Monday morning? This week must be full of good things to come.”

“…!”

The corners of her mouth, unable to hide the truth, twitched uncontrollably.

‘What does he mean? Am I like, a goddess of fortune or something?’

Audrey couldn’t control her hands and feet which kept fidgeting.

Even though she knew it was just a brief greeting with no special meaning to Claude, she kept mulling over each phrase, trying to assign significance to it.

It was one of the habits formed from her long-standing unrequited love.

‘But I shouldn’t show it too much. I need to be as natural and lovable as possible…’

Though she tried hard to act nonchalant, love and gambling debts are ultimately impossible to hide.

Audrey’s face had long since turned bright red.

It was really strange.

Just looking at that face made her lose control of her emotions as if she had become a fool. Her whole body felt tingly and somewhat numb.

She even wanted to tap her toes, hidden under the hem of her dress, for no reason.

‘If only I could face this enchanting face every day…’

Audrey was willing to abandon her 20-year history and tradition as a night owl and gladly become a rooster.

“Hehe.”

The woman in love twisted her body this way and that.

Her vivid appearance, once like a freshly bloomed flower, had now disappeared, and she was now as limp as a vegetable that had been boiled for too long.

Hans, the only one being treated as if he didn’t exist, looked at her state with disgusted eyes.

With his face all scrunched up, it seemed he found his childhood friend’s affectation utterly dreadful.

“Hey. Am I invisible or something?”

“Oh, hi. But Oppa, what brings you here on a Monday morning?”

“Huh.”

This girl?

For a moment, sparks flew in Hans’s eyes.

I’m not a beggar, you know!

The greeting thrown at him in 0.1 seconds, as if giving alms, was blatantly insincere.

But regardless of that, Audrey’s interest was solely focused on his brother, Claude.

Claude, finding his squabbling sibling adorable even in the early morning, let out a light chuckle.

“I heard the Kevelson family carriage is under repair. Since we’re heading to the same destination, I thought I’d come by to ride along with the Count.”

“Ah, how thoughtful you are, brother! We could have just rented a carriage from the rental place… I’m sorry for the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all since I’m going the same way. Besides, I enjoy the company of the Count, so I won’t be lonely.”

“…Ahem.”

Count Kevelson suddenly became a shameless adult.

However, even his kind and pretty late-born daughter was useless in the face of love.

The reason was that Audrey’s sparkling eyes were persistently circling only around Claude.

His deeply exhaled sigh of worry was full of embarrassment towards the other party.

“This is troublesome. The carriage needs to be fixed soon…”

“I really don’t mind, I tell you.”

“But we can’t keep inconveniencing you.”

“I quite like it.”

“Pardon?”

“Thanks to this, I get to see your face before I go. What better excuse could there be?”

“…!”

Claude smiled brightly with an unsuspecting face.

Audrey, suddenly struck in the heart, stood blankly, forgetting what to say.

It was no easy task to hide her dark intentions in front of such an angelic smile.

‘…I can never admit that I’m the culprit.’

How could she possibly confess that it was none other than the daughter of this house who personally cut the wheel axle in two in the dead of night?

So she could only smile back with an innocent face.

Meanwhile, her childhood friend, whose insides were all twisted up, couldn’t just quietly watch this warm scene.

“But what’s with you, did you attend a ball at dawn or something? What’s with that getup?”

His openly disapproving gaze scanned Audrey’s attire up and down.

As expected.

How dare he try to ruin someone else’s love!

“Ho, hoho. What are you talking about? I’m embarrassed to look so shabby on a Monday morning. Oh my, if I had known we’d have guests, I would have at least tidied up my hair before coming out.”

Audrey pretended to be embarrassed as she smoothed her hair.

However, her childhood friend of 15 years was not so easily fooled. Instead, he snorted and openly mocked her.

“Shabby? Hey, look in a mirror. You’re more flamboyant than a male peacock in courtship right now.”

“Why you!”

Oops.

Audrey, who was about to lose her temper as usual, suddenly came to her senses.

‘Claude is still watching!’

The strength slowly left her tightly clenched fist.

The hand that was heading towards his solar plexus abruptly changed direction towards his shoulder. The fingertips that lightly tapped her friend’s shoulder, pretending to be playful, were sharp.

“Hoho! A peacock! How amusing.”

“Hey, where are you touch- Ow!”

Audrey skillfully covered his foot with her voluminous skirt and mercilessly stomped on it.

She didn’t forget to cast a spell on her shoe heel in that brief moment.

“You, you crazy girl!”

Hans started rolling on the floor with a red face.

He made a fuss, yelling at the top of his lungs that his toes must have all fallen off.

However, Audrey very calmly saw off the two men with the terrible screams as background music.

“Father, Oppa. You’ll be late at this rate. You should get going now.”

“…I suppose so.”

“See you later, Audrey.”

And so the two men left the mansion, almost as if they were being chased out.

Unlike Count Kevelson, who seemed somewhat disgruntled, Claude kept looking back with a pleased smile.

‘…What a puzzling young man, indeed.’

The Count observed Claude from the corner of his eye.

He was certainly a very solid and intelligent young man, befitting the empire’s most eligible bachelor, but sometimes there was something that felt just a bit odd about him.

Should one say he’s not just positive, but overly optimistic?

Like now, even though his younger brother was rolling around screaming loud enough to bring down the mansion, instead of being worried, he said things like,

“They’re playing so amusingly. It’s the prime of their youth, isn’t it?”

and smiled brightly… it didn’t seem quite normal no matter how you looked at it.

***

Audrey flopped onto the bed as soon as she went up to her room.

The effort she had put into getting ready since the crack of dawn seemed to have served its purpose and instantly became useless.

Hans, who witnessed this scene, felt exasperated and his mood soured for no reason.

That lazy bum only cared about looking good for Claude.

He felt ashamed of his own attire, which he had carefully chosen since dawn under the pretext of being polite.

‘How could she not say even a word? What a cold-hearted acorn…’

She could have at least mentioned that it was a cravat she hadn’t seen before, or that blue suited him well or even mocked him.

How could she be so lacking in acknowledgment, interest, and courtesy?

Hans glared at the room’s owner rolling on the bed for no particular reason.

His irritated hands roughly undid his cravat and threw it far away. It was his own small act of rebellion.

Regardless of all that.

Audrey was busy perusing the newspaper from early in the morning.

“Hm, hm, hm. Let’s see, let’s see. What news do we have today?”

The Imperial Newspaper was the same as always today.

The front page was adorned with a strange survey without any substance.

Unlike other newspapers that usually carried special reports, this was quite a bold move.

《Imperial Newspaper Survey》

1. Which unmarried man is likely to break the bed on his wedding night?

“…What? Who on earth is curious about this kind of thing?”

Audrey frowned involuntarily at the provocative topic.

The names listed down to 15th place became even more vivid.

“Anyway, what strange tastes.”

Even as she clicked her tongue, her eyes didn’t leave the newspaper.

Her eyes, moving upwards from the bottom like a salmon swimming upstream, were quite careful and thorough.

Anyone could see she was full of curiosity.

However, the moment she spotted a familiar name in the rankings,

“No way!”

Audrey unknowingly crumpled up the newspaper.