Chapter 6 – Strategic Alliance

Allen’s gaze, watching her as though looking at a prey, tied her up tightly like ropes, but the experience of acting the fool for 11 years had not gone anywhere. Eveline quickly searched for a way to get out of this situation.

Of course, the way she looked now was suspicious to anyone’s eyes, but as long as she did not confess it herself, that was enough. Something on this level could be dressed up as sleepwalking or at most an odd habit.

With that thought, Eveline quickly turned her mind and put on a dazed expression, intending to resume her foolish act.

Thunk!

But Allen silently threw something down in front of her. It was the clothes and shoes Eveline had hidden so she could change into them whenever she went out. Faced with evidence she could not possibly deny, Eveline realized that everything had been exposed.

‘Since when did he know?’

She let out a quiet sigh, then pushed the door shut with a tap, no longer bothering with the caution she had shown just moments ago for fear of being caught by anyone.

Allen walked out from behind and came to stand in front of her. Eveline had to tilt her head up to meet his eyes.

“Duke, were you perhaps taking a stroll under the moonlight?”

Allen made a peculiar expression. She tried to examine more closely what it meant, but before she could grasp it, he had already erased it.

“I was waiting to offer advice to a wife who slips out at night so often. Fierce beasts sometimes come down from the mountain here. One may enjoy a night outing and easily end up becoming their prey.”

He had not deliberately made his expression fierce in order to frighten her, and yet the low warning he spoke in an indifferent tone sounded quite threatening. The gaze fixed squarely on her also was not intentionally forceful, but it was intense.

Whether because of the aftereffects of the long war, or because of his sense of loss, she had nearly forgotten, seeing how he had left even the ducal castle’s utter disorder untouched all this time. He was a beast of prey with its claws hidden.

Even that arrogant Henry trembled before him like an animal that had met its natural predator. The fact that he owed this dangerous man such a debt must have been choking his throat.

A chill ran down Eveline’s spine, and for the first time in a long while she felt a heavy pressure at the signal warning her of danger. Her fingertips trembled, but she hid it by clenching her fists. She had never intended this situation, but that did not mean she would collapse and sit there trembling. That would not be like her.

She hid the trembling and curved up the corners of her mouth.

“That is a very kind piece of advice. Since you shut me up in the castle and never showed your face even once, I thought I wasn’t even in your thoughts, but apparently you’ve been seeing more than I expected.”

“Perhaps more than you can imagine. I still haven’t heard an answer. It’s too late at night for an outing, so what urgent business could possibly require you to go out at this hour?”

Eveline quietly watched as he questioned her with an indifferent face. She wanted to confirm his true intentions in asking this. But she still could not read him easily. She continued probing him.

“Is it that important to you?”

“It has nothing to do with me.”

Allen added more after saying that.

“But there are many in the royal capital who would take an interest in news about you.”

At the obvious threat, Eveline clenched and unclenched her fist hard enough that her nails bit into her palm. She wanted to pry open his head and look inside right now. She had to know his intentions to respond accordingly, and yet she still did not even know why he had accepted this marriage to her.

“You seem to be overestimating me. Are there really that many people with enough free time to take an interest in a Princess who was forgotten long ago?”

“At the very least, the royal family would take notice.”

He certainly knew her weakness well. If the Queen and Countess Miller found out that they had been deceived by her all this time, then this time they would surely try to finish it for good. Eveline had no way of stopping the two of them.

‘What could he gain by reporting me?’

She started with the most basic question. 

Did that weary man truly have enough will to run all the way to the royal palace and tattle that I was not a fool?

Once her thoughts reached that point, Eveline spoke with the mindset of placing a bet.

“I didn’t know there was still loyalty left in you for the royal family that saddled a war hero with a foolish Princess. Such lofty devotion, it’s truly astonishing.”

Allen simply looked at her in silence, as though telling her to go on. What Eveline possessed more than other people was a superior survival instinct. That very survival instinct, which had kept her alive until now, was warning her that she needed to seize his interest.

Even if the method meant drawing out the claws of a beast….

“So is that why you calmly left your enemy alone, even while walking about right before your eyes?”

A crack appeared in Allen’s expression. Eveline’s heartbeat rose. She stared at Allen with the feeling that she was walking a tightrope over a high cliff.

“To think your loyalty to the royal family comes even before avenging your family….”

A large hand seized Eveline’s chin. Allen glared at her with eyes as cold as ice. If his hand moved just a little lower, it felt as though he could snap her slender neck without the slightest difficulty.

If his self-restraint had been even a little weaker, he certainly could have done so. Even knowing that a wrong word from her could get her neck broken, Eveline smiled brightly. Her survival instinct was warning her of this threatening situation, and her body too trembled as though reacting.

But rather than fear, Eveline felt exhilaration at the fact that her gamble had been successful. She twisted her lips sideways and finished the words she had left hanging.

“Your family must praise that noble spirit as well.”

“My revenge is already over.”

Allen bent his head toward her and spoke roughly. His force was so menacing that it was hard to believe he was the same person who had been so listless until now. Facing that savage intensity, Eveline felt her entire body tingling. If she had been an ordinary, weak-hearted lady, she would have fainted on the spot. But she herself was hardly normal either, smiling in a situation like this.

“Is that really so?”

Instead of retreating before the pressure closing in on her, Eveline only provoked him further.

“With my own hand, I severed the head of the enemy commander who invaded the Duchy.”

Allen lowered the hand that had been holding her chin and wrapped it around her neck. His hand was so large that it nearly enclosed it entirely. He had not tightened it, but it was already threatening enough. Eveline swallowed dryly and looked up at him.

“His neck was nearly twice as thick as yours, I think.”

As he said that, he traced the line of her throat with his thumb. Unlike an ordinary noble’s hand, his was rough. Eveline’s slippery, slender neck was far too delicate compared to that weapon-like hand.

“I swung my sword at exactly this part.”

His thumb slowly rubbed near the nape where her pulse could be felt. He was not doing this and saying these things without intention. A warning lay in his cold eyes. It might have been wiser for her to retreat here, lie flat as though dead, and submit. Perhaps he might even let tonight’s events pass as though they had all been nothing more than a one-night dream, and leave her alone.

But rather than hope for such an uncertain outcome, she chose to bring matters to a close, even if it was more dangerous. Since she had already been exposed anyway, she decided to pull him into this revenge play.

“Is that really enough for you?”

Eveline spoke in a subtle voice.

“When the very root of the whole matter is still living well and full.”

She deliberately let out a sigh as though she found it regrettable. She looked at him with understanding eyes, as though she deeply sympathized with his pain. Even though he was still holding her neck, Eveline paid it no mind at all.

“In truth, don’t you also feel empty because you know your revenge still hasn’t been completed?”

Eveline calculated that moving this man would make revenge more effective than using mere assassins. In order to persuade him, she was willing to offer up even her neck. And Allen knew that too. He removed his hand with a crooked smile.

“Or should I do as you did and feed them White Fragrance Herb?”

At those words, Eveline’s eyes widened. She had never imagined that word would come from Allen’s mouth.