“Why… why is it the duke……?”

“My lady, which room did you go to last night? I clearly left a water pitcher in the guest bedroom…….”

“I clearly… went to the bedroom prepared for guests, too. The person there was struggling, looking like they had taken a love potion…. But why…….”

“Please describe what the person you slept with last night looked like.”

Lucille’s tone grew urgent.

“Dark black hair…….”

“Black hair?! Lord Cedric has blonde hair!”

“What……?!”

“Shh.”

At the sound of footsteps rushing down the stairs, Lucille covered Liane’s mouth with her hand and pulled them both into the shadows.

“Who in the world would try to poison the duke?”

“There must have been some misunderstanding. It gives me chills to think someone among us would dare do something so bold.”

“If it turns out it wasn’t a misunderstanding and they catch the culprit, that person is as good as dead. To think someone would dare harm the Duke of Granville…….”

The maids’ voices faded into the distance, and Lucille removed her hand from Liane’s mouth.

“My lady. We need to leave here right now.”

“……!”

“Before this gets any worse, quickly!”

Lucille grabbed Liane’s hand tightly and hurried her along, breaking into a run toward her own room.

***

“Let go of me. No matter that you are my brother, I never gave you permission for this kind of insolence.”

“Keep struggling. You must not know that the more a woman resists, the more it excites a beast of a man.”

“Please… stop……!”

The harder she tried to pull away, the tighter Arman squeezed, and the wrist he held began to ache so badly it went numb.

“Liane… you’re so beautiful…….”

“What are you—!”

Arman grabbed a strand of Liane’s hair and brought it close to his face, murmuring, and Liane felt her scalp prickle with revulsion.

No matter how hard she pushed against Arman’s shoulder with her free hand, he didn’t budge.

‘Someone… anyone passing by… please help me……!’

Of all places, Liane had come to the innermost study, where people rarely passed through.

She had thought it was the best place to enjoy reading alone, but Arman had burst in without warning, tossing out shallow jokes as he drew closer and closer, until the situation had come to him trying to knock her down onto the sofa.

Lately, Arman’s blatant stares had made her uncomfortable, and she had quietly been avoiding being alone with him, yet this had happened anyway.

When he tried to undo the top buttons of her dress that fastened all the way up to her neck and found it difficult, he yanked and tore them off, and at the sight of it, Liane’s face drained to a pale blue with fear.

As her hand flailed upward and her fingertips touched something, Liane grabbed it without even registering what it was and brought it crashing down hard onto Arman’s head.

With a sharp clatter, liquid splattered down over Arman’s head, and only when she saw a single streak of red blood run down through his hair and across his forehead did Liane realize she had struck him with a teacup.

“St… stop it! I’ll scream!”

“Ha… look at this. You dare make me bleed?”

As Arman wiped the moisture on his forehead with his sleeve and saw blood smear onto it, a flash of madness crossed his eyes.

“Who would be in more trouble if you screamed, you or me? Should I spread the word that you’ve been defiled by your stepbrother? That suits me just fine. Then I can keep you by my side as my plaything.”

Each word Arman spat out pumped up Liane’s dread a little more.

‘If I’m going to be defiled like this, I’d rather…….’

When Liane’s gaze drifted to the broken teacup shards on the floor, the study door flew open and a voice rang out.

“My lady!”

Arman and Liane both turned toward the voice at the same time.

“My lady! So you were here. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You said you would teach me the secret to embroidering wildflowers today, and I suppose you forgot.”

Even at the sight of the broken teacup pieces scattered on the floor, Lucille kept a deliberately composed smile on her face and strode over to Liane’s side.

“Ha… the mistress and the maid are just as ill-mannered as each other.”

Arman growled out the words and glared at Lucille.

Then he snatched the embroidery cloth Lucille was holding, pressed it against his wounded forehead, and walked out of the study with quick strides.

Once the sound of Arman’s footsteps faded away, Lucille finally turned around to look at Liane.

Liane held her dress closed with one hand, the buttons torn off down to her chest, and watched Lucille with an anxious expression.

“Miss Liane…….”

“Lucille…….”

Only then did the tears that had been welling in Liane’s eyes spill down her cheeks.

“I’m glad I happened to know where you were. I’m sorry I was late.”

“Sob… Lucille…….”

“And right after the count passed away, for this to happen…….”

“Arman has lost his mind. What am I going to do from now on…….”

“My lady, let’s go back to your room first. Take a hot bath, change your clothes, and we can think it through slowly.”

With Lucille attending to her as she changed, Liane finally felt her heart begin to settle.

Watching Lucille comb her hair through the mirror, Liane opened her mouth.

“Lucille. I think I need to leave this house.”

“Pardon?”

“If I stay here… I don’t think I’ll be able to protect myself. Once Arman has his way with me… it will be too late.”

“But… my lady, if you leave, you have nowhere to go.”

Liane lowered her gaze.

After her mother passed away, the count had remarried, and his new wife had brought along a son two years older than Liane.

Having grown up without siblings, Liane had treated her stepbrother Arman with respect, but for some reason she could sense that both her stepmother and Arman kept their distance from her. And then, before she had even properly adjusted to her new family, her father fell ill with an epidemic last month and passed away.

The moment her father died, her stepmother and Arman’s attitudes changed completely.

As soon as the funeral was over, her stepmother began meeting with matchmakers to look for a marriage prospect for Liane, and in the meantime, her stepbrother Arman started showing his ugly intentions toward her.

“There’s someone who was my mother’s nursemaid living in Ordelin, not far from the capital. She came to visit my mother when I was young and met me once. It’s shameless of me, but I want to try going to see her. I was hoping she might know whether there are any relatives on my mother’s side…….”

Liane’s voice grew smaller and smaller as she folded her hands in her lap, lacking confidence.

“Do you have the address?”

“There are letters she sent to my mother that are still here. The address was in them.”

In response to Lucille’s question, Liane opened the drawer of the vanity where she sat and took out a worn envelope.

Lucille took the envelope from Liane, turned it over and back, and spoke again.

“But it was quite a long time ago. I wonder whether she still lives there…….”

“I know. But with no other relatives whose whereabouts I even know, this is the only option I have right now.”

“What if you sent her a letter first?”

Liane took the envelope back at Lucille’s suggestion and let out a short sigh.

“Actually… I already sent a letter, but there was no reply.”

“Then… the chances that she’s no longer living at that address…….”

“But Lucille, I have no other choice. I just want to at least confirm whether she’s there. They won’t grant me permission for an outing that far, so I have no choice but to make it look like I’m leaving the house for good. If I come up empty-handed… I’ll have to come back in the end, but… it will still be better than sitting here doing nothing.”

Liane recalled the l*st-filled look in Arman’s eyes from that afternoon and shuddered, wrapping both arms around her shoulders.

She thought back to the terrible thought that had crossed her mind as she stared at the broken teacup shards, the thought of escaping Arman that way, and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Lucille, that’s why I have no choice but to leave this place. I…….”

“I understand, my lady.”

Lucille met Liane’s resolute gaze and answered in a few short words.

“Thank you for understanding, Lucille. I’ll plan to leave at a time that lines up with when you go out, so your absence won’t be blamed on you.”

“What are you saying? Of course we’re leaving this house together.”

“What? No, Lucille. You don’t have to go that far.”

Liane turned to Lucille in a fluster and spoke quickly, but Lucille only quietly shook her head.

***

Inside the rattling carriage, Liane watched Lucille dozing lightly and squeezed her hand with gratitude.

‘And yet, here we are, running away again…….’

After slipping out of the count’s estate in the dead of night, they had gone to the address on the letter, but no one was living there. In despair, the two had tried to make their way back to the count’s estate, but before they could even board a carriage, a pickpocket stole their bag and they lost all their travel money.

With nowhere to sleep for the night, they heard that the duke’s household was looking to hire maids, and as an immediate solution, Lucille took a position as a maid at the duke’s estate.

The Granville ducal house where Lucille found work was one of the most powerful noble families in the empire.

On the seventh day of Lucille’s work at the Granville ducal estate, she and Liane had formed a plan.

That plan had failed, and now they were riding in a carriage, running away again……

‘To think that man was the Duke of Granville…….’

Liane had fallen into deep despair upon learning that the man she had gone to the night before was the Duke of Granville. The original target of the plan Liane and Lucille had devised was Cedric, who had come to visit the Granville ducal estate that day. He was the third son of Viscount Blackburn’s family.