Diana attended the banquet and gazed at the knight standing beside the Emperor, smiling contentedly to herself.

An engagement to the man she admired! Every time she remembered that he was her man, a smile naturally appeared on her lips.

As the captain of the Imperial Knights, he often attended banquets for work, which meant they rarely had opportunities to dance together.

Still, it was fine. Just being able to see his face from afar made her happy.

Even while dancing with other men, Diana’s gaze remained fixed on her fiancé. The young ladies who noticed her stare looked back and forth between Diana and her fiancé, their eyes full of envy as they watched the pair.

He was undoubtedly the most sought-after man in high society, and since he had never interacted with anyone before, this reaction was only natural.

“It must be just a formal engagement, don’t you think?”

“Exactly. It’s just a political marriage.”

Some young ladies who envied Diana mocked her, claiming she had used power to claim him.

Since the engagement had been pushed through unilaterally, Diana couldn’t refute their words.

They seemed to think the relationship could easily be broken before marriage. She couldn’t deny this either. Since their words weren’t wrong, hearing them felt like nails being driven into her chest.

Though she knew this, Diana felt these stares every time she attended a banquet, making her both happy and sad about her engagement to the man she loved. Naturally, her anxiety grew stronger.

She couldn’t even tell if she was smiling properly at banquets where she should be laughing. Yet Diana had to smile. Showing her anxious state would only give them more ammunition.

But her heart couldn’t comply. Her chest fluttered so much she could barely breathe. She feared others might hear her heartbeat.

If she stayed in the banquet hall any longer, her heart might burst, so she needed a moment of rest. Diana left the banquet hall and walked quickly down the corridor. Just as she reached the lounge, someone grabbed her wrist.

Diana was about to scream in surprise, but…

“Shh!”

Recognizing that the person was her fiancé, Diana quickly covered her mouth and nodded. He smoothed her disheveled hair and smiled gently.

“I’m glad we can meet like this, even briefly.”

The man carefully lifted Diana’s hand and lightly pressed his lips to the back of it before pulling away.

“Then please enjoy the rest of your evening.”

Ten seconds. Though truly brief, just being able to have this conversation made her happy. It was enough to quickly forget the mockery of others.

However, if there was one thing she found disappointing, it was why he kissed her hand. It would be nice if he kissed her lips instead.

Diana gazed at the spot where her fiancé had stood moments before and let out a deep sigh.

“Haah…”

She had no complaints about the engagement. Rather, being engaged to him felt like living in a dream. A dream she never wanted to wake from.

Whatever he did, Diana was prepared to accept it. But her fiancé didn’t move according to her thoughts.

If anything, the problem was that he cherished her too much. He maintained appropriate boundaries, and while it would be better if he did so because he thought of her as precious, that wasn’t the only reason.

This distance he kept was surely because it was a one-sided engagement without any feelings involved.

‘No matter what others say, even if they call me lonely, he’s still my fiancé. So I shouldn’t worry about it.’

Diana tried to push away her negative thoughts. Wasn’t he originally a man she couldn’t even dare to covet?

Since they had no connection, she had planned to keep her feelings for him to herself.

But those feelings changed when an incident occurred that completely shook her life. Something utterly unimaginable and absurd.

Because Diana’s original husband wasn’t her current fiancé, but a different man entirely.

* * *

Heavy raindrops fell with a pitter-patter. Listening to the loud sound of rain in the pitch-black darkness, Diana stared blankly at the ceiling.

She lay in bed with swollen eyes, continuously shedding tears. Except when sleeping, she cried so much that tears obscured her vision. Despite shedding so many tears, they showed no sign of stopping.

Diana had been in this state ever since losing her parents in a carriage accident recently. The shock had even caused her to miscarry, making her feel like she was living but not truly alive. What reason was there to live in a world filled only with despair?

However, as the Duchess of Winchester, she had a duty to protect the family, so she had to live somehow. She had to force herself to live.

Though she had lost her child now, she had to overcome this somehow while thinking of the baby angel that might come again next time.

Every night she would fall asleep after firmly resolving her heart, but tonight she felt strange. Why could she sense an unfamiliar presence in the room filled only with deep darkness and silence?

She was about to go to sleep when, on a whim, she lit a candle and was startled. A woman holding a blade in her hand was staring at Diana with hateful eyes.

A voluptuous figure. A woman exuding a seductive aura. Diana definitely knew who she was.

“What are you doing in the middle of the night without saying anything? If you were going to enter my room, you should have at least made some noise.”

Though she knew this wasn’t a situation to act leisurely, Diana tried to maintain her composure. But the other party didn’t seem inclined to do the same.

“You’re quite a light sleeper, Your Grace. Though I suppose after what you’ve been through, you wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully.”

Her tone was completely different from usual. Her voice, which normally overflowed with coquettishness and was full of nasal sounds, wasn’t like that now. It had dropped low, like she had become a different person. It was a voice Diana had never heard before.

“I thought you’d take your own life, but you’re more persistent than I expected. How troublesome.”

Seeing her grumbling appearance, an ominous thought flashed through Diana’s mind.

Hadn’t she lost all her precious people at once? Wouldn’t everyone think it natural if she took her own life in such a situation? The other party seemed to be aiming for exactly that.

Diana urgently called out the other’s name.

“Charlotte!”

“Don’t call my name anymore. It’s no longer a name you can use freely. After you die, I’ll become the Duchess.”

Duchess? Could she possibly mean…

“Don’t tell me you were Clive’s mistress?”

“That’s right. I’m Duke Winchester’s mistress. How foolish of you not to know even that until now.”

Charlotte’s mocking laughter echoed through the quiet room.

Shocked, Diana’s pupils shook unsteadily. Her eyes gradually grew more intense as she looked at Charlotte with narrowed eyes.

She remembered when she first saw her. A pretty appearance and a voluptuous figure that immediately captured attention.

She looked like someone who preferred playing with men over work, but thinking it wrong to judge people by appearance, Diana had hired her as a maid. 

In reality, contrary to her first impression, she worked diligently, so Diana had thought she had been prejudiced against Charlotte.

But that wasn’t the case.

Charlotte had definitely come here targeting Clive from the beginning. And he had fallen for her seduction.

It wasn’t that Diana hadn’t expected her husband to have a mistress. She had often felt something was off.

The subtle fragrance emanating from his shirts. His suddenly changed clothing style. Her husband spending less and less time with her under the excuse of being busy. There were several other suspicious signs, but she had pretended not to notice because she wanted to trust her husband.

Since protecting the Winchester family came first, she had even considered turning a blind eye to his mistress.

But she had no idea that person was Charlotte. Moreover, that she would even threaten her life. Would she abandon human decency for her goals?

Meeting Charlotte’s murderous gaze, a chilling coldness swept down Diana’s spine.

She couldn’t die unjustly like this. Die for whose benefit? To survive, she needed help. Weren’t there maids and servants who had come to the villa with her?

“Is there anyone outside?”

If this were the Winchester estate, she couldn’t call them since they used different floors, but the villa was different. Among the employees, those of higher rank used the same floor as Diana. So if they weren’t heavy sleepers, they would wake up from the commotion.

“Screaming won’t help. Everyone is on Duke Winchester’s side, so there’s no one to help you.”

But such hopes were cruelly crushed the moment words of despair flowed from Charlotte’s mouth.

“What do you mean…”

Diana stopped speaking and thought of the maids and servants who had come to the villa with her. Come to think of it, except for Charlotte, none of them were close to Diana.

Now that she thought about it, there had been a reason why her personal maid Marie had suddenly fallen ill with food poisoning the day before departure and couldn’t come. 

Judging by the current situation, someone had definitely fed her spoiled food to prevent her from coming to the villa.

The knights who were loyal to Diana also hadn’t come, which was undoubtedly because Clive had taken some measures.