Chapter 55

“I don’t usually lie if I can help it…”

The Duke trailed off.

Diane quickly softened her gaze and bowed her head again.

Unlike someone else, the Duke couldn’t even tell a lie.

She was tall, so she really wouldn’t have been light, yet he carried her up those high stairs without faltering, and she’d dared to glare at him.

Maybe being sick had made her lose her sense of propriety.

“I’ll be going now.”

She felt she needed to leave the study where she was alone with the Duke as soon as possible.

“Hmm… It’s just… As your employer, I only meant that I hope you don’t collapse in front of the child while working in my house. There’s no other meaning, none at all.”

Diane found herself biting her lower lip as she looked at the Duke’s face and listened to his words.

As an employer, he didn’t want her to collapse in front of Leon, and there was no other meaning.

Somehow, his words were both warm and stinging.

He was just a truly considerate employer, worrying about his staff.

It felt almost silly to refuse him.

She felt foolish for trying to avoid him.

If the Duke knew about the conflict in her heart, how laughable it would be.

“If I’m making you uncomfortable, I’ll get up. I thought Leon might be in the study, so I prepared some milk and a cup for him. Please have some.”

The Duke actually stood up.

“No, no! You don’t need to get up because of me.”

Diane waved her hands and approached the Duke.

It would be ridiculous to chase the master out of his own study.

The Duke hesitated for a moment, then sat back down.

Crunch.

The sound of cookies breaking in her mouth was so loud.

But perhaps it was only loud to her, as the Duke didn’t even look up from his book.

She drank the milk she had prepared for Leon as well.

She hadn’t intended to eat so much, but once she started on the cookies, she naturally reached for the milk.

She felt the milk flow down her throat into her stomach.

At the same time, she felt a refreshing energy run through her body.

It was hard to believe she’d been so sick that morning—she felt lively.

Maybe the medicine worked well, or maybe she’d slept well; in any case, she seemed to be recovering quickly.

She was never sick for long, rarely more than two days at a time.

The thought of almost collapsing in front of the Duke felt distant now.

Less than five minutes after she sat across from the Duke, half the cookies and a cup of milk were gone.

“Were you sick because you were hungry?”

The Duke suddenly spoke to Diane, who was reaching for another cookie.

Snap!

She broke the cookie she was about to pick up.

“Ah, well. I don’t know. I don’t usually get sick from skipping a meal…”

When she worked at Tertz Newspaper, she often skipped meals or ate on the go.

With only three people handling all the work, it was hard to eat on a regular schedule.

But she hadn’t gotten sick from it.

So, the fact that she started feeling ill yesterday and was still sick today probably wasn’t from hunger.

Besides, though she ate less than usual last night, Rodin had brought her soup, so she hadn’t really starved.

<I think it’s better to skip meals when you’re sick, but since I was told to bring it, I did. Decide for yourself whether to eat it.>

Rodin had said that coldly as he set down the soup bowl.

If he said it was an order, then the Duke must have told him to send the soup.

Suddenly, Diane felt a faint ache in her chest as she looked at the Duke.

Yes, she hadn’t been sick from hunger.

It was because of President Edward Wale and the kind Duke in front of her.

Of course, the Duke had done nothing wrong. It was her own fault for being swept away by his kindness and failing to guard her heart.

“Then, did Edward upset you yesterday?”

Had her feelings shown on her face?

The Duke brought up yesterday’s events.

“No.”

No, not at all. Yes, actually.

But that wasn’t all.

She hadn’t been sick only because of President Edward Wale.

It had started with the Duke, not the President.

And not just yesterday, but gradually over several days.

The Duke’s kindness seeped into her heart like oil—never mixing, never washing away.

Then, when she sat at the piano in the tea room, it wasn’t just seeping in—it had soaked her completely.

After that, when President Wale arrived and shouted, it was like throwing a lit match onto all that oil she’d soaked up.

The President’s talk of ‘prince’ was the final spark, burning down the building of her heart.

Her heart, burned by that fire, had made her body collapse.

“After that, did anything happen with Edward?”

No, nothing happened.

She’d learned something she really didn’t want to believe.

She still didn’t want to believe it.

“Your Grace.”

Before she knew it, she was calling him as if in a trance.

“Yes?”

“You said you visited Lina Orphanage before, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you happen to meet a girl there? A girl five years younger than you?”

Her resentment toward President Wale finally made her ask a question she’d never dared to voice.

President Wale had called himself a liar.

So maybe everything he’d told her was a lie.

Maybe he’d just repeated what the Duke had told him.

Even as she resigned herself to the idea that the President’s words were true, she wanted to check with the Duke directly.

Was the ‘brother’ from back then really not the Duke?

“I’m not sure. If it was an orphanage, I probably met several children. Why, did you know someone there?”

As expected…

It wasn’t the Duke.

Why had she asked, when she already knew?

It was pointless.

The Duke was her employer now, and had never had any connection to her before. She had never been special to him.

“I was there. I grew up at Lina Orphanage until I was nine. Actually, I met a ‘Brother’ there, and I thought he was you. Haha! But it turns out he wasn’t.”

“Ah…”

The Duke let out a small exclamation and then fell silent, as if he’d lost his words.

He seemed surprised to hear she’d been at an orphanage.

She’d seen that reaction often enough that it wasn’t new.

People she knew would be speechless for a moment when they learned she was from an orphanage, then say something like ‘I didn’t know’ or ‘It must have been hard,’ then act as if nothing happened and move on.

She never felt hurt by that.

She was used to it, and she knew they didn’t mean harm.

There was no reason to feel hurt alone.

Even now, if she was hurt, it was not because of the Duke’s reaction, but because she’d confirmed the prince from her past wasn’t the Duke.

She hadn’t avoided the Duke’s question and told him she’d grown up at the orphanage because she wanted him to know exactly who she was.

She didn’t want her heart to waver at his kindness anymore, not today, not yesterday, not in the past few days.

She wanted the Duke to know she was just Diane Lina, the orphaned tutor, far removed from him.

“Then…”

The Duke opened his mouth.

Now was the time for him to say, ‘It must have been hard.’

“Was the ‘Brother’ you met there Edward?”

“What?”

Diane’s eyes widened.

The Duke was saying something she hadn’t expected at all.

Why was he suddenly talking about President Wale?

Had President Edward Wale told the Duke about her?

“So it was Edward. The ‘Brother’ you met back then.”

The Duke seemed to find the answer just by looking at her face.

“So you thought it was me all this time. That’s why… Ed… said… I see.”

He kept talking, but the last part was almost a mutter, so she couldn’t make it out.

“It was just someone I met once as a child.”

Actually, it was twice. She and the President had met twice.

Diane corrected herself silently.

“Just once as a child…”

“Yes.”

Both times were memories she’d never forgotten. But there was no need to be so precise with the Duke.

Even if he had been that ‘brother,’ they would have only met twice as children. But now that the President was that ‘brother,’ whether it was once or twice, he was just someone she wanted to forget.

“It must have been a precious memory, for you to remember a single meeting for so long.”

Diane was startled by his unexpected words. That he could interpret her words that way.

“No. Precious? Not at all! It wasn’t special, and I was so young I’ve almost forgotten it. It’s really not important at all.”

She fiercely downplayed her memories, thinking of the President’s face.

Memories like that weren’t precious at all.

The Duke looked straight at her.

His gaze made her face flush.

Only then did she realize she’d reacted too strongly and emotionally about her childhood memories.