Chapter 122

“A bastard?”

Nerys’s eyes narrowed slightly.

The marquis didn’t even realize he’d been holding unnatural eye contact with her for some time. Still, he felt a chill on instinct—a strange sense that he might be devoured at any moment.

But by whom, and for what reason?

A pair of violet eyes shone, as if seeing straight through him. The marquis felt that he shouldn’t resist even such a brief question. And to justify that feeling to himself, he made up reasons.

A skilled agent from the Elandria family—yes, if he won their cooperation, his own house would receive better treatment… Catherine was brazen, so a closer partnership with the advisor was needed…

So it seemed reasonable to reveal the Grand Duke’s weakness. Yes, it was the logical choice.

The marquis creaked open his mouth like an old door.

“Edith was my real daughter’s name. That wench who married into this castle and died doesn’t even deserve to have her name spoken. That bastard took my daughter’s place in marriage.”

“She was still Your Excellency’s child, wasn’t she?”

“Strictly speaking, yes… But she was born to a lowly maid—a cunning woman who caught my eye hoping to better her lot. My wife gave her a beating, and I thought she was gone, but she showed up with a child. I couldn’t kill a baby already born, so I gave her some money and a house. The child grew up cheeky. She became a headache. Then, right before the day my real daughter was to be wed to the north, Edith died.”

“That must have been difficult for you.”

“Difficult? Of course. Edith… my beloved daughter… Imagine the rage of having the glory that should have been hers stolen by a filthy bastard. Someone who couldn’t even touch the hem of my daughter’s dress.”

He’d made the child himself, so how could he call her filthy? Nerys gently pressed him to continue.

“Please go on. The deceased real daughter and the former Grand Duchess were both Your Excellency’s children. But your true daughter was born to your wife, and you couldn’t feel affection for the former Grand Duchess because she wasn’t.”

“She wasn’t exactly a stranger. But she never meant anything to me. If I hadn’t had to send a daughter to that mad Grand Duke for my own lands’ sake, she never would have…”

“I see.”

The marquis blinked several times, then forced the anger back into himself. The room was quiet, so he exaggerated his own senses to keep that anger alive.

“Anyway, wasn’t I the boy’s own grandfather? He looks so much like his mother, he doesn’t even recognize his own blood!”

Looks just like her mother?

Saying he “couldn’t kill a baby already born,” but then sending that same daughter to marry a stranger—those were strange words from a supposed father.

He hadn’t said it outright, but Nerys could imagine the situation. She herself had become a similar kind of sacrifice.

What could a parentless child do in a marriage alliance between great houses? Especially if she depended on the one forcing her to marry? The word “family” was a sweet temptation that could only deceive.

‘So the former Grand Duchess put too much stock in blood, didn’t she?’

Nerys had intended to end the topic here, but the marquis’s phrasing bothered her. She frowned, meeting his gaze.

“What do you mean, ‘doesn’t recognize his own blood’? Did the former Grand Duchess dare treat her own father rudely?”

She’d expected him to answer boldly as before, but the marquis hesitated at this question.

There was more to the story. To push him, she put on a look of pity.

“You poor thing, how hard it must have been to keep that to yourself all this time. If you tell me, I’m sure you’ll feel much better.”

“…Yes…”

The marquis’s eyes went vacant again for a moment.

“…It’ll make me feel better.”

“Of course.”

“My own son doesn’t know this. I’m telling you alone… She, she learned a ‘skill.’”

Among the nobility, when someone said a lowborn relative had learned a ‘skill,’ it usually meant training for unofficial house work, such as assassination or fraud.

‘The shadow division.’

Nerys’s heart went cold. How many families would treat their bastards or daughters like trash, yet squeeze every drop of value from their blood?

She could almost guess what he’d say next. She wanted to close her eyes.

But she couldn’t—not if she wanted to keep using the Jeweled Eyes. So she watched the marquis’s face as he confessed everything, not with guilt, but with nothing but spite.

“She was supposed to kill her husband at the right time. But that lowborn fool didn’t know her place and fell in love with the idiot. She even let her identity slip! So I cleaned it up. If a beast like that disobeyed my orders and acted on her own, who knows when she’d point a knife at me!”

❖ ❖ ❖

Lost in confusion, Nerys stared up at the ceiling.

She couldn’t remember how her tea time with the marquis had ended. Maybe he’d been busy and she’d just sent him away. She needed time alone to process what she’d heard.

Now, at the end of her day, she lay in bed by herself.

Edith Tipion.

She’d never cared about Edith’s background since the woman was already dead and her origins were clear. But there had always been one strange thing that stuck in her mind.

“…There was something we were supposed to do together. At least, I thought so. I thought she wanted the same thing I did, but maybe not.”

When Nerys was still a first-year, she’d once found Cledwyn in the woods, and he’d said exactly that.

Until now, she’d assumed the events six years ago were simply the result of the marquis’s short-sighted choices.

Given the personalities involved, Abelus was probably the mastermind, with the marquis as a willing collaborator—he had the right connections and could easily be convinced or pressured. It was a matter of either cooperating or facing the wrath of the imperial family.

Even the highest nobility were still human. She’d assumed the marquis had struggled with the decision. If Cledwyn had inherited the Grand Duchy and united the north, there would have been great benefits as the Grand Duke’s only family and confidant.

But the marquis had chosen to betray his grandson. No matter how much he struggled, his final decision was betrayal, and Nerys had no intention of pitying him for it. If you decide to gamble, you can’t complain about losing.

But now, she thought differently.

Maybe there was another reason the Marquis of Tipion gave up on his grandson so easily.

Perhaps he wanted to uproot the child of the daughter he’d killed, to prevent any chance of future revenge.

‘Disgusting.’

Yes, now she understood.

Even among nobles, people treated their children in all sorts of ways. Some loved their children more than their own lives, others felt nothing, others showed favoritism.

Some cared more for the eldest, some for sons, some for the children of a second marriage… The variations were endless, but the marquis’s kind of attitude was the most common.

Children from a formal marriage were “real children.” Children from mistresses were property.

‘What a joke.’

It’s not like the child asked to be born to a mistress. Nerys only half believed the marquis’s claim that the maid was “trying to better her lot.”

By imperial law, children born out of wedlock didn’t officially exist. Even a bastard of the emperor couldn’t claim a single coin of inheritance. All they could hope for was their parent’s charity.

But what woman, working as a maid in someone else’s house, would risk having a child for some vague hope? Especially in the house of someone like Hudis Tipion, whom she must have known at least a little?

‘Of course, there are people who act without thinking…’

The Edith Tipion that Ellen remembered and Catherine performed was a strong and gentle woman. She didn’t seem to take after the marquis, so perhaps her mother was such a person.

A woman who hadn’t wanted a child destined to bear a lifetime’s stigma, but who raised her with strength and kindness.

Catherine had imitated a good-natured country girl who’d grown up with such a woman.

‘How much does Cledwyn know?’

What was that “thing” he and the marquis had meant to do together six years ago?

The former Grand Duchess, who’d collapsed in the greenhouse and died—she must have been ill, Nerys had thought. But maybe not.

‘Poison?’

If the former Grand Duke loved her, he wouldn’t have let her murder go unpunished. The people of this land were too fierce for that; revenge would have come before anything.

Yet the Marquis of Tipion had visited Maindulante so brazenly, and young Cledwyn had trusted him until six years ago. There was no evidence or even reasonable suspicion tying the marquis to the Grand Duchess’s death.

‘But the perpetrator themselves might still be nervous.’

And perhaps Cledwyn had his own suspicions. Maybe he believed the imperial family was behind his mother’s death.

It would be a nightmare for the imperial family if the Marquis of Tipion and the Grand Duke of Maindulante joined forces.

From here on, it was speculation. But Nerys thought it worth considering.

A high noble with vast lands of his own, coming to meddle in another’s domain—what reason, except perhaps a desire to erase the traces of a crime committed long ago?

There were a few questions to answer in this theory. For instance, if there really was evidence of the marquis’s crime somewhere in the castle—

First, if he suspected evidence existed, why hadn’t he destroyed it long ago, right after the Grand Duchess died? Why try now, more than ten years later?

Second, if evidence existed, wouldn’t the people of this castle have found it already?

Nerys thought she knew the answer. It was still only a hypothesis, but—

‘A place neither the marquis nor the castle residents could enter until recently. If someone just now managed to get in, and the news had just reached him, he might well come for a look.’

She suddenly sat up and pulled the bell cord. A moment later, Dora entered.

“Yes, miss. Madam is asleep.”

“That’s not what I called for. Call Ellen and tell her to meet me in the former Grand Duchess’s bedroom. And bring an axe.”

Nerys had pretended to be an agent of the Elandria family to ally with the Marquis of Tipion, planning to use him to get various things done.

But now, she no longer wanted to do that.

Someone who’d manufactured a person, used her, forced her into terrible acts, then killed her—someone who used her shadow even to control her own child. She couldn’t let such a person rest easy for even a moment longer.

But first, everything had to be certain.