c8
'Huh. .......”
Elise let out one sigh.
Since that day, she couldn't help but think of Grace.
'I would love it if I could help protect the beautiful Elise!"
"Elise is special!"
"Even if it costs me my life, I will protect the jewel of the kingdom, Elise-sama!”
The words of Grace, the third son of the Duke of Caiman, refrain in her brain and her cheeks heat up.
These are all words that have never been said to her in her life as she has been treated as an outcast.
She clenched her fists and bit her lip.
It was not right. This man has a very bad reputation.
He has such a bad reputation that even this outcast of the royal court hears about it.
In any case, he probably plays such sweet-talking tricks on every woman he meets.
It must be so, it must be so.
Otherwise, .......
He is supposed to have a dry relation with his escort and employer.
So why is it that I am so disturbed by him .......
She moved to a window overlooking the outside.
The view from there was spectacular, and the castle town could be seen all around.
Elise had ambitions.
One of them was to survive in the royal family, where evil spirits of mountains and rivers are everywhere.
She had been the victim of assassination many times since she was a child.
And the other is--
"A child born of a commoner's lowly woman, after all. So lowly from everyday behavior!”
These were the words of Queen Isabella, who was standing beside her father when she asked for a birthday present from the king at the age of five.
"After all, when you have commoner's blood in your veins, everything you do becomes low and vulgar."
"The very existence of that girl is a disgrace to this royal family. I want her out of here as soon as possible!"
"Whatever she wears, it doesn't suit her status. It's as if a bum had wandered into the royal palace. A-ha-ha!”
As the second princess of the kingdom, she seems to have retained the image of her late mother, who was a side wife, in her appearance, and this may have further fueled the queen's hatred of her.
Her words of hatred have been hurled at her at every opportunity.
To avoid the queen's bitterness, she have been treated like a tumor in the royal court since childhood.
There was no full-time guard, and education was limited to the minimum necessary to avoid embarrassment to other countries.
The only person who stood by her side was the old steward who had served her mother before her death.
Elise had an ambition.
She wanted to take revenge on Queen Isabella, the woman who had supposedly assassinated her mother.
“Mother, I will take revenge on my enemies,”
To achieve this, Elise secretly invested the assets her mother had left her in a promising merchant, and steadily laid the groundwork for the future.
First, the outer moat. Even for the royal family, money is important, and there are countless countries in history that have perished because of money.
She intended to use whatever she could get her hands on.
Even if it was a man of bad reputation called the “ pervert ".
But did he, Grace, really do such a thing?
She could not feel even a millimeter of bad reputation from him that she had seen before this.
A woman is sensitive to the lustful gaze of a man.
But from that man, whom she had heard was a man of lust, she could not feel even the slightest hint of such a gaze or desire.
It is a little annoying that it seems that she is the only one who is aware of it, but .......
“If his bad reputation was a plot to discredit him,......
Grace is the third son of a duke, and a bastard child, too.
If that was the case, it was only natural that a bad rumor or two would be spread.
I wish it were so.
Elise could not stop herself from being drawn to Grace, even though she herself denied it.
Thus, the princess's ambition would increase one more time.