Chapter 3
Bestia pretended to be weak with tears streaming down her face as her brother seemed to be cornered. Her fine blonde hair glided down her shoulders.
“Hic! Please stop it.”
“Bestia, don’t cry.”
When the Grand Duke soothed her, she continued.
“Your Grace, my brother is a person who is more passionate about teaching than anyone else.”
“Yes, I know the Baron’s character very well.”
“That’s right. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. The Grand Princess must have come in late and blamed it on the outcome without knowing the situation.”
“Misunderstand… ”
“My brother told me that the Grand Prince didn’t study well and lied. It can be embarrassing to refuse corporal punishment.”
“…”
“Perhaps it was meant to be a simple corporal punishment. Everyone is like that, right?”
The Grand Duke was speechless. She assumed that he agreed with her. That’s stupid.
‘You dig your own grave.’
I asked her sensibly.
“Do you mean that it is natural for a tutor to beat a student?”
“If necessary. When I was young, I was often beaten by my Madam, but I never thought of it as abuse. Because it was a love hawk!”
Lady Locke vomited a dramatic voice like the main character in a play, sinking deeper into the Grand Duke’s arms.
The skill that was combined with my experience was superb. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to know that it stimulated the Grand Duke even more.
‘Yeah. Goodbye, Grand Duke’s Passing Lover 1.’
I expressed my condolences lightly. After a while, he gently separated her from himself.
“Your Grace?” Bestia looked at him in surprise. It was because the Grand Duke’s face had hardened all of a sudden.
“Go for today. You’re tired.”
When he gave a congratulatory order, Bestia only blinked her eyes.
She hadn’t even seen him scolding me yet, but she was dumbfounded when he told her to go back.
“Hold on a second, Your Grace. Am I going like this? Really?”
Normally, she would have been happy if Locke would tremble, but not now. Grand Duke Hadellus coldly dismissed it.
“You should go.”
“I don’t want to! You promised that you would punish the Grand Princess!”
His gaze changed as Bestia shook her head and begged.
“Lady Locke, since when did you vomit and reject my words?”
“That, that… ”
At the changed atmosphere, Bestia flinched. But she already spilled the water.
“I must have liked the Lady too much.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want you to enter my castle from now on. I’ll clean up the rooms you used to live in every time you come here.”
“L-Like that!” She trembled like a person who heard a sound like a thunderbolt.
When the Grand Duke shook his head, his aide, who was waiting near him, spoke politely to her.
“Come on, Lady Locke.”
“Not allowed to enter the castle? What does that mean, Grand Duke?!”
It means, I’m going to stop having fun with you now.
I twitched the corners of my lips as if I was watching a house on fire.
“Take her out.”
“Yes. Your Grace.”
The servants, who had been floating around, responded quickly and drew out Lady Locke.
“Grand Duke! How could the Grand Duke do this to me!” Bestia pleaded with her tears, but he didn’t listen.
I hummed inside as I watched Bestia being dragged away by the servants.
She just made a huge mistake.
She only knew how to decorate her face, but she had been standing on the precarious blade of a sword since she didn’t care about what the Grand Duke was doing.
Even after witnessing the recent incidents of child abuse and corporal punishment, the Grand Duke wouldn’t be able to condone it under the pretext of being his lover’s brother.
Perhaps he was afraid that this would leak out, that’s why he shut the mouths of Locke siblings and tried to get them out.
Love is love, work is work. No matter how free-spirited the Grand Duke’s lower part was, he didn’t need a lover to interfere with his work.
In addition, the fact that Lady Locke’s whining had become too annoying recently also played a part.
It was like he was getting tired of it, and he provided a place to sit on his own.
‘Phew, this will solve one thing for those siblings.’
In the original story, the Grand Duchess learned of Akid’s abuse and threatened the Grand Duke to obtain the mine.
But now, the Grand Duke found out first by chance.
Originally, the Grand Duchess had planned to mess with the Grand Duke, but what does it matter? At the moment, my husband was being beaten and I had to stop it.
I giggled inwardly, hiding the corners of my lips that were about to go up.
Akid looked at me strangely, but he lifted his hand. Then the Grand Duke called me.
“Daughter-in-law.”
“Yes. Father.”
“This matter… ”
“Please don’t worry. I won’t even open my mouth.”
When I responded cleverly, the Grand Duke shrugged.
“Then both of you, go away.”
“I’ll go out, then.” Akid greeted him politely and stood up from his seat.
“Yes, Father! Have a good night!”
The Grand Duke’s eyes narrowed at my cheerful greeting. Suddenly, he wondered why I was so friendly.
I thought he would be terrified if I even gave him a goodnight kiss like this. I shrugged my shoulders, grabbed Akid’s hand and exclaimed cheerfully.
“Come on, Honey!”
Then again, Akid stared blankly at his grasped hand. The Grand Duke also seemed very surprised by my actions.
‘Oh right. Our concept of a bad couple.’
I was happy that I had dealt with the Locke siblings, so I acted friendly without thinking.
Besides,
Honey
. Loena never called Akid that much.
‘I just said what came out of my mouth.’
Even before I met him, I couldn’t fix my habit of saying ‘honey’, ‘you’, and ‘mine’.
It was also a little strange to let go of the hand I was holding now. So I decided to act as if I was wearing an iron mask.
Rather than pulling my hand out, I fixed it correctly.
Then, smiling bashfully with an innocent expression, the Grand Duke said:
“Since when did you two… ”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. It’s no wonder since you’re a couple. Just go out now.”
The Grand Duke waved his hand dryly. I bowed once more and left the room with Akid.
He was silent as he walked down the hallway. And when we arrived at the bedroom.
“What are you thinking?” Akid asked me with a hard face.
“What do you mean what am I thinking? Is it a problem for me to protect my husband?”
“That’s not what I meant… ” He frowned, unable to continue his words.
It was very incomprehensible that I was suddenly trying to protect him.
Well, I didn’t mean to cause my character to collapse in this way.
I was going to approach him slowly, but what should I do when the Baron made me angry?
After a while, Akid asked calmly. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“What?”
“The way you provoke Lady Locke.”
Akid made a point as if he didn’t want to change the subject. But I blinked my eyes and pretended.
“What do you mean by provoke? Didn’t I just act as usual?”
Normally, Loena used to do this kind of bullying when she was bored, right?
When I responded to him as he was asking why, he was unable to continue. A confused expression was evident in his eyes.
I felt a little sorry for him, who doubted the other person’s intentions despite such small consideration.
“Are you okay where you got hurt? Fortunately, I think you treated it as I said.”
As I tried to reach for his forehead, he grabbed my hand lightly to stop me.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll see and decide whether it’s okay or not.”
“Why are you doing this all of a sudden? Didn’t you hate me, Wife?”
His blue-grey eyes fluttered shallowly through his black hair. His hand was so careful that it seemed to fall off with the slightest movement. His tone of voice was cold, but he thought of his wife more than anyone else.
Because he had a sense of debt to marry a young child through an unwanted arranged marriage.
Loena Hadellus knew his weak heart, and she strayed around at will and tormented him.
‘If it were me, I would have understood his heart well… ’
It was rather suspicious to deny that I had never hated anything throughout the year after marriage. I immediately admitted it.
“That’s right. I hate Akid… I did.”
Seeing him with a hard expression on his face when I said I didn’t like it, my heart ached. And before he opened his mouth, I made a clear explanation.
“But not anymore. I hope you believe this.”
“…Didn’t you try to drown yourself because you hate me? Because your husband is an illegitimate child, and you don’t want to be around me.”
Akid muttered words that were difficult to put into his own mouth. It looked very difficult that his lower lip trembled.
He was right. Loena Hadellus hated him very much as he was. Just because he’s an illegitimate child.
And the day she drowned, I became Loena. Even though I possessed her, the truth hasn’t changed.
“That’s what happened.”
“How do you think I felt when I saw my wife in the water?”
Akid clenched his fists as if he was angry at my reaction.
“Even my wife hates me although I don’t want her to. Yet now she wants to kill herself. How miserable are you planning to make me feel?”
Akid lifted his head vividly, covered his eyes with his hand to catch his breath.
“Hold on, Akid… ”
I was bewildered that he seemed noticeably agitated.
He stretched out his hand to calm the somewhat overheated atmosphere, but he pulled himself back. He didn’t stop talking.
“Don’t confuse people like you did today.”
I thought he was going into his bedroom with those words, but he came back and held out a document.
“I will do as you wish. Take it. It’s what you wanted, Wife.”
“This is… ”
“Divorce papers. Any amount of alimony you want… ”
“I can’t do that.”
I tore apart the divorce papers before he could even finish speaking. I forgot to chop it up into small pieces to avoid recycling.
White paper fell to the floor like snow. When Akid saw my actions like that, his eyes widened.
I declared to Akid, who couldn’t say anything in embarrassment.
“You can never get a divorce. I don’t want a divorce.”
Emergency alarms began to sound in my head.
Non-refundable, non-refundable, against divorce!