CH 10

Chapter 10 – Reunion (2)

Translator: Lioness

She couldn’t tell the details to Benedict, so she evaded his words. She didn’t know what he was doing inside the teahouse, but it occurred to her that Lesir might have mentioned she had gone to the jewelry store to gain Karus’s trust.

‘I can’t get caught.’

It was such a good opportunity. If she played her cards her, going to another country was a piece of cake. In addition, she got Duke Littenverk behind her back, so she was going to hold onto this jewel. She looked down and thought.

‘I can take revenge for what he did previously, too.’

Seeing Lawrence standing still there, she borrowed a pen from the clerk of the café and write a few words on her handkerchief. Benedict watched her write in shock but said nothing all and once she was done, she handed her handkerchief to him, who was behind her, and said,

“Give this to him.”

“My lady, he is a Duke from another country.”

“I know. So please pass it onto him.”

At Alice’s resolute words, Benedict stared at her face. Red eyes filled with determination made him quit hesitant. As Benedict gazed at his dark hair blowing in the wind for a moment, words of permission flowed from Benedict’s lips.

“I will do as you command.”

“Thank you.”

Alice watched from above until Benedict, went downstairs to meet Lawrence. After receiving the handkerchief from Benedict, Lawrence looked up. Lawrence’s blue eyes and Alice’s red eyes collided in the air. Alice raised the corners of her mouth, returning her beaming smile to Lawrence, who looked at her with her eyes filled with doubts.

‘I’ve got my eye stamped, I’m good to go.’

She didn’t need anything more. The situation had been prepared and what she had to wait for was the banquet day. It doesn’t matter if Karus found out that she was the one who took the jewel. He wouldn’t be able to take the jewel with Marquis Hamilton protecting her.

‘Does he have proof?’

It was enough to say double. The only person who saw her take the jewels was the clerk at the jewelry store, who wouldn’t be able to recognize if her clothes was changed. No, even if she brought her up, she wouldn’t be able to point her out.

“That jeweler, it’s my family’s.”

Alice’s smiling face shone brightly.

When Benedict returned, Alice offered a seat in front of her. Her faithful escort knight declined her offer, but she could not overcome Alice’s stubbornness. There were strange glances around her at the lady dressed as a commoner and the escort knight sitting opposite each other, but Alice didn’t care.

“Miss.”

“Yes?”

“Why did you do that?”

Alice’s smile grew wider at Benedict’s question. Coming out of the Marquis House was full of fun. She had been living happily in her room before that, but when her original story was over, the whole world was beautiful.

“Just because.”

“Did you just say that?”

“I just wanted to.”

“To do so…”

“Wouldn’t that be something I, Duke Lawrence Littenverk, would have to accept anyway, even if I wanted to?”

Benedict’s head nodded. The sunlight warmly embraced Alice, and the leisurely teatime with the friendly escort knight passed like that.

****

Lawrence continued to look at the handkerchief as if he had been waiting for him when he was in trouble. He didn’t look up until his aide, Flein, asked what was going on.

“What about diamonds, did you only bring a woman’s handkerchief?”

“Because something happened.”

He was in a bad mood, feeling like a joke right now. The writing on the handkerchief said that if he wanted to get what he wanted, he should be her escort for the third day of the banquet. It was written by a young lady from a noble family, someone Lawrence had heard of and seen. The woman he had just met.

‘Alice Hamilton.’

The culprit who humiliated the Crown Princess in public, made her cry at her birthday party, and now the culprit asked him to ask her to be her escort. His expression grew serious that his aide, Baron Flender shut his mouth. Externally, people knew him as good-natured, but few could guess his true intentions. He was an unpredictable person. And that was Lawrence Littenverk.

‘Escort?’

He was the one who had entrusted the jeweler to set the Diamond of Abyss and now the person who had taken it from him was making demands. It was unbelievable. Dumbfounded, Lawrence didn’t dare tell his men that he’d been taken advantage of. It was a matter of his pride.

‘There was no way.’

What was more serious was that he had no choice but to comply with such an absurd request. She was a person who would never give the diamond of the abyss if he did not grant her request. Didn’t he see her in the garden? She was the woman who made the Crown Princess cry and laughed happily. Also, in the pastry shop. Just looking at her, she was above average.

‘Plus, she could be the Imperial Princess.’

There was a possibility that she was the princess, so he couldn’t ignore it either. Wrinkles formed between Lawrence’s eyebrows, and Plein, his aide, slipped outside. The superficial reason was to recheck the place where the knights were staying, but the real reason was that he didn’t want to deal with Lawrence who was angry.

“Right.”

He sat for a long time, tapping his fingers on his desk. It was Lawrence’s habit when he was deep in thought. Feelings of arrogance and resentment swirled through hiim. But he was also intrigued, curious to know what kind of person the Young Lady was who had driven him to this point.

‘She’s a different person than how public evaluated her.’

This was the rumor about Alice Hamilton. She was the bane of the Marquis of Hamilton. The only thing she had, worthy of her prestige as the cherished daughter of a wealthy marquis, was money. A reclusive daughter of the Hamilton family, who has the title of Marquis but was not treated as a noble by other nobles, either.

However, the evaluation in the family was a little different. Before coming to the Erha Empire, Lawrence, who had researched all the noble ladies of the empire, collected information so as not to miss a single detail. The evaluation in the house were apparition. However, the young lady who received such an evaluation pushed him to an unavoidable proposal.

“Different.”

She was a completely different person from what he had heard.

“It was just a trick…”

Then the story was different. Lawrence, he also uses gossip as a gimmick. The appearance of Alice at the banquet hall was rumored, but even if her appearance was a trick, she was a great person. How can a person who uses other people’s eyes to hide himself be normal?

“Is there anything a young lady would do that much?”

The Hamilton Marquis family had some money and the title of Marquis, so it was a family that could play and eat for the rest of their lives. But why would a young lady from such a family do something to shame herself?

As he thought again and again, the sun was setting before he knew it. The conclusion has already been reached. He couldn’t pass by someone who piqued his curiosity to this extent.

“I need to meet her.”

Normally, Lawrence would not listen to such outrageous demands. There were not one or two young ladies who challenged him as a duke. He pretended to be courteous and polite, but since refusal was the limit, he pretended not to have received the letters from the young ladies at all. The daughters of the Nakran Empire, ignorant of the facts, made Flein, his aide, a public enemy.

Despite knowing all of this, Lawrence remained ignorant in public. Lawrence didn’t care even though he knew how stressed Flein was when he couldn’t stand the girls’ annoyance. His day was too busy to pay attention to such things.

Lawrence Littenverk was not as nice a person as the world was knew him for. Was it really a gain or a loss for him to show his interest in Alice and harden his heart to meet her?

****

Alice stopped by another jewelry store to buy jewels for Stella, the crown princess, and arrived at the marquis’s house in a happy mood. It was a forced outing with the determination to meet people from other empires, but the result was greater than expected. The man she met at the bakery shop and the jewelry shop!

‘It’s Lawrence Littenverk!’

It was a success even ifs he met only a nobleman who had just participated in the banquet, but she asked Lawrence Littenverk as an escort.

“Is something going smoothly?”

It seemed to be paying off her hard work for the past four years. She intended to attend the banquet with Lawrence and talk. Banquet partners can be together for a long time, so there was plenty of time to talk.

‘He has to take me there somehow.’

As soon as Alice came here four years ago, she asked the Marquis of Hamilton to set up a plan to open the Marquis’ shop in the Nakran Empire. She recommended her to be in charge of the shop, but the marquis didn’t bat an eye. Instead, he got angry and repeated that he couldn’t let her go to the Nakran Empire.

He didn’t tell her why, and only kept repeating that she couldn’t go, so Alice tried to find another way. However, there was no place in the Erha Empire that Marquis Hamilton could not see. For the day they left for the Nakran Empire, it took them to borrow a carriage or a horse. It took him to find money and hire mercenaries.

Since she couldn’t go outside himself, she had no choice but to collect money in her magic bag and buy things. So, she gave up and decided to wait. Until the very end of the original story.