The Devilish Duke Can’t Sleep

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Too hasty

Kahel said yesterday that relatives should not know that Lena is Kahel’s close maid.
He was of marriageable age and if he had a girl around him, no matter how the fact that she was a maid and was serving him, everyone would react sensitively.

Lena also tried to pretend she didn’t know Kahel as much as she could, as she didn’t want to be portrayed as an insolent girl who dared to flirt with the Duke.

“Right, are you okay after you got hit earlier?”

Mariela frowned and looked at Lena’s face.
She must have been seriously injured before, but now she looks so good, her eyes are mixed with suspicion.

“Because I allowed the two of them to meet for nothing, so I just blessed her with healing, so she’s probably okay.”

In response to Kahel’s seemingly indifferent answer, Mariela nodded her head.

“She pretended to be a precocious and pitiful girl, who knew she was such a savage miss?”

“Well, if she had been a weak woman, she wouldn’t have been brought by Liddell.
She is the trump card that Liddell brought to attack me, how can she be easy?”

“Ha! You don’t know how much my teeth trembled when I looked at it from the side.
Liddell is becoming more and more like her father day by day.
How could she be so shameless with that innocent face?”

Kahel just laughed.
He didn’t think that Liddell’s attitude was bad.
If she is the heir who will lead the Duke family, she must make the most of her strengths and know how to gracefully attack her enemies.
As a result, Liddell is doing well enough to maintain an angelic image while using a mean move.
He was also using his appearance and devilish powers, so he was not in a position to criticize Liddell.

“Anyway, I’m sorry for the disturbance at Aunt’s tea party.
I should have looked more closely.”

“Oh! Why is that your fault? It’s because of the person who came here with the intention of starting a fight.
And don’t worry too much.
The people who came today seemed to enjoy the situation earlier.
Besides, it’s not a bad result, since Liddell fell for it.”

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Mariela snorted and drank her tea.
A high-ranking noble to the bone, she drank her tea and made no noise.
Lena glanced at it with surprise in her heart.
But Mariela felt Lena’s gaze, so she suddenly called Lena,

“Oh! The name…… Was it Ena?”

 

“It’s Lena, madam.”

“Yes, Lena.
Do you have any close relatives?”

“No.
There is not.”

“Ummm…… Did you say you were a commoner maid?”

“Yes…….”

Mariela seemed to be lost in her thoughts again after asking that.
Not only Lena, but also Kahel swallowed a gulp.
He wanted to defend Lena by saying that she was a better child than any nobleman, but he didn’t know what the quick-witted Mariela would doubt.

“Kahel.
Why did you put this child in the close maid’s position? Of course, there are cases where commoners become close maids these days, but she could have just been left as a normal maid.”

Mariela’s question was natural.
As the status of commoners gradually improved, close maids from commoners were occasionally seen.
But even so, most of them had worked as maids for many years before they caught the eye of their master, and it was rare to hire a commoner they didn’t know well like Lena as a close maid.

Kahel took the teacup and wet his mouth, pretending to be calm.

“At that time, some of the maids in the mansion had left, so the seats were vacant.
Moreover, the dead Baron’s couple disguised this child as their own daughter and tried to marry her to Viscount Delroins instead of their biological daughter.
Arder said it would be no problem to have her as a close maid, so I just wanted to use someone who was willing to listen rather than the noble ladies filled with all sorts of ulterior motives.”

“What? They dressed her up as their daughter and tried to marry her off? No, wait… If it was Viscount Delroins, was he not a man who had reached the age of fifty?”

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“Yes.”

“Then, they want to get a connection with Viscount Delroins, but they don’t want to let their own daughter go, so they want to throw an innocent commoner girl to the pervert?”

“It seemed so.”

“What kind of people are that? Oh my gosh, you must have suffered a lot, too.”

 

Mariela looked at Lena again and gave her a pitiful look.

“It’s all in the past.
Every day I have fun in the Duke’s residence.
His Excellency has bestowed me with great grace.”

“Ahh, our Kahel is a kind person.
Hmmm.
Anyway, the child who used to be a close maid can’t be called a normal maid any more, and the fact that the close maid of the Duke is a commoner is something that other people will find fault with…….”

Kahel thought ahead of time how to say no to Mariela when she brought up an adoption story.
But she put a suggestion in her mouth in a completely different direction.

“Kahel.
How about appointing this child as secretary to the Duchess? Of course, in a mansion where the Duchess is vacant, it is nothing more than a formality, but the Duchess’ secretary can receive the title of a Baronet like a junior knight of the family.”

As he listened to Mariela, he remembered something vaguely similar.
It was the royal family’s authority in the end, but giving the title of a Baronet to the main vassal was also possible as a Duke.
Of course, it was an authority that he couldn’t use too often in order not to appear as if he was exceeding the authority of the royal family.

“Isn’t it almost a privatized system? How on earth do you remember that?”

At Kahel’s admiration, Mariela shrugged her shoulders.
Before her marriage, she was trying to become a jurist, so she knew all kinds of laws and regulations besides this.
Thanks to this, she knew how to make Lena keep up with Elliot, without Kahel using the adoption method.

“It would be nice that way.
Anyway, the process is not complicated as all I have to do is put my seal on it.
Thanks for letting me know, Aunt.”

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“The Luaves must not lose to the Santellas.
Even if that was the status of a close maid.”

“You are right.”

“And I’m going to be the guardian of this child so make her debut in the social world, too.
If you take this child out in front of Liddell, the expression on her face is worth seeing.”

“I’ll think about that a little more later.”

Kahel barely stopped Mariela from going out militantly, and Lena, who was getting tired and pale, sighed in relief.
Mariela, who had finished drinking her tea, was on her way back and felt uncomfortable that Kahel had used his magical powers to heal a maid’s wounds, but she heard her son Cesar calling her from afar.
And soon forgot about it.

* * *

Elliot returned to her former life again.
The kind of life where she passed on Liddell’s laundry to the maid.
If there is one thing that has changed a little bit, it is that every day she is off-duty, she hears the sharp shouts of the etiquette teacher.

The last tea party was a trap.
Elliot explained her situation to Liddell in detail in the returning carriage.
Lena provoked her first, and she said it was wrong for her to lose her temper and raise her hand, but when she slapped her on the cheek, she didn’t feel like she was hitting Lena at all.
Still, her face was scarred and she collapsed awkwardly, as if it is a play by a terribly incompetent actor, and the butler appeared at that moment as if he had been waiting.

It was only after hearing her explanation that Liddell realized that Kahel had been waiting for this situation today.
Well, she didn’t even kill the girl in the first place, so she had no reason to fear Kahel.
This was completely her own mistake.
However, she would not have suffered that disgrace if Elliot had been more careful about her actions.

“Elliot.
It is unheard of in Ardennes for a noble girl to directly slap other people.
What’s happening today is probably because Elliot lived in Kerouac and you didn’t have a proper etiquette teacher.
So, for something embarrassing like this to not happen again, I’ll attach a good etiquette teacher to Elliot.”

Liddell smiled so softly that she seemed to get over Elliot’s mistake, and Elliot was relieved.
It was not even in her dreams how famously scary it was the etiquette teacher that Liddell will bring in.

Meanwhile, news spread quickly that Liddell had been defeated at the tea party in the Luaves.
The day after the tea party was the last day of the New Year’s Celebration, so it is in a blink of an eye that the interesting story that happened yesterday was spreading.
Originally, Liddell had set the day before the last day of the New Year’s Celebration as a day of revelation to spread Kahel’s mistake, but now it has become a schedule to strangle Liddell.

“Is it possible that Lady Santella did that on purpose?”

“You are so naive…… If there was no real meaning to it, would she have done it there?”

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“But Lady Santella deserves to raise a problem.
Had it not been for such a place, would Duke Luave have forgiven her?”

“Is that the girl who said she was the daughter of the dead Baron? Don’t even talk.
She slapped the girl who was caught and almost killed in her place, and slapped her very hard on the cheek.
I was so surprised.”

“Then, it must have been that Lady Santella was deceived by that vicious girl.
But you said that girl has already been enrolled in Viscounty Lucenwein?”

“She is.
It was said that Lady Santella worked hard.
So what to do? The level is not right, but you have to pretend to know it.”

As a result, the nobles who had connections with the White Faction eagerly defended Liddell, rumors were roughly sealed in the direction of ‘Elliot was bad’.
But even then, the subtle atmosphere was not completely resolved.
Liddell was smiling brightly today, but she was not very comfortable inside.

“You were too hasty, Liddell.”

“I know, please don’t stab the sore spot again.
Honestly, who knows that the content of the official notice was wrong.”

Liddell responded with a bitter smile towards Lian, who had a worried expression.
She had, of course, covered her face with a fan, making it difficult for anyone to notice the sibling’s conversation.

Liddell admitted her mistake, but that didn’t make her feel intimidated.
Rather, as she pondered last night, she had the feeling that she had caught a big fish unexpectedly.

“Anyway, rumors like this will soon subside.
It was a painful mistake, but nothing was lost.
Rather, I think I gained more valuable information from this failure.”

“Yes? What information?”

“Older brother said that before, didn’t you? Kahel has a maid close to him.”

“I did.
No, wait.
Then maybe… … !”

“I am almost certain.
The maid who was captured instead of Elliot is Kahel’s close maid.”

“Be careful, Liddell.
You made a mistake because you were too hasty.”

However, Lian, who insisted on being cautious, also thought that Liddell’s sense was right.
If the maid who was captured with the Barony Fidelia couple was Kahel’s close maid, the timing of her appearance was just right.
Besides, if it weren’t for her peculiar constitution, Kahel would not have hired her as a close maid rather than a regular maid.