~Chapter 02~
I was about to look outside, wondering if some accident had happened, when the door suddenly burst open.
“So it was you, Leonia.”
A figure appeared in the carriage, their face hidden beneath a robe. In an instant, they pressed me against the wall and placed a hand on me, keeping me from escaping.
“You went to the banquet yesterday, didn’t you?”
Through the robe, I caught a glimpse of a face and body I knew very well.
“…What does that have to do with anything?”
I answered with slight annoyance and tried to step out of the carriage, but my wrist was grabbed. Before I could get off, the door closed, and the carriage began to move.
“Don’t even think about running. You’ll come with me to the estate.”
The figure removed their robe with one hand, revealing pink hair tied high, and piercing blue eyes that looked as cold as the sea, full of irritation.
“Understood, Leonia?”
…Of course. I had expected this.
I let out a resigned sigh.
It was Alice Bellasy.
She was the heroine of this story—and my older sister.
“Louis’s real target is her, too,” I thought, feeling my mood sink. How was I going to handle this?
“Won’t you answer me?”
“You already know everything, so does my answer even matter?”
I tilted my head. The fact that she had come after me in the first place was proof that she already knew about yesterday.
“…I really thought it would be a no, that it was just wrong information.”
Alice crossed her arms, staring at me with a look of disbelief.
“Seriously, how long has it been since your engagement ended, and you’re already running around so happily?”
“I’m not a criminal just because I’m no longer engaged,” I said.
Unlike my fiancé, who had spread rumors with other women during our engagement, I had been perfectly fine.
“Who doesn’t know that?”
Alice seemed unconvinced and sighed heavily.
“Even if you’re innocent, public opinion is not on your side. Your former fiancé is the future emperor. Even if he’s in the wrong, it’ll usually look like your fault.”
“I know that.”
“Then why—”
“I don’t care about marriage,” I interrupted.
“…What?”
Alice narrowed her eyes, trying to judge if I was bluffing.
“After being engaged for over ten years to someone like that, I’ve grown skeptical about marriage.”
I rested my chin on my hand, staring out the window, and added calmly, “You would have felt the same if you were me.”
“…That scoundrel of a Marquess Reizen is a piece of trash, though.”
Alice nodded in agreement.
“I don’t even know why he wanted to get engaged to you. You’d never even met before the engagement.”
“He liked you, that’s why he proposed to me,” I explained.
“…What?”
“My fiancé was obsessed with you, not me. That’s why he asked me to marry him. Once he realized I didn’t look like you, he regretted it immediately.”
He was the villain who had been fixated on my sister.
“I didn’t care about the marriage, so I created scandals to make him fall away. I wanted him to leave me alone,” I said.
In the original story, Leonia never let him go and was eventually killed. The situation was different now, but it still left me feeling uneasy.
“How did you know I went to the banquet yesterday?” I asked, changing the topic.
“I stopped by the guild in the morning. Some madman bought a huge amount of sleeping drugs and caused trouble,” Alice explained.
It was too late to ask, but she pretended not to know.
“I felt uneasy, so I went to your room as soon as I got to the estate. You weren’t there,” she continued.
“That’s all it took for you to know I was at the banquet?” I asked.
“I have a good sense for these things,” she said. It seemed she had gotten a guest list from the information guild.
‘Not exactly legal, but effective,’ I thought.
I still needed to figure out why Louis proposed to me. Maybe I could get help from Alice’s connections. My own information was too limited.
“By the way, sister, there’s something I want to check,” I said.
“If it’s about Marquess Reizen, you can’t. That could backfire politically,” Alice warned.
“No, not him. I want other information.”
When I finished speaking, Alice’s eyes widened.
A week later, Alice brought me what I needed.
“…I really can’t figure you out,” she said as I took the envelope.
Inside, I found confirmation of my suspicions: every outfit Louis had recently purchased was black. Black uniforms, tuxedos, hats, shoes—everything except gloves.
‘Even the day I met him at the estate, he was dressed all in black.’
It made sense. Since his parents and brother had died, Louis always wore black in public.
There were rumors he had fallen out of favor with the emperor because of his protests over his family’s deaths. And now, showing up in all black, he clearly wanted to make a statement.
Alice asked, “You’re not interested in Duke Arban, are you?”
“Not really,” I said, vaguely explaining how I had received help from the estate, without mentioning that Louis had already proposed.
“…Really?” Alice tilted her head. It sounded like Louis might be interested in me, though that wasn’t the case.
Louis didn’t want me for romance—he wanted information.
The revenge plan needed precise information, and maybe I had accidentally given him useful clues that night. Perhaps that’s why he proposed.
“What are you going to do now?” Alice asked.
“I don’t want to get involved. Nothing good will come of it,” I admitted.
I barely escaped one trap, and I didn’t want to step into another. But I had already pretended to be Louis’s first love and talked too much.
‘If I refuse his proposal and refuse to help with revenge, I’ll probably be dead,’ I thought.
I decided to refuse the proposal but agree to help with revenge. Then, I could find an opportunity to escape to another country.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—Louis hadn’t contacted me in over a week. I hoped he would just forget about me.
A knock at the door brought a maid announcing that lunch was ready. The tea set was cleared, and dishes for lunch appeared.
“You know that dress we matched for the royal banquet?” Alice said.
Since I had stayed silent, she continued.
“It was finished faster than expected.”
Originally, it had been meant to be matched with my fiancé, but he had abandoned me for another woman, so I went with Alice.
“If you weren’t going to run around, you could have gone to check the dress sooner,” she teased.
“Yeah, maybe I should,” I said. We had to attend the banquet, so checking the dress was necessary.
As we discussed when to go to the fitting, the door suddenly burst open.
“Out of the way!”
Count Bellasy entered.
“You’re early. How was the trip—”
Alice and I stood to greet him, but a loud noise made our heads snap to the side.
“My father!” Alice exclaimed, hurrying to stop him.
‘He must have heard about my broken engagement,’ I realized, lowering my gaze calmly.
He had probably abandoned his trip and returned immediately after hearing the news.
“You crazy girl! What do you think you’re doing? Breaking the engagement?!”
“Father! Please calm down—”
“Calm down? How can I calm down? You’ve ruined everything! And you’ve destroyed our reputation! How are we supposed to recover from this?!”
“I’ll take care of her! Just until things settle in the capital—please!” Alice pleaded.
“…You’ll take care of her?”
The count scowled, clearly frustrated.
“The emperor wants to marry you off to some old noble. How do you think you can—”
He threw an imperial letter at my face. I read it quietly.
As I suspected, the emperor intended to marry me to a man over seventy. A man rumored to have killed his previous wives in staged accidents.
“Load her into the carriage immediately!”
The count grabbed my arm roughly and handed me to the nearby knights. Alice tried to stop them but was blocked, and I was dragged into the carriage like luggage.
