Chapter 73
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Sponsored chapter by LC (⅗) ❤️
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"Well, I forgot for a moment that it was you who pawned it for three crowns."
He looked pleased that he had gotten his way. It was the first time he'd ever smiled, even as he recounted how he'd nearly lost the pearl forever.
Perhaps her attempt to escape the carriage had been a mere misstep.
But Louise could not rejoice fully.
All she had was her name and the pearl. Why should she be so bitter when she had known this all along?
If she had resolved not to betray him, she should have rejoiced as a servant that someone had helped him, but she could not because of that beautiful, young woman.
‘You're being dishonorable and cowardly. You're so mean.’
Caius laughed lowly, unaware of Louise's feelings.
"We will change carriages as soon as we leave the imperial city, and I apologize in advance that the carriage we will be using will not be as luxurious as this one."
But even the less luxurious carriage he was referring to would be more comfortable than the stagecoach Louise was used to riding in. And the man knew it.
"I'm fine."
Louise smiled, but there was a chilling shade behind it.
***
In Krefeld, they changed carriages once again. This time, it was a nobleman's carriage, far better than the ramshackle one they had traveled in from the capital.
The waiting courier reported.
"The disguised soldiers have returned safely, and it appears that most of the nobles we've been working with have made it out of the Imperial City without arousing suspicion."
"And Lady Hessen?"
Louise felt her heart clench again at Caius's use of the name, and she wondered if there was some other reason he was so concerned with her.
Unfortunately, the courtier shook his head with a blank expression.
"I apologize, Your Excellency. I'm not sure about Lady Hessen, but she didn't make it out of the capital."
"She may have been injured. Find out and report back to me in Trier. If not in time, report later, perhaps in Burg."
"Yes, Your Excellency, I hope you return safely."
Louise asked cautiously, only after his attendant had closed the carriage door and stepped away.
"You say she may be injured? Did Lady Hessen have any sort of altercation?"
"Ah."
Caius smiled sheepishly.
"Nothing much, she just fell."
"Ah."
Maybe she'd fallen in her haste to get out?
But if that was the case, Caius had left the woman where she fell.
Louise gave him a sideways glance.
The man was always so blunt, so selfish, so self-serving, but only to her.
Only to the traitorous Ermoli.
Not once did he do so in front of the nobles who were supposed to be on his side.
"Did I mention her name is Charlotte? Lady Hessen is very resourceful.”
She remembered his words as soon as he climbed into the carriage.
Combining those words with the suggestion that she might be injured, it was clear that Charlotte must have fallen while trying to get Caius out of the palace.
Charlotte was too precious, too valuable to be punished for what went wrong.
Therefore, Louise had to convince herself that her heart was pounding in her chest because she was worried about her.
Caius stretched his upper body, which had been hunched over from sitting in the cramped carriage, and put an arm around Louise's shoulders.
"We have a long way to go, and it's late, so let's get some sleep."
The man with the worst insomnia in the world leaned against her shoulder and slept soundly. Louise hated how strangely comforted she found herself.
***
Morning dawned while Louise was still swaying in the carriage.
Prince Leopold in the Castle awoke early.
The Emperor was already suffering from a pounding headache from the previous day's events. He frowned at his son, who had appeared unannounced.
"What are you doing so early in the morning?"
In the decade or so since the Empress's death, the neighboring countries of Domus and Galicia had each requested a citizen of their own as Empress.
The emperor chose neither.
Galicia had already been granted tariffs and other privileges, making it difficult for him to accept an empress from there, and he could not accept the request of the smaller country of Domus to maintain its neutrality by having an empress of its own.
If Domus had an Empress, it would have caused a stir in Galicia and beyond in Sedei.
The recently crowned Sedei had become so powerful that Domus was often grateful for the barrier that kept them at bay.
The emperor had often had to use the excuse of illness to refuse offers of marriage from neighboring nations, and he had never been able to pick an empress from among his own people.
Whenever he longed for the warmth of another's body, he took in women with light bodies and heavy lips.
After a year or two of this, he had gotten comfortable and complacent. With the prince growing up, he had no other worries for nearly ten years.
He never expected to be plagued by such unholy rumors.
The Emperor was not unaware of the rumors of an affair between Count Nasau and the late Empress, but the late Empress was in fact as fragile as Leopold.
The Emperor had never imagined that she might be carrying a child from an extramarital affair.
Even though he would sometimes get angry, deep down he still trusted the Empress.
She may have been playing with fire, but she did the least she could do for him, so Leopold must be his blood. He's just late in manifesting the mark.
Perhaps he believed it because he wanted to believe so badly.
But the son, whom hs wanted to believe so badly, turned the emperor's stomach with another foolish statement.
"Yesterday at the banquet, my cousin…”
"A cousin?"
Emperor Karl's frown deepened.
"A cousin, what kind of crazy talk is that!"
"But I saw him clearly, he came and laughed at me!"
The emperor didn't have the energy to shout and tried to dismiss his son with a wave of his hand, but Leopold refused to back down.
"It's true, father, he had the same face as my uncle in the portrait!"
The emperor finally lost his temper and had to chase his unruly son away.
Shortly afterward, Chamberlain Otto came in with the day's newspaper, his face sullen, and for some reason he couldn't look up, as if guilty.
The emperor stood puzzled before his chamberlain and opened the paper.
[The imperial masquerade ball is disrupted by fire
A fire broke out at the annual Parma Castle Masquerade Ball. The blaze started from a chandelier that fell from a balcony on the top floor, and was fortunately extinguished in the early hours.....................
(emphasis added)
Meanwhile, a young couple dressed up as the late Emperor Wilhelm and late Empress Christina caused a bit of a stir among the nobility of Hyreth.]
Emperor Karl read the headline and threw the newspaper down in a heap.
"What! Dressed up as the late Emperor and his wife? You saw them, and you let them walk out of my castle on their own two feet?"
"It was actually................."
The chamberlain bowed before the emperor and stammered.
In fact, the previous day had been full of embarrassing incidents.
In the middle of the banquet, the guards suddenly left at once. While the bewildered chamberlain went out to find out what was going on, a young couple dressed as the late emperor and the late empress caused a commotion.
He hadn't seen them because he was away.
When he returned, alarmed by the sound of fire, the couple was gone, and a noblewoman had sprained her ankle in the chaos.
Outside, a riot was in full swing, and every nobleman was important to the emperor.
Later, when he questioned the guards, he was told by a fellow uniformed guard that the captain had been summoned. Of course, the captain was in the dungeon, serving the emperor, so it had to be someone else.
In fact, no one knew who the guard was by name.
The day before, Otto, the chamberlain, could not bear to tell the whole story of this miserable situation, and omitted to mention that the commotion had been caused by the late emperor and his wife.
He never thought it would appear in the newspaper in such precise print.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? If you're going to put the poor little prince in charge, shouldn't you have done the right thing?"
***
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