Chapter 49
It wasn’t a shock. Nor was it a bolt of realization.
It was just like a drizzle that slowly seeps into one’s collar before it’s even noticed. By the time she came to her senses, her heart was filled to the brim with affection for Lionel.
Perhaps, it was only natural.
Since he was the first to share human warmth with her, she might have been destined to love Lionel despite any cold treatment.
Even if he was the one who took away her legs and her dreams.
She couldn’t help but be that way.
“How much longer do I have to stay like this?”
“That’s…… enough now. I’ve become warm thanks to you, Duke.”
Agnes slowly pulled away from Lionel’s embrace, swallowing her lingering regret.
The tip of her nose tingled.
Agnes grimaced hard on the bridge of her nose to avoid getting caught.
Someone said that when you realize your feelings of love, your heart feels overwhelmed. Why was she so
sorrowful?
“You really don’t have to come pick me up today. Having you accompany me on my way to work like this is enough.”
“……If you say so. I’ll see you at the mansion in the evening.”
“Yes. See you later.”
She answered readily, but Agnes thought. She did not have the confidence to face Lionel’s face, at least for this evening.
“Sit down, it’s distracting!”
Adrian was frantic because of Chloe, who suddenly barged in and was wandering around the room.
It wasn’t a day or two that his daughter acted unexpectedly.
But at this moment, he had no room to accept it.
The reason was simple.
It was Agnes.
Agnes, that girl was more useful than he thought.
It had only been about a month since she touched the trading company’s finances, but there were noticeable results.
She succeeded in extending the contract with the client where the biggest hole was made, and completely blocked several losses that were about to burst.
Adrian picked up the contract spread out on the desk again.
It was a new military supply contract signed with a trading company under the House of Count Guten.
Looking at the conditions alone, it was flawless.
As he turned the pages, the corners of Adrian’s mouth rose on their own.
Just as Agnes expected, he didn’t notice at all what she had planted in those clauses.
‘At this rate, a surplus is only a matter of time.’
As he gained some breathing room, something else bothered him.
Adrian picked up the documents regarding the Castia trading company.
Castia was an ordinary trading company on the surface. But in reality,
it was Rebelt’s source of funds.
The demand for wigs supplied by Castia was skyrocketing day by day.
That was the problem.
Whenever he smelled money, Adrian had to turn it into his own pocket to feel satisfied. So he was greedy for it.
Especially these days, they were
clamoring to raise the supply price, which made him even more annoyed.
Adrian’s desire to let go of Rebelt and
Castia grew stronger.
Anyway, those guys are the ones whose necks will fly off after being caught by the military someday.
Before then, he could just swallow the wig business and cut off the relationship.
It was a perfect plan in the long run.
Adrian put this dark desire into action without delay. By setting a meeting for negotiations with Castia to adjust the supply price a few days later.
Naturally, he planned to send Agnes to the negotiation table.
The leader of Rebelt was a man with a fiery personality.
He was the kind of person who wouldn’t just make threats if the negotiations went wrong, but could cut the opponent’s neck on the spot.
Adrian had no intention of sitting in such a dangerous place himself.
Agnes was perfect.
As a consumable for a shield.
If she was unlucky, she would be the one getting hurt there, or in severe cases, losing her life.
‘If that happens, it’s better for me.’
As for Jerome Winterbolt. It was enough to explain it well to him after the incident happened.
Hehe. At the moment Adrian was laughing surreptitiously, Chloe let out a scream mixed with annoyance.
“This is all because of father!”
“What is it again!”
Adrian crumpled his expression.
Chloe shouted with her cheeks puffed out, almost in tears.
“If I had married the Duke, I wouldn’t have been treated like this! That was originally my place!”
Chloe pointed toward the backyard.
Lionel and Agnes were still standing there.
In the first place, the person to become the Duchess was not Agnes, but herself.
If her father hadn’t pushed Agnes into that position, becoming a noble and being protected by Lionel, whom everyone envies, would have been her.
Instead of being insulted like a moment ago.
“This is all because of Agnes. She snatched mine away. Father made it that way!”
Her voice became sharper and sharper, and Chloe screamed with a bright red face.
“I can’t do this, I’m going to climb higher than that Agnes. What am I lacking compared to her!”
Chloe just discovered Lucian entering the trading company and her eyes sparkled with a strange light.
“That person named Lucian, you said he was Colonel Winterbolt’s right hand, right?”
Chloe, who turned around, lifted her chin.
“Please push for my marriage with Colonel Winterbolt. Father.”
“Are you crazy?”
The moment Adrian heard those words, it felt like his blood pressure was skyrocketing to the top of his head.
“Is he even compatible with you! Marriage, even just thinking about such a thing, you wouldn’t have anything to say even if you were dragged away for the crime of insulting the Imperial family!”
“What’s wrong with me? Even someone like Agnes became a Duchess!”
“The situation is different! If you’re going to say useless things, get out!”
However, Chloe raised the corners of her mouth even more.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.
I’ll take care of it myself.”
“Chloe Bardo! Don’t do anything
foolish. Please!”
But Chloe didn’t even pretend to listen.
Instead, she just glanced once more at Lucian, who passed through the yard and disappeared into the building.
“Just wait and see. You think I can’t do it?”
The Duke’s office where night had fallen.
Lionel, situated like a stone statue in the middle of it, chewed over what happened in the morning.
The sensation of holding Agnes still remained in his arms.
The soft and weak body temperature that seemed likely to disappear if grasped clung to his skin and would not fall off.
Like Agnes’s face that kept floating in his head.
“To think she had kept it until now.”
Lionel’s lips drew a slight arc.
Although it was faint, the backyard he saw today was not much different from the image in his childhood memories.
Agnes must have managed it that way.
That’s why she had a face that looked like the whole world had collapsed while looking at the collapsed building.
Coming forward today was neither efficient nor logical behavior.
It was a matter he didn’t necessarily need to intervene in.
Nevertheless, why did he step forward?
It wasn’t because there was something to exploit, like when he took Agnes out of the interrogation room.
“…….”
“Duke.”
Kalt, who had entered before he knew it, broke Lionel’s thoughts.
Lionel raised his loosely opened eyes.
“What is it.”
“The Duchess has sent a report on today’s trading company business.”
“……A report?”
“Yes. It’s a document summarizing the things that happened today.”
Lionel narrowed his brows slightly.
The place where he was now was the capital, not the North.
To think she sends such a thing on paper while living in the same mansion.
‘She could just say it to my face.’
Lionel handed the report written by Agnes back to Kalt.
“Tell Agnes. To come in person.”
A little while later.
Agnes, who entered the office in a daze, emptied water glasses one after another to hide her restless heart.
‘Why…… did he call me?’
Immediately after realizing her heart, Agnes couldn’t decide how to look at him.
So, she had just delivered the information about the materials confirmed at the trading company today through Kalt.
At least until she could skillfully hide her heart, she didn’t want to run into Lionel…….
By the time she came to her senses, she was in the same space as Lionel like this.
Agnes secretly pressed her chest hard.
Because the office was so quiet, she was worried that the sound of her heart beating would be caught.
Once she became conscious of it, every action felt awkward.
Lionel, with his metal-framed glasses loosely hanging on, asked without taking his eyes off the documents.
“Was there anything else you found out today?”
“I delivered it in writing through Kalt……?”
“Speak it. As you can see, I’m a bit busy to read it all one by one.”
Hmm.
Agnes lowered her hand from her heart and fiddled with the empty water glass.
However, because Lionel really looked busy, it was difficult to add more
words for no reason.
Eventually, with the thought of finishing the work and leaving quickly, Agnes picked out and recited what she had written in the report.
“It was confirmed that every date the sales vouchers were strange during the war, a carriage loaded with weapons traveled to the Sercadia army. And, I also found a newly formed trading company that seems to be related to Rebelt.”
“Good.”
Lionel put down his pen and raised his head.
His blue eyes flashed beyond the lenses.
“Then, can I leave now……?”
“From now on, come here every night. I’ll hear what you’ve found out at the trading company directly.”
“Every…… night?”
“Yes. We’re in the same mansion, so isn’t this much more efficient?”
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