Why the Northern Duke Wanders the Snowfields - Chapter 67

“You want me to find a boy named Hardin?”

“Yes. He’s probably working with the knights as a reward for helping find His Grace.”

Lien tilted her head at Aubrianna’s request. “But why are you looking for him?”

“There’s something I absolutely have to tell him.”

Now that the Queen’s messenger had arrived, those of mixed Carnu blood would soon be arrested. No, it could happen as early as today. Unlike in her previous life, Kaeloc had returned, but she didn’t think the Queen’s demands would change significantly.

“All right. I’ll ask Carlo to look into it.”

“Please, Lien.”

Lien smiled and rose to her feet. “I’ll do anything you ask. I want to repay you while I can.”

“…Lien. I truly meant it. Don’t feel burdened.”

Lien looked at Aubrianna with a serious expression. “Burdened? If it weren’t for you, I might’ve lost not only my younger siblings but even my mother back then.”

Aubrianna lowered her eyes awkwardly. Her admission to Regatta Girls’ School had fallen through, so she still had plenty of money, including both the admission fee and the living expenses she’d need in Alandor. But as an orphan, she had nowhere else to spend it.

Then she heard that an epidemic was spreading through Lien’s hometown.

“The previous Duke died from that disease too, didn’t he?”

“They say you need to eat well and get plenty of rest, but how can ordinary commoners do that? They live from hand to mouth….”

Lien was the only person who helped Aubrianna without showing any displeasure when she first became a maid. Having supported her mother and several younger siblings in place of her father, who died when she was young, Lien spent days looking gloomy after hearing about the epidemic.

“I’ll work hard and save up to repay the money you gave me back then, so consider this the interest and ask me to do anything you need.”

Aubrianna smiled softly at Lien’s resolute reply.

“You gave Theo a gift too. So it’s all right.”

Though Lien felt sorry for the pregnant Aubrianna, she made a hat and gloves for the baby and gave them to her as a gift.

“If you really insist, consider it my wedding gift for you and Carlo someday.”

“W-Wedding gift! We’re not in that kind of relationship yet!” Lien waved her hands, her face blazing red.

“From the look on Carlo’s face, he seems ready to propose at any moment.”

“I thought you came back from the snowfields in one piece, but apparently not.”

Shaking her head, Lien backed away.

“I’ll find out about that boy Hardin and let you know.”

“Yes, it’s urgent, so please hurry.”

Lien said she understood and disappeared. A short while later, Renee came out.

“Miss Aubrianna. Young Master Theo is asleep.”

Then she smiled and made a request.

“I have a friend who works at the castle. May I go see her?”

“Of course. Go ahead, Renee.”

Not long afterward, Renee finished getting ready and left. Alone in the quiet room, Aubrianna looked out the window.

‘I can see the square.’

She could see the place where she’d been unjustly put on trial. Remembering how she walked forward one terrified step at a time while surrounded by everyone made her brow furrow involuntarily.

On top of that, the sight of Cedric talking about Shatrijan had been sickening.

‘He was a debauched scoundrel obsessed with women from the start.’

She roughly knew what Cedric’s future held.

Before Kaeloc’s wedding took place, Cedric was reportedly found stabbed to death by someone in a filthy street in the red-light district. Afterward, countless people were brought to the underground prison as suspects in Cedric’s murder, but no one was punished.

As Aubrianna sank into thought, the castle’s bustling garden entered her view.

Because of the Queen’s visit, the gardeners were frantically pulling weeds, planting flowers, and trimming branches.

And it wasn’t only the garden. She could see maids bustling around with armfuls of laundry.

‘If it weren’t for Kaeloc, I’d be down there.’

A maid’s work was harsh and exhausting. It was difficult because she’d never done such work before, but she could endure it. No, she had to endure it.

At the orphanage, if she failed to do what she was told, she went hungry for days and was tormented. Here, if she failed to do her work, she would be thrown out. Then she would starve forever.

She was an orphan, living an adrift existence without belonging anywhere. The Kingdom of Trilan was where she grew up, but without a single relative there, it was still a foreign land to her.

Someone with nowhere to go.

That was why Aubrianna always held on to hope.

She hoped that someday, her noble father would come looking for her and free her from this grueling life as a maid.

‘I endured the orphanage by clinging to that hope too.’

No matter what anyone said, she tried to live with dignity. Then she grew close to Kaeloc. Because she knew the ancient language of Blanc, she read his storybooks to him, then went on to read his other books, one after another.

Some days, she was summoned while busy preparing for a ball, and other times, she was called in the middle of the night. When he was ill, she nursed him by his side and quietly read storybooks to him.

They naturally grew close that way, so Aubrianna thought it was love.

She thought Kaeloc felt the same way about her. And so she began harboring another hope.

The secret hope that she might marry him and become the duchess.

‘Thinking about it now, it was truly absurd.’

She grew up from childhood in the closed environment of an orphanage, and no one ever shared intimate matters with a girl who looked like a foreigner.

It was only after she slept with Kaeloc, when she heard what people were saying about her, that she finally understood. Keeping a mistress was tolerated among the nobility, but the mistress herself never had a good reputation.

Moreover, even among the maids, Aubrianna couldn’t fit in with anyone other than Lien, so she became the target of both open and covert jealousy.

“She went to His Grace’s room every day, so she must’ve seduced him with her body.”

“She put on airs like some noble lady, but in the end, she was nothing but a whore.”

After spending her first night with him, Aubrianna was practically unconscious. When she came to her senses, she was deeply shocked by the words of the maids cleaning the room.

Ignorance was also a sin.

“Aubrianna. Things have turned out this way, but just think of it as a good opportunity.”

Lien comforted her.

“People in our position will eventually meet men in similar circumstances and go on living as we do now. We’ll do grueling work just to earn a few coins.”

But a mistress earned money too. An enormous amount that a maid couldn’t earn even after working her entire life.

“You always said you wanted to go to school. His Grace will soon welcome his fiancée. When that happens, he’ll give you a large sum of money as compensation, and you can use it to live your own life.”

“But….”

What about my feelings? She couldn’t ask Lien that.

***

Before Theo woke up, Renee returned with a grave expression.

“Renee? Is something wrong?”

“Lady Agnes seems to be very ill.”

On her way back after meeting her friend, she ran into Agnes’s lady-in-waiting, who said she was on her way to get medicine.

“Really?”

Aubrianna rose to go see Agnes.

“She said she isn’t receiving visitors.”

“What? Why?”

“She said her symptoms seem like a mild cold, but it could be something highly contagious, so Sir Tarion said no visitors for the time being….”

Aubrianna hesitated, then sat back down.

“What should we do?”

She was worried. The weather had been pleasant these past few days, so they often dined and took walks outdoors. Could that have affected her?

“Could we get some tea or food that’s good for a cold?”

Renee looked slightly surprised, then nodded. “I’ll ask my friend.”

Aubrianna suddenly felt ashamed of her position. Though she was the Duke’s mistress, she had no authority to do anything in the castle.

‘My only role is to wait for Kaeloc and warm his bed.’

Would things have been a little different if they’d met as commoners outside the castle? Feeling awkward, Aubrianna told Renee to rest well before the baby woke, then left the room.

She intended to ask Tarion whether any medicinal herbs were needed and go out to buy them herself.

‘In the past, I couldn’t leave without Kaeloc’s permission, but things are different now.’

Aubrianna preferred Kay, the hunter who’d lost his memory, to the Kaeloc from before.

He was just as obsessive and lustful for her body, but she felt there was some indescribable difference between them.

Was he more generous and more willing to listen?

She was walking down the corridor with those thoughts when someone appeared in the distance.

The castle of House Tennant, which guarded the northern border, was an elegant old castle built hundreds of years ago. But because defense had been its highest priority, its flaw was that the corridors had no windows.

The dim lanterns mounted on the walls made it difficult to identify the person approaching from afar.

If she’d known who it was, Aubrianna would’ve immediately turned in another direction.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until he came close enough that avoiding him would be difficult that Aubrianna realized the man before her was Cedric.

The man approached with an evil smile and a swaggering gait, sneering,

“Well, look who it is.”

The way he spread his arms as though delighted to see her made her stomach churn. But he was the acting head of the family.

Holding her skirt, Aubrianna slowly bent her right knee in a curtsy.