IDHGA 01

Chapter 01

“Milady. The Duke has returned.”

It was a late night, when the world had been dyed entirely black.

That short, ordinary sentence dragged me down to hell in an instant.

My husband, who had come home after the streetlights had been turned off, just as always.

And I, dressed in plain white clothes, sitting blankly in a place that wasn’t even the marital bedroom.

Just how much longer did I have to endure this hellish time?

Staring blankly, the question suddenly arose.

Just how much longer? And why?

Just as these unanswerable questions began to fill my head, there was a commotion outside.

“Eloise! Eloise Mason!”

“…I think you should go out, Milady.”

At the voice calling my name as if to shake the whole house, the maid who had come to fetch me, Nellie, turned pale.

My husband, who no longer called me by my name, was terrifying.

My husband, who constantly called me by my maiden name as if I were no longer his wife, was an object of fear not just for me, but for everyone in the mansion.

It was no different from usual for that young maid to be trembling in such fear.

Besides, my husband was particularly ferocious when he was like that.

“Yes. Alright, Nellie. I’ll go out, so you stay here and then return to your room.”

“M-Milady… Shall I call for the knights?”

Nellie looked at me, trembling uncontrollably.

I knew without asking that the young girl’s gaze was filled with pity for me.

It wasn’t anything new. Receiving sympathy from the people of this mansion.

The pitiful Milady, the unfortunate Milady, the Milady whose beauty is her sin.

The laundry maid, the gardener, the stable hand… all the employees of the mansion whispered about me behind my back, one and all.

If I had a fault for being despised by my husband, it was because I was beautiful.

They said I had seduced my husband with my looks, but because of those same looks, my husband doubted my faithfulness.

Even while knowing that all I did all day was breathe quietly, trying not to catch anyone’s eye.

A quiet Milady who met no one and never went out.

But their master, who spent every night drinking because of that Milady’s looks.

They felt sorry for me, who had to endure all this simply because I was beautiful, but they didn’t stop the husband who tormented me every night.

Other than putting me forward and staying silent, for fear of getting burned themselves.

To that maid who managed to muster up the courage to offer me a helping hand in a mansion full of such people, I gave a quiet smile.

Calling the knights would give me a brief respite from him, but the outcome was always the same.

Unless I died, there was no way for him and me to escape this meaningless shackle.

I quietly rose from my seat.

“Tell them to escort the Duke to the bedroom. I will enter shortly as well.”

“M-Milady…”

“Thank you for your concern, Nellie.”

But, it’s alright.

Repeating the words that had become a habit, I left the room just like that.

To meet the husband who no longer loved me.

Once upon a time, yes, there was a time when we were as happy as anyone.

A time when we held each other, shared trivial daily stories, and were happy just being together, like any other couple.

A time when we were intoxicated by the rain-like happiness that came after a difficult period, unable to see anything else around us.

Because we were a bond formed after hardship, we were deeply affectionate towards each other and wanted to give and receive more.

The happiest time of my life.

Our love, which had been the talk of the entire empire, culminated in a grand and splendid wedding that could be called the wedding of the century.

Amidst the congratulations of many attendees, we spent a time of unparalleled happiness.

But our relationship, which I thought had ended with a happy ending like an enviable love story, began to crack in an unexpected place.

Fontaine of the Central region, the most powerful of the empire’s five great noble families.

The empire’s most eligible bachelor, lacking nothing in status, wealth, or looks, had been snatched away by a country girl from the far North. How could that have happened?

The eyes of high society were bound to be unfavorable towards me, who rarely engaged in social activities unless accompanied by my husband.

Those gazes filled with curiosity and jealousy soon turned into malice, creating increasingly absurd rumors.

That I was a notorious temptress in the North, that my skills in the bedroom were so good that I had seduced the Duke of Fontaine.

That, when you look into it, I had been with every man in the empire – such rumors spread like wildfire throughout the country.

The rumors that reached me through several channels became clearer in their malice with each passing day.

Not only was I labeled the empire’s temptress, the villainess of the century, the witch from the North, but there were even those who secretly asked me to teach them my bedroom skills.

Up to that point, it was bearable.

My husband and I could brush it off with complaints that people were being too harsh.

He loved me, and I loved him.

I believed that that one word between us could render the rumors that were battering us powerless.

But the Crown Prince, and the Emperor, were not the kind to back down from that.

The Crown Prince constantly summoned me to the palace, using the Princess as his proxy, and tirelessly sent the Princess to my husband to whisper of my infidelity with the Crown Prince.

When the rumors that had spread through high society in this way grew tail upon tail, and finally the label ‘the Crown Prince’s mistress’ was attached to me, the noble and beautiful name of Fontaine began to crumble.

“…What did the Crown Prince promise you?”

“…Pardon?”

“If not that… do you have some agreement with Count Mason?”

“Ars, I… what on earth are you saying…”

“…I truly don’t know what you’re thinking while you’re by my side.”

In an instant, truly in an instant.

The trust of my husband, which had been so firm, crumbled.

Was it such a shock to him that I was the mistress of the Crown Prince – not just anyone, but the Crown Prince who constantly mocked him?

Or was the problem that the rumors were so specific that everyone found them plausible?

My husband Ars, who had always comforted me, saying it was alright no matter what rumors he heard, began to distance himself from me from that point on.

He still loved me, but at the same time, he couldn’t hide the rising sense of betrayal. And I, who had believed that such rumors wouldn’t affect our relationship in the slightest, began to close my mouth more and more.

My husband’s increasingly late returns home, the reproachful words hurled at me whenever we met faces, my husband growing more haggard day by day, and me losing my vitality.

Unlike the fairy tale that ends with ‘they lived happily ever after,’ our ending was miserable.

Life wasn’t a fairy tale, and my life was even less so.

And despite everything, the one who urged even me, who couldn’t let go of my husband, to give up, was none other than my own father.

“How about returning to His Highness the Crown Prince now?”

That was the first thing my father said when he visited my house after a long, long time.

He had asked me to send everyone away, so I wondered what it was about and readily cleared the room.

My father, who had been staying in the capital for so long but remained by the Crown Prince’s side, not at his daughter’s or his other daughter’s house.

That was the words my father addressed to his married daughter.

To return to the Crown Prince now.

Hearing those words, I felt as if lightning had flashed in my head.

I realized it, but I couldn’t believe it.

Hoping my thoughts were wrong, I clasped my trembling hands tightly and looked at my father.

“…Surely not, Father, are you now…”

“Haven’t I told you from the beginning? It is only proper to follow His Highness the Crown Prince, as he desires you.”

Without caring how surprised his daughter was, my father said it matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing.

That my father was the root of all this evil.

I moved my bloodless lips and barely managed to force the words out.

“It was all… it was all your doing, Father? For such a trivial reason?”

“Trivial? It is only natural for an imperial noble to be loyal to the Imperial Family. It is a noble’s duty. And it serves the family. Haven’t I told you repeatedly?”

“For such a trivial reason, you viciously slandered your own well-established daughter? By fabricating such absurd stories?”

“The very reason we came up from the North to the capital was for that purpose. I told you that His Highness the Crown Prince wished to see you, didn’t I?”

“Hah!”

My father was composed.

His face showed no sign of thinking about what was wrong, where things had gone wrong.

Simply that the Crown Prince wanted it, that we must be loyal to the Imperial Family, and that doing so would benefit our family, so all of this was just a natural course of events.

Whether his daughter was hurt, or the family’s image was tarnished, my father showed no concern whatsoever.

Just loyalty to the Imperial Family’s command.

That is why we live in this capital, not in that cold and desolate North.

The man who had abandoned me and my mother his entire life and lived as a dog of the Imperial Family said it was all as natural as that.

“Since things have come to this, it won’t take long for the Duke of Fontaine to divorce you. His Highness the Crown Prince is preparing much for you, so prepare yourself even as soon as tomorrow…”

“Derrick! Derrick!”

I couldn’t listen any longer.

Not just the content, but I couldn’t bear to face the human being called my father, who so casually spewed such terrible words.

As I cried out for the butler, Derrick, who must have been waiting outside, immediately entered the reception room.

“Milady, are you alright?”

“Get, get him out! Right now!”

“Eloise!”

As I screamed, Derrick looked back and forth between me and my father with a startled face.

It was horrifying to even be in the same place.

The fact that I had thought of such a person as my father and followed him all this time, that whenever I had doubts about him I had tried to dismiss them just because he was my father.

It was unbearably, utterly horrifying.

“Throw him out! Make sure he never sets foot here again!”

“Eloise! I am your father! What do you mean, throw me out!”

As I practically shrieked, Derrick shouted something towards the outside.

At that signal, people appeared from somewhere and rushed into the room in a flurry, dragging my father, who kept shouting, out.

Clutching my suddenly aching head, I saw through my blurring vision the man who had been praised as the century’s greatest military commander being forcibly dragged away.

Even as I lost my senses from the surging pain, why was that one sentence so clear?

“His Highness will not give up, Eloise! Come to your senses and…”

*Bang.*

With the sound of the door closing, everything fell silent.

“Milady!”

In my fading consciousness, what came to mind was

‘Rose.’

My husband’s smiling face, which was now even a faint memory.