Chapter 130

“How did you even g-get here? Weren’t you drunk?”

’This is a bit dangerous.’

The positioning was bad.

To begin with, the Duchess and I currently had our backs to the cliff. It wasn’t that I lacked the confidence to subdue him, but if this turned into a desperate, no-holds-barred physical brawl, Noah held the advantage.

While I was pondering how to safely reverse our positions, the Duchess shouted at Noah with a trembling voice.

“Yo-you aren’t his personal servant? Don’t tell me he ordered you to kill me? Is that it?”

“……”

“How could he do such a thing! A human! A human…!”

Her grudge-filled voice couldn’t carry far and was swallowed up by the sound of the raging waves.

“How could he… think of killing me… And right here of all places…”

I couldn’t even begin to guess the magnitude of the betrayal the Duchess must have felt, but now was not the time to provoke Noah.

‘Should I strike first?’

In any fight, getting the first hit in is half the battle.

It would be a disaster if Noah had combat training, but if not, I should be able to neutralize him easily.

Seeing Noah trembling violently as he clenched his fists, I made that judgment and was about to step forward.

“The Duke didn’t order this! I-I was instigated by Marquis Pland!”

Noah blurted out such nonsense.

“What?”

“You once laughed at the Marquis’s confession in front of everyone at a past social party, didn’t you?”

The Duchess retorted as if it were absurd.

“There’s no way the Marquis would still hold onto a petty thing from our youth!”

“He remembers! The Marquis’s humiliation is still casually tossed around in high society! Especially now that Sir Robert has become the head of the house!”

“He holds a grudge over something that trivial?”

“It’s entirely possible!”

The Duchess clutched her head, looking utterly confused.

“Has Marquis Pland already gone senile?”

No way.

I firmly dismissed it.

“You’re lying.”

“What?”

“You were ordered by Sir Robert, and you’re just making up excuses to hide it.”

“Lita.”

He was calling out to me so plaintively, but I had to stay on my guard.

Because his eyes were gleaming like a lunatic’s.

So for now, let’s try to coax him into calming down.

“Are you in a tough spot right now? Were you ordered to do something you didn’t want to do?”

…!!

Looks like I hit the nail on the head. Noah’s pupils dilated widely and shook like trembling aspen leaves.

“If that’s the case, I’ll help you out. I have a plan.”

“…I’m sorry.”

Grab!

“Wh-what are you doing right now!”

Noah suddenly grabbed me by the collar! Well, strictly speaking, he tried to grab my throat, but I took a step back and let him grab my jacket instead.

Ignoring the Duchess’s startled cry, Noah spewed another piece of nonsense.

“Just let yourself be caught quietly!”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Rejecting him in less than a second, I immediately blocked the hand he reached out to grab me with again.

“Wh-where do you get this strength?!”

Seeing Noah desperately trying to pry his hand out of my grip, my heart felt heavy.
Even in this situation, there was no drop in affection.

‘How on earth am I supposed to interpret the mindset of someone who wants to kill me while supposedly liking me?’

Did the affection system glitch or something?

Or was his affection for me still intact, but his loyalty to Robert outweighed it?

I learned a valuable lesson today: you shouldn’t blindly trust affection points unconditionally…

‘That aside.’

Noah needed to calm down a little.

By means of physical force, that is.

If I threw a punch, Noah might actually die.

Potions were too precious to waste, so let’s use my head appropriately…

“Argh!”

I launched a direct headbutt right into his forehead, and Noah collapsed backward, landing hard on his backside.

Perhaps wanting to help me, the Duchess tried to swing a random rock she picked up from somewhere behind Noah’s back, but awkwardly lowered her hand instead.

I looked down at Noah, who was rubbing his slightly swelling forehead.

“You okay? If you’re not, you’re gonna have to take another hit.”

“I-I’m fine!”

Judging by the frantic way he shouted it in a startled voice, he really did look fine.

“That’s a relief.”

“Ahem. Well then, shall we try to calm down first? I’m talking about having a conversation.”

“……”

“……”

Neither of them answered, but I’ll consider that tacit agreement.

Just in case someone might see us, we moved to a secluded spot.

“So, Belita. What was this plan you said you had?”

At the Duchess’s question, Noah, who had been staring strictly at the bricks on the ground, also raised his head and checked my expression.

The method I had intended to propose to Noah…

“Noah couldn’t disobey Sir Robert’s orders. But at the same time, he probably didn’t genuinely want to kill the Duchess either. Right, Noah?”

Noah swallowed a groan and confessed as if spilling it out.

“Th-that’s right. No matter how much it was the Duke’s order, there’s no way I would want to commit murder or anything like that. But if I disobeyed…”

“You’d be disposed of?”

“Yeah…”

I knew it. Seeing him push someone, panic, walk backward, and trip over a rock, it didn’t look like he was enjoying it of his own free will.

This time, I looked toward the Duchess and spoke.

“The Mistress probably doesn’t want to return to a mansion where she never knows when she might be murdered, either.”

At my words, the Duchess weakly dropped her head.

“That’s true. Even if our relationship wasn’t particularly warm, I thought we at least shared the bonds of living together all these years. To think he’d try to kill me just over a single threat…”

A threat?

When I asked Duchess Rachel what kind of threat she could possibly have made, an unexpected answer came back.

“That is… Fine. We’ve reached this point anyway, so I might as well tell you.”

The Duchess clutched her temples and continued.

“I told Robert that if he kept harassing you, I would expose all his past corruption. I warned him that I’d go all-in with nothing left to lose, so he’d better be prepared.”

…!!!

“What do you mean by that, Sir Robert harassing Belita…”

…Just how much had Noah’s once-firm affection dropped in such a short span of time?

Judging by the looks of it, it seemed to take a hit every time something about me was discovered that didn’t match the image Noah had built up in his imagination.

Things like resorting to violence or having some kind of history with Robert behind the scenes.

The latter was completely uncalled for since it wasn’t even my fault, making it feel utterly unfair.

As a senior in life, I felt a strong urge to tell him that he was the epitome of a small, pathetic man.

“You didn’t know about this. Even as a cherished subordinate, it seems Robert didn’t share everything with you. Robert rather frequently hit on women who already had lovers. He did the same to Belita.”

“Th-That’s… I knew about Sir Robert’s wandering eye, but to think he’d go that far with Belita too…”

“Did you think it would be fine just because you claimed she was your lover? As if he’s the kind of person to care about such details. If anything, he would’ve liked it even more.”

“No way… Belita, why didn’t you tell me…?”

“If you knew, what would even change?”

“B-But…”

The conversation kept straying from the point.

I steered it back.

“Anyway, I believe there is only one way for all of us to survive.”

“What are you planning to do…?”

Well, it wasn’t some grand, elaborate method.

“We fake the Duchess’s death.”

“What? What do you mean by that, Rita?”

“Fake it?”

“It’s not unusual for the traces of someone who fell into the sea to go unfound. If Noah reports that his mission was successful and the Duchess vanishes, the Duke will fall for it, too. Once that happens, both Noah and the Duchess will be completely safe.”

A faint spark of color returned to the Duchess’s previously ambiguous expression. Noah also furrowed his brows slightly before nodding in agreement.

“It’s classic, but we can definitely escape Robert’s threat this way.”

“Same goes for me, I suppose.”

“But Belita, will you be alright? Without me around, Robert is just going to harass you again.”

‘Now’s really not the time to be worrying about me.’

Living as a dead person when you’re alive wasn’t an easy feat. It meant throwing away the entire life you had built up until now.

“I have a plan. The Duchess, on the other hand, will have to live the rest of her life with a fabricated identity—will you be alright with that?”

“I was planning to leave for a foreign country anyway once Hereis inherited the house, so this works out well. I’m just leaving a bit sooner.”

The Duchess let out a heavy sigh. But she looked relieved, as if she had finally shaken off all her lingering worries.

“You’re just going to leave Young Master Hereis behind, though.”

“The man who cherishes Hereis to death will take good care of him. I’m washing my hands of it now. I’ll worry, of course… but watching from afar is something I’m used to.”

Come to think of it, during the course of the story, Lady Rachel never once showed up in front of the protagonist no matter what he was up to.

That statement was probably the truth, then. I suppose I could finally let go of the guilty conscience I’d been harboring from potentially turning someone’s life into hard mode.

“So, what are you going to do? You’re not actually thinking of accepting Sir Robert, are you?”

Noah asked with a voice tinged with bitterness.

Wondering if this was really the time to bring that up, I held back what I was about to say and firmly shut him down.

“I never accepted him in the past, either.”

“Didn’t you give him an opening, which is why the Duke kept pushing in?”

Was this the fallout of dropped affection points?

His pettiness was starting to reach its peak.

Just as I was about to set the record straight, the Duchess pointed an accusing finger at Noah and grew angry.

“Y-You, are you doubting Belita right now?! How can you be like that as a boyfriend! Apologizing for not understanding sooner would barely be enough!”

‘Well, I appreciate it, but Noah’s intuition was actually spot-on.’

Given the chance, I was fully planning to fall right for Robert’s little maneuvers. Affection points were a matter of grave importance, after all.

My conscience gave another sharp, nagging pinch.

Noah’s fiercely hardened expression faltered, his mouth parting slightly as if in shock.

“…I’m sorry, Belita. I must have lost my mind for a second there. Nothing actually happened between you two, right?”

“There wasn’t even time for anything to happen. The threat the Mistress made worked like a charm.”

And that was the absolute truth. It worked so well that Robert practically treated me like an invisible person. Thanks to that, my affection points had remained unchanged for weeks.

“It certainly looked that way. He was furious beyond belief.”

So that was how it was. Unable to swallow that anger, he must have finally resolved to dispose of the Duchess.

“So, what are we going to do when the Duchess is gone?”

“Before we talk about that, there’s something I need to say. Duchess, please listen closely as well.”

Two pairs of bewildered eyes turned toward me.

“If the Duchess’s escape plan succeeds, both Noah and the Duchess will owe me a huge debt. Because I’m the mastermind behind this plan, and it erases the fact that Noah almost committed murder and that the Duchess almost died. Agreed?”

At the mention of a debt, a trace of anxiety flickered in their eyes, but both of them nodded.

“Is there something you want? I’ll gladly grant it to whatever extent is within my power.”

“I-I too… if it’s something I can do…”

“It’s nothing material, but there is indeed something I want.”

Feigning hesitation for a moment, I opened my mouth.

“Actually, I intend to expose the Duke’s corruption.”

“What?”

“That’s why I want to gather evidence. Both of you will help me. That is how you’ll repay the debt you owe me.”

The two of them fell speechless for a moment.

The first to recover her wits was the Duchess.

“What do you mean by that? How on earth do you expect to pull something like that off…?”

“I have a method in mind. Though I can’t share the details.”

“…….”

The method didn’t matter. This was all a lie anyway.

Though I did plan to gather information on Robert as it came my way, I had zero intention of making it public.

If he actually did something that warranted getting his peerage stripped, it would ruin my quest, too.

I was only going to use their help to fish out suitable tidbits and report them exclusively to Jeffrey.

‘This is shaping up to be a quite lucrative spy life.’

Even if Evan or Sera asked me for the secret to my performance later, I’d make sure never to tell them.