I Will Seduce The Northern Duke
chapter-108

At that time, she used the same fork to solidify herself with Kalcion in the cake shop. Was it like back then…? The cutleries, which she usually didn’t care about, took up all her mind.

“Wa, wait.”

As she hesitated, pondering an answer, Kalcion suddenly reached out and touched her lips.

“You have something.”

His fingertips lightly touched her lips. This time, her eyes did not fall from his fingertips, not from the cutlery.

‘No way… Noo way, no way.’

She didn’t expect it to go into his mouth, but luckily he rubbed it on a napkin.

Her stiff shoulder, which was about to touch her ear, fell down. She even wondered if he was doing this to make fun of her right now. So now that he was gotten used to it, he was starting a counterattack.

‘Then, I can’t lose.’

Looking up into Kalcion’s eyes, Selina tightened her eyes and rearranged her expression again.

Their eyes met.

However, the fight didn’t happen. It was because she lost her will just by seeing that deep gaze towards herself.

“….”

It was invisible to others though Selina could see it. The unrestrained affection was so clear in those eyes.

The warmth towards her was unbearably feverish. The kiss was not an accident. It wasn’t even impulsive. The thought, which she had not been able to recognize until now, was pushed out by the word ‘acting,’ so she had been deceived.

‘…Since when?’

As the sky changed color with time, it slowly faded into color. It was impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when it was night and when it was day. Still, the distinction between the two was always clear.

Embarrassment rushed over. She would return any time. Emotions beyond work would only leave scars.

Even if Selina’s heart changes and the two of them agree, she cannot dream of a happy ending. Kalcion was the Duke. Here, she was nothing without the pretense that she was his lover. She could never choose the option to stay here even if he guaranteed a luxurious life.

‘I need to get my act together.’

Selina gathered her heart.

Kalcion is an attractive person. If such a person looks at her and expresses himself with the eyes of falling in love at every moment, she will fall apart no matter how hard she tries. She wasn’t even confident that she wouldn’t be shaken.

However, she still had to refrain herself from swaying.

“Did Count Orlen contact you?”

When she changed the topic to the incident back then, the warmth escaped from Kalcion’s eyes. Seeing how he quickly changed to work mode and regained his composure, it seemed that he wasn’t completely obsessed with her yet.

‘Should I say this is a relief?’

The day would come when he would give up his love for her.

“You didn’t even train in the morning, so how about a walk instead?”

There seemed to be an important story related to the Count of Orlen. Selina quickly noticed.

“Yes, I like it. The weather is good…”

Looking out of the window, there was an overcast.

In the morning, she couldn’t even sleep because of the bright sunlight, although the sky was now dark.

“…It’s usually better to go for a walk on a cloudy day.”

It didn’t matter which way she went as long as she had a clear purpose in mind.

As she walked out of the porch with her arms crossed, the sky was getting darker, and it looked like it was going to rain soon. While the damp air was wet, the wind was blowing, and it wasn’t unpleasant. The hem of her skirt fluttered to and fro in the wind.

After confirming that there were no people around except for the escort, Kalcion slowly opened his mouth.

“I haven’t heard from the Count yet. Still, other information came in.”

“What information?”

“It seems that the escorts who were there at the time were reassessing the situation and found something.”

Kalcion let out a small sigh before speaking his words.

“It seems that the direction of the arrow was not entirely aimed at Count Orlem.”

“What…?”

Lava erupted from her terrified chest.

“Then, it was originally aimed at me?”

“Looking at the strength and speed of the arrow, it was immature and could not take lives. It is highly probable that they originally aimed at you, but hastily changed the target to Count Orlen.”

“Perhaps, Count Orlen got hit instead of me.”

There were escorts around, but they kept a distance between the two. It was Selina who could see and feel the situation up close, but she was so startled that her memories were jumbled up. It was difficult to tell the difference between what she saw and what she thought.

She was confident that what she had seen was right.

“If it were for me, it would be simple. However, if there were a sharp turn to Count Orlen, it would be when the conversation we were having was interrupted.”

“What were you two conversing about?”

“He said I should be careful when dealing with the Crown Prince, so I asked what happened.”

For that moment, she thought that the key to all solutions was in front of her eyes and focused her nerves. Thanks to this, the memory about Count Orlen right after the arrow was shot was blurry though the conversation was clear.

“Crown Prince.”

Kalcion cleverly got the most critical word right.

“We ended up conversing about that while talking about Irell.”

“Irell?”

“Did you know that men approached her after being ostracized by women?”

He didn’t even know that Irell had been bullied, so he wouldn’t even know that. Kalcion shook his head honestly.

“Only the parties will know how far they have crossed, but at least from the outside, it seems that they have crossed the line that could be criticized.”

It was before the engagement ceremony, not even after getting married and producing an heir.

“She was just rejected here and there, but in the meantime, they kindly approached her and took care of her so she must have fallen for it.”

“Everything was going on under my chin.”

Just before the engagement ceremony, she went out with other men, no matter how free-spirited the noble society was. Even if he had known, he could have simply said that he wanted her to take care of herself before the wedding, yet that didn’t happen.

Now, it had become a complicated feeling that he could neither be angry for.

Selina, who looked into Kalcion’s complicated face, sighed as her chest tightened. It was a series of misfortunes from Irell’s point of view, but a series of handshakes from the point of view of the third party.

“I’m guessing that the Crown Prince may have gotten in.”

Even though it was understandable up to the first part, the Crown Prince… Kalcion’s head tilted to the side.

“Why the Crown Prince?”

“…Isn’t the Crown Prince a playboy?”

His head tilted to the other side as if he was thinking about it.

“No, the Crown Prince prefers to beat up women.”

“Your personality looks the exact opposite, but that’s similar to the Duke.”

“I apologize.”

Among Kalcion’s faces she had ever seen, that was the most vivid.

“I’m sorry. It was a slip of the tongue.”

Selina immediately apologized.

“You’re not interested, and the Crown Prince is wary of the dividing power. Absolutely different.”

“Yes, it’s different. It is fundamentally different.”

His face softened slightly at her response.

“Despite that, the Crown Prince is very aggressive towards me. He had something to do with Irell before me.”

As she was talking, there was a point that just connected.

“…He’s trying to steal because…the Duke’s woman?”

“…Ho.”

To think of it as a coincidence, the only thing that Irell and Selina had in common was that they were the ‘Kalcion’s woman.’ The two were different in appearance, personality, status, and origin—even their position in the social world.

“If these assumptions were true… First of all, the Crown Prince is behind everything, and it may be the decisive cause of Irell’s death.”

“It seems to be a fact that he is already involved.”

“Then, are the lines connected like this? Rosalyn moves for the Crown Prince, Lirel, whose weakness is Rosalyn, and Juna is sent by Lirel.”

A picture was drawn roughly.

At the same time, the people who entered the suspect list were also classified into different categories.

Fionel was the first to be excluded from the list of suspects. Once things were settled, she was clear of the charges.

“Fionel… Now that I think about it, I think it was a warning, not a threat. It must have been true that she hated me.”

“What did Fionel do?”

Even though he had come to the point of falling in love with her, he was still dull when it came to a woman’s heart. Especially when it came to other women who were no different from roadside stones. She was sorry for the first time to Fionel, who was in the midst of one-sided love.

…When she returned to her original world, would Fionel take the place of Duchess?

Dressed up like the Duchess, she pictured Fionnell laughing joyously, crossing her arms with Kalcion. She would look down on the world with a triumphant smile as if she had it all.

Will that be all? She would do worse now than what she, who was pretending to be his lover, would be doing.

In a public place, hugging, embracing, carrying, leaning, Kalcion would kiss the back of her hand. He would kiss her on the cheek in the morning and evening… If he went out hunting, he would kiss her on the forehead, and if he had to, he was sure that he could even kiss her on the lips…

…At night, the two of them go to the same bath to wash each other, put on the see-through pajamas, and go into the same bed, deeply overlapping their lips, doing this and that—!

There was a feeling of discomfort, as if her stomach got twisted. She hated to even think about it.

Fionel and Kalcion…

She hated it so much.

‘I don’t like her either.’

Selina continued her words, erasing the unpleasant imagination from her head.