It Couldn't Have Been the Grand Duke... Right?

No. This made no sense. It was so ridiculous I could have doubled over laughing!

"Laura! Laura!"

"Coming! What is it?! A headache? Dizziness?"

At my call, Laura came bursting through the door as if she'd kicked it open.

"So, you see. Why. Last week, when I didn't come home......"

I glanced at her sideways, choosing my words carefully. What I really wanted to ask was, Did I happen to stay out last night? But if I put it that way, who knew what kind of misunderstanding I'd stir up. So I deliberately framed it as if I were probing.

"Ah, that day."

Damn it. So something really did happen.

"I'd been debating whether I should bring that day up with you or not, my lady."

"Of course you should have. Don't tell me you weren't going to say anything? Your lady didn't come home without so much as a word. Isn't that strange?"

"We assumed you had someone you were meeting in secret, my lady. You did come back first thing the next morning. And also...... ahem."

Also what?

Laura suddenly coughed awkwardly, flushed, and added in a rush, "Also, the knot on the corset I'd laced for you the night before... was different the next morning...... Ahem, ahem."

Oh, gods above.

The room swayed before my eyes. Whatever the details, it meant I'd apparently undressed somewhere outside the house. Truly, damn it all.

"But my lady, why have you been asking about all this? Do you... actually not remember? Now I'm worried."

"N-no, it's nothing. I just couldn't recall the exact date, that's all."

"Ah, I see......"

Laura nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on me, unconvinced. I had a feeling that if I let this conversation drag on, she'd catch me in something, so I hustled her out the door.

Now then, back to the matter at hand.

"Leon Obsidian... me, with the Grand Duke of Bernstein... hahaha."

The more I turned it over in my mind, the more hollow laughter spilled out of me. That was how absurd the whole thing was.

This was the Commander of the Holy Knights, a man sworn to chastity before the gods. A being no one could ever dare lay a hand on.

Granted, women by the dozens would have thrown off their dresses and thrown themselves at him at a single crook of his finger.

But we had nothing connecting us, did we?

The closest thing to a connection was that we were both academy alumni. And maybe the fact that we'd brushed past each other a few times back when we were both merit scholarship students?

In other words, he was practically a stranger.

"Besides, he joined the Divine Holy Knights right around the time I graduated from the academy. I haven't laid eyes on him since."

He was, after all, the Grand Duke whose devout piety was the stuff of legend. So when that man finally chose to make an enemy of the temple—or rather, to give himself wholly to it—high society reeled in shock.

The countless young noblewomen who had secretly adored him mourned the distance that had grown between them, and even the most haughty married ladies pined away, throwing the whole social season into an uproar.

But the fuss died down quickly enough. Unexpectedly, the flirtation from young ladies and noble matrons alike didn't stop even after he became a priest. A persimmon out of reach is still worth a poke, as the saying went.

And beneath it all lurked something else—the transgressive thrill of coveting a sanctity too sacred to touch.

Still, honestly. Watching married ladies trail after him in breathless worship was a sight to behold......

Every era had its vices, but in Orden high society, adultery was an act that could never be forgiven. Yet in a world dense with arranged marriages, there were plenty who savored a dangerous little affair on the side—and to them, Leon Obsidian made the perfect target.

A devastatingly handsome face, a body sculpted by relentless training. The exalted rank of Grand Duke, and royal blood in his veins despite being illegitimate. On top of it all, a priest holding the favor of the High Temple itself.

But what good was golden blood and a flawless face if he was incapable of putting any of it to proper use?

Taking everything together, then, Leon Obsidian was a man who could never, under any official circumstances, become someone's lover—the so-called "safe" man. Which was precisely why most nobles turned a blind, indulgent eye to their wives' one-sided pining, and why the ladies grew bolder and bolder in their advances.

And yet, through all of it, the Grand Duke has never once kept a woman at his side.

He could have lived comfortably off the hem of any lady's skirt had he wished. Instead, he spent most of his days at the temple in the empire's southern reaches, praying and occasionally riding out at the High Temple's command to hunt down monsters. An existence almost unbearably austere and chaste.

Among the gossiping public, rumors even circulated that something might be wrong with his... reproductive capabilities, but perhaps thanks to his fine looks, everyone kept such talk hushed. People simply couldn't help resenting the piety of a man who'd gone and given his heart to a god.

And now that man—

"Slept with me?"

Sitting frozen in my chair, I slowly ran my eyes over my body, here and there. Then it dawned on me what a pointless exercise this was.

"No, of course not. It's been days. What trace could possibly still be left?"

Still, on the off chance, I put myself through every contortion imaginable in front of a mirror—not a scratch, not a single bruise anywhere on my body.

That hardly proved nothing had happened that night, of course. But the woman who'd stolen my body had insisted, point-blank, that she'd slept with Leon Obsidian. And according to Laura, I had apparently stayed out overnight with clear signs of having undressed.

Denying the incident itself seemed next to impossible.

"But it absolutely was not Leon Obsidian."

It wasn't just that I found it hard to believe. The timing, the circumstances—none of it added up.

Which left only one possibility.

"Was this woman... scammed?"

Some con artist posing as the Grand Duke had tricked her. Yes. Nothing else made any sense.

"A woman from some other world wouldn't know the Grand Duke if she saw him. She just swallowed some fraud's lies and believed her partner was the Grand Duke. This idiot woman—using my body for this!"

Memoryless as I was, I felt no particular wrongness or odd sensation, but the mere fact that someone had lain with this body made fury boil up in me. And to think I didn't even know who it was!

"I knew from the start it didn't add up. The Grand Duke wouldn't be in the Imperial Capital. If he'd come up here, the whole city would've been in an uproar days ago—"

Knock knock knock!

"My lady!"

Almost simultaneous with the knock, the door flung open and Laura stormed in, pale as a sheet.

"What now? What on earth is wrong with you?"

"It's—it's terrible! Downstairs, right now!"

Downstairs what?

Laura, gasping for breath as I begged her to calm down and speak clearly, finally shouted it out.

"The Grand Duke of Bernstein is here!"

"What? Who did you say is here?"

The Grand Duke? There was only one Grand Duke in the empire, but I asked again anyway, half-convinced I'd misheard. Laura nodded grimly.

"Lord Leon Obsidian! He says he wishes to see you, my lady! He's waiting downstairs right this moment—hurry and get ready. Hurry!"

The confirmation was so airtight there was no room left for denial, and everything went white before my eyes.

No—why on earth would a man who belonged at a temple in the outskirts be here? And why at our house? Why was he looking for me?

And of all things... at this exact moment?

No way. Come on, there's no chance. It absolutely can't be. No, it had better not be!

A dozen questions and a crawling dread began to churn in my head. The things I'd kept dismissing inwardly—impossible, impossible—morphed, before I knew it, into one anxious premonition: what if every last one of them was true?

I shot up from my chair and demanded anxiously, "Laura. What state was the Grand Duke in?"

"I'm sorry—his state, my lady?"

"You know. Did he seem angry, perhaps? Or maybe... wronged, somehow, or—"

"Oh!"

At my question—whether there'd been anything distinctive about him—Laura fell briefly into thought before her eyes went wide and she spoke up.

"He was holding an enormous bouquet of flowers in his hands, my lady!"

Good heavens.

Listening quietly all this while, I swallowed a scream.

A bouquet.

Somehow that's even more terrifying.

Wow. My heart is about to burst.

Standing before the drawing room door, I clenched my fists. The entire walk down, my head had been consumed by a single thought.

Why did the Grand Duke come here? Why on earth?

As if my life weren't chaotic enough, the very architect of the disaster had shown up in person. At this point, there was nothing to do but face him.

"Whew."

All right. Here we go.

Straining to steady my trembling nerves, I drew one deep breath, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.

The first thing to greet me was—

"Ah, Erna."

A face so breathtakingly radiant it seemed to hold the warmth of sunlight in its smile.