I Didn't Seduce the Dark Grand Duke — Episode 5
Grand Duke Leon Obsidian of Bernstein's shocking, dishonorable dismissal from his post has become the talk of the empire.
In the early hours of this morning, the Grand Duke formally declared that he could no longer fulfill his priestly duties to the Imperial family. The palace has since notified the Temple of this fact and, in accordance with protocol, demanded his removal as Commander of the Holy Knights.
Meanwhile, the High Temple maintains its position that "the exact circumstances are still being assessed, and nothing has been confirmed."
Will the Grand Duke—once hailed as a gift of the gods—truly step down from his post? All eyes remain fixed on how this affair will unfold―
Whoa, this is….
The article's entire thrust was to emphasize that the Imperial Palace and the Temple were at odds over the matter. I skimmed through it quickly, then reached for the gossip sheet instead.
…Ladies of the empire, who have contented themselves with gazing from afar all this while! You who secretly set your hearts ablaze!
How do you feel now? The sacred relic you believed you could never, ever touch has been trampled underfoot by someone!
"N-no, this is going too far!"
Anyone reading this would think I'd actually done something to the Grand Duke! The whole thing was practically baiting the reader, and it made my head spin.
…On the other hand, some are positively fluttering over the news—namely, the unmarried noble daughters of the realm who remain on the market.
One lady of high society, speaking to us on condition of anonymity, remarked: "This may be a blessing in disguise. If he was nothing more than cake in a painting—something to look at but never taste—then doesn't this mean we finally have a chance?"…
High society is stirring with anticipation that the nobleman once thought impregnable may soon hit the Orden marriage market as its most coveted prize!
Further coverage will follow in an exclusive from the empire's leading daily, The Red Rose―
"The Grand Duke, dismissed in dishonor! And over a scandal of all things!"
"Truly the world is turning upside down. Whoever could that shameless woman be, the one who dared lay hands on the Grand Duke?"
Laura, thoroughly worked up, and the butler poured out near-identical exclamations like a rehearsed duet. Caught between them, I laughed awkwardly and played along.
"Haha. I know, right. Whoever could it be?"
The idiot woman who dared lay a hand on the Grand Duke, that is.
To cut to the conclusion: my flight to the territory never happened.
Not that I'd given up on it, mind you.
The problem was that a fatally inconvenient variable had appeared in the execution of my plan.
"You really are useless to the very end."
Once I actually tried to leave, the sheer volume of unfinished work was no joke. It couldn't be helped, I supposed. While some clueless stranger had been squatting in my body, she'd lazed about, feasted, and enjoyed herself to her heart's content before flitting off—of course the work had piled up. Unable in good conscience to abandon it all, I'd picked up my pen, and now here I was, hacking through the backlog like a madwoman.
All right. If I grind through this by tomorrow night, I can leave the day after.
Leave or not, the work had to be done first.
"My lady, are you all right? You look positively pale."
"I'm fine. I barely slept last night, that's all."
Pressing at my heavy eyelids, I lifted the teacup set before me. One sip of its refreshingly fragrant brew, and a cool sensation spread through my mouth, sharpening my foggy head.
A headache-soothing tea. It was one of the bestsellers of Roar, the trading company run by the Zacherete Marquisate.
"Phew."
Catching my breath for a moment, I raised my head. This was the trading company's headquarters, right in the heart of the Imperial Capital. What had begun as a general store dealing in tea and spices had, since I became head of the family, flourished into a string of shops and the newly opened tea salons. These days its value was recognized enough that it even supplied the Imperial household. It was no exaggeration to say we had conquered the Orden Empire's teatime outright.
"Feeling better now? Go ahead with the report."
"Yes, my lady."
At my nod, Jean, the company's administrator standing before me, answered promptly.
"First, overall sales across our shops rose this week. The new blended tea we recently launched in the tea salons is also receiving quite favorable reviews."
"Good to hear. But no getting complacent. We should add at least three more new products by year's end—more if we can manage it. Ah, how are things overseas?"
"Reception there has been excellent as well. Demand in the Roman Kingdom in particular has surged dramatically. Roman is a cold region, you see, so we made our flagship a tea blended with spices to draw out that distinctive spicy warmth, and it seems to have struck exactly the right chord with consumers. We're planning to develop similar blends and turn it into a full series."
"Perfect. Oh—and be careful the recipe doesn't leak."
"Of course. Although… there is one issue. The loss rate incurred during transport remains stubbornly high."
"Hmm. That is the thorniest problem."
I studied the chart in front of me. Roughly twenty percent of total production was recorded as losses. Frustrating, but there was nothing to be done.
Each variety of tea leaf is grown in a different region, after all….
The Zacherete family was a noble house holding vast tracts of land across the empire—scattered in small parcels across wildly different places, no less. This was due to a peculiar aristocratic law unique to the Orden Empire. Wary of the nobility expanding their power bases, the Crown deliberately granted lands not adjacent to a family's existing holdings but far-flung ones, scattering them to prevent consolidation.
The other nobles had pushed back—scattered investment across distant territories diluted returns, they argued, and choosing even a single plot for concentrated development was headache enough. But Zacherete had swiftly accepted the arrangement, and accepted it again besides. We had cultivated our fragmented territories from early on, and thanks to that foresight, we were now a sprawling enterprise handling hundreds of varieties of tea leaves and spices.
"The trouble is that every tea leaf has a different shelf life, and different drying times on top of that."
"Indeed it is. Haaa… if only we had a mage on hand, this would be solved in a heartbeat."
"True. It might have been possible, oh, three hundred years ago. But it's been ages since mages walked this earth."
Having said my piece with a bitter smile, I closed the file and moved to shelve the issue for now. I was hurrying off to the next item of business when Jean blurted out a question.
"By the way, my lady. Are you truly going down to the territory?"
"Why, out of nowhere?"
"Just wondering. It's been so long since you last visited, after all."
About time you looked in on the place, isn't it? he'd said, but my conscience twinged all the same. And why wouldn't it? How was I supposed to explain the truth—that I was fleeing the Grand Duke?
"Seeing you rush like this, it honestly looks like you've caused some disaster and are running from it."
"Periodic inspection of the territory is a lord's duty."
"You haven't performed it once until now, though. You left the territory's management entirely to your proxy."
"…Which is why I'm getting around to it now."
Jean nodded, still regarding me with openly suspicious eyes.
Right. He buys about half of that, judging by that look. Why is it that everyone in my employ has such sharp instincts?
Just as I was racking my brain for a good change of subject to escape the situation—
"Oh, Laura, did you hear the rumor?"
"You mean about Grand Duke Bernstein? Of course. It's absolute pandemonium out there right now."
Ah, this is the last thing I wanted them talking about.
Laura snapped up the moment Jean tossed out the bait. Their eyes gleamed like they had stars plucked straight from the night sky and set in them.
"They haven't identified her yet, have they?"
"No. But surely she must be a staggering beauty, don't you think? Why else would the Grand Duke—impregnable as he was—finally fall?"
"Everyone's frantic to find out who she is right now. Oh, for the record, my money's on 'one of the temple faithful.'"
"You mean he carried on so shamelessly inside the Temple?"
"It's the only explanation that makes sense. Think about it. The Grand Duke, famous for his piety. The only places he ever set foot were the Temple and the frontlines of the demon hunts. Just those two. Where on earth would he have had the chance to catch a woman's eye?"
"Oh. That's actually rather convincing."
Laura and Jean, both thoroughly worked up, put their heads together and launched into a full-blown debate. Who was the woman who had lured away the Grand Duke, flawlessness incarnate, a living god among men? Lately there was nowhere in the Capital you could go without hearing this exact conversation.
The nobility, starved for fresh gossip, were gleefully playing detective over the woman who had tempted the Grand Duke—and some among them had their eyes blazing as they hunted her down personally, insisting they simply had to see the woman who'd dared seduce him with their own eyes.
In other words: staying in the Capital right now meant danger.
"You'll be heading straight back to the mansion, then?"
"No. There's somewhere I need to stop first. That's the whole reason I came out today."
I caught Laura just as she marched out the door and made straight for the carriage. Regrettably, today's main agenda lay elsewhere. Sighing, I drew a single sheet of paper from my coat.
"Someone's mess I have to clean up, you see."
The godforsaken letter left behind by none other than our Miss Park Sumin.