If I Can’t Be Your Wife

“N-Nothing.
I went for a walk and it must have been an insect bite.”

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She made excuses and quickly fastened the button to cover her neck.

 

“Really?”

 

Fortunately, Emily tilted her head as if it was strange, patted her on the back and laid down on her bed without further questioning.

 

“Oh gosh, I’m going to die.
I’ve been walking around all night, and my legs hurt, my back hurts, and my whole body aches.”

 

“Weren’t you supposed to be on the night shift?”

 

Emily was a maid who usually worked in the laundry room.
During the day she would collect the laundry and at night she would do the laundry.
Yesterday she was supposed to be on a night shift, so she shouldn’t have had to move around.
It was unfortunate.

 

“It was originally supposed to be like that.”

 

“Did you go on an errand?”

 

Emily answered with a big yawn.

 

“I was at the Master’s all night.
No, in the middle of the night there was a sudden summons order, so I went to see what was going on, and all the night shift workers were gathered there.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I don’t know.
I thought only the laundry maids were called, but there were kitchen maids, maids who cleaned the house, servants in charge of the stables, and other maids.
Probably all of the employees were there except for the nanny in the annex.
Anyway, the head maid nagged for a while.
She said that we had to pull all the weeds out of the Duke’s garden all of a sudden.
At that late hour!”

 

“During the night?”

 

“That’s right! She said that a man from the Imperial Palace will come to the castle ten days later so she had to manage the Duke’s.
But did we really have to do that then?”

 

Emily’s shoes and skirt were all dirtied with mud and grass.

 

‘No way…….’

 

Kathleen felt a chill as she remembered the conversation she had heard.

 

“But the strange thing is that the nanny’s maids were also there.
The Master attached them to her to never leave her side because she was the one whom the Master regarded like his own mother.”

 

“Really?”

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“Anyway, when I came back in the middle of the night, they said that the Master had spent the night with a woman!”

 

Emily raised her voice in great excitement.

 

“Besides, because the woman ran away, the butler is looking for her everywhere, because the Master was angered and ordered to catch her quickly.”

 

“The woman… The Master said to find her?”

 

Her heart sank.
She just thought he would consider it a dream, but she didn’t expect it to be like this.
She rarely went to the castle since she belonged to the kitchen, but she could not be reassured that she would be unnoticed if she ever met him face to face.

 

“Yes.
But it’s very strange.
Why did she run away from the bedroom?”

 

“Is the nanny looking for her?”

 

Kathleen asked, seeming to be overly interested.
Fortunately, Emily didn’t seem to think it was strange.

 

“Actually, the nanny looked like she was not in the mood to stay still.”

 

She felt cold sweat running down her back.
As the nanny of the Duke of Walten and the maid who had cared for the Duke’s biological mother since childhood, she had great power.
In the midst of this, when it is revealed that she had spent the night with the Duke, not only the Duke’s but the Imperial Palace would be overturned.

 

“I’m happy though.
Because, even if it was just for a day, a person appeared at a time when a successor was urgently needed.
To be honest, I thought the Master was a eunuch.
He never proposed marriage, and he treated noble girls coldly.”

 

A eunuch?

 

The Duke she met last night was not such a man at all.
It would have been more accurate to say he was the complete opposite.

 

In any case, Kathleen nodded her head awkwardly and matched Emily’s words.

 

“Th-That’s right.
So, she might have run away.
The nanny is the nanny, so there’s no way she’d welcome the woman the Master played fire with as his wife.”

 

“Yes.
But her identity will soon be revealed.”

 

“…Huh?”

 

“The butler said he has conclusive evidence to find out who the woman is.
I think he said after work, she took off her shoes and ran away?”

 

“What?!”

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Kathleen hurriedly looked at the corner of the room and covered her mouth as she had screamed without realizing it.
Indeed, she only had one of her shoes she had taken off.

 

“Kelly, what are you doing all of a sudden?”

 

Emily furrowed her brows and sat up.

 

“What’s that face? It’s very suspicious.”

 

“….”

 

“You, no way.”

 

Emily’s gaze turned to the corner then she bounced like a grasshopper and picked something up.
Her mouth hung wide open and her gaze turned to Kathleen, rushing for an answer.
Kathleen couldn’t bring the truth out of her mouth, and instead bit her lips and nodded her head slightly.
At that moment, Emily struck her in the back as fast as lightning.

 

“Ouch!”

 

“You, what? What’s going on all of a sudden?”

 

“That hurts!”

 

Emily’s eyes grew bigger and she slapped her on the forearm this time.

 

“How did this happen? Did you spend the night with the Master? Why did you go to his bedroom? No, did he come here? Did he come and take you?”

 

“No, it’s not like that……”

 

“Tell me properly and don’t leave out anything! That way, I can help you.
Okay?”

 

Emily, who had been lying down like a vegetable blanched in water until just now due to exhaustion, made a fuss and went crazy.
Reluctantly, Kathleen briefly recounted what had happened the night before.
Emily didn’t believe her words at all.

 

“Isn’t it just a dream?”

 

“No it’s not.
I’m telling you!”

 

“Yes, anyway, whatever it is, going there because of the nightmare of me and you dying, it’s a big deal.”

 

Emily seemed to think she had confused her dreams with reality and went to the bedroom, and she thought so, too.
It wasn’t wrong at all, so Kathleen decided to move on.

 

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“Then why did you run away? It’s not like the Master would’ve minded.
Just identify yourself and try to fix the situation.”

 

“No way.”

 

Kathleen waved her hands with a straight face.

 

“You know what my dream is.”

 

“I know! You’ll save up your salary, buy a house and then leave this castle when you’re older.
But Kelly, wouldn’t it be better if, perhaps not the Duchess, but if you were a concubine? To be honest, a villa given by the Master would be bigger and better than a house you could buy from the money you saved.”

 

“Hey did you hear me?”

 

Her body was already exhausted from what she had been through all night, but Emily kept sticking to her trying to convince her.
She had lost all energy.
But Emily didn’t give up.

 

“Think carefully though.
If the Imperial Palace finds out about this…”

 

“What are you all doing!”

 

“Oh my!”

 

Kathleen and Emily were brought back to reality by a loud noise from beyond the door.
She was the nanny’s close associate and the chief of the maidservants who managed the Duke of Walten.
Kathleen pulled out a new pair of shoes from under her bed and put them on as she motioned for Emily to fold her blanket.

 

“The sun has risen in the middle of the sky, but the maids are still dilly-dallying?”

 

“I’m sorry.
It’s because I was just resting after finishing my night shift yesterday.
Hehe.”

 

Emily, who was very friendly, smiled softly and glanced at the handmaiden.
However, the wrinkles on the forehead of the handmaiden grew deeper.

 

“Aren’t you just slow or are you deaf? Haven’t you heard the news yet?”

 

“What? What news?”

 

“The nanny ordered all the maids to stop what they were doing and gather in the front yard.
Come out immediately.”

 

Her heart pounded like it was going to explode.
In the six years of her stay in the Duke of Walten, the nanny had never summoned all the lower-ranked maids.
Emily, who was following the handmaiden, noticed it, too, with a serious face, and whispered in her ear.

 

“Do not worry.
I will never tell on you.
I don’t know anything.”

 

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“Okay.
Thanks.”

 

But Kathleen had other worries in her mind.
She struggled to erase her thoughts.

 

“Go over there and stand.”

 

When she arrived at the front yard of the annex where the nanny was staying, the handmaiden pushed her back.
Dozens of other maids had already gathered.

 

“Chief handmaiden, are they all here now?”

 

“Yes.”

 

As she and Emily were approaching the place where the maids had gathered, Kathleen was startled when she heard the voice of a Knight standing in front of the greenhouse wearing a long sword.
He somehow felt familiar.

 

‘Ah… Last night with the nanny.’

 

You were an escort knight.

 

Kathleen pretended not to know him.
She lowered her head and kept her eyes down as she mixed with the other maids.
After a while, the annex door opened with a rattle.
The maids all bowed their heads in unison.

 

However, the sound of footsteps on the marble was heavier than usual.

 

‘Are you very angry?’

 

She remembered how the nanny stamped her feet a few times because the nanny couldn’t release her anger when the letter of proposal arrived to the Duke of Walten.
But her footsteps seemed to be heavier now than back then, so she must be really angry.

 

Tuk.

 

As soon as the nanny opened her mouth, something black fell to the ground.
Kathleen’s eyes, as she involuntarily looked at it, almost popped out.
It was the shoe she had left without even realizing that it had come off.

 

“Who is the owner of this shoe?”

 

The man’s low, hard yet sharp voice resonated in her ears.

 

The owner of this voice was not the nanny.
This…….

 

“I already know that you are one of those who are here, so it would be better for you to just come out.”

 

It was the Duke of Walten, the person who spent the night with her.