The Devilish Duke Can’t Sleep

Proofreader: somnium

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Must hide it

The ‘morning meeting’ was convened the next day in the Santella residence, where the head returned.
Leonard’s expression, who arrived last night, was as serious as ever, so the people in the mansion were very nervous.
But, as always, Liddell opened the door to the office brightly.

“Good morning, Father.”

“Yes.
When I look at Liddell’s face, it seems to relieve my fatigue.”

Perhaps he had hidden a smile to show to his daughter, and while he had just pressed down on his tired forehead, he quickly showed a bright smile.

Because of the head’s atmosphere, Lian, who was always grumpy, quietly followed Liddell and sat down today.

“What are you doing? You have had a bad complexion since you arrived yesterday.”

Lian kindly spoke out, worrying for his father.

“Something, I have a bad feeling.”

“Yes? From Levanas?”

“I only found out in Levanas, but what I am talking about is related to the Duke of Luave.”

Liddell’s eyes, which had shone brightly, became slightly cold at that answer.

“Related to……Kahel?”

“I don’t know how he hid it, but…… No, he could have been hiding it because everyone believed that it couldn’t be, but there was a woman who didn’t respond to Kahel’s devilish power.
Right next to Kahel, right now.”

“What?”

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Liddell asked, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t know what it really is.
Because I didn’t see a face, I didn’t hear a voice.
But there is definitely a woman by Kahel’s side, and she…… seems to use a power we have never seen before.”

There was silence in Leonard’s office, where they could even hear the sound of a needle falling.
However, in the heads of the three people, all kinds of information and predictions were noisy and spinning.
To have a woman by Kahel’s side, it was really surprising.
The fact that there was a woman who was not the Queen or of the Santella clan, but did not yield to his devilish powers, was certainly another power they did not know, as Leonard said.

Of course, they couldn’t rule out the case of a priestess, but Kahel wasn’t the kind of person who would have taken out a young woman and put her by his side.

“Do you have any more information about that woman?”

Leonard shook his head slightly at Liddell’s question.

“It was Margella who came to see her in person.
But something happened to her after she came to see her and she immediately lost her consciousness.
I tried to bless her with healing several times, but she couldn’t come to her senses.
It’s also strange.”

“Do you understand what kind of relationship she has with Kahel?”

“I didn’t even have time to figure that out.
But Margella said that she had been injured and she was being treated in a very luxurious room.
She’s not the kind of person Kahel takes lightly, since Margella said, ‘Maybe, she’s the Duke of Luave’s woman,’ at a glance.”

“She was being treated in a luxurious room…….”

“There is a relationship between the two, but the problem is that we don’t know what the power that doesn’t respond to the devilish power is.”

“But if you think about it, even with Kahel’s devilish powers, there are a lot of people who stayed by his side.
Even for ordinary people, it’s not that there’s no way at all.
Maybe we’re focusing on Kahel’s powers too much.”

“Yes, that’s true but…….”

While exchanging questions and answers, Leonard and Liddell were thinking about the unknown woman, assembling various pieces of information that only they knew together in their heads.
Meanwhile, Lian was thinking of the woman he had seen on the streets of Rivella.
Under the circumstances, it was very likely that the woman Leonard was talking about was that woman.
The woman who was Kahel’s close maid.

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“Still, I think we should investigate the person first.”

 

Liddell made an offer to Leonard, but the answer came from Lian.

“You don’t have to.
Because I have already investigated.”

In response, Leonard and Liddell’s surprised eyes turned to him.

“What are you talking about, Brother?”

“I’ve seen a woman with Kahel on the streets of Rivella before.
So I did some background research.
I didn’t get much compared to the time and money I put into it.”

“Why are you talking about that now?”

“Our lovely Liddell always likes accurate information, and we don’t know how Kahel will react when he finds out that we were investigating her for no reason.”

Liddell pouted her mouth at Lian’s unpretentious attitude, but she couldn’t blame him any more.
As he said, Leonard’s information: ‘it seemed that there was an unidentified woman by Kahel’s side’ was so disappointing.

“So, how far did you find out?”

“I couldn’t see the hair color very well, but the eyes are unusually bright purple.
It’s a rare color.
And she’s pretty.
The age is in the late teens or early 20s at most.”

An eyewitness testimony was interesting.
Even Leonard, who had been focusing on Liddell rather than Lian, was now leaning towards Lian.

“Did you feel magic?”

“No, not at all.
There is no magic power, and the aura is average.
Just as normal as girls of that age.
Even so, she was immune to the devilish power enough to be able to ride a carriage with Kahel.”

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“Do you have any other information?”

“The woman….… From what I know, she’s working as Kahel’s close maid.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“But she doesn’t look like a simple close maid.
She may be the close maid and the mistress.
It is very rare to find a woman who does not respond to Kahel’s devilish powers, so Kahel may not have had a choice.”

Those words implied Kahel’s unfortunate situation.
He cannot have the woman he loves by his side.
Otherwise, she will soon become a beast dominated by carnal lust and madness.

But Kahel is also a man and a human being.
Since there is no lack of his desire for the opposite sex, and when a woman appears who does not respond to his devilish power, he has no choice but to make her the object of his desire.

“Then I feel sorry for Kahel…….”

Liddell raised her eyebrows and her arms as if in disappointment for a moment, but Lian shook his head with a grin.

“Well? It’s too early to judge that.
Just because he reluctantly lets her be the mistress, I think Kahel is pouring money on her a little too much.”

“Really?”

Finally, a predatory anticipation stood in Liddell’s eyes.

“Then…… Should Kahel hide her more tightly? Because she could be a weakness..
….”

Liddell said in a way that she was worried about Kahel, but even Lian didn’t believe she was worried about Kahel.

Leonard said he had more to say with Liddell and sent Lian out first, and Lian went back to his room and drank cold water because he felt uncomfortable.

It was definitely information that would be helpful to the family, so it was right to share it.
It seemed to excite Leonard and Liddell that they might have finally found the flaws in the seemingly perfect Kahel Luave, and he was praised by Leonard for the first time in a long time.

But it didn’t feel good.
At the end of the meeting, Leonard and Liddell’s eyes were unforgettable.

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Lian had been feeling for a long time that something he didn’t know was going on with his father and Liddell.
But the head of the house was a place to be given to his younger sister anyway, and he just pretended not to know because if he finds out what’s going on, he’ll only take on the troublesome work.

But recently, he’s been thinking that the ‘work’ that only they know is a bit risky.
When asked why Leonard went to Levanas every winter, he did not give a convincing answer.

But Liddell certainly seemed to know the purpose.
But she always pretends she doesn’t know, and she adds, ‘Levanas is a less important estate, you can only visit when everything else is done.’

The reason he asked Leonard, ‘Why do you go to Levanas every winter?’ was because of the fact that monsters appear every winter in Sharden.
Normally, since monsters have appeared in the territory beyond the border, it can also appear in Levanas, so shouldn’t it be normal to say that he’s going because of that?

Besides, Liddell didn’t seem to worry at all that her beloved father might fight monsters.
Like someone who knows that there are no monsters in Levanas…….

The same is true of the woman named Margella who was invited from a foreign temple.
In Leonard’s words, she is a theologian who studies theology, so why did she have a laboratory in Levanas, where there is no temple? Besides, every now and then, whenever he heard stories about her, it was as if she was using magic.

Since then, Lian felt like something dangerous lurked in Levanas.
But he didn’t have the courage to figure out what it was on his own.
He was afraid to find out what was irreversible.

‘No, that can’t be true.
There’s no way people in my family would do anything that would harm the kingdom.’

Lian struggled to stop his anxious thoughts.
But his heart has been beating badly since he left Leonard’s office.

* * *

Regina Palace, where the New Year’s Celebration was held, was crowded with nobles from all over the country.
It is a place where people without a title do not dare to come and go unless it is during the New Year’s Celebration period, so young men and women, especially those who have been in marriageable age, used to mobilize connections from distant relatives, perhaps even from ones with just a drop of noble blood.
They were hoping that they would be able to raise their status in the eyes of a person of a higher status than theirs.

But that was their situation, and the real nobles were only looking at them in order to share a word of business with those who had come from the estate after a long time.

The person who received their greatest attention was arguably the former head of the Luave family, Damian Luave.
He should have been called ‘Count Allendorf’ after passing the dukeship to his son Kahel, but people still called him ‘His Excellency,’ with the feeling of respect.

Even at the age of fifty, he was so handsome that he seemed like the man who was the father of the man called the ‘Devil of Temptation’.
If Kahel’s eyes were cold red, his red eyes were as deep as old wine.

His white skin seemed to never age, and his long, black hair was still very smooth.
He is as tall as Kahel and his body is not flabby, and not disheveled in any place, so if people have not seen Kahel, they might mistake him as the ‘Devilish Duke’.