Chapter 111
Jane had devoted her utmost concentration to utter this single phrase.
To keep her voice from trembling, to prevent herself from blurting out something foolish, to calibrate her gaze toward the Duke—neither impertinent nor disrespectful, yet never appearing servile or foolish.
But the Duke said nothing more.
As the silence stretched on, Jane was increasingly overcome by an unbearable feeling.
She had so many questions.
So many that she didn’t know which to ask first.
Yet Jane couldn’t bring herself to ask any of them.
No, she decided to hold them in.
Wasn’t patience what she had spent her entire life honing?
Once she reclaimed her rightful place, there would be plenty of time to talk with her father.
So there was no need to be anxious.
Her rational mind certainly insisted as much.
But how could she possibly remain patient?
When right before her eyes was her real father—the one she had longed to see, had missed so desperately, yet had never met once in her lifetime.
And not just any father, but the “Duke of Bolshevik” himself!
And here he was, looking at her with such terrifying eyes…
Just as sorrow welled up in response to that cold gaze and Jane was about to speak—
“Confess with your own lips.”
The voice, cold enough to freeze her to the bone, pierced Jane’s heart even more mercilessly than his gaze.
“That you are nothing but my daughter’s shadow.”
Jane’s breath caught in her throat, leaving her gasping wordlessly.
Why.
Why? Why on earth would he make her say such a thing with her own mouth?
Though she might be just a shadow now, what would happen when it was revealed, not too far in the future, that she was the real one?
Jane’s thoughts didn’t continue for long.
No, she couldn’t continue them.
“I said confess.”
The Duke pronounced this as if he would hear nothing else.
Jane’s jaw trembled, but she had no choice but to speak.
If she didn’t part her lips now, it felt as though she might never have the chance to speak again.
“I… I am a shadow… a shadow.”
No response came to those words that had emerged between gasps for breath.
Only a command of dismissal.
“You may leave now.”
She had so much she wanted to say, and even more she wanted to hear, yet this long-awaited audience with the Duke ended in utter emptiness.
Despite her breaking heart, Jane dutifully turned to go.
Staying wouldn’t change her current situation anyway.
As she grasped the doorknob, colder than her tension-chilled palm, Jane’s movement halted.
She could simply open the door and leave.
Although the Duke had treated her coldly today, when she reclaimed her rightful place, she would be able to call him “Father” proudly and smile at him face to face.
No, after suffering this indignity, perhaps she would get angry before smiling, or maybe she would burst into tears.
What expression would the Duke wear then?
Wouldn’t that be something to see?
But Jane couldn’t wait for that day and turned back around.
Rationally speaking, there was no reason to say what she was about to say at this moment, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Why did you bring me in as a shadow?”
A mere shadow dared to ask the Duke his reasons.
However, this question was practically the certainty that had allowed Jane to dream of a brilliant future ahead.
Or rather, not the question but the answer to it.
She had worked tirelessly to enter the ducal family.
She had seen blood, used others, and sometimes trampled them as she clawed her way up.
But Jane also knew.
The reason she, a mere commoner, now stood in the Duke’s residence before its head was entirely due to the Duke of Bolshevik’s decision.
That’s why Jane had been overjoyed when the Duke’s messenger arrived.
Ah, so the Duke knows.
Even if he wasn’t certain, he must at least suspect that I am the real one, and the woman currently in my place is the impostor.
Otherwise, why would someone as insignificant as me be allowed to enter as the heir’s shadow?
As Jane swallowed dryly, a voice cold enough to cut through flesh reached her ears.
“I did not give you permission to question me.”
That was the end of it.
This time there wasn’t even a dismissal, but Jane clutched the doorknob like a lifeline and somehow managed to turn it.
If she didn’t escape this place right now…
After Jane, now pale as a sheet, fled through the door, the Duke stared at the empty space she had occupied for a long time.
In the depths of his blue eyes, all manner of emotions rippled.
Regret, derision, anger, and even despair.
The reason for bringing that one in as a shadow.
The Duke clutched his forehead and spat out an answer that Jane would never hear.
“I chose her because she was the bloodline of the woman who spent the longest time with my wife.”
And that reason, which had escaped his lips, was not the grand and magnificent thing Jane had imagined and convinced herself of.
It had nothing to do with questions of real or fake, switched or not—it was simply the past of a father who had been blind for the sake of his daughter.
His young daughter who had cried nearly to death, blaming herself for her mother’s death.
Listening to his daughter’s wails, the Duke had constantly reassured her: that couldn’t be, it wasn’t your fault, it was just an accident.
Then, now, and in the future, that belief would never change.
But his daughter thought otherwise.
So he had deliberately searched for the woman who had stayed by his wife’s side the longest but had fled from her funeral.
He couldn’t even ask why she had fled from the ducal residence.
Because that woman was already dead.
Only the woman who claimed to be her sister remained, revealing that the woman’s bloodline still existed.
And so, the incompetent father who wanted to do everything for his daughter, but knew nothing of what she carried, foolishly brought into the ducal residence the very thing that would plant a dagger in his daughter’s back.
And this time, too, he had no choice but to bring it in.
Because his daughter hadn’t made a move, he had no choice but to act as he had before the regression.
That was the price of turning back time.
But even so…
“This time.”
Behind the words of a father with a festering heart who had sent his child ahead of him, words that would reach no one’s ears and scatter, clung the desperate wish of a father whose heart was melting with longing.
“Please. Let me protect you.”
A few days after the mushroom-gathering outing with Sierre—which was really an excursion to track suspicious foreign merchants.
Riina tilted her head and furrowed her brow.
“So there was nothing suspicious?”
“Yes. According to my verification with different people several times over, that’s correct.”
She had deliberately ordered all the mushrooms they had gathered that day to be examined, concerned that someone might notice they were investigating, but the answers she received were far from satisfying.
At this point, most would consider it an overreaction and move on, but Riina had not the slightest intention of doing so.
An illness was going around, they said.
Something that she dared guess might become an “epidemic.”
In such a situation, how could she dismiss it as mere imagination or oversensitivity?
Moreover, nothing like this had happened before the regression.
She, as the Bolshevik heir, would certainly have known about something as significant as an epidemic.
So this must be happening because she had made different choices for a different life than before.
Call it needless responsibility or excessive self-awareness if you will; it didn’t matter to her.
Whatever it was called, as long as she sat in the position of Bolshevik’s heir, she would not handle matters concerning the empire’s citizens carelessly.
And if it was happening because of her misfortune…
Biting the inside of her cheek to regain her focus, Riina stared at the restless Lione.
“Lione.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“How is Jane?”
“She’s been quiet since she was summoned by the Duke. Excessively quiet, which is somewhat strange.”
Riina already knew that Jane had met with her father.
—Tap, tap.
As she drummed her fingertips on the document, Riina recalled Jane’s daily routine, which Lione had observed meticulously.
Study. Process documents. More study. Then more document processing.
It seemed she occasionally tried to be friendly with the servants, but Becky must be keeping them in line, as those efforts appeared unsuccessful.
At a glance, or even upon closer inspection, she appeared to be living the life of an exemplary shadow.
Yet there were several things that bothered her…
The unidentified herb that Jane had cherished and kept close to her chest, and now these mushrooms.
The situation was thoroughly suspicious, yet nothing suspicious had been found.
Come to think of it, before the regression, when she was executed, she had struggled after being poisoned with concoctions made from various unknown herbs or whatever they were.
“Not good with plants… hmm?”
“My lady?”
“Lione, when these mushrooms were examined, did you have them checked individually?”
“Yes. Every single one was verified.”
At his response, Riina nodded and commanded:
“Find out how they might work in combination. From the common to the uncommon.”
Lione, who had been bowing with a puzzled expression, brightened at the mention of “uncommon.”
After Lione dissolved into the shadows in an instant, Riina, without even a moment to catch her breath, assessed the stack of documents and pulled out a bundle from the middle.
The title on the first page of the document, which bore no urgent or confidential stamp, seemed unremarkable.
[Survey for Pest Control]
—Flip.
As she turned the pages, a layer of frost settled in her blue eyes, then another.
After scanning through the entire bundle of documents, about two finger-joints thick, in just a few minutes, Riina’s lips twisted.
“Ha, they said she had just one flaw. She was hiding something tremendous. No, at this point, it’s almost laughable to call it ‘hiding.'”
The pest that stood by the side of Prince Sierre, the youngest prince, was a pest not only to the child but also to the child’s mother.
—Knock, knock.
With permission to enter, Einar appeared—by now accustomed to visiting without prior appointment.
With familiar steps, he made his way through the mountain of documents, approached her, and glanced at the papers she was holding.
“Not a good afternoon, it seems.”
“If we could eliminate this pest right now, it might become a good afternoon,” replied Riina as she handed the documents to him.
