“Just relax. I know you’ve been as busy as me lately with all of your ideas being so successful.”

Edgar whispered as he rubbed Rubica’s back. He massaged her so gently that she closed her eyes, relaxing.

“Edgar.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t go anywhere.”

She groped in the dark to grab his sleeve.

“Stay here until the morning.”

She thought she would be able to see his face when she woke up in the morning now that they knew they loved each other.

However, he kept leaving the room at night, just as he had done when their marriage was nothing more than a deal. It hurt and disappointed her a lot.

“Promise me.”

He didn’t say anything, so she opened her eyes and pressed him again. Edgar looked at her, a little sadly.

Of course, he didn’t want to leave her either. The woman he loved was in his arms, whispering loving words… he would never want to leave her if only he could.

‘But she will tell me everything that happened with her and Arman tomorrow…’

So, he decided to lie just for once.

“Okay, I promise.”

Rubica smiled happily at hearing that. She was so lovely that it ached his heart, and he couldn’t even believe such a lovely girl was his lover.

He feared she might melt and disappear like foam if he ever took his eyes off her, so he stroked her hair and cheeks, again and again, to make sure this was all real.

“Rubica.”

He whispered after she started to breathe comfortably. No answer came, so he carefully got up. Rubica was so deep in her sleep that she didn’t even move.

“I’m sorry.”

He apologized although she couldn’t hear him.

“Tomorrow, I will stay with you.”

However, he couldn’t be sure if that was ever going to be possible. Maybe Rubica would get mad at him and announce she didn’t want to share the room with him anymore.

He had been so sure he could make her fall for him, but now that she did love him, he feared her love might leave him.

As many people often do, he regretted what he had done, thinking there wasn’t a person more foolish than the him of the past.

“Just today… endure it just for today…”

He lingered in the room and could leave only after a long time.

“Your Grace.”

Carl, who had been half asleep leaning against a wall, came to him with a lamp.

“You’ve been coming out later and later. I’m not Sir Stephen, so it’s a little tiring for me.”

Carl yawned and protested, which he rarely did. Edgar could also see he was extremely tired. Carl had been working both as his butler and his guard these days.

-Sir Stephen looks a little tired. Maybe the guarding duty is too much for him.

What Rubica said without much thinking made a seed of doubt grow in his heart. He thought she knew about the war caused by Stella and the spy, so he had asked the king to find out about the knight’s past.

‘Now that I think about it, she’s been paying too much attention to Stephen for some time.’

Although Stephen wasn’t as handsome as Edgar, he was good-looking enough to catch Rubica’s attention, and Edgar didn’t like it. So, when Rubica looked at Stephen or talked to him, he just couldn’t ignore it.

Edgar renamed that jealousy as reasonable suspicion and slowly started to exclude Stephen from his guard duty.

“Just hold on. This will be the last day and she will tell me everything tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay.”

Carl said that as if he was giving up. It made his master quite angry, but nothing had come true among the things he assured to Carl about Rubica, so there was nothing he could say to him.

“I will grant you a leave next week.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, I cannot leave your side anyway.”

“That is exactly why you should take some days off. Granting you a leave is meaningless because you never actually leave.”

“But you keep making situations in which I cannot leave your side.”

The two went to Edgar’s office as they talked like that.

A long time later, a shadow came out from a corner. It was Stephen.

After making sure the duke and his butler were gone, he went to the duchess’s room.

He had encountered a few maids and knights on his way there, but he was the guard captain, so none of them even thought of stopping him.

He blew out the candles and opened the door, using a duplicate key he made in advance.

Thanks to the moonlight that filled the room, he had no trouble with seeing. He opened a window to look down.

Thankfully, his brother was waiting there with three horses, right on time. Now all he had to do was to take the duchess.

He went to the huge bed in the middle of the room and opened the curtains. Rubica was sound asleep.

She was smiling like an innocent child, probably having a good dream. That made Stephen frown hard. She made him suffer so much, and now she was sleeping so comfortably?

His blood boiled with anger and wished he could wake her up and make her pay for all she had done to him.

But now wasn’t time for that. He took out a rope he brought and started to bind Rubica with it.

“Umm, Ed…”

Rubica opened her eyes without much surprise, thinking it was Edgar. But then, she was shocked to see it was Stephen. The knight covered her mouth before she could yell. Her feet and hands had been bound already, so she couldn’t even think of fighting back.

‘I knew you liked Edgar, but I didn’t know you liked him enough to do this.’

Rubica looked at Stephen with pity. His face muscles twitched while coldly saying, “If you try anything, I will break your neck, so stay still.”

It seemed like it would be better to not anger him more, so Rubica nodded. Stephen was probably planning to carry her down using ropes, so squirming to escape would only make her hit the wall and get injured severely.

She decided it would be better to try to convince him when she was safely on the ground and the cloth that was covering her mouth was removed.

However, Stephen was a little surprised to see Rubica cooperating so easily. She was so calm as if she had been through things like this more than once. What kind of life had she been living?

‘Well, it’s none of my business.’

For now, he decided to kidnap her safely, just as he had been instructed. He could kill her if she fought back so hard, but it would be better to let her live and use her later.

They came down safely using ropes. Then, Stephen put Rubica on one of the horses, but she was really shocked to see the man who had been waiting for them there. He looked just like Stephen!

“Nice to meet you, Your Grace. I believe we’ve already met.”

Even their voices were exactly the same. There were items meant for running away on his saddle, and Rubica realized this wasn’t one of Stephen’s spontaneous actions. This kidnapping had been prepared for a long time.

The moment she realized that, she started to think that following them wasn’t the right choice. Before her body was bound to the horse, she wriggled and fell from it.

“Neeeigh!”

The horse ran away in shock, making a big sound. The fall gave Rubica great pain, but thankfully she wasn’t kicked by the horse’s hooves. She wished it would run around the garden and be noticed by the guards.

Sadly, Stephen whistled and the horse came back.

“Yes, Dingo. Good boy, good boy.”

Stephen patted it and it started to relax while Rubica moaned in pain and bit her lips.

They were in the blind spot of the guards. Stephen was the guard captain, and he knew about the mansion more than Rubica did.

If he was not doing this just spontaneously, he must have prepared a good escape route as well.

‘What should I do?’

Her head was spinning fast. It’s been quite some time since she was in such a situation. She kept thinking, trying to find a way, but then she saw a yellow light in a flower bed over there.

‘Ios!’

A golden luster glowed for a second and disappeared, so it had to be the dragon. Minos was supposed to come tomorrow, so why was he already there?

Anyway, as Ios had found her, she hoped he might save her.

“What are you looking at?”

Stephen’s voice surprised her a lot. Thankfully, the yellow light had already disappeared.

“There’s no one there. You should get rid of any hope that someone will find us.”

Stephen wanted Rubica to look up at him with fear, but her eyes remained calm as if she expected it.

“If you keep behaving like this, the great duke might get your dead body delivered to him.”

He said threateningly, but her expression was still peaceful. It really irritated Stephen.