Ironically, that was exactly why she doubted he would hand over a sword that could potentially become a valuable political asset.
It wasn't because he was locked in some power struggle or factional conflict with her brother.
It simply felt like that was the kind of person he was.
"...Fine. Let's say you're right."
Mason didn't argue.
Whenever his lord claimed something was "just a feeling," it had almost always turned out to be correct.
Instead, he voiced another concern.
"But won't it only be a matter of time before Your Grace's identity is exposed? Even if the young lady herself didn't recognize you, the guards beside her certainly seemed to."
Then she might refuse to see you next time...
He muttered the last part under his breath.
Blake, however, answered as though it hardly mattered.
"That doesn't concern me."
"Pardon? But then the sword..."
"I've already created a good enough reason to visit House Flovert."
Blake carefully tucked the wooden token Angelina had given him inside his coat.
In any case, he had prevented the sword from falling into the Crown Prince's hands.
And he had also established a connection with the Marquess of Flovert.
That alone made the outing worthwhile.
"...Well, if that's what Your Grace says."
Mason couldn't quite understand what Blake was really planning, but he chose not to question it.
I'm sure he knows what he's doing.
"Let's head back."
Rather than dwell on it any longer, Blake turned and began walking away.
Mason hurried after him.
"Whew... Next time we meet them, I think I'll just stand quietly in the background."
Of course, his mouth never stopped moving as they walked.
"Do you have any idea how terrifying that guard standing beside her was? And she was pretending to be a maid, of all things."
Remembering the so-called maid named Laura, Mason shuddered.
"I was hiding my presence perfectly, but she looked straight at where I was and kept flashing throwing stars from her sleeve the whole time..."
He rubbed his arms vigorously as he spoke.
His stream of complaints continued all the way back to the ducal estate.
"What?!"
Having returned to the mansion and changed into fresh clothes, Angelina had just taken a sip of tea when she nearly choked.
For once, she raised her voice loud enough to startle everyone.
Goosebumps spread across her entire body.
"Say that again. What did you just say?"
She looked at Laura with desperate hope that she'd simply misheard.
But Laura's answer remained exactly the same.
"That man wasn't an ordinary knight."
"He was Duke Cadenhart."
“So... you mean Blake Cadenhart, the man known as the greatest swordsman in the Empire? His Majesty the Emperor's nephew?”
Angelina fired off the questions as if denying reality itself, but Laura's answer remained unchanged.
“Yes.”
The crisp, matter-of-fact reply only made Angelina's mouth fall open.
Her expression twisted into something halfway between shock and disbelief.
What the hell...?!
She rubbed her forehead.
This was beyond absurd.
Why on earth was someone who's practically the male lead getting shaken down for money in our territory?!
A hollow laugh escaped her.
Blake Cadenhart.
He was the male protagonist of the novel she remembered.
Not just any protagonist, either, but the perfect one—the wildly popular kind every romance fantasy reader adored.
He had everything a leading man was supposed to have.
For starters, the novel claimed he was so handsome that anyone could recognize him as a breathtaking beauty even from inside a passing carriage.
As the Emperor's nephew and the Empire's only duke, his status was impeccable.
He was also renowned as the greatest swordsman in the Empire.
And that wasn't all.
His personality was flawless, too.
Whenever the heroine needed him, he was always by her side. He respected her unconditionally, spoke with effortless kindness, and behaved like a true gentleman.
To top it all off, he loved only the heroine with unwavering devotion.
From every angle, he was the ideal romantic lead, and readers absolutely adored him.
Of course...
Even someone like him had one fatal flaw.
Right. He was perfect... except for being broke.
The Duke's household was desperately poor.
The novel had described it as:
"You could empty every warehouse they owned and still fail to find a single grain of rice."
It hadn't always been that way.
The ducal family had once been one of the Empire's most glorious houses.
Everything began to collapse because the previous duke remarried the wrong woman.
Blake's birth mother had come from a humble county on the frontier, but she had genuinely loved the duke and had been a wonderful woman.
Sadly, she passed away not long after giving birth to Blake.
Had the duke possessed a calmer temperament, perhaps things would have been different.
But he was an emotional man.
Unable to overcome the grief of losing the woman he loved, he tried to drown his sorrow by constantly throwing himself into monster subjugation campaigns.
The Empress, who had always viewed House Cadenhart as a threat, saw an opportunity.
She whispered into the grieving duke's ear.
A young Blake needed a mother.
If the duke intended to keep leaving on expeditions, then at least he should install a lady of the house.
His judgment clouded by grief, the duke accepted the woman the Empress introduced as his second wife.
That single decision marked the beginning of every tragedy.
The woman who had wrapped herself in the guise of love...
Had actually been the Empress's pawn.
The new duchess utterly ruined House Cadenhart.
The first thing to disappear was their wealth.
Next came the family's honor.
Finally, they lost the trust of the people.
The duke realized the truth eventually...
The moment he discovered everything, he divorced her.
Unfortunately, it was already too late to undo the damage.
The wounds he'd sustained during years of monster hunts worsened, and before long, he too passed away.
What remained for the young Blake was little more than the empty title of duke...
A mountain of debt.
A reputation in ruins.
The people's shattered trust.
And a devastated territory.
Forced to shoulder everything at such a young age, Blake struggled as best he could.
But it was never easy.
The Empress refused to leave him alone.
She continually sent the powerless young duke to dangerous monster extermination missions, while those who knew nothing of the truth simply pointed fingers at him, calling him another blood-crazed madman just like his father.
It was a lonely battle.
Though that was exactly what made the male lead into such a terrifying man.
As befitted a gifted protagonist, Blake eventually overcame it all.
He annihilated the orc tribes of the north and wiped out the toads that plagued the east, eliminating every excuse anyone could use to keep sending him to the battlefield.
By the time he returned from the frontier...
He was no longer a child.
He had become a monster fueled by vengeance and deep-seated hatred.
I knew that happened two years before the novel began...
Angelina let out a weary sigh.
She had always known the novel opened with her death.
She even knew that her death was only two years away.
What she had never considered...
Was connecting that timeline with the male lead's return.
Partly because she'd believed she was nothing more than an insignificant extra with no connection to the original story.
But still—
The male lead should've been busy exposing traitors in his territory, reclaiming his family's lost influence, and rebuilding his ruined domain.
So why... why in the world was he getting extorted in our territory instead?!
The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed.
If I'd known he was the male lead, I never would've gotten so involved.
Grumbling inwardly, Angelina glared at the magic sword resting on the table.
You're the root of all this.
So this must be that heirloom... Aras? Artois? Whatever it was called in the novel.
The treasured sword of the ducal family.
By a twist of fate, it eventually fell into the Crown Prince's hands.
There had been a subplot in the novel where the Crown Prince, who had distrusted Blake all his life, tried to use the heirloom to manipulate him.
Thanks to the heroine's intervention, however, his plan failed.
Instead, the Crown Prince—who served as a mid-level antagonist—ended up getting a satisfying taste of karma.
I'd always wondered how an heirloom belonging to House Cadenhart ended up in the Crown Prince's possession.
So this auction house was where it happened.
Perhaps the man occupying Balcony No. 5 had been one of the Crown Prince's close aides.
"Haa..."
Angelina released a long, bitter sigh.
If only the novel had mentioned somewhere that the heirloom was actually a sword...
The story had referred to it only as an "heirloom."
It had never explained what it actually was.
No wonder she'd failed to recognize it.
Honestly, the novel had done a terrible job explaining its own setting.
And there was something else she found deeply unfair.
Wasn't he supposed to be so handsome that everyone, regardless of age or gender, would lose themselves just looking at him?
The novel insisted that anyone could tell he was impossibly handsome from a single glance.
Even while drenched in monster blood on the battlefield, it described him as looking like a solitary black rose blooming amidst the carnage.
But...
My brother is way more handsome.
No matter how she looked at it, Ante won by a landslide.
Isn't my brother supposed to be the hidden mastermind while that guy's the male lead? Since when does the villain look better than the protagonist?
It wasn't that Blake was ugly.
Far from it.
In fact, he was the first man besides her brother whom she'd ever thought was handsome.
The problem was simply that he wasn't the kind of breathtaking beauty the novel had made him out to be.
Was everything described through the heroine's love-struck eyes or something?
Seriously...
You can't trust this novel at all.
