In the end, Chloe’s weakened fists could no longer push or hit, and just grabbed the duke’s shoulders. This isn’t right. I’m supposed to be a man right now.

Your Grace…

But at some point, even the sound of her resistance to the duke began to change its tone.

From a voice trying desperately to avoid him to a strange sound as if she was falling into the kiss with him.

“…!”

But in the very next moment, lightning struck Chloe’s head. One of the duke’s hands that had been cradling her face was now fumbling up her cheek and grabbing the arm of her glasses.

He was trying to take off her glasses.

It didn’t seem like a conscious action, but rather like he was trying to remove something that was interfering with the kiss. It was clear that the duke was no longer in his right mind.

But whether it was a conscious action or not, it didn’t change the fact that it absolutely must not happen.

Chloe fully realized her situation. More desperately than ever before.

She was, according to Lord Joyce, a commoner woman who had stolen the duke’s purity and ran away, deserving to be torn to shreds.

And now, on top of that, she was about to make the duke engage in sodomy while he was not in his right mind due to illness. And in an instant, it would all be revealed that the manservant who became the partner in sodomy was actually the commoner woman who had stolen his purity. I’ll be torn to shreds by Lord Joyce.

Ah! Since he’s even kissing her now, has she already made the duke commit sodomy?

Of course, she was being forced by the duke, but that didn’t change the fact that the duke had kissed a man and that man was her.

As she realized this horrifying reality again, strength returned to Chloe’s arms that had gone limp. She began to push the duke away with all her might.

What is this! Is it rock? Diamond? Is this really a human body?

The duke’s body felt like a rock mass in the perfect shape of a human.

Solid and immovable.

The duke didn’t seem to even notice her desperate resistance.

“…!”

But as Chloe shook her head violently left and right to avoid the duke’s hand trying to remove her glasses, she was struck by an even greater shock the next moment.

With Chloe’s resisting movements, the hand of this beast-like man, seemingly having lost interest in the glasses, suddenly started moving downward.

Why, of all moments, did she have to remember the duke asking Lord Joyce about a woman’s body?

Various acts the duke had done to her body on the night they had slept together flashed through her mind.

Damn it! No!

Sure enough, the duke’s hand had already reached her chest. This was a crisis of a whole different dimension than before.

If only there was a way to get this crazed beast-like man off… Ah!

In that moment that felt like an eon yet also just a brief instant, Chloe realized the only method of resistance available to her now.

“…!”

And that method proved effective.

The duke’s lips, which had seemed completely out of his mind, immediately separated from hers.

At the same time, she tasted blood in her mouth.

Of course, it wasn’t her blood. It was blood coming from the duke’s tongue, which Chloe had bitten without mercy.

I hope I didn’t bite his tongue off?

“Your Grace!”

Even as she worried, Chloe shouted with a voice so loud it surprised even herself. And at that moment, the duke’s eyes snapped open.

“Clyne?”

He looked at Chloe with a different expression and voice than just before. It was a face that seemed to say, why are you here?

So he really was out of his mind!

It seemed he had been delirious from the fever.

“Your Grace, it’s me. It’s me. I’m your ‘male’ manservant, Clyne Liden.”

Chloe spoke deliberately, as if trying to bring him to his senses.

“Male Clyne…”

The duke mumbled.

Not missing this opportunity, Chloe sprang up from the bed like a coiled spring and pushed against the duke’s chest.

Unlike before when he hadn’t budged an inch, the duke, unexpectedly easily pushed, slumped down next to her.

“Your Grace, you seem to be very unwell. I’ll bring some fever medicine. Please lie down for now.”

Chloe instinctively blurted out whatever came to mind. She had to cover up what the duke had done to her, and what she had done to the duke.

What fever medicine! She might be able to get some from the innkeeper, but even if she could get fever medicine, there was no way she could come back into this room.

She just needed a suitable excuse to flee from this room at this moment.

“…”

The duke said nothing. Chloe slowly shifted her hips to the opposite side from where the duke was sitting, and finally got off the bed.

Even as she moved like that, the duke didn’t budge. Rather, his face looked slightly dazed, as if shocked by something.

“Please lie down for now.”

Regardless, Chloe shouted as she ran towards the door and left the duke’s room. The events that had just occurred overwhelmed her mind too much to worry about the duke’s condition.

Chloe closed the duke’s room door with a loud bang and trembled, touching her tingling lips.

To think she had kissed Duke Hugrey Ulpaz while disguised as a male manservant.

Moreover, it might not have ended with just a kiss… At some point, even I… I must have gone crazy…

The future seemed so bleak that she couldn’t even imagine what would happen next.

Only the feeling of regret that she should never have come on this trip to Solarine became clearer.

Damn Solarine…

Even by the next morning, Chloe still felt fuzzy-headed.

It was the aftermath of staying up all night, unable to sleep no matter how much she tried to calm herself and fall asleep after what had happened in the duke’s room.

A kiss with the duke.

Of course, sleeping with the Duke as a woman about a month ago was also a tremendous accident. If that hadn’t happened, there would have been no reason for the Duke to come to Solarine to find the woman he slept with, no reason to bring her along on the trip to Solarine, and no reason for last night’s incident to occur.

But in a way, last night’s incident seemed more serious than the one a month ago. At that time, she wasn’t dressed as a man, and the Duke didn’t know who she was.

Unlike yesterday.

Last night, it happened when she was in the state of Clyne Liden, the male attendant. The more she thought about it, the more frightening yesterday’s events became.

It was an unfortunate coincidence that Joyce was absent from the inn last night. If Joyce had been there, such a mishap might not have occurred.

But on the other hand, given that it had already happened, she thought it was fortunate that Joyce hadn’t returned to the inn until morning.

If she had faced Joyce last night, she might have fainted from fear.

He was someone who said he would tear her to shreds even as a woman. Let alone if he found out that she, as a man, had kissed his lord…

“Ah…”

A sigh escaped involuntarily, and her knees weakened.

By the way, where on earth did Joyce go?

She couldn’t understand where he had gone when his master was so ill as to lose consciousness, but considering what the Duke had said in his feverish state last night, it seemed that Joyce had also gone out to help the Duke somehow.

Based on her observations over the past four months, Joyce was the most loyal to the Duke in the mansion, so there was no way he would leave his lord, who was delirious with fever, without reason.

So it was fortunate that he hadn’t come back yet, but now Joyce needed to return.

Was the Duke feeling better now? Was he still in the same state?

She didn’t have the courage to go check on the Duke’s condition. She didn’t know how to face him either.

Moreover, given what happened yesterday, it seemed difficult to continue working at the Duke’s mansion.

To think she would have to leave the Duke’s mansion for this reason, without even being discovered as the woman he had slept with.

What about the salary she had received in advance?

Apart from thinking about quitting her job because of the previous incident, last night’s situation wasn’t actually her fault. Rather than being her mistake, it was something that happened when the Duke was sick and not in his right mind.

But even so, she couldn’t say she wouldn’t repay the salary because it was the Duke’s fault. Even mentioning yesterday’s incident felt like a taboo to her.

She felt pathetic and pitiful that her mind was occupied with money calculations even in this situation.

Moreover, she had to say that she would take a day off today. Even though it was a right she had been asserting naturally, somehow today even that made her feel uneasy.

Would they tell her there was no need to come back after taking the day off?

Click!

‘…!’

Chloe, who had been lost in thought, suddenly sat up in bed at the sound. It was the sound of a door from the next room.

Either the Duke had come out or Joyce had returned.

Chloe instinctively started to run out towards the Duke’s room but stopped to check her appearance. Though she looked haggard from lack of sleep, her wig and glasses were properly in place.

After patting down her wrinkled clothes to straighten them, she quietly left the room.

Neither the Duke nor Joyce was visible in the corridor. It seemed Joyce had returned and entered the Duke’s room.

She approached the Duke’s room on tiptoe and tried to listen to the sounds coming from inside. She could hear something, but not clearly.

But it was certain that Joyce was conversing with the Duke.

Chloe’s ear moved closer and closer to the door until it was pressed right against it.