Seeing the Duke’s reaction, as he looked for Chloe, she felt both trembling with fear and full of guilt day by day. Now that it had come to this, she thought it might be better to leave the Duke’s residence cleanly. And as she changed her mind, her heart calmed down.

“I’m sorry. If you don’t want me to return, I’ll quit my job.”

Finally, she was able to bring up resigning first.

“What?”

The Duke stood up abruptly. Chloe was rather surprised by the Duke’s reaction and took a step back.

“So I, if I’m uncomfortable, no, if you don’t like me, I should quit my job…”

Contrary to her previous calmness, Chloe’s words kept getting tangled as she quickly became frightened again.

“Clyne Liden! Do you not know even the most basic human decency! How dare you say you’ll leave your master on the day he barely recovered from the brink of death. Do you have even a speck of responsibility or professionalism for your position as a personal attendant! Damn it!”

Damn it?

“You really, you really are… immoral, irresponsible, and cruel…”

“Your Grace…”

Chloe was dazed by the words the Duke poured out in anger.

Immoral, irresponsible, cruel? Who…? No, what on earth?

She was stunned as all the adjectives the Duke was attaching to her were ones she had never heard before.

He seemed displeased when I said I’d return, so I offered to leave first, but why is he so angry? Ah! Could it be…!

“You…! You…!”

It seems it’s not just ‘could it be’…!

Only then did Chloe understand how the Duke’s mind was working. It was clear that the memory of the kiss had completely disappeared due to the high fever.

Now the Duke’s attitude made sense. If a servant who had been given a large sum of money and shown kindness suddenly quit after recovering from an illness, it would naturally be upsetting.

“I absolutely cannot accept it. If! If you quit your job, you’ll have to pay back all the medical expenses I paid for your mother. I did it as part of employee welfare, not for an irresponsible guy who would just swallow up the treatment costs and run away after a few days.”

“Pardon? Run away?”

Chloe’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

Apart from the Duke not remembering last night’s incident as she had expected, the words he was spewing out were so shocking.

The threat to pay back even the medical expenses if she resigned was so absurd that it was hard to believe this petty man was the same Duke Hugrey Ulpaz she had known.

You were so sick yesterday, and in the end, your personality changed.

Moreover, ‘damn it’? Using such a vulgar expression.

These were expressions far from the Duke she had seen so far.

Anyway, one thing was certain.

This man doesn’t remember kissing me.

“Answer me!”

“Answer what?”

“That you will never leave my side…, never quit your job as my personal attendant.”

“…”

“Clyne Liden! Answer.”

Well, that’s not too difficult, is it?

“Yes. I won’t quit.”

Chloe, intimidated by the Duke’s attitude, smoothly said what he wanted to hear. It wasn’t a bad thing for her either.

“You said you’re going to Boergen, right?”

The Duke immediately asked about the vacation to the dazed Chloe.

“Yes.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Pardon? Where? To my hometown… you mean?”

“Yes.”

“…Why?”

It was fortunate not to be fired, but this was another bizarre order. She couldn’t understand at all why the Duke was saying he would go to her hometown with her.

“It’s not far from here anyway. Prepare for departure knowing that.”

“But…”

“I said prepare.”

It was a firm tone that made it difficult to argue further.

“Yes, I understand, Your Grace.”

What a strange situation to be taking the master to her vacation destination. Dumbfounded by the Duke’s incomprehensible thinking, Chloe returned to her room and started packing, but suddenly stopped.

Come to think of it, her mother didn’t know that she had been working in disguise as a man.

She had always shown her original self when her mother was bedridden. Just as she was before her mother collapsed. Even if it took time and effort to stuff it all into the wig, she hadn’t cut her long blonde hair.

It was because she didn’t want her sick mother to worry if she found out that she had even disguised herself as a man to get a job. But now she had to go to her hometown with the Duke. What if the Duke were to whimsically decide to visit her house?

It wasn’t common sense for a master to visit a personal attendant’s home, but since the Duke’s trip to Boergen itself wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t a completely groundless worry.

Ah, the Duke has really gone strange!

Although she had escaped the danger of being fired and disappearing from this world, Chloe once again sank into deep thought.

This is strange, really strange.

Sitting in the carriage heading to her hometown in Boergen, Chloe felt like she was sitting on pins and needles.

The reason she was having such an uncomfortable journey in such a spacious and comfortable carriage was because of what Lord Joyce had done when he left the inn. Of course, Lord Joyce must have done it on the Duke’s orders.

Lord Joyce, who had been absent, had bought a horse from downtown Solain. Since they hadn’t come riding horses from the Duke’s residence, they needed horses to ride here, he said.

Why would he insist on riding a horse now, leaving behind a perfectly good four-person carriage? It would have been fine to continue using the carriage as they had been doing so far, since they had already come by carriage. It was truly an incomprehensible order. When he said the carriage was stuffy, it wasn’t just idle talk, it seemed.

He buys a horse because he’s rich and feels stuffy. It’s up to a rich person how they spend their money, but…

In fact, since he had been sick all night and was hardly in his right mind, it would have been best to ride in the carriage, no matter how much money he had or how rock-solid his muscles were.

Well, going to Boergen was irrational to begin with, so what can I expect?

The Duke even ordered Lord Joyce to buy a horse, so Chloe was the only one riding in the carriage.

The master and the noble knight were riding horses outside, while the personal attendant was alone in a four-person carriage. Judging by appearances, it looked as if a noble lady was making a procession escorted by knights.

In reality, Chloe, who was riding alone in the carriage, sat stiffly as if she were being punished.

Although she could lie down comfortably since she was riding alone, the reality was quite different. This was because the Duke occasionally peered inside through the transparent window. It was as if he was monitoring to make sure the personal attendant wasn’t lying down, or something.

She was sleepy due to fatigue, but she couldn’t even lean back comfortably for fear that the Duke or Lord Joyce might look in through the transparent window.

At least it’s only a two-hour journey, so I’ll just have to endure.

Chloe forced her drooping eyelids open repeatedly. However, after more than half an hour into the journey, her eyes, which hadn’t slept at all night, finally closed gently.

The imagination that Clyne might disappear after going to his hometown, the anxiety that he might not return to Roizen, the worry about what he might do if he met that Calcus fellow, and the desire not to be separated from that guy all coalesced into one result: Hugrey was now heading to Boergen.

A master following his personal attendant on vacation.

It seemed like there wouldn’t be such an absurd situation anywhere else on the continent, yet he was the one doing this ridiculous thing.

Unable to resolve his rut and barely holding on with suppressants, he couldn’t trust himself to be in an enclosed carriage with that guy, but he didn’t want to leave him alone with Joyce either.

If Joyce knew his true intentions, he’d probably be so shocked he’d fall off his horse, but Hugrey didn’t care about that at all.

“Your Grace, are you alright? Wouldn’t it be better if you rode in the carriage now? I’m uneasy since it’s not James’s horse. You probably haven’t fully recovered yet.”

That very Joyce was saying such carefree things, oblivious to others’ feelings.

Joyce was someone who knew that Hugrey was a wolf shifter, and even that he was an alpha.

Although the current Joyce family no longer had strong shifter blood flowing through them, and no shifters were born to them anymore, the family itself originated from beings with wolf blood mixed in. From that ancestor onwards, the Joyce family had lived as vassals of the Ulpaz family for generations, following the wolf’s characteristic of obeying the alpha.

Joyce, who knew everything, was truly his closest confidant. However, there was now a secret that he couldn’t reveal even to Joyce.

The fact that he had gone into rut over his personal attendant.

Rather, because he was an alpha, he couldn’t reveal it especially to Joyce, who had been offering instinct-driven loyalty.

Same-sex relationships were absolutely forbidden for the alpha, the leader of the wolf shifters who had to produce the leader of the species. In fact, even saying it was forbidden was nonsensical. It was unprecedented, without example.

To avoid revealing such a state, he had to ignore Joyce’s sound advice about the uneasiness of the horse he was riding.

Horses instinctively reject Hugrey, who has wolf blood flowing through him. That’s why he only rode horses he had tamed over a long time. Only after putting effort into eliminating the aversion and convincing them that he was a human wanting to ride a horse, not a wolf trying to harm them, did he make them his own horses.

However, today there was no time to tame, let alone familiarize himself with the hastily acquired horse.

If it were his usual self, even with a hurriedly obtained horse, he would have taken at least the minimum time to tame it, but today he forcibly subdued it with the message that he would kill it if it didn’t obey.

Because Clyne was waiting impatiently.