“Duke?”
“Can you move away now?”
Lina began to grasp the situation at the man’s cold voice.
‘I am now…’
And she soon realized. That she was leaning her back against the Duke’s chest and looking up at his face.
“I’m, I’m sorry!”
Lina almost bounced out of the Duke’s arms and then bowed in front of him.
‘Of all people, it had to be the Duke…’
She managed to overcome the crisis of falling down the stairs, but a greater crisis had come upon her.
Lina began to make excuses to the Duke in a flustered voice.
“I’m really sorry, Duke! My foot slipped on the stairs and.”
‘Huh?’
But the Duke, seemingly uninterested in her excuses, was already climbing the stairs before Lina even finished speaking.
‘He’s just leaving…?’
Lina, who clearly thought she would be scolded, watched the retreating Duke with a puzzled look.
It was a dangerous moment when the Duke could have been hurt due to her carelessness. It was clear that punishment was deserved.
But once again, the Duke seemed to be passing over it quietly.
“It’s a relief, but…”
The Duke’s reaction, which she thought would be angry, ended too blandly, and it felt strange.
“Why does it feel so uncomfortable…?”
Lina rubbed her neck with her hand, bothered by a feeling she couldn’t explain.
“What’s the big deal? It was almost a disaster. From now on, I must avoid the Duke’s eyes.”
Lina clenched her fist and made an unseen resolution. But that resolution was ultimately not kept.
[This is the time separator]Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
In the heavy silence, only the sound of something hard colliding was regularly repeated.
‘What has happened?’
Lina, who had been preparing well in her room just a moment ago, was suddenly dragged into the Duke’s office by people who rushed in.
The brown floor, which had seemed cozy a few hours ago, now felt endlessly cold and hard like the stone floor of a prison.
Lina, nearly thrown to the floor in her pajamas, began to assess the situation with confused eyes.
Cullen and Emma were looking at Lina with anxious eyes beside the Duke.
And next to them was one person who was definitely not welcome.
‘…Susan?’
Why was Susan here?
Before she could think about the reason, the irritating noise that had been echoing in the room stopped abruptly, and a now familiar voice filled the void.
“So.”
The Duke, crossing his legs and sitting arrogantly in his chair, muttered.
The nib of the pen he had been tapping on the desk was already broken and unusable, but his eyes were fixed on Lina.
“This maid is the culprit?”
Why did the ink leaking from the broken pen feel so eerie?
Without realizing it, Susan’s shoulders shrank, and she spat out the words she had prepared.
“Yes. A few days ago, I saw Lina carrying a box out of the Duke’s office.”
‘What?’
Lina, who had silently listened to Susan’s accusation, let out an involuntary snort.
Was it the chill rising through the thin pajamas from the floor? Or anger at Susan, who was accusing her?
Lina’s lips seemed to tremble slightly.
“I searched the room, but found nothing. However, the crystal was missing, and when I searched after seeing Lina coming out of the Alina Forest, I found it buried in the eastern area of the forest.”
The butler spoke, placing a dirtstreaked box in front of the Duke.
Looking at the box placed before him and the Duke’s frowning brow, Susan struggled to suppress the corners of her mouth from rising.
‘You think you’re the Duke’s exclusive maid, you’re so out of your league.’
How angry she had been when that girl took what she had believed to be her rightful place.
‘You took what was rightfully mine, and now you’ll pay.’
“I have no idea how you caught the eye of His Lordship and the butler, but that place was not your place.”
Lina could not stand the sight of being condescended as the Duke’s exclusive maid, so a somewhat extreme method was needed.
Although it was a method that could endanger herself, she had to take this much risk.
With a face and figure that were no better than her own, Lina, who always ignored her, always irritated Susan.
Whenever she saw Lina acting calmly without blinking an eye, even when insulted or tormented, she felt like a fool.
So she secretly stole the most expensivelooking thing in the office when no one was around.
Thinking of hiding it in Lina’s room, she remembered the words of Late, who was chattering that Lina had come out of the Alina Forest, and secretly buried it in the forest at night.
“It’s just that the time to leave the mansion has been pushed forward, Lina.”
If she ever became the Duchess, she intended to send Lina out of the mansion. Of course, she didn’t intend to send her off nicely.
“If I become an exclusive maid, becoming the Duchess is just a matter of time.”
Everything was going smoothly. Now all she had to do was watch Lina, soaked in pain, being driven out of the mansion.
Soon Cullen opened the lid of the dirtstained box. Inside the opened box, a transparent, shining round crystal sparkled.
Turns Out He’s Been Secretly in Love with Me
One-line summary: He acts like he doesn’t like her but is actually playing hard to get.
Synopsis:
Xu Muzhou like her. He has liked her for a very long time, and through repeated schemes, he finally closed the distance with her.
But this is still far from enough.
He wants to be the one who stands out among her many suitors, to fight for her attention, and to make her take the initiative to pursue him.
_____
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