Lady Maude stared at me intently.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because there are rumors circulating that you were deeply involved in Barbarossa’s downfall.”

In truth, it wasn’t Barbarossa’s name that people dared not speak in front of Lady Maude.

What people were really whispering and wondering about was whether the rumor was true that Lady Maude had sent a woman to ruin the life of her husband’s illegitimate child.

“There was one condition for Barbarossa, Lord Percival’s illegitimate son, to enter the knighthood. That was ‘to never marry for life’.”

It was the upper class’s disgust, allowing him to join but not to leave behind that filthy bloodline.

“However, Barbarossa, who agreed to this condition, didn’t live entirely cleanly after joining. Though the knighthood demanded purity and chastity, Barbarossa knew that they would tolerate a certain degree of dalliance.”

And that was indeed the case. Until a pregnant woman appeared before Barbarossa, claiming to be carrying his child, everyone merely frowned upon his behavior but didn’t particularly make an issue of it.

“Barbarossa, who thought he had managed his lower half well enough, was shocked and at a loss then. The existence of a woman who could prove his infidelity through pregnancy in front of the knighthood was a clearly different matter from merely enjoying moderate pleasures.”

Lady Maude listened in silence. There was not a hint of agitation in that woman’s eyes.

“With his induction ceremony just around the corner, Barbarossa must have felt as if the sky was falling. What about the expectations of his parents who had given him, an illegitimate child, a chance and pushed him this far… that is, you and Lord Percival. Above all, he thought his life, which had finally succeeded after all that humiliation, was about to unfold before his eyes. Oh my, he fell from there to here!”

I paused to catch my breath. It was for the twist that was to follow.

“Still, Barbarossa, who had grown up being cursed as a fatherless bastard, surprisingly thought of taking responsibility for the woman by giving up his bright future and marrying her. The woman was touched.”

And so touched that…

“She confessed everything. Saying that she had to tell the truth because you treated her so well. That this child was not Barbarossa’s, and that she had lied in front of people at the request of your legal wife.”

She exposed the true feelings of the legal wife who had been watching the illegitimate child’s silent efforts and success for a long time.

Lady Maude, who had been praised by those around her for raising her husband’s illegitimate child without hatred and discrimination, had in fact been harboring a chilling grudge for a long time.

She had been patient. To overthrow Barbarossa when he had risen to the highest point.

For a revenge more perfect than anything else.

“So how could I not care about your intentions? Is this answer enough?”

Now, only a deadly silence flowed between Lady Maude and me.

“Could you like your husband’s illegitimate child, my lady?”

“No. But I don’t think I could bear to endure and endure until I was called a virtuous wife, only to blow up the child’s life at the critical moment.”

“I disliked that child from the moment I first saw him. He was an eyesore.”

The illegitimate child even had superior talents to her son, Donau. If he had become a knight as he was, Barbarossa would now be a knight competing for rank with Lucian.

“It was a strange sound. That word, virtuous. From what others say, I was so merciful that I raised my own son and my stepson without discrimination. It’s all nonsense. My child is the legitimate heir, and that child is just my husband’s bastard. How could I have treated that child warmly?”

“But you tried to make him a knight. Even adding the condition that he would swear never to commit infidelity in the future to the knighthood that said an illegitimate child couldn’t join.”

While investigating the relationship between Barbarossa and Lady Maude, there was one thing I was curious about.

This story about Barbarossa ruining his future due to Lady Maude’s scheme just before joining the knighthood.

‘Isn’t everyone too well-informed about Barbarossa’s love life for it to be a hushed story in high society? He was already someone who secretly dated because of the chastity vow.’

As if someone had deliberately spread the rumor.

“The day that child first held a wooden sword, he was relentlessly pushing Donau back, but when our eyes met, he immediately lowered his wooden sword. How do you think I felt then?”

“An illegitimate child who even took away what your son was good at. Your heart must have been torn.”

Honestly, not many people would be unmoved by that sight.

“I was born into a knight’s family and grew up watching knights wield swords all my life.”

Lady Maude’s breath hitched. Her whole body was trembling slightly.

“The day I told that child to prepare for sword lessons just like Donau, I had to pray in the temple all day. For God to grant me just a little mercy.”

At that moment, I deeply sympathized with Lady Maude.

Judging by her actions now, the prayer she made that day was not likely to have been ‘May the illegitimate child slip while swinging the sword and cut his own neck,’ or ‘May Lord Percival’s excellent martial prowess finally manifest in our Donau.’

“Please, let me, as a believer in God, show at least minimal mercy! I have no intention of treating that child better or worse, so let me continue to treat him fairly!”

At first, Lady Maude did not transfer her hatred for her husband onto his illegitimate child. And she was saying even now that this was how it should have been.

Lady Maude wiped the tears flowing down her cheeks.

“I have never seen a more devout and deep-hearted believer than you, my lady. Your benevolence towards Barbarossa is almost too precious when compared to his actions.”

“You say I’m devout?”

Lady Maude sneered.

“It was just the best excuse to avoid Lord Percival. The thought of having to join flesh with that impure man again was too horrifying. Good heavens, to have marital relations with that man…”

Lady Maude had already given birth to her legitimate son, Donau, to Lord Percival at the time. She had already fulfilled her duty in the arranged marriage.

So Lord Percival had nothing to say to a wife who suddenly became deeply religious and declared she would no longer have marital relations with her husband.

“I hated having Barbarossa sit at the table with my child, and I even felt hatred when the servants called that illegitimate child ‘young master’ just like Donau. To me, that child was an uninvited guest.”

Lady Maude gritted her teeth.

“And yet you say I’m a merciful lady because I gave that child a sword just like I did my son? Hah…”

A woman who had been killing her emotions inside for decades to maintain an emotionless calm.

“When Barbarossa… When Barbarossa first saw Donau wielding a sword and picked up a sword himself.”

I imagined it. The young Donau and Barbarossa, holding a wooden sword for the first time, sparring. And Lady Maude watching the scene with an expressionless face.

“There was Lord Percival’s talent that Donau hadn’t inherited.”

Barbarossa, who had been suppressed ever since he entered Lord Percival’s house, must have swung the sword frantically at his newly discovered talent.

“I could tell at a glance that he was a child with exceptional aptitude.”

Seeing the shocked face of his stepmother, he must have realized something was wrong. That his talent shouldn’t be better than Donau’s.

“I…”

Self-loathing for making an innocent child feel self-conscious.

But the moment she allowed Barbarossa to hold a sword, she could clearly see what would happen in the future.

“…I only allowed that child sword lessons to be fair. So it’s wrong to say I’m a stepmother who even allowed sword lessons because I loved that child.”

“But from what you’re saying, you sound like the Holy Mother no matter how I hear it.”

“That child was a foreign substance that drove my family to ruin. I just… knew I couldn’t and didn’t need to love that child, and judged that I could at least be a patron.”

Patron. As defined by Lady Maude, she and Barbarossa had a relationship of giving and receiving patronage. It was to assert that Donau was her only biological child, and that she was not a narrow-minded person who denied the illegitimate child’s outstanding talent.

That story might be true. Even the claim that she discriminated between Donau and Barbarossa.

“Wait. Let’s go back to the beginning, Lady Maude. You supported Barbarossa with the intention of treating him fairly, so why are such rumors circulating now?”

But why… after Barbarossa left the castle, are there rumors that this was all a scheme by Lady Maude?

Judging from our conversation so far, Lady Maude seems like someone who would push her husband’s illegitimate child to become a knight while stabbing her own thigh with a needle, rather than someone who would plot such a complicated scheme.

After a long silence, Lady Maude replied weakly.

“The woman Barbarossa was seeing at that time wasn’t just seeing Barbarossa.”

“What?”

“She met a woman like me somewhere. She was divorced but hadn’t completely separated from her ex-husband. That woman was seeing two men at the same time then, so even she herself couldn’t be sure which of the two was the father of the child.”

“You mean…”

“In any case, it was a bolt from the blue for me, who had been supporting him hoping he would become a knight. An ex-husband she had separated from after marital discord, and Barbarossa, the illegitimate son of a wealthy family. It was obvious who that woman would name as the father of her child.”

And she added that the woman indeed didn’t hesitate at all and outright said it was Barbarossa’s child.

“So, are you saying you intervened there?”

Offered money for her to leave Barbarossa?

“I told her I’d give her money if she went to Barbarossa and told him that she had pointed to him as the father of the child in her womb because I had ordered her to. More precisely, I told her to say that she had approached Barbarossa from the beginning because of me.”

“What?”