The day the Duke lost consciousness and collapsed, Leah’s plea of injustice did not reach Bayern.

‘He must have intended to frame me from the beginning.’

Everything went as expected. The butler was convinced that the Duke had lost consciousness after receiving Jane’s report. Unaware that she had been bribed in advance.

[Go and report to the butler. Tell him that the Duke, who ate food containing medicinal ingredients, is in a coma. And that there is no hope of him waking up.] [……] [And the Duke will support the treatment for your younger brother.] [Tre, treatment?!]

Jane questioned Leah in disbelief, even after hearing it with her own ears. To think that the Duke would provide treatment for her younger brother, a sinner deserving of punishment.

[There is a price for all this consideration. Jane, what happened today……] [I will absolutely pretend I don’t know! I didn’t hear or see anything! I’ll do anything if it means saving my younger brother!]

Jane was sobbing, clutching the hem of Leah’s skirt with a desperate face. Jane was quite clever. That cunning Bayern was completely fooled by her.

Afterwards, Bayern judged that Leah, who had left the mansion, had fled in fear. Leah was hiding in an inn arranged by the Duke.

Waiting for the news that would soon reach her. And it didn’t take long for that news to reach Leah.

[When the imperial doctor arrives at the mansion, come back. Leah.]

Exactly two days after the Duke lost consciousness, she received a message that people from the imperial palace had arrived.

.

.

.

– Thud, thud.

Footsteps crossing the silence. Leah, who had been hiding in the darkness, walked out in front of everyone.

And as she removed the hood of the robe that had been covering her face, everyone’s attention was drawn to her.

“…You.”

Marquis Rodrigo trailed off at Leah’s revealed face. The woman he met for the first time had just turned twenty.

Leah felt the Marquis’s gaze scanning her, trying to figure out the identity of the young-looking Leah.

“I am Leah, the Duke’s pharmacist and attending physician.”

“You mean the pharmacist who ran away?”

Leah’s lips curled into a sneer at the word ‘ran away’ that came out of the Marquis’s mouth.

‘It wasn’t running away, but a tactical retreat for a counterattack.’

“It, it’s her! It’s the pharmacist’s doing!”

Bayern pointed at Leah with wide-open eyes.

“The mulberry leaf tea the pharmacist gave to the Duke is what caused this situation!”

“Mulberry leaf? What kind of tea is that?”

Marquis Rodrigo asked Leah in response to Bayern’s exclamation.

“Mulberry leaf is a tea that the Duke always drank. It’s a tea that improves insomnia.”

“Then it doesn’t seem like it would suddenly become a problem?”

Most of the toxicity in mulberry leaves disappears during the drying process. At Leah’s concise explanation, the Marquis’s sharp gaze fell on Bayern.

“Yes! That’s right! Mulberry leaves alone wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s a problem when incompatible medicinal herbs are added together!”

“……”

“When I had the servants investigate the medicinal herb storage, two herbs were missing!”

Bayern continued with a fierce momentum.

“Heteria and Kiana. The ingredients of those two herbs are incompatible with mulberry leaf tea! The storage is usually locked, and only the butler and the pharmacist Leah have the keys.”

“If there are two keys, couldn’t the butler be the culprit?”

When the Marquis’s arrow pointed at him, Bayern gasped for breath. Then he quickly waved his hands.

“No! I lost my key while on vacation. I always take it with me when I go on vacation because there are many servants who steal from the medicinal herb storage!”

“Since you lost the key, the only way to access the storage is with the pharmacist’s key.”

“Yes. That’s exactly it!”

Bayern’s complexion regained color as if he had found a glimmer of hope. As if he felt the situation was turning in his favor.

In reality, he hadn’t lost the key, but Jane had taken it. After the incident, he had instructed Jane to keep the key in case of any unforeseen circumstances.

‘To think it would be used like this.’

Moreover, as promised, Jane would have left the mansion as soon as people from the imperial palace arrived. She was supposed to be killed by an assassin on her way back to her hometown.

Since the evidence would disappear forever with Jane’s death, Bayern was triumphant.

“Is that so? You lost the key?”

Leah’s lips curled into a mysterious smile when she was supposed to show confusion at being cornered. That smile was eerie enough to feel.

“Come in.”

At Leah’s call, the bedroom door opened.

And seeing the person who entered, Bayern let out a silent scream inwardly.

“…!”

Because Jane, who should have been a cold corpse by now, had entered.

“I am Jane, the Duke’s assigned maid.”

Jane, who had been glancing back and forth between Bayern and Leah, approached the Marquis and handed him a key.

“This is the storage key that the butler gave me. As the Marquis will find out if he checks, the butler’s name is engraved on the key.”

The Marquis listened to Leah’s words, turned the key this way and that, and discovered the butler’s name.

Before long, the Marquis’s sharp gaze turned to Bayern.

“Didn’t the butler say he lost this key while on vacation?”

“Ma, Marquis. That, that is…!”

“One more thing. Jane is a witness to this incident. Jane stole medicinal herbs from the storage on the butler’s orders. And she actually tried to feed the Duke food containing the herbs but gave up.”

There was not a single lie in Leah’s speculation. Knowing this, Bayern’s face turned pale, not blue, but white.

“I, I was threatened by the butler. I have a sick brother, so I just…! I have committed a sin deserving of death.”

Jane knelt down and started banging her head on the ground. Seeing this, Bayern hurriedly knelt in front of the Marquis.

“Marquis! This is unjust!”

He looked at Marquis Rodrigo with pleading eyes, but the Marquis was cold. He brushed off Bayern’s hand as if there was no longer any worth in listening to him.

“Bro, brother! Please listen to me!! The Duke can speak!! He has been deceiving the imperial family all this time……”

As if cornered, Bayern started saying things he shouldn’t have. But no one believed his words. They just clicked their tongues, saying he was talking nonsense.

“Tsk. He’s gone mad.”

“There’s no need to listen further. Marquis.”

When things didn’t go his way, Bayern bit his lip. A deep sense of defeat spread across his face.

As if foreseeing the future that would come, Bayern closed his eyes.

The Duke, who had been quietly observing the situation, began writing something. Leah, who had been watching the paper, spoke up on his behalf.

“I have never lost consciousness. Because I didn’t eat the food containing the medicinal ingredients in the first place.”

At Leah’s words, the imperial family members gasped. To think that the Duke, who had been lying still all this time, was acting.

“Escort the butler Bayern to the capital on charges of attempted assassination of the imperial family.”

Leah checked the last sentence and smiled slightly.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, was it?

“This is all by the order of Heideln, the Duke and lord of this territory.”

For the first time, the Duke, who had been living like a dead mouse for five years, showed his claws.

The imperial delegation checked the Duke’s condition and returned to the capital.

The Marquis couldn’t take his eyes off the Duke until the very last moment he left. Perhaps because of what Bayern had said at the end.

With the butler’s position vacant, silence fell over the mansion like a splash of cold water. No one dared to insult or underestimate the Duke.

And it was later that Bayern, who had been sent to the capital, was found dead.

[This is the timeline separator]

“Ah, it’s great!”

The warm sunlight streaming through the window tickled Leah’s hair. It was a refreshing feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Leah, who was fixing her hair that had blown over in the breeze, stretched.

That day. After Bayern’s incident was over, it seemed like she had slept for two days straight. It must have been because she was quite tense without realizing it.

“The Duke also said that I could rest for a while.”

Originally, she was planning to focus on the temporarily halted antidote development right away.

She was about to discuss the clinical trial with the Duke, which was just around the corner.

[Your Grace. I was thinking of starting the research again in the annex starting tomorrow.] [No. Don’t come to the annex tomorrow.] [Why?] [Because there is a reason for it.]

But the Duke stopped her, saying there was no need to come to the annex. Leah, recalling the puzzling Duke at that time, scratched her head.

“Why is he suddenly doing that? I thought he would urge the development of the antidote even more.”

Was it his way of telling her to rest more because she had been through a lot? Leah, who had been forced into a vacation due to Akkia’s untimely consideration.

‘Then should I review the data on the antidote for now?’

And think about how to conduct the clinical trial.

She was heading to the dispensary to do the work that had been piling up. A maid who spotted her from afar approached.

“Miss Pharmacist. Someone is looking for you outside. They asked me to tell you it’s Beren.”

“Beren?”

Why is the Magnolia Company suddenly looking for me? Could it be related to the nutritional supplements?

Leah tilted her head and walked to where Beren was said to be. Beren, who was waiting for Leah at the entrance of the mansion, greeted her.

“It’s been a while. Miss Leah.”

“It has been a while. But what brings you here?”

“I came because I have something to tell Miss Leah.”

He even took off the hat he was wearing and spoke in a respectful manner.

“Our company’s president wants to meet you, Miss Leah.”

“The president……”

‘The president of that Magnolia Company?!’

At his words, Leah’s eyes widened. The president of Magnolia had been a veiled figure to the point where no one had ever seen them.

Yet such a person wanted to meet her. Leah, who had already been rejected when she casually asked about the president before, couldn’t contain her excitement.

“If it’s alright with you, please come with me to the company. The president is waiting.”

.

.

.

Entering the Magnolia Company, Leah took a deep breath to calm her trembling heart.

She had already visited the company several times. Why was she more nervous than the first time she came?

Leaving Leah behind, who was clenching and unclenching her fists, Beren stopped walking. Then he opened the door to the reception room on the third floor of the company.

“If you wait here, the president will come.”

“Yes. I understand.”

Leah moved her stiff body and sat on the sofa prepared in one corner of the reception room.

‘What kind of person could the president be?’

A person whose appearance, let alone gender and age, was unknown.

‘Since they run such a large company, they must be quite old.’

At least middle-aged. It wasn’t an easy task to run a company of this size.

While she was picturing the president’s face in her mind as she waited, she heard approaching footsteps, and someone opened the door.

And the person who appeared before her eyes at that moment was…

“…Your Grace?”

It was Akkia.