The Curious Eyes of the Imperial Princess
The three of them found themselves gathered together again, each one staring at the exact same scene yet arriving at completely different conclusions in their own minds.
Luong viewed the entire situation through the lens of politics. He had set out to recruit Bianca as a political ally by pulling her out of the gossip mill of high society.
Angela, however, was still operating under the grammar of love, jealousy, obsession, and misunderstanding. She believed she was sensing a subtle undercurrent of tension between the two.
And Bianca? She was neither of those things.
She had been shaking just moments ago in the garden, yet she was already plotting to draw a line first and recalculate everything afterward.
“Bianca!” I came!
Angela bounded toward them with sudden energy.
Bianca reflexively straightened her posture.
“E, ah! Lady Angela has arrived. Your Highness, you may release me now. The matter... can be discussed later...”
The lingering sensation of her waist still pressed against his remained vivid, even now.
Yet she had no intention of holding onto it.
It was not something she liked.
She had merely been shaken.
And the thought of letting it slide without a second thought was even further from her mind.
The time she had spent living as a noble daughter’s daughter had been long enough for such emotions to feel anything but light.
But Angela did not know that.
Or rather, she was too curious to let it slide.
From the moment she had caught sight of the two of them at the garden entrance, the question had been gnawing at her mind.
Eventually, her mouth opened first.
“So... nothing happened between you two?”
“Eh... no?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
Both Luong and Bianca answered almost simultaneously.
Angela bit her lower lip lightly.
Even if an odd current sometimes ran between two friends at school, the question would still be asked.
How much harder must it have been for her own friend, a man who looked like the male lead from a novel, to stand so close in the middle of the garden without giving in.
But both of them had denied it with perfect naturalness.
Luong truly had no intention of acknowledging any special feelings.
If he had felt anything, he had shoved it deep down.
He was still far from fully recovered.
He had barely managed to gather the shattered pieces of his mind.
He was not without lust.
But he was not in a position to shove love into that void.
Bianca had worn her own mask.
As a noble daughter, openly displaying affection toward a man was something that usually only happened after a formal engagement.
Before that, she had to act clueless, feign indifference, and keep things vague.
She was still a virgin, after all—the representative daughter of her family.
So the fluttering she had felt moments ago had to be nothing.
Gently shattering the subtle air, Angela opened her mouth.
“I... I ended up following Your Highness, Prince Luong.”
Bianca’s eyes widened by the smallest amount.
“Has Baron Goldrun made such a choice?”
“Y-yes...”
Bianca was briefly surprised in her heart.
It was a decision that even a common noble would find difficult.
Nobles almost always hoped their daughters, especially the eldest, would become mistresses.
It allowed the marriages of younger siblings to be raised in status and elevated the family’s honor and legitimacy.
Yet Baron Goldrun’s choice was outrageous.
Sending her daughter into the position of mistress rather than formal wife.
If it had been the Lasca family, the lord would have slammed the table in fury.
But Bianca immediately began calculating again.
‘...It’s not the worst plan at all.’
The daughter of a baron family is forming ties with a royal prince.
Even without a formal marriage, the other party is still a royal.
The fact that the other party is a mad prince is certainly a negative factor.
But that does not mean the royal bloodline disappears.
In a world where magic exists, rare bloodlines hold their own value.
Angela, unaware of these calculations, cautiously voiced her own worries.
“Then... do I have to go to Your Highness’s residence?”
At those words, Luong narrowed his brows first.
“Is it really that urgent?”
“Huh?”
“Yes.”
Bianca tilted her head.
“Just a moment ago, Lady Angela was worrying about jealousy. Was she doing it on purpose?”
Angela’s mouth went dry.
She had clearly asked carefully, yet the reactions from the two of them were completely different.
The person who had been trembling just earlier because she did not want to clash with her fiancé—
now saying she would enter the residence of a man who was not even her fiancé first.
From a noble perspective, it sounded like she was challenging him to a duel.
Luong did not understand.
She had been scared off by danger, yet why was she now walking straight into that danger?
Bianca was also confused.
When she had listened to her friend’s worries earlier, it had clearly been about not wanting to clash with her fiancé.
Now she was saying she would clash with him first.
She had no way of knowing whether this was because she was anxious or whether she was hiding something.
But Angela was not acting on emotion.
Exactly—she felt something close to love, but survival fear was crushing it.
Her only desire was one thing.
To survive.
To prevent Luong and Rachel from reaching a dead end.
Bianca watched Angela, who was still trembling, and decided to calm her down first.
“Calm yourself.”
She gently took Angela’s hand.
‘Even I can do this for someone...’
Bianca was not one for physical contact.
Especially not with someone other than the servant she had been with since childhood.
All the noble daughters her age were competing with each other in the marriage market, so contact like this was rare.
But Angela had already chosen her path.
That was why she could afford to be a little more lenient.
Angela felt a momentary surge of courage from Bianca’s hand.
‘Am I seeming too eager? But to mediate between the villainess and Luong, I need to enter the residence first and read his heart...’
Contrary to what the two of them thought, Angela’s goal was purely survival.
She asked again, cautiously but clearly.
“So... when...?”
Luong answered without much concern.
“Not long after I head to the Rosefield estate, I suppose.”
Bianca understood almost immediately.
The wedding would most likely be held at the imperial palace.
Luong was a royal prince, after all.
And the Rosefield family would want to see their successor established before Luong fell completely apart again.
They had to finish the marriage quickly, seal the alliance fast, and then move to the estate.
In the meantime, having Luong’s lovers living in his residence could cause problems.
So it was very plausible that an affair would be brought to the Rosefield estate right before departure.
Bianca nodded naturally.
But Angela’s face hardened.
“Eh... eh...?”
In her understanding, even if it was a mistress-like position, she would have been called over much sooner.
Yet she was being invited only after the engagement, the wedding, and the alliance were complete.
To Angela, who was already living in modern sensibilities, this was strange.
It was also far too alien to the romance-fantasy grammar she knew.
“Lady Angela, why do you look so troubled?”
Bianca asked carefully.
Angela murmured blankly.
“So... how long do I have to wait?”
Luong raised an eyebrow.
“You want to enter early?”
At that, Angela froze.
Entering early would surely be dangerous.
The chance of clashing with a mistress would be high.
Looking at their reactions, she began to doubt whether her judgment was wrong.
‘Maybe it would be better to wait until later and mediate between the two of them?’
But right then, something flashed through Angela’s mind.
‘No. To catch a tiger, you have to enter the tiger’s den.’
She recalled her true goal once more.
To smoothly connect Luong and Rachel.
To prevent them from clashing and going to a dead end by easing the middle before it happened.
‘If I’m not there, who knows what might happen if they fight bigger when I’m not around.’
Noble eyes never calculated love.
They only saw politics and gain.
But love turns people irrational.
And that irrationality can break every calculation.
Angela knew that.
At least, she knew it from the romance-fantasy she had read.
If she had not considered love, she might have been harassed and executed as a side character when she reached Luong’s side, just like the saintess had.
So she had to enter.
She had to get close.
She had to act before the incident flared.
Angela spoke with caution, yet clearly.
“Yes. I want to enter a little sooner.”
“And the reason?”
“If I enter later, we’ll both be awkward around each other... and might fight, right?”
Luong stared at Angela for a moment.
He was trying to gauge whether those words were sincere or whether she had some hidden agenda.
Normally, mistresses subtly flaunted that they were loved more than wives.
They never directly provoked the wife.
A mistress’s power was strong, and one wrong move could cost a life.
But she left traces of love in places the wife never saw.
Scents, gifts, tokens of affection, the marks of a single night.
The mistress observed the other party slowly through those traces.
Once she gained grounds, she would drive the mistress out of the house.
Luong wondered for a moment whether Angela knew about this noble-style rivalry.
...Probably not.
With those clear eyes, she looked like the type who would leap in without fear, even if she knew nothing.
And she had already become friends with Bianca so quickly—
‘Well, she’ll figure it out on her own.’
Luong decided that Angela, being an adult now, would at least know how to take care of herself.
It was a rather naive judgment—that even without understanding political points, she could at least read emotions.
‘As long as I can stop her from dying right before the end.’
She might even become friendly inside the residence quickly.
If so, that would be even better.
Luong had never heard that this world moved on the basis of a novel.
He only recognized the pink-haired woman with memories from another life, nothing more.
Besides, she carried an aura like a protagonist.
He had arbitrarily decided she would not die easily.
In the end, the date Angela moved into the residence was not decided right after the wedding.
It was postponed until after the engagement party arrived in the capital and they discussed it again.
If the opponent strongly opposed Angela’s entry, the invitation itself would become troublesome.
It was better to meet face-to-face once, then bring up the story afterward.
*****
That evening’s dinner was exceptionally lavish.
Nobles could not afford to treat guests lightly.
Otherwise, when they later visited other residences, the same complaints would spread: “The service there was terrible.”
And the Goldrun family was rich.
Originally, nobles were supposed to borrow money just to host guests properly.
This house did not need to do that.
If they wished, they could lay out a feast as lavish as they pleased.
“Receiving guests at the residence is a rare occasion.”
Giovanni spoke calmly.
Luong glanced sideways at him and gave a small snort.
“You’re not going to tell the children not to be so tense? It looks like they might drop the cutlery and get hurt.”
It was plausible.
The Goldrun family was a house that other nobles rarely recognized as proper nobility.
That was why they rarely received noble guests.
They always ate together as a family, but today a royal prince and a high-ranking noble daughter were sitting at the table together.
It was only natural that Angela’s younger siblings looked tense.
The children sat with faces frozen, gripping forks and knives tightly.
They had learned etiquette from books, but no proper teacher had come.
Their movements were stiff at every point.
Luong watched the scene and suddenly spoke.
“If you want, I can hire an etiquette tutor for you.”
Giovanni’s eyes flickered slightly.
“Would that be possible? It would be troublesome for our family’s reputation.”
“My reputation is already ruined here. Is there anywhere left to sink?”
At those words, the air above the table wavered strangely for a moment.
It was a joke that was hard to laugh at or not laugh at.
To be honest, right now the young children at the table were actually following the etiquette better than Luong himself.
Of course, Luong had done it on purpose.
He had no intention of eating by the rules.
But from the children’s perspective, the fact that the mad prince was behaving so casually made their tension ease a little.
Luong himself had once learned etiquette.
He had teachers when he was young, and those connections still remained.
They had been forged when Luong’s reputation was good.
Now, seeing the current Luong, they would probably feel pity or try to advise him to live properly again.
Even after clinging to his sanity with memories from another life, Luong had not bothered to meet them.
There was no point—etiquette would be the first thing they criticized.
But in the future he would need their help a great deal.
Even if they were an abnormal noble house that raised influence with gold coins, it was important to raise their dignity.
Nobles slid downward once their standing began to crumble.
They were slowly ignored,
slowly excluded,
and eventually, at some point,
they could no longer even be called nobles.
Once they fell, it happened faster than expected.
So mediation was necessary.
Not just a house full of money,
but one that looked like a noble house no matter who looked.
And Luong himself intended to lend a hand in that work.