The Grand Duke’s Sworn Brother Power That Even Our Little Princess Couldn’t Help Being Jealous Of—Honestly, I’m Basically His First Mistress, You Bitch!
Gathered around the long dining table were Gareth, Rebecca, Karin, Bayle, and even the unwelcome guest who had not been invited, Helena.
But there was no sign of the little princess, Veronica.
“Where is Veronica?” Gareth asked in a hard voice before he had even taken his seat.
Lady Rebecca, too, avoided her husband’s gaze and replied dryly, “After her swordsmanship lesson in the training yard this morning, she was very tired...... so I put her down for a nap. I thought it would be better to let the child rest properly.”
The moment he heard that answer, Gareth’s brow furrowed ominously.
Tired and taking a nap? She was fine when I ran into her in the corridor earlier—bright-eyed, dry as a bone. She couldn’t possibly have done any sword training, either?!
A blaze of suspicion began to roar up inside him.
She’s lying.
Gareth clenched his jaw and, barely restraining his temper, strode toward the head seat.
Then he gestured to Helena, who was following after him with demure steps.
“Helena. You must have had a difficult journey to come all this way. Sit here, by my side. We’ll have lunch, and you can greet the people here as well......”
It was the exact same kindness he had once shown Bayle when the latter first came to the Grand Duke’s Castle, trying to seat him in the place of honor beside him.
But then—
Swish.
Rebecca stepped forward with firm, decisive strides and cut off Gareth’s words without mercy.
“Your Grace. The places at the table have already been assigned.”
“What......?”
“According to the etiquette of the Grand Duke’s household, the seat to Your Grace’s right is mine, as the lady of the house. And the first seat to the left belongs to the benefactor of the Grand Duke’s household, the one Your Grace personally called your brother, Sir Bayle.”
Rebecca extended her hand and indicated each seat one by one.
“And to my right is the empty seat reserved for our Veronica, with the seat next to that belonging to Sir Karin, her official swordsmanship instructor.”
At last, Rebecca’s gaze settled on Helena, who had been wearing a gentle smile all this time.
“Miss Helena is still a distinguished guest rather than an official member of the Grand Duke’s household, so...... it would be proper for her to sit over there, beside Sir Bayle. Wouldn’t you agree?”
For a moment, Helena’s eye twitched.
But she was quick-witted enough to lower her head at once.
“Oh my, I didn’t know the etiquette of the Grand Duke’s family. You’re absolutely right, Lady Rebecca.”
Smiling with nauseating sweetness, she allowed herself to be shunted away and sat down beside Bayle as though she’d been pushed there.
And yet—
She had finally struck the pus-filled pocket of Gareth’s inferiority complex, already swollen and rotten deep in his heart.
Bang—!!
“......?!”
The Grand Duke brought his large fist crashing down on the table.
The silverware on the tabletop jumped violently with a clatter.
“Your Grace......?”
Rebecca gasped and looked at her husband, her shoulders flinching.
“Etiquette?! You dare speak to me of etiquette in my presence?!”
Gareth’s roar shook the dining hall.
“The official papers you’ve been handling in the office are full of mistakes! How dare you try to establish rank over something as trivial as table seating when you can’t even manage the affairs of this domain properly as the lady of the house!!”
“Y-your Grace...... I was only in a hurry......”
“Don’t make excuses!! And Veronica is tired and sleeping? Enough with the lies! She didn’t even sweat, let alone train! Why are you going on about her being tired? Did you force her to sleep because you didn’t want her father to see her face?!”
The humiliation was unbearable—being publicly berated by her husband in front of the household retainers.
Rebecca’s pale cheeks went white with shame, but she tightened her grip on her skirt and forced herself to answer.
“I...... I am simply trying to uphold this Grand Duke’s household, the order of our family, Your Grace!”
“Uphold the order? Or are you trying to challenge my authority?!”
Shaking with rage, Gareth lost all control and now turned, flinging the sparks elsewhere.
His target was Karin, sitting stiffly across from him.
“And you! You call yourself Karin!!”
“......Yes, Your Grace.”
Karin tried to rise, tense and rigid.
“You were in charge of the princess’s swordsmanship lesson this morning, yes? Then how is it that the child didn’t work up even a single drop of sweat?! Are you just wasting money and neglecting your duties? Are you really teaching her properly?!”
Karin bit her lip hard.
If she defended herself here, she would have to tell the truth—that Veronica had not trained at all—but that would only put her young liege in an awkward position, so all she could do was lower her head in silence.
Gareth’s fury was out of control.
Rebecca was on the verge of tears.
Karin was being unjustly chewed out.
And Helena was watching the entire disaster with malicious amusement, laughing to herself.
Then, in the middle of this suffocating, horrifying, hair-trigger moment—
“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!”
Someone let out a scream so loud it seemed it might bring the high ceiling of the dining hall crashing down.
“B-Bayle...?”
“Sir Bayle......”
“My ears......”
Ah, that’s better.
I understood it then.
If someone didn’t put out this fuse right this second, this household was going to flip the table and fall apart before dinner was even served.
So I squeezed my eyes shut, drew in a short breath, and wrung the strength of my dantian from all those ten-thousand thrusts I had once drilled at the Wall.
Then I screamed with absolutely no warning whatsoever.
Time stopped inside the dining hall.
Even the Grand Duke, who had been pouring out his rage, and Lady Rebecca, whose eyes had begun to glisten with tears, both stared at me with their mouths hanging open.
Especially Helena, who had been forced to the side seat right next to me—my sudden yell nearly blew her eardrum clean out, and she ground out a curse only I could hear.
Tough luck, bitch? Lady Rebecca is hurting ten times worse than you are right now.
I tilted up only one corner of my mouth and sneered at Helena.
Helena’s brow remained deeply furrowed as she glared at me with murderous eyes that said, What the hell is wrong with this lunatic?!
I planted both hands on the table and began breathing hard, my whole body trembling.
My eyes darted around as though I had lost focus, and I forced out a cold sweat on my forehead.
“Haa...... ha...... Ah, ah......!”
“Bayle? What’s wrong, man! Are you all right!!”
Gareth forgot all about his anger and lurched toward me in alarm.
“Ah...... I-I’m sorry, Your Grace...... Lady...... hic.”
I pretended to steady my breathing, then covered my face with trembling hands.
“I thought I’d calmed down a great deal thanks to my brother’s kindness after coming to the castle...... but just now, when I heard someone raise their voice and shout in anger...... it brought back the terrible screams from a year ago, when the tribespeople came over the Wall......”
I put on a heart-wrenching display of battlefield trauma, of post-traumatic breakdown.
“M-my body just doesn’t listen to me sometimes, and every so often I get these outbursts...... Sir Karin and Lady Rebecca have seen me go blank in the library and the training yard, haven’t you......”
When I glanced meaningfully toward Karin, she responded at once, nodding with a heavy, mournful expression.
“......That is correct, Your Grace. I was told that Sir Bayle had calmed down recently, but it seems the wound in his heart has not yet healed. The poor man......”
“Ah......”
In an instant, the fire draining from Gareth’s face was almost visible.
His benefactor, his comrade who had endured hell at the northern Wall—
And he had driven that man into a war-trauma seizure simply by yelling.
Because the Grand Duke was kind to his core, conscience and guilt doused his rage before long.
Gareth’s lips moved soundlessly as he dragged a large hand over his face.
It was as though he had finally realized how petty and ugly his own anger had been. His shoulders seemed to shrink with shame.
“I...... I’m sorry, Bayle. I couldn’t control my emotions and caused you pain.”
Gareth muttered in a hoarse voice and sank heavily back into his chair.
Then, unable to meet either Lady Rebecca’s or Karin’s eyes, he mumbled, “I think I was just tired and short-tempered for a moment. Lady, and Sir Karin...... please don’t take the harsh words I said just now to heart. I’m sorry.”
The storm that had been about to tear the household apart vanished cleanly with a single shout from me.
But even if the crisis had been defused, the mood at lunch did not recover.
No one dared speak carelessly. Only a suffocating silence remained, so careful you could hear the clink of a spoon against a plate.
I let out a quiet sigh of relief and silently spooned up my soup.
I ignored Helena’s murderous stare from beside me as she ground her teeth.
Though I had barely managed to cover up the spark of disaster that had swept over the Grand Duke’s Castle, the deep fissures in the family’s hearts were still widening, black as pitch beneath the table.
And in that heavy silence, Helena was the first one to reach her limit.
This was supposedly a welcoming lunch in her honor, yet she had been pushed to the very edge of the table, stripped of even the seat beside the Grand Duke, and was now forced to swallow her food while reading the room.
On top of that, she needed payback for the brute who had suddenly yelled in her ear, made her eardrums nearly burst, and then snuffed out the Grand Duke’s anger.
Remembering what she had heard from Veronica at the training yard earlier, Helena wore a practiced smile and opened her mouth in a sweet, casual tone.
“Come to think of it, Sir Bayle...... I heard that you still can’t read at all, that you’re illiterate. How unfortunate, how inconvenient, for the Grand Duke’s benefactor to still not know his letters. Would you like me to introduce you to an excellent scholar from the capital?”
She meant to subtly mock Bayle for his ignorance in front of the Grand Duke and the retainers.
The moment she said it, Lady Rebecca—who had helped me more enthusiastically than anyone with my reading lessons—bristled and lifted her head.
“Who says such a thing? Sir Bayle’s reading lessons were personally handled by me......!”
Just as Rebecca, who knew better than anyone that Sir Bayle had already learned to read, was about to refute Helena’s jab—
“Aha-ha-ha-ha!!”
I cut Lady Rebecca off in one clean slice and burst out laughing, loud and hearty.
“Oh dear, how embarrassing! Miss Helena, why bring that up here of all places? Yes, that’s right! I’m still illiterate, so the world’s pretty dark to me, hahaha!”
Lady Rebecca looked at me with a bewildered expression that clearly said, Why would he tell such a lie?
She had no way of knowing the groundwork I’d laid at the training yard, preparing this illiterate act in anticipation of Helena’s move, so my shameless self-detonation must have seemed incomprehensible to her.
But then—
Swish.
From his seat beside me, Karin quickly and neatly peeled a plump shrimp with the knife and placed it lightly onto Lady Rebecca’s plate.
“Lady, please have some.”
“Ah...... Sir Karin.”
Peeling shrimp and handing it over.
It was the symbol of love and affection that had quietly taken root in the Grand Duke’s Castle ever since my welcome banquet.
Though the husband, the Grand Duke, was busy fixating on another woman and wrecking the table atmosphere, there were still loyal people at the Lady’s side—people who truly cared for her and looked after her.
Moved by Karin’s rough but warm comfort, Rebecca’s anger at Helena and her confusion over me softened. She smiled quietly and put the shrimp into her mouth.
After that, the rest of lunch proceeded with Helena thoroughly shut out.
“My, so in the capital these days......”
Whenever Helena tried to force her way into the conversation and drag it in another direction—
“Brother!! Did you see how our Veronica Princess swung that wooden sword in the training yard just now? You know how heroic and adorable she looked?!”
I would raise my voice and cut her off with shameless enthusiasm.
“Oh! Our Veronica is already that good with a wooden sword?”
Gareth, too, was eager to escape the awkwardness Helena had created, so he responded with exaggerated excitement and joined in my Veronica bragging.
“Yes! Sir Karin was tongue-tied at the princess’s talent! Isn’t that right, instructor?”
“Indeed. The princess possesses the qualities of becoming the greatest knight in the Empire.”
With me, Karin, and even the Grand Duke joining forces, the lunch table instantly turned into a gathering of overindulgent daughters-in-law fan club members praising a Veronica who wasn’t even present.
Helena opened and closed her mouth, but in the end she was reduced to a mere decorative screen, forced to grind her teeth in silence.
* * *
Once lunch was over, the manor became busy again as preparations resumed for the birthday party guests who would be arriving that evening.
Leaving the dining hall, Helena forced her mouth into a smile even as she fumed inwardly.
Doesn’t matter. The Grand Duke and his wife are already irreparably ruined, anyway. As long as I go up to the fifth floor alone and melt the Grand Duke’s heart, that’s all I need.
Just as she was about to cling to Gareth’s side and seduce him with a sweet voice—
“Brother!!”
I once again shouted straight into Helena’s ear and shoved myself between the two of them.
“Brother! We’ve had a hearty meal, so why don’t you and your younger brother have a cup of tea and a good, deep conversation for a change! I have so much I want to tell you!”
The Grand Duke had found Helena’s company increasingly uncomfortable, and with his sworn younger brother making the offer, there was no reason to refuse.
“Ha-ha, good! Brothers ought to spend some time together and catch up. Helena, leave the unpacking to the maids for now, and you can see to it later.”
“Y-your Grace......!”
Gareth abandoned Helena without a shred of mercy, then wrapped a firm arm around my shoulder and marched off first toward the fourth-floor reception room.
I turned my head just slightly toward Helena, who was grinding her teeth so hard she looked as if she might crack them.
Then I crooked my lips and shot her a sneer so satisfying and infuriating it almost felt like a slap.
How about that? This is the power of the Grand Duke’s sworn brother that even our little princess couldn’t help being jealous of.
A man so beloved by the strongest authority in the manor that even the princess had reason to be jealous.
Honestly, this excessive skinship from my brother is pretty gross and a little suffocating...... but if it can stop your rotten little scheme, then I’ll happily use it.
I gritted my teeth, quietly savoring Helena’s expression as she fought to swallow her fury, and strolled away attached to the Grand Duke’s sturdy side.
Honestly, I’m basically the Grand Duke’s first mistress, you bitch!
“.....”
Damn it...