/
As soon as Luna, who seemed to know what had happened, entered the bedroom with Luca, she left the bewildered guards in the hallway and closed the door.
“What? Isn’t she here either?”
When even the guess that they went to the hut was wrong, the children became even more puzzled.
“Where are you going, Hazel?”
Daisy, who was lying on the couch in the cabin’s living room, waggled her tail as Luca asked.
[Hehe, hello! Hi!]
[Your brother and nanny went to the whole town to salt in broad daylight.]
Lady sighed and pointed the tip of her snout at the door, but her little ones didn’t understand.
“Hmm… I’m sure they were here.”
Luna looked around the cabin, pretending to be an inspector of the constable.
“There are two used teacups on the table. Proof that she had tea here with her brother. She took off her apron. It means she is not on duty.”
“Wow, you are smart.”
“Ha… I’m tired of compliments like that.”
“Then why not?”
Luna let out a deep sigh and tousled his unwitting brother’s hair.
“Saying you’re bored doesn’t mean you don’t want to hear it, Luca. You too will go out to society someday, but you don’t know how to read the speech of an aristocrat. This sister is very worried.”
“Ah, my head! Hee…”
Luca followed his sister, brushing his messy hair. Luna opened the door to the cabin and went outside. In the front yard, from the gate to the fence, there were two pairs of new footprints.
“This is my brother. This is Hazel.”
Luna clung to her fence and looked out. She couldn’t go outside without permission.
“Footprints lead over there. It must be on the way to the village.”
“Chi-it, Sister, did they leave us to play?”
“It’s a good time. Whoop whoop.”
Luna laughed sinisterly like her grown-ups and took Luca, who didn’t understand why she was laughing, to the chicken coop. After watching the brooding hen and chicks, the two of them started running around the enclosure like baby goats.
“Catch me!”
“Kyaaak!”
The tag was a dog and a cat. The animals tried to drive the children into the cabin like goats in a pen.
‘It’s only children.’
Someone watched from behind a tree across the stream as the children ran around avoiding cooking.
‘Perfect.’
Bright red lips drew a sharp smile.
* * *
The Grand Duke took her to a teahouse, saying it was a chilly day. It was tea time, so the inside was crowded. As soon as they entered, the customers who saw them all fell silent. Suddenly, silence fell over the noisy teahouse, as if a ghost had passed by. While everyone was looking at her and the Grand Duke with surprised eyes, the owner of the tea shop came running with his arms wide open.
“It is an honor for us that Your Highness has come to this humble place!” said the owner as he bowed his elongated head. “Where can I take you?”
“A quiet place would be nice.”
“Then I’ll take you to the private room.”
Hazel, who was looking at the one remaining seat in the middle of the hall, was puzzled when the Grand Duke nodded. If they go to a private room, wouldn’t it accomplish the purpose of today’s ‘date’? Because they couldn’t show the Grand Duke dating a witch in the eyes of others.
She headed to the separate room and tried to guess what the Grand Duke was thinking. Perhaps the Grand Duke thought that he had shown enough in the eyes of others. Now, she wanted to finish acting as a lover and go back to being herself in a place where no one else saw her. But was this the original Grand Duke’s self?
The moment the door to the private room closed, she thought he would treat her like other servants or knights, but he didn’t. Rather, it was more like a lover now when no one else was around. The Grand Duke said that he was warm inside, and took off the mantle from his shoulder and handed it to the owner of the tea house, and then took out the chair himself.
Would she feel like being the noblest noblewoman in the empire? He was still kind, but it wasn’t more or less than the manners he showed to servants. So, he had never done anything like this to her, but maybe it was because his manners were well-accustomed to his body, it was as natural as flowing water.
Rather, she was taken aback and flummoxed.
“What is left now?”
Immediately after, the Grand Duke asked, with a gorgeously set tea set on the table.
“I held your hand and walked around the shopping district to see it, and now we are drinking tea at a teahouse. So all that’s left is to eat and drink, see a play or opera, go out in a carriage or horseback…”
She was dumbfounded and asked.
“You’re not going to do it all in one day, are you?”
“If Miss Hazel knows how to turn back time, there’s nothing we can’t do.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Sorry.”
He must be joking, but why did he sound serious?
“Let’s do one a day.”
After saying this without much thought, she paused. It’s like asking him to go on a date every day.
“Good.”
The Grand Duke nodded his head, so she guessed he didn’t sound strange. Relieved, she soon lost her mind. Was he going to drink too? She was drawing a scene where she was drinking alone with the Grand Duke, but her imagination just jumped here and there. Maybe it’s because she randomly mixed the scenes she had seen before without any context. On the last day of last year at the inn bar, the Grand Duke pushed a beer glass to her, his indifferent, soft gaze. The sore throat of the time when she refused and he picked up the glass and drank it in one gulp. And worried eyes looking down at her as she lay down on the bed.
No, this was when she was sick. She groaned in pain while slightly frowning between his eyebrows that were drenched in sweat… This was when the Grand Duke was sick.
‘Stop, you lewd witch. This is a fairy tale for children!’
“By the way…”
“Yes?”
The Grand Duke’s sudden words put an end to the adult fairy tale in her head.
“I’ve never seen you put sugar in your tea.”
That’s because Koreans generally didn’t put sugar in their tea. She realized it only after answering inwardly. So he had been watching her so far that he remembered that she didn’t add sugar to her tea, right? Oh no. He was just a naturally observant person. Unless people here were very poor, she must have stood out because they mostly drank with sugar.
She was engrossed in tea and dessert, breaking the buds of illusions that were about to sprout again. However, the Grand Duke did not touch the dessert to his taste and just chatted.
“Where did you learn to draw?”
The Grand Duke asked while fiddling with the necklace with the portraits of the Chestnuts.
“Just self-study.”
She couldn’t say that she learned from watching YouTube. Did he feel something was missing from the answer? The Grand Duke rolled his eyes in dissatisfaction with the answer.
“Painting, cooking, parenting. Miss Hazel knows how to do so many things, so it’s amazing.”
And then he said something like this. Did he doubt her identity?
“Because I’m a witch.”
There were also learning enhancement potions. Ho ho ho. She roughly changed the topic, but after a few words, the topic returned to her without fail.
“You said you didn’t have any siblings.”
“Yes.”
“Your parents…”
“Neither of them are here.”
They didn’t die, but she hadn’t seen them since they left home when she was in the second grade of elementary school. She had seen her dad’s face just for a few years for holidays, and had lost contact since the last time she saw him at her grandmother’s funeral.
“I was raised by my grandmother.”
Before the Grand Duke asked more, she brought up a personal history that she couldn’t dig into in detail because she was mostly sympathetic. Apparently, this survey was suspicious. Maybe he was starting to doubt her true identity. She had been working hard pretending to be a human here. She thought she was doing well, but she was taken aback when the Grand Duke suddenly asked her questions he hadn’t asked before. She tried to hide her nervousness and looked at the Grand Duke’s eyes. If he knew that she wasn’t actually that witch, would she feel a greater sense of rejection and betrayal than the witch? Then would she go back to the lonely witch of the black forest again? It was only then that she suddenly thought what to do if she regretted becoming close to the Grand Duke’s family. Better not to be in the first place. It’s harder to hold on if you don’t have it.
“My grandmother was really good at cooking.”
“Miss Hazel isn’t good at cooking for nothing.”
“She had better hands than me. My grandmother’s taste was really special. Even if other people cook it the same way, it didn’t taste like it…”
The story of her grandmother, which she brought up just to change the subject, eventually got her hooked on it and made her proud. She chatted happily and suddenly came to her senses. Only then did she feel embarrassed to be alone.
“This story isn’t funny.”
“Aren’t you just having fun?”
No way. That’s just a word out of innate courtesy.
“Tell me about Your Highness.”
“Are you talking about me?”
The Grand Duke rested his chin on his hand and leaned toward her.
“Tell me Miss Hazel. What are you most curious about me?”
What? She was more nervous than when he asked about her.
“I want Hazel to be as curious about me as I am about Hazel.”
At that moment, her heart sank. Now, it really felt like they were on a date. Staring at the purple eyes that hadn’t left her ever since she entered this private room, she was convinced once again. The thing that charms people was, after all, not her, but the Grand Duke.
* * *
“Guys.”
When Regina approached the cabin’s fence door and called, the children who were playing stopped, and they turned around at once.
“Do you live here?”
The little ones and even the puppies looked at her with wary eyes. Regina held up the leather bundle in her hand as the children slinked away.
“I am a wandering merchant.”
“I’m not buying it.”
Seriously, that kid was nasty, nasty from the beginning to the end. But today would be the last day of this nasty thing.