If It’s Going to Be Taken Away, I’ll Take It First syl_bee October 16, 2025 0 Comments

ITIF Chapter 71

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Portrait of the Late Empress

Lady Zimmer proceeded to the location written on the note, vigilantly checking to ensure no one was following her.

She was determined to expose the true nature of Lady Amaterasu to the Empress’s messenger.

****

“Head butler, someone from the Radcliffe Trading Company is here. What should we do?”

At the servant’s question, the butler of the Cardia ducal residence pondered for a moment.

He hadn’t been informed of anything regarding this matter.

Currently, Duke Cardia, the master of the estate, was in a meeting with his vassal knights.

He could ask if the Duke had ordered goods from the Radcliffe Trading Company, but he was concerned it might be an unnecessary interruption.

Only after checking how long the meeting had been going on did the butler allow the Radcliffe Trading Company’s carriage to enter the Cardia ducal estate.

Based on past experience, he judged the meeting would conclude within an hour at most.

Once the butler gave permission, the Radcliffe Trading Company’s carriage entered the Cardia ducal residence.

The butler’s eyes widened when he saw who stepped down from the merchant company’s carriage.

Giselle Grante gave the surprised butler a light nod of greeting and said,

“I have my reasons for this.”

“……Please come inside for now. The Duke has gone into a meeting. I’ll inform him of your visit, but I’m not sure when it will end…….”

The butler trailed off, gauging Giselle Grante’s expression.

“I’m fine with that. I’ll wait. I didn’t come with a prior appointment anyway. I don’t want to interfere with the Duke’s work.”

Giselle Grante conveyed that there was no need to inform the busy Duke Cardia of her visit.

“Yes, then…….”

The butler bowed to her with an apologetic yet relieved expression. He told the maids standing by the door to prepare tea and left the drawing room.

As she sat on the sofa, her gaze was caught by the enormous fountain beyond the large glass window.

Water streaming from a round water jar that a woman held on her shoulder splashed against the circular stone floor, creating spray.

A rainbow repeatedly appeared and disappeared among the water droplets scattering in all directions.

After staring blankly at the scene for a while, Giselle Grante lowered her gaze to the red carpet.

‘I wonder if she’s alright.’

Currently, Lady Greykin was locked inside a large wooden crate, loaded onto the Radcliffe Trading Company’s freight wagon.

There were gaps in the wooden crate, so there shouldn’t be any problem with breathing, but it didn’t seem like it would remain a very pleasant memory.

Being confined for several hours in pitch darkness with no room to move.

So she wanted to get her out of there as quickly as possible.

But having come to ask for a favor, she felt she shouldn’t cause any further disruption.

‘Still, I’m relieved…….’

Ever since meeting Lady Zimmer, one side of her heart had felt heavy.

Worried about what would happen if all the handmaids who had been by her side were the Empress’s people.

But after meeting and talking with her directly, she became certain that Lady Greykin was not one of the Empress’s people.

So she decided to protect her. Because she was one of the few people on her side in her short life, if it could be called short.

She wanted to protect her.

From past experience, she had a fair understanding of how the Empress’s mind worked.

Since the trial results wouldn’t please her, the Empress would surely try to hunt down and eliminate everyone involved.

After obtaining information at Countess Tarel’s salon that Lady Zimmer was one of the Empress’s people, Giselle Grante had intended to use her as a hidden card.

That’s why she kept Olla by her side to watch over her.

But each time she received news about Lady Zimmer from Olla, her disappointment grew.

Even though someone she’d been with for years had died, Lady Zimmer didn’t seem to feel even a hint of sadness.

Setting aside whether she was directly involved in Trinity’s death, she had consistently maintained a heartlessly cold attitude.

It was the same when they met face to face.

Whatever mistake Lady Zimmer had made toward Giselle Grante in the past, she could sense from her attitude that there was absolutely no willingness to reflect on it.

It was fully predictable that she would have shown the same reaction even if confronted about betraying Princess Trinity.

****

Kavelaseth, leaving the conference room, looked at the butler standing in the hallway waiting for him and asked,

“Did something happen?”

The butler glanced at the nobles quickly exiting the conference room, then whispered in his ear.

“……Who came?”

Kavelaseth momentarily doubted his own ears.

‘She said she’d be careful to avoid running into me. Why would she come here on her own accord?’

His bewilderment at her unexpected visit was brief before Kavelaseth immediately spoke.

“Where is Giselle Grante now?”

The butler looked around with a somewhat flustered expression.

His face clearly showed he thought the name had been called too familiarly.

The butler, watching the backs of nobles already far in the distance, soon answered.

“The young lady is waiting in the drawing room on the second floor.”

“Let’s go there.”

Kavelaseth, who immediately started walking toward the drawing room, suddenly voiced a question that occurred to him.

“How long has it been since she arrived?”

“Ah…… I think it’s been about thirty minutes.”

“Why didn’t you inform me earlier?”

Kavelaseth looked back at the butler and asked.

“When I told her you had gone into a meeting, the young lady said she didn’t want to be a disruption and would wait until the meeting ended.”

It was a perfectly reasonable answer.

They hadn’t arranged to meet, and she had come to the estate without even knowing whether he was there or not.

But somehow he felt uncomfortable. The butler, noticing this change in his mood, cautiously asked,

“Is something…… wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

Kavelaseth lightly shook his head and moved toward the drawing room.

Being tall with long legs, his stride was naturally fast, but the butler couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being somewhat impatient.

So the butler nearly ran after Kavelaseth without even thinking about seeing off the nobles who had attended the meeting.

****

‘Is the meeting still going on?’

Giselle Grante paced by the door.

Even after the butler left and she went directly to the freight wagon to check if Lady Greykin was alright, her anxious feelings continued.

And for good reason.

The truth was, in her childhood, she had once been locked in a box slightly smaller than the wooden crate Lady Greykin was currently in.

It had been quite long ago and she thought she’d forgotten, but facing a similar situation naturally brought back memories of that time.

‘No, don’t think about it.’

Giselle Grante quickly shook her head from side to side.

To shake off unpleasant memories, it was better to focus on something else, so she immediately looked around the interior of the drawing room.

Then she noticed a frame turned face-down in one corner of the display cabinet.

Staring intently at the frame, Giselle Grante made an assumption.

‘Maybe it’s a portrait of an ex-lover…….’

A soft laugh escaped at her own ridiculous thought.

She knew well enough that there was no way he had any ex-lover.

If Kavelaseth had been seeing a woman, she would certainly have been on gossips’ lips for days on end.

They would have talked about him everywhere at social gatherings.

‘But why would the frame be turned over?’

The reason could be narrowed down to one of two things.

Either it fell over by accident, or it was deliberately turned over. Since the possibility of it accidentally falling was slim, she concluded that Kavelaseth had deliberately turned it over.

‘If it was unpleasant to look at, he could have just put it away somewhere.’

Even while thinking this, her gaze kept drifting in that direction.

Perhaps it was because waiting for the meeting to end was boring.

‘It can’t have been something he was trying to hide.’

Having rationalized it that way, Giselle Grante reached for the frame. Deciding to just take a quick peek at what it was.

Inside the frame, slightly larger than her palm, was painted a beautiful woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, holding a newborn baby in her arms.

Giselle Grante, puzzled by the face that resembled the late Empress, froze when her gaze reached the dress the woman was wearing.

‘This dress looks like it’s made from Solzakai fabric.’

Solzakai fabric couldn’t be obtained by just anyone.

In Solzakai, only royalty had clothes made from that fabric, and aside from gifting small amounts to royalty of other nations for diplomatic relations, they didn’t sell it separately.

The necklace the beauty in the portrait wore was also quite familiar.

There was no need to strain her memory to recall where she’d seen it.

It was identical to the one worn by her mother, who had been the late Empress, in the portrait she saw every night before going to sleep.

The Empress’s accessories were specially crafted by artisans exclusively for her alone.

Of course, she had heard there were noblewomen who, out of admiration for the Empress, commissioned pieces with designs similar to the Empress’s…….

Giselle Grante’s blue pupils began to tremble finely as she stared at the frame.

The necklace and dress made from Solzakai fabric, the appearance that so closely resembled the late Empress.

Multiple pieces of evidence pointed to the woman in this portrait being the late Empress.

Except for one thing.

The fact that the newborn baby the woman in the portrait was holding had black hair.

If this was truly a portrait of the late Empress, the baby’s hair should have been bright silver. Just like Trinity’s hair had been.

“What are you doing?”