Please Forget Me - Chapter 342

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

“Yes, I can always hire a new butler. If you don’t want to be fired, throw that woman out right now!”

But the butler had already disappeared outside. No reply came, only the hollow echo of the Marquis’s rage.

“Get out. Now!”

Was he about to drag me out himself? The Marquis started down the stairs. He moved slowly, limping, clearly hating the idea of letting me see his weakness more than anything else. While he hesitated halfway down, I seized my chance and turned back to the old woman.

“Madam, my first love was your second son, wasn’t it? The man who gave me those letters was Killian, right? And you… you sold me to that fraud, didn’t you?”

Her eyes shook violently as she looked at me. Guilt, perhaps. She even took a step back. I followed, pressing on.

“…Sold you?”

“I’m asking if Killian was the real one!”

My voice rose. The old woman opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Instead, she nodded.

That nod was enough.

Killian was real. He hadn’t lied. The truth I wanted was the truth after all.

“Ha… ha… hah….”

I laughed, then burst into tears.

I laughed because I could finally love Killian without shame.

I cried because I still loved him, and yet I had lied, telling myself I didn’t.

‘So now I’m a liar too.’

Just days ago, I’d insisted that whether he was real or not, whether his story was true or not, he was a con man and I had to stop loving him. But why should that have been a reason? I was a liar too.

Still, there was a difference.

Deceiving someone because you love them, and deceiving yourself by denying love, those were not the same sin.

‘I have to go to him. Right now. I have to beg for forgiveness.’

To do that, I needed his mother. But she was already walking toward the Marquis, who had only made it halfway down the stairs.

“Miss Loveridge was Killian’s lover from the beginning! You stole her, and now that you’ve lost her, you take petty revenge?”

I froze.

“There are limits even to revenge! Did Killian commit some unforgivable crime? And you still call yourself human?”

“What… what are you talking about?”

I regained my senses and clutched her arm desperately. She looked at me in shock.

“You didn’t know what that monster did to Killian?”

“He—he told me he was alive. That he went home….”

Her clenched jaw trembled, matching the quiver in my voice.

“He’s alive now. For now. But soon he’ll be branded a traitor and hanged.”

“What…?”

“Killian Ackroyd is imprisoned for treason.”

In that instant, something flashed through my mind.

“Was it really written by Killian Ackroyd?”

That letter.

I’d thought the question came from jealousy, but it hadn’t, had it? Had that letter been twisted into a speech and printed in the Highland gazette…?

‘The faraway land where I wander shall become your home! Wherever you draw breath—that shall be my home!’

Wait. It had even been turned into a marching song.

Just like Felkner said he’d been sick of hearing enemy anthems stolen from prisoners, maybe the Marquis had been forced to listen, over and over, to an enemy war song whose lyrics came from Killian’s love letters.

‘How could I have forgotten that?’

If I’d remembered, I never would have handed that demon the weapon to kill Killian with my own hands. The self-loathing nearly drove me mad.

“Aaaah!”

I grabbed my hair, unable to contain the hatred boiling up inside me. My eyes met the Marquis’s from the stairs, he looked down at me as if I were insane.

“You fraud! You deceived me!”

I pointed at him and screamed until my throat burned.

‘To be honest, I was angry at him. But I didn’t take revenge.’

What? You didn’t take revenge?

You hunted him down the moment you got proof! You’d already taken revenge!

He’d lied to me from the very beginning. Of all his lies, the first was the greatest. I could forgive being deceived into marriage far sooner than I could forgive being deceived into condemning my lover to death with my own hands.

“I’ll kill you!”

But saving Killian mattered more than revenge.

“Die before you go bald, just like you always wanted!”

I spat the curse and ran, straight for the opposite side of the entrance.

“Dana!”

I had to escape before that demon reached me. Before the Loveridge attendants arrived. Asking for a tour earlier had been the smartest thing I’d done.

I raced through the maze-like corridors until I spotted a side door leading outside. I flung it open—

But I didn’t run into the garden.