Please Forget Me - Chapter 344

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

But with a man who was both a Marquis and an active officer in the military police insisting on having the boy executed, nothing Kathleen tried made any difference.

In the end, she realized there was no solution without confronting Rupert himself. She waited in front of his residence all day long, abandoning the manners and dignity she had upheld her entire life as a noblewoman just to secure a meeting. And yet—

“You’re Killian’s mother, aren’t you?”

She lost her chance the moment she became entangled with Dana Loveridge, who had arrived there first.

“You fraud! You deceived me!”

Kathleen managed to corner Rupert, whose mind was wholly consumed with hunting down his runaway wife, and pleaded with him belatedly. But there was no chance it would work.

“You cause a scene and then claim you’re here to beg a favor? How amusing.”

She had already lost her temper and revealed the truth to the woman, and then confronted Rupert over right and wrong. All she had done was stoke his rage further.

“Aunt, I truly wish to help Killian, but given the nature of the charges, my hands are tied. Besides, the evidence is already conclusive, isn’t it?”

Later, he refused her with impeccable politeness. Perhaps to avoid appearing cruel in the eyes of others, or perhaps because admitting otherwise would mean acknowledging that he himself had framed his cousin.

“Now that the newspapers have spread the story nationwide, even His Majesty could not save Killian from death.”

“Ah. So that’s why you leaked it to the press.”

“What are you implying…?”

Kathleen had already found it suspicious that the story had flooded newspapers across the country when the investigation had barely begun.

When she sought help from high-ranking figures in the military and government, they all responded the same way: If only it hadn’t reached the press, they might have been able to do something…

For the state and the military, acknowledging that a royal-blooded war hero had committed treason was a heavy burden. Had the matter not gone public, they might have tried to quietly reduce or bury the case.

That was when Kathleen began to suspect that Rupert had deliberately shaped public opinion, so that execution would become inevitable.

“Are you accusing me of framing him?”

“You’re the one who framed Killian!”

She should have kept that thought to herself. She’d let her anger spill out.

Rupert had her thrown out, calling her a madwoman.

Your wife is the madwoman.

That woman, no matter how one looked at her, was not sane. What gleamed in those clear eyes was unmistakable madness.

“Madam, my first love was your second son, wasn’t it? The man who gave me those letters was Killian, right?”

Her tone had been gentle, yet relentlessly persistent.

“And you… you sold me to that fraud, didn’t you?”

Even for a Marchioness, to speak so casually of a noblewoman of an ancient house as having ‘sold’ someone.

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

She had even dared to browbeat an elder.

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

The curses she hurled at her husband, the way she tore at her own hair—by Kathleen’s eyes, were burning with anger not unlike Rupert’s, the woman had long since stepped outside the bounds of sanity.

‘Two perfectly sound men trying to kill each other over a woman who’s clearly insane…’

Moments ago, the people who had been running through the streets calling that woman’s name were nowhere to be seen. She must have fled far away.

‘What does she think she’ll accomplish by running from her husband?’

But this was hardly the time to worry about others. If anyone was reckless beyond help, it was Kathleen herself.

She moved her heavy feet. An Ackroyd family car stood parked across the street; the driver stepped out and opened the door for her.

Normally talkative, the driver must have read her expression. He said nothing as he helped her into the car and closed the door. Even after taking the driver’s seat, he didn’t ask where she wished to go, only waited for instructions.

‘Where should I even go now?’

Kathleen had no answer. Hadn’t she just destroyed the last, faint hope with her own hands?

“Ah…”

The tears she had held back until now finally spilled over. An elderly noblewoman crying in front of her servant, there could hardly be a greater disgrace. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, trying to stifle her sobs, when—

“…What?”

The driver, who had been discreetly averting his gaze, suddenly spoke. Something must have happened. Kathleen lifted her head, and her tears stopped cold.

A woman was climbing out through one of the first-floor windows of the Marquis’s residence.

‘That woman…’

Kathleen could not fail to recognize the bag—the very one the woman had swung at the butler earlier.

‘…Dana Loveridge?’

Why was she coming out from there? Had she not fled outside earlier, but been hiding inside the house the whole time? And no one had noticed…

Kathleen watched in a daze as the woman vaulted over the fence and crossed the road toward her. She thought the woman meant to speak to her…

Click.

Instead, the woman opened the rear door of the car, climbed in without asking, and shut it behind her. The strangeness didn’t end there. She ignored the seat, crouched down on the floor as if she owned the place, and barked an order at the driver.

“Go. Now.”

“……”

“What are you waiting for? We have to save Killian right now.”