The Ugly Wife of the Shady Duke - Chapter 115.1

‘No—was Benjamin the one who had this made in the first place?’

For example, what if Benjamin, the Temple, and the Magic Tools Association had colluded together…?

Grace shook her head before the thought could go any further.

‘No. If he were the culprit, there’d be no reason to go through something this roundabout.’

She forced herself to calm down.

If this black fog had been part of a process meant to kill her from the beginning, Benjamin wouldn’t have needed to take such a long and convoluted route. Of all people, he was in the easiest position to eliminate Grace. Why would he bother with this much effort?

‘The probability that Benjamin knew absolutely nothing about this is close to one hundred percent.’

“……”

Even so, she had no idea how she was supposed to explain this to him.

She couldn’t just blurt out that the Temple and the Magic Tools Association were working together to kill her.

‘Besides, I can remove this fog now. The last time the black pebble exploded for some reason, but if I control it properly, only the fog will disappear.’

To an ordinary person’s eyes, nothing would look different anyway, so there would be no need to replace the purified furniture.

“Then would it be all right if we only change the landscaping pieces? I rather like the furniture we have now.”

There was no need to replace everything. If Benjamin had brought these items because of the pebble explosion incident last time, accepting this much would be enough.

“Of course.”

As expected, that seemed to be what bothered him most, because he agreed without hesitation. The rest appeared to have been given as extras.

“Oh, and when I told them we’d visit together next time, they were all quite pleased. Since they’ve never met you in person, they seem to be looking forward to it.”

“That’s wonderful. To be honest, I’ve been curious about the Magic Tools Association for quite some time, not just because of that incident.”

Grace wondered whether they were truly anticipating meeting her with pure intentions, but she didn’t let it show.

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Why not? It’s a place closely tied to you, after all. Of course I’d be interested.”

“……”

Benjamin pressed his lips together, his face reddening at her words.

“…?”

Seeing his obvious reaction, Grace felt awkward for no reason.

‘I feel like his face turned red like that before, too.’

How could someone who couldn’t even hide his expressions properly manage an entire noble house, one as large as a ducal family, no less? Embarrassed, Grace avoided looking directly at him and shifted her gaze elsewhere.

From a distance, Abel alone watched Benjamin with a look of pure contempt.

Of course, Benjamin couldn’t afford to show such reactions in public. But he had never once revealed that kind of expression in front of anyone else.

He always acted like a perfectly social, endlessly kind man, yet only in front of Grace did he behave like a real human being. Even if Benjamin was his superior, Abel found it utterly repulsive.

‘Madam will probably never know.’

⋆★⋆

‘We’re supposed to stop by the Magic Tools Association first, right? Come to think of it, I never heard what happened to Sylvester afterward.’

Grace opened the diary, the first one she had discovered, the one marked with check symbols. The diary with X marks showed how many times Grace had undergone ‘consultations’.

‘In the original story, she didn’t lose consciousness for that long. Was there some difference?’

The fact that both Benjamin and Grace had been present? Tilting her head, Grace carefully reread the entries.

‘It’s called a diary, but it feels more like reporting to someone—how the day went, how she felt…’

At the beginning, the entries were fairly detailed, but they grew increasingly sparse over time. They shifted toward raw emotion, so heavy that even someone with no context would feel their mood sink just by reading them.

‘In the original novel… was Grace in that original fate really murdered?’

Her stomach churned.

The Benjamin in the text had publicly announced that she died while battling illness and strictly forbade any further investigation.

‘What if it was suicide to begin with?’

And if that suicide had been caused by this depression, could it really be called suicide at all?

Grace looked around the bedroom.

The gloomy fog lay thick in the air.

Because the furniture beneath the bed hadn’t yet been cleared away, the bedroom was once again filled with fog.

‘If I learn any more, I can’t just purify everything recklessly like Aria did.’

Grace had only recently learned how to wield divine power. They said it was instinctive, almost innate. But for some reason, she found it difficult to control.

There was a limit to how much fog Grace could currently remove. Using her power blindly wouldn’t make it disappear.

She had realized this when she hid a fog-emitting object under the bed to deceive Boris.

The fog felt unpleasant when it touched her, but it wasn’t threatening. In other words, if it ever reached a level where she felt genuine danger, it meant there was nothing she could do about it yet.

‘Maybe it’s because I’m not a true saint, just a possessor who received some kind of special benefit.’

If the original Grace had possessed divine power, she wouldn’t have died helplessly in an environment like this.

‘No, if she had divine power in the first place, no one would have claimed she was a threat to the world. A saint is a unique existence, treasured above all else.’