I, Who Was Betrayed By The People I Loved Most - Chapter 17

When I returned to the mansion, I immediately noticed something was off—an eerie stillness hung in the air.

Leticia, who would usually greet me at the entrance, was nowhere to be seen. The servants all kept their heads bowed, avoiding my eyes.

Sensing something ominous, I walked down the hallway. From the salon, I could hear raised voices, clearly in the middle of an argument.

The moment I opened the door, two figures turned to face me—Camille and Leticia’s personal maid, Marie.

But Leticia herself was nowhere to be found.

“Welcome home, my lord…”

Marie’s voice was hollow, her eyes swollen from crying.

“Where is Leticia?”

“…She no longer resides in this mansion.”

“…What?”

My mind couldn’t keep up with her words. I asked again, as if to confirm what I had just heard.

Camille stood up abruptly, her face pale. Like Marie, her eyes were puffy, her makeup smeared and worn away.

“Leticia… Aunt Leticia found out everything.”

“…What do you mean?”

“She overheard our conversation in the study. She even found out about my pregnancy…”

A chill ran down my spine.

“Still… to think she’d leave…”

“She said she would divorce you. She told me to raise the child on my own.”

“My lord… the mistress discovered our relationship as well. She instructed me to remain here and look after the baby.”

…Impossible.

There’s no way the wife who gave me so much—who was so devoted—would simply walk away.

Leticia was infatuated with me. Wasn’t she?

Yes, I truly loved only her… no one else.

A divorce? I couldn’t accept it. I wouldn’t.

But despite my disbelief… Leticia never returned.

What arrived sometime later was an official decree from the royal family—an approved divorce notice.

It went further, even acknowledging Camille as the new Duchess of Rubert.

And then came the whispers, adding salt to the wound.

Leticia had reportedly gone to her old friends, influential women in the social elite, and pleaded with them, asking they accept Camille as the new duchess.

…It was all too perfect—too saintly.

The more Leticia was spoken of as a paragon of virtue, the worse Camille and I came to be viewed.

At the royal ball, I brought Camille as my partner. But no one would meet our eyes. Even when we greeted them, they pretended not to notice.

Such humiliation—I had never known anything like it.

What I heard instead were whispers full of scorn and ridicule.

“Don’t go near the Duke of Rubert… He has a taste for younger women, I hear.”

Noble ladies would whisper ostentatiously into their daughters’ ears, loud enough that even I could hear.

These were women who had once been Leticia’s closest friends… women of high rank with whom I had once shared cordial relationships.

And now, their gazes and tones drew a clear line in the sand.

“You are no longer one of us.”

Even the noblemen had begun to murmur.

“A duke should possess a sense of dignity…”

“To lay hands on his wife’s niece? Shameful.”

“A maid’s granddaughter, now a duchess? The world must truly be ending.”

Because of Camille, I had been thoroughly disgraced.

Weeks later, a letter arrived for me.

The sender: Leticia.

Could it be… that she missed me, after all? That she still thought of me?

Perhaps she would forgive me.

Perhaps she would come back. Trembling with hope, I opened the letter.

But what was written inside was—