The Handmaid and the Usurper

You were always an insolent maid to me. Damn it, you’re a bad girl who gnaws away at my memories and won’t let me go. Leopold, the king’s abandoned illegitimate son. Fueled by revenge against the royal family, he returns as a war hero under a false identity to seize the throne. However, he himself cannot tell whether what he wants is the throne, or that spirited maid girl who ran away from him... The stupidest one here was me. Then, now, and in the future, I’m the one who can’t let you go because I love you. Laila, from La Ellosa. To escape a miserable life at the bottom, she stole the identity of a noble lady. Whether the love she sought through that stolen identity was a flame that would burn her up, in the end only God and herself knew she could never let go of it. “Long time no see, Laila. My maid.” It was a name she had not heard in nearly ten years. She had tried to forget it, and tried to make it disappear. “Long time no see, Count.” Leopold Leor Edehardt, Count of Rhineland, illegitimate son of Franz II. And Laila’s first love. A name she had never once forgotten. “How have you been? No, you must have been doing well. A child who used to do nothing but maid work would naturally have been fine after putting on the false shell of the heir to a ducal house, wouldn’t she?” It was a flimsy shell that might peel away at any moment. There was no Princess Hortensia of Orléans here. Sitting before him was only Laila from La Ellosa. “You chose this life yourself, so of course you shouldn’t have any regrets.” After Leopold let go of Laila’s chin, he put the cigar in his mouth. At his words, which struck right at the heart, her mouth went dry. It was hard to tell whether what lay in his eyes was contempt or resentment. “Right... You were that kind of girl... Proud and haughty... such a...” As he muttered incomprehensible words over and over, a casual reply slipped out of her mouth: “How... have you been?” Like an eagle snatching prey, Leopold tilted his head. But soon he laughed again with a defeated air. The laugh, somewhat spasmodic and irritable, looked like mockery directed at himself. “You were always like that. You never even let me hope. You always left me room, made me foolish, and made me cling to you pathetically.” That prim-faced girl who rarely smiled. There had been a time when he was frantic just to see even a single trace of a smile bloom on that face. And he was still trapped in that time.

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