LUCIA

Chapter 5 Shall We Marry? (3)

That's it?"

Hugo asked as he flipped through Fabian's report, that consisted of only a few pages. It had been a month since the Duke had ordered him to investigate the princess. No other investigation had taken that long. He had come all this way in the dead of night; for all the effort he had gone through, he was very disappointed.

"There was barely anything to be investigated, so I was exercising my precaution. I'm sorry for not meeting your expectations."

It was the first time Fabian had felt the limit of his own skills. It wasn't the first time he did a background check on someone, but this time around, no matter how much he dug around, it was all for naught. She had been hidden away deep inside the royal palace, so it wasn't easy to interact with her in the first place. Nobody knew about any Princess Vivian, so there wasn't a starting point for his investigation.

Hugo no longer reprimanded Fabian. He understood Fabian's skills well. He wasn't a subordinate who would do a mediocre job, then make up excuses to hide his shortcomings.

The princess had grown up as a commoner until she was 12. Afterwards, she had entered the royal palace. On the surface, she had never left the royal palace since, neither had she made a debut among those of high society. However, once a week she would pretend to be a palace maid and leave for an errand. That was the information Fabian had collected this whole time.

'Since she's never made a formal debut in high society, how was she able to act so naturally during the Victory Ball?'

She had not made a name for herself in the Victory Ball, but it wasn't a place any normal person could easily take on. She didn't stand out in the party; at the same time, she did not make any mistakes or cause trouble for herself either.

"She wrote a permission slip of leave for herself and left just like that? Since when had it been that easy to escape the royal palace's security?"

"The palace gate guards know her as a maid. There are too many royal children in the palace, so the amount of maids that enter and leave are too many to keep track of. They simply check whether they are taking anything out of the palace and that's about it."

He had wondered what she was doing each week, but she always went to the same place. She was going to a famous female novelist's house every week. The female novelist lived a hermit's life as well, and knew only one other person – the house maid.

"And I assume she has gotten the brat's information from her?"

The existence of his son, Demian, was not a top secret, but it was not something a mere princess could come to know on a whim. Hugo had been suspicious over how the princess had come to know of it, thus he'd ordered the investigation.

"She is a famous author. It's known through her novels that she understands high society very well. It seems she has some kind of connections with an informant, who delivers all the latest rumors of high society. I have not been able to confirm the identity of this person, but if you wish, I shall continue my investigations."

"That's fine. It's not important. In the end, what I wanted to confirm was whether she's really a princess or not."

Most of the report was made by speculations. She was a princess with nothing to her name, but at the same time, everything about her was unclear. He skimmed through the pitiful report once more.

"Why are there no maids residing with her?"

"There had been many palace maids that had worked by her side... But most of them left or were reassigned after a few days for an unknown reason."

"Are you sure there isn't anyone pulling any strings behind the scenes?"

"There's no mistake. I've investigated high and low, but she has no connections with any factions within the royal palace."