My Dear Grand Duke on a Leash - Chapter 22

Chapter 11.2 — The dog, the lark and the Princess (6)

Only then did she bow her head with an apologetic expression. Seeing the sadness clearly entering her eyes visibly, Cain was deeply impressed. She was truly a princess who couldn’t lie.

“Still, I don’t like seeing dogs die. Animals actually fight because they are scared, and if you know they’re scared, you can stop it without a fight. You just have to soothe them, whoever they are.”

“They fight because they’re scared…”

Did she see fear in the bloody dogfight where even grown men were terrified? Besides, it wasn’t even a person, it was just a dog.

Wasn’t this indeed a tenacious kindness?

It was an impossible idea for him. Cain glanced down at his hand, which had unwittingly tried to shoot the dog without realizing it.

“In any case, it’s true that the Grand Duke would have been in great danger. I made a mistake in judegment… I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m…”

Cain’s gaze shifted from the back of his hand to face Riette.

“You have an unusual constitution. It’s something the Princess didn’t understand, so there’s no need to blame yourself for it.”

“Constitution…?”

As she glanced down at the back of her hand, which had been bandaged again as soon as she’d unwrapped it, Riette soon turned to face him again at his words.

“Animals hate me, especially dogs.”

“Oh, I see.”

He was surprised at how easily she bought into this nonsense. Thankfully, Riette’s voice relieved the gloom a little, as if she felt better after exchanging a few words.

“I’m the opposite. All animals like me, especially puppies.”

Wasn’t there such a person in life? Even if they didn’t do anything special, cats would be coiled nearby. During a walk, a mountain bird would fly in and perch on their shoulder.

“Maybe because I saved a puppy that fell into a water fountain when I was a little.”

Riette muttered, looking down at her hands, which had grown shriveled over the past few days.

“My father died when I was five years old, as you probably already know…”

Fifteen years later, she still remembered that day.

Her mother, her sister… the nobility, the media, and the public thought the youngest princess, only five years old, knew nothing, but Riette understood everything… that her father was gone forever, and she would never see him again.

She remembered clearly how many times her mother had been carried out of the chapel in tears. How her sister had spent hours clinging to their father’s coffin and sobbing. Even though she also wanted to see her father’s face one last time, she knew she shouldn’t go in there. Five-year-old Riette, dressed in a black dress she didn’t quite like, headed to the Princess’s Palace backyard.

Since she was too young to say her greetings to her father, instead, she’d ask the angel at the top of the fountain.

“…Couldn’t you bring my father back? I’ll be a good princess who won’t bother sister, so please don’t take father away.”

Upon arriving in front of a cherub angel pouring transparent water from a bucket, Riette encountered an unexpected creature.

The black puppy had fallen into the fountain and was struggling.

“That was the first time I saw a puppy in person. I thought it was big at the time, but I was young, so it was probably about… this size. It was wet, cold and damp, so I picked it up and put it on my lap, and it came into my arms.”

At that time, Riette felt a strange comfort from the puppy, whimpering and burrowing into her as if it were looking for its mother.

The tiny puppy that burrowed its way into her empty, lonely heart was so poignant, pitiful, and cute. She hoped that the creature that she met at the border of her loss wouldn’t die like this. Thankfully, the puppy gradually regained its strength as she wiped it off with the hem of her skirt and hugged it tightly to raise its body temperature. The feel of the puppy’s pink tongue licking her hand, barely able to open its eyes from exhaustion, was like a ray of sunshine on a heart that had stiffened.

So, after that… what did she do?

Her memory was strangely hazy.

Still, it was clear that the reason why she grew up as an adult who was obsessed with animals was from that incident. It was an intense memory of such a traumatic day that when she tried to recall it after so many years, the shattered scenes flashed before her eyes.

The palace had never had a puppy, so the puppy…

“Princess.”

The deep, low voice sound brought her mind back to the present.

Regaining her composure, Riette was taken aback as she turned to face Cain.

“I have something to tell you.”

It was because he was wearing a more serious and darker expression than any expression she’d ever seen on his face, as though he was about to say something he’d been holding back for a long time. Seeing that the look in his eyes was one of trepidation, Riette swallowed dry saliva without realizing it.

“I’ve… come to Chalonné to find a marriage partner.”

Want to read more? Up to [15] advanced chapters are available on Patreon: