righttt, same thoughts. I feel like the scenes keep jumping
His grandma knew and wife candidate also knew, so the subtext is the royal family also knows bc the men sent after him secretly found him and spied on him to report back on what he was doing
In the novel, it's a little clearer, even though it's never explained outright. He had a phone call with his butler, who also works for his grandmother. It's never stated explicitly, but the butler says, "I have to report this." So he reports it to her, and she sends the cousin to talk to him.
The cousin is basically the second son in the family, so he knows he'll never inherit anything, whether it's the title or the fortune. Because of that, he's carving out his own place by doing favors for the grandmother. He's not a bad person, though.
Once the grandmother finds out, and since she's determined to marry him off to someone from a family with a strong pedigree, all the potential marriage candidates end up hearing about it.
As for the uncle finding out... I couldn't figure that out either, even after reading the entire novel.
i was reading the official chapters up to ch 18 and then switched to the other ones that have up to ch 23 but im a bit confused. it seemed like there are missing details like how is our ml duke already talking to his cousin about vanessa suddenly when he used to have it as a secret? or like how did uncle suddenly know that it was duke battenburg that our fl vanessa was seeing? somebody pls halp