The Perks of Being a Villainess

Chapter 7

* * *

The weekend that my dinner out with the duke was set to take place arrived quickly. Since I hadn’t stepped foot outside the mansion in a while, the servants were busy fussing over me. They brushed my wavy hair and applied scented oil to it. Then they helped me into a sophisticated evening dress that Helen had apparently poured her heart and soul into designing.

I can’t believe I actually look good in this dress… I couldn’t take my eyes off my reflection in the mirror. Thanks to my beautiful face, the dress—with its abundant skirt—looked wonderful on me.

“You look lovely, my lady.”

“You resemble a rose in bloom. Absolutely stunning.”

The servants flattered, choosing their words carefully lest they say the wrong thing and set me off.

“Your skin is so soft as well.”

“And your lips are like cherries.”

“Hmph.” I knew better than anyone just how good I looked, but I repressed the urge to gush like the servants and instead scoffed lightly. I was practicing my icy demeanor—I needed to maintain my reputation as the greatest villainess in the empire as well as assert my position as their employer. I don’t want to fall out of character.

“My lady, the duke will be here soon,” the mansion’s head steward announced, a man who was very hard to catch sight of at the best of times.

I was carrying a dark purple fan that complimented my light purple dress well. Already rather tall, I towered over most of the servants in my high heels.

The duke, wearing a navy suit, arrived in the lobby not long after. He possessed a dignified appeal that only good-looking middle-aged men were capable of.

Now, this is the life. I felt like giving a standing ovation in honor of the Asteia Empire’s overwhelmingly handsome population. It was a good thing I’d been practicing my cold expression because otherwise, I might have ended up just standing there gaping at him like a fangirl.

“That dress looks as lovely as it is, no doubt, expensive,” the duke said coldly after gazing at me quietly for several long moments. His wintry tone was just as hard to adjust to as his good looks.

And the men in this household are as nasty as they are good-looking, I wanted to say. I managed to smile instead with monumental effort. “This lovely dress only suits me so well because I inherited my parents’ good looks.”

I could never stand the tense silences that fell whenever I was around the blunt duke, so I found myself working on my ability to flatter him, to help ease the conversation between us.

“If so, you should treat your body with more care. If I catch you trying something like that again, you won’t be simply confined to your room,” the duke grouched, referring to the way I’d slapped myself in the face. He came to a stop in front of that carriage waiting for us, marked with the crest of the two-headed snake and held his hand out to me.

So my first outing begins. I climbed into the carriage with the aid of my gruff escort and then we were off. I marveled at the scenery flying past the window. We still hadn’t even reached the townhouse’s front gate.

Why does it take so long just to get to the gate? Possessing Deborah’s fragmented memories and actually seeing the family’s vast wealth for myself were two very different things. It wasn’t just the sheer scale of the mansion that shocked me over the course of our day out.

This is supposed to be peak dining time, isn’t it? Why aren’t there any other customers? I looked around the restaurant in surprise. The wooden building, consisting of two floors, was entirely empty with the exception of the table where the duke and I were seated.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I was wondering if business isn’t going very well here.”

“Perhaps you take after me, child. Your jokes aren’t very funny. But I appreciate your efforts to try and lift the mood. You seem to have matured considerably of late.”

What the hell is he saying? I had a feeling I was missing something in this conversation. Before I could think about it any further, a waiter appeared with some appetizers and bread.

This is incredible. The savory butter and the soft, moist bread could only have been produced by a top-class restaurant. It made absolutely no sense that there were no other customers here. Oh, I get it. He rented the entire place out.

I could appreciate the taste of money as a member of the lower middle class, but it also made me oddly uncomfortable. I chose to just eat my meal quietly.

The food that the empire’s nobility enjoyed could be likened most accurately to a French cuisine. There was a huge variety of table utensils used thanks to the many kinds of ingredients, and it was harder than it looked to choose the correct one without fumbling.

I tensed every time a new dish was served since I knew I’d be summoning the duke’s disdain if I made such a basic mistake as using the incorrect tableware. Thankfully, aristocratic habits were built into Deborah’s muscle memory, and I found I was able to use the utensils without much mishap.

“Deborah, did you bring me a letter today?” the duke asked suddenly as I carefully plied the flesh from a crustacean with my fork. “I’m not trying to rush you. It’s quite fun, anticipating when you’ll next appear with a letter for me. Was that intentional on your part?”

I’d decided to give him the letters one by one rather than all at once due to my own painfully learned life experience. People were ungrateful by nature. They might never let go of a grudge, but favors were easily forgotten. That’s something I learned thanks to my twenty-four years living as a pushover…

I’d only come to understand how necessary it was to constantly remind people they should be grateful after I’d died and woken up in someone else’s body. Of course, if one wanted to do this while also successfully making a good impression, they needed to employ sophisticated techniques. And that wasn’t easy.

“I’m happy that it brings you joy,” I replied, non-committal. The duke laughed as if he found this amusing. The hardness in his eyes had softened somewhat, so I said cautiously, “Father, I thought I might deliver you another letter in a slightly different fashion today...”

“A different fashion?”

“Yes. Do you have a moment after we finish eating?”

The duke drank a sip of his white wine and nodded. “Of course. These days, meeting with you is my first priority. All anyone ever talks about with me is work. I’m sick of it. My sons are so reticent, you wouldn’t believe—” He stopped speaking abruptly mid-complaint. “I can’t believe I said all that to you.”

“Please, do as you wish.”

The duke’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “That pink diamond you wanted will go to auction at the end of the month. Are you still set on having it?” He continued to question and prod at me like this until the meal ended, asking what it was I wanted from him. He even gently suggested that I could ask for anything I pleased since he wanted to reward me for delivering the letters.

It wasn’t my intention to get anything in return for the letters, though… I supposed it would seem odd if I kept refusing when he was being so insistent. In the end, I just shook my head again. Perhaps the duke simply wanted to be able to say that I hadn’t changed after all. I remained cautious, fearing that all my efforts might end up going to waste.

It took two hours for all the courses to come out. When we left the restaurant, it was snowing heavily outside. Judging by the snowflakes’ steadily growing size, I had a feeling it would be snowing for a while. Walking toward the carriage waiting opposite the restaurant, I nearly slipped on the slick pavement.

“My, my,” the duke tutted. He held his hand out toward the ground and suddenly all the snow around us melted away.

As a person who’d lived all my life in a modern, technological world, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the supernatural. The computer-generated magic in movies was nothing in comparison to the real thing.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“That was amazing,” I muttered honestly.

He rubbed his chin. “You keep saying such strange things today. Get in,” holding his hand up to help me into the carriage. The duke’s hand was warm in mine, unlike before, perhaps thanks to the spell he’d just cast.

The interior of the platinum-plated luxury carriage was silent, magically soundproofed, and it moved through the snow and darkness easily, transporting us back to the mansion.

“Some new tea came in yesterday. I hear it smells quite nice.” The duke, remembering my request to speak after our meal, immediately brought me to his office. “Bring two cups of tea made with fresh tea leaves, as well as some refreshments.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

It wasn’t long before his aide brought a tray laden with fragrant tea and snacks. The man no longer cast suspicious glances in my direction whenever he found me in the office. As soon as the tea was on the table, I produced one of the duchess’s letters from within my purse.

“I thought you said you’d be giving it to me differently this time?” the duke said. He seemed disappointed, almost as if he’d been looking forward to it.

I opened the letter. “Today I’ll read it to you myself.”

“Read it? Don’t tell me you’re going to act it out?” he asked, bursting into laughter.

Holy cow. I nearly dropped the letter, since I’d never seen the brusque man laugh like this before.

“Well, this is certainly novel. I never suspected you could be so amusing.”

“Please close your eyes,” I said. “You should focus.”

“I see,” the duke agreed with a grin, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. He was like an adult indulging the whims of a child, and he didn’t seem to be taking me seriously at all.

As he leaned back in his seat, I began to read out the poem titled “My Heart is a White Flower.” It was a nature poem written by one of the empire’s most prominent poets, comparing white flowers and snowflakes to describe the ambivalent nature of love.

“...and when you are gone, and the cold pierces my heart, I sing surrounded by its fragrance.”

After reading the poem, I wet my parched throat with a sip of tea. The duke nodded, not opening his eyes even though the poem had come to an end. He seemed to be deep in thought. “That’s certainly a poem Marienne would have enjoyed. And it suits today’s weather perfectly.” He got to his feet, gazing through the window at the thick snow blanketing the outside world with an unfathomable look in his eyes.

A hard, dispassionate man who had never known what it felt like to be lonely had met a woman. And as he fell in love, his world had bloomed into a flowering garden full of white blossoms. The flowers became cold like snowflakes after that same woman disappeared from his life, but her scent lingered all around him. That was what the poem was about.

* * *

Duke Seymour, who’d been slowly mulling over the meaning of the poem, retrieved his wife’s letter from the coffee table after Deborah had left. He couldn’t quite believe his eyes when he read the contents for himself.