The year was 1876 by the Albion imperial calendar.
True to the saying that April is the cruelest month, an unexpected cold snap had killed the flowers just as they were bursting into full bloom.
Even the imperial citizens, who so relished high society and its insincere smiles, refrained from going out on a day like this.
“Well, well. Look who it is.”
Yet an unexpected guest had arrived at the Lancaster mansion on the outskirts of the capital.
The master of the house sat with his long legs crossed, sneering at his visitor.
Dull, pitch-black hair without a trace of sheen.
Gleaming bronze skin, slightly darker than that of other men in the empire.
With his massive, solid build, he brought to mind an exotic black leopard.
And all the more so when his sharp golden eyes fixed upon a person…
“Lady Rochester. Since when were you and I on such intimate terms?”
He asked it right to her face: what right did she have to come here when they were hardly friends?
Yet Lady Dolores Rochester, daughter of the marquis, did not so much as flinch.
Rather, it was the mansion's servants who struggled to catch their breath.
Stealing glances at the lady's back, they marveled inwardly.
‘Good heavens. She truly is everything the rumors said…’
She was well worthy of being called the empire’s diamond, the “porcelain doll of high society.”
Rich, deep brunette hair tumbled down in luscious waves.
In stark contrast to the man's, her milky skin gleamed with a porcelain-like luster.
Because the weather was still chilly, her dress wrapped high around her neck, accentuating her slender figure.
Above all, whenever a hint of a smile touched those languid green eyes and scarlet lips…
“Your Highness, I may not look it to you, but I am your elder brother's betrothed. You are being far too cold.”
…anyone looking directly at that smile would find their knees going weak.
Unfortunately, that dazzling beauty had no effect whatsoever on Resurreccion.
“Has it been ten years already since that betrothal was made? Not once in all those ten years have we ever exchanged greetings.”
“…”
“And here I thought you were simply too busy being worshiped by other men. Or was it truly my coldness at fault?”
Dolores kept a beaming smile on her face, but a sigh escaped her heart.
Had she possessed any other choice, she would never have come to meet this brute.
‘To think I was granted a second life, only for it to be this miserable.’
In her first life, their relationship had hardly been good—no.
Frankly, it had been the absolute worst.
Resurreccion, the Second Prince, had looked down on Dolores, and Dolores had despised him in turn.
That mutual enmity had persisted even when she was betrothed to Adrian, the First Prince and heir to the throne.
Had Dolores been a man, she likely would have driven a sword through his ribs in a duel long ago.
‘Yet right now, he is the only man who can break my betrothal.’
Moreover, he was the only person who happened to share a common goal with her.
Dolores offered him a graceful smile.
“Your Highness. As you say, we have never been close.”
“A remarkably accurate assessment…”
“And so, to mend that rift, I have taken the liberty of calling upon you despite your busy schedule—”
“Lady Rochester.”
Snap. The man cracked his knuckles sharply.
That brief, dry sound laid his irritation bare.
“Cut the evasions.”
“…”
“Do I look like the sort of man who has time to waste on a lady’s dainty rhetoric?”
Dolores kept her faint smile.
Inwardly, however, she scoffed at his question.
‘Right, as if you ever could.’
The imperial family's beast, a man who trampled all over etiquette.
He was the natural predator of Dolores, who adhered to imperial decorum down to the letter.
If he had any saving graces, it was perhaps his exotic looks and his clean record with women.
Unfortunately, Dolores did not have the luxury of time to drag this out either.
Raising her fan, she pointed it toward the servants behind her.
It was a signal to dismiss the help.
A flicker of surprise crossed Resurreccion’s face.
‘A woman like her would normally raise hell about being left alone with a man.’
Then again, her coming here in defiance of public scrutiny had been strange from the start.
Which was precisely why he had granted an audience to a woman he detested…
‘Well, I have nothing to lose.’
He waved a hand, gesturing for the servants to withdraw. Working in the Lancaster mansion, their lips were tightly sealed.
Before long, only the two of them remained in the drawing room.
Golden eyes and green eyes locked onto each other in an unblinking stare.
“Now then, my lady. Since you’ve gone this far, out with it.”
“Marry me, Your Highness.”
“…”
Resurreccion stared blankly at Dolores.
The empire's diamond seemed to have gone mad all of a sudden.
Yet Dolores snapped her fan shut, emphasizing her words once more.
“Marry me, Your Highness. Help me break my current betrothal to Prince Adrian.”
“Hmm. Did I miss the outbreak of a plague that rots people's brains?”
“Had that been the case, my heart would be far easier. Alas, it is not.”
The man deadpan, the woman still smiling faintly, they grated on each other’s nerves.
Yet in this negotiation, Dolores was the one in greater need.
She rested both hands more modestly over her lap.
“The reason I must annul my betrothal to the Crown Prince… is because I have discovered that His Highness keeps another woman by his side.”
“Hmm.”
“And on my own, I am powerless to undo this betrothal.”
As deeply as the Albion Empire looked down on foreigners, it prized its own nobility all the more dearly.
Generation after generation, the imperial family of Lancaster had married Albion women whenever possible.
And, gloriously, the only daughter of Marquis Rochester had seized the seat of the next empress.
Dolores, twenty-two years old this year.
…Even if, beneath the surface, she was forty and had seen all the trials of life.
Looking upon the twenty-five-year-old Resurreccion once again, she bit her lip.
‘Ha. So the Grand Duke already knew even by this time.’
When she said Adrian was unfaithful, the man had not even blinked.
‘Was it an open secret among the men, then?’
Though rage briefly scorched her insides, Dolores smiled as if nothing were amiss.
“It has been ten years since the betrothal with the imperial family was sealed. The funds my family contributed for this union are substantial.”
“…”
“Thus, I cannot dare propose breaking the engagement with the imperial family. Unless, of course, there is someone who can replace the Crown Prince…”
Dolores fluttered her long eyelashes toward the Grand Duke.
What the Rochester family demanded of Dolores was, precisely, to become an imperial woman.
Her father and brother had both wished for her to be the empress.
That was why they had urged her to endure twenty years of humiliation in her previous life.
‘But I no longer want that seat.’
She desperately needed an excuse to avoid it.
And that was the position of the future Grand Duchess.
“…Haha! Hahaha!”
Just then, Resurreccion burst into a deep, chest-rattling laugh.
Like a massive, agile beast mocking a fox that posed no threat at all.
“Whew. Finding out my elder brother was cheating on you is quite commendable, my lady.”
“To think you would praise me for realizing it now. I am humbled.”
“Yet why should I agree to such a bargain? Ah, no.”
Resurreccion narrowed his golden eyes and scoffed.
“This isn't even a bargain to begin with. There isn't a single condition here to tempt my appetite.”
“As things stand, of course it is not a bargain, but a servile plea.”
“So you do know?”
“However, if you grant me that place for two years… no, just one single year, I will give you everything I have so that you may obtain what you truly desire.”
“And what makes you think you know what I want?”
“The Aleister Fief, which should have been yours by right.”
A sharp light gleamed in Dolores's gentle eyes.
In the past, those eyes had only practiced smiling prettily for men.
Now, however, they were hardened with unyielding resolve.
“Do you not want it, Your Highness?”
Gazing into those exotic golden eyes, she was certain.
Resurreccion Aleister Lancaster.
He was not a pure-blooded imperial, but a prince who carried foreign blood in his veins.
‘He inherited his mother Princess Juliana’s eyes exactly. His skin tone, too.’
The Aleister Fief had once been a small kingdom bordering the empire.
It had been a wealthy realm blessed with mild weather, fertile land, and a harbor readily accessible to foreign merchant vessels.
Then the empire conquered the kingdom.
Princess Juliana, the sole survivor of the royal line, was subsequently made the Emperor's second wife.
With features and an upbringing vastly different from those around her, Juliana languished and eventually died.
Leaving behind only an untamed beast in the empire…
After a momentary flash of murderous intent in his gaze, Resurreccion chuckled softly.
“Lady Dolly. Here I thought you were just a doll with a pretty face, true to your nickname.”
“…”
“What a rich imagination you have. Truly astounding.”
At his mockery, the corner of Dolores’s mouth twitched.
Dolores's nickname was Dolly. High society’s perfect porcelain doll.
Boasting luminous skin and an alluring presence, it was an apt moniker for her.
And inside a porcelain doll’s head, there is nothing.
…Her failure to realize the ridicule behind the name earlier had been the beginning of all her tragedies.
[What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice!]
It was an imperial nursery rhyme passed down through generations.
And no girl in the empire fit this rhyme more perfectly than Dolores.
Alluring, never raising her voice, smiling softly from behind her fan.
From the age of twelve, Dolores had been chosen as the Crown Prince’s match.
From her debutante ball at fifteen onward, every man was frantic just to share a single dance with her.
Basking in his sun-bright golden hair, Adrian would often marvel aloud.
“Dolly. I’ve never seen a woman as perfect as you.”
Her fiancé, Adrian, was similar in build to his half-brother, but blessed with noble blue eyes and fair skin that made him as beautiful as a god.
“Dolly. You will become the most beautiful empress in the empire.”
Dolores had never once doubted those words.
…Of course, she had occasionally wondered in passing how the imperial chroniclers would remember her, beyond merely being beautiful.
“Dolly. There’s no need for you to worry your head over such things.”
Yet whenever she voiced such a question, Adrian would let out a bright laugh.
“You are the most radiant woman simply as you are.”
“…Yes, thank you, Your Highness.”
“Don’t trouble this pretty little head with such headaches. You only need to trust in me.”
And so Dolores had acquiesced in silence.
For her entire life, all she had ever learned was how to be pretty and obedient.
“Dolores, you are the hope of our family. Even if only for your brother’s advancement, you must tend to your beauty with utmost care.”
Not once had she disobeyed her father’s bidding.
Even when she craved rich food or wished for one more sweet macaron, she forced herself to push the plate away.
Still, Dolores had believed her life was perfect.
Until she became Crown Princess in the spring of her twenty-second year, and received the physician’s verdict that winter.
“The Crown Princess is… barren.”
From that day forth, she became a sinner living a life worse than death.