The Trash Lady Who Stole the Duke's First Night
Chapter 13
Toby clicked his tongue in displeasure, his scowl fixed on Elio.
Elio had no idea who she was supposed to resemble, but she forced the trembling corners of her lips upward anyway.
“Don’t smile.”
“…Pardon?”
“Smiling makes you look even more like him. It’s annoying.”
Elio promptly shut her parting lips. Just who on earth did she look like? She was at a total loss as to how she was supposed to humor these foul-tempered men.
It seemed people’s dispositions grew nastier the closer they lived to the north.
A wave of sorrow kept welling up inside her. Too embarrassed to even look Carlos in the face, she turned away and cast her gaze downward.
I don’t think anyone is going to buy my potions…
Jingle, jingle. A bell rang. A boisterous crowd of men poured through the open door.
Young knights, carrying the scent of tree branches as if they had been outside for hours, stepped into the dining hall corridor with puzzled expressions.
“Vice-commander? What are you doing right now?”
“Can’t you see? Applying a potion.”
Toby replied in a sullen grumble.
“Why bother putting that on? You always say we should conquer pain with mental fortitude—”
“Th-the work you lords do is far too great and important to waste on conquering things with mental fortitude! You must save your mental energy carefully.”
Elio jumped in swiftly, then scurried behind the young knights to hide, fleeing from the feral, hound-like presence of Toby and Leon.
Concealed behind their broad backs, she pressed a hand over her thumping heart and peeked her head out.
Carlos was still standing tall right where he had been.
Beside him stood Grita, who had come down at some point, shaking her head with a chuckle.
Grita reached into her inner pocket and pulled out a leather pouch.
“My Lady. Shall I buy some potions from you? How much money do you need?”
Elio stared blankly up at Grita’s neat smile and the gleaming gold coins resting in her hand.
“My Lady?”
Why did being addressed so punctiliously as “My Lady” make her feel even more ashamed? A real lady would never be this desperate for money.
Carlos gazed silently at her as she peeked from behind the young knights, then, as if having lost interest, tossed his cigar into an ashtray and headed up the stairs.
Elio followed him with wavering eyes.
At the end of the man’s callous, infuriatingly slow stride on those long legs—slam. The door on the second floor shut hard.
“My Lady?”
A tidy, soothing voice broke through her dismay.
“Do not worry. I will buy plenty on the Commander’s behalf. He rarely uses low-cost liquid potions like these anyway…”
At Grita’s considerate words, Elio barely managed to pull herself together, forcing the trembling corners of her lips into a smile.
Beaming brightly, she explained in clear, articulate words that her potions were by no means inferior in terms of efficacy.
Her fingertips shook far too much, however, to offer a demonstration.
❖ ❖ ❖
Late afternoon, when the sun had dipped a little further.
“That comes to four thousand shillings in total. They may be inexpensive, but you know the quality is guaranteed, right?”
Carlos stared at the flushed face and red-tipped nose of this shamelessly confident assassin rabbit.
Elio lifted her chin, which had begun to droop under the man’s piercing stare. She lightly knitted her brows at the heavy scent of cigars wafting from him, rubbing her stuffy nose. She disliked this ruffian and chainsmoker; he made her profoundly uncomfortable.
“A swindler, are we?”
“A swindler? How could you say that!”
Elio’s eyes widened round as she rushed to counter his accusation.
“My offer to give you the potions for free was only if we crossed the Ogre Mountain Range without incident! But I didn’t make it across safely, did I? So you have to pay full price like everyone else, my Lord!”
Elio bit her lip firmly in resolve. Her dense, moisture-laden eyelashes fluttered frantically.
“Wait, My Lady, didn’t you tell us five thousand shillings! Why does the Commander get it for four thousand?”
A hulking young knight, who had been dabbing potion onto his skin, protested in an aggrieved tone.
“That’s because Lord Carlos killed the ogre, even if he took his sweet time doing it, so I gave him a special discount! You lords just stood there and did nothing!”
When Carlos had come down to the ground floor, the sight that greeted him had been utterly absurd.
Brutes who wouldn’t bat an eye if their fingers were severed were diligently dabbing potion onto tiny little scratches.
Just how on earth did she manage to sell it to them?
“My Lady! We were only watching because the Commander ordered us to! In our hearts, we had already hacked that bastard ogre into hundreds of pieces!”
“I-I don’t need your hearts! Show me with your actions next time!”
Elio huffed, puffing her cheeks out round. The flush quickly spread down to her porcelain chest, staining it like a ripe strawberry.
She’s going to cook herself at this rate.
A smirk pulled at the corner of Carlos’s lips. He tapped a potion bottle with his finger.
“Am I getting special treatment, then?”
“It’s not special treatment. It’s the bare minimum expression of gratitude for rescuing me.”
With a face like a bright red tomato, Elio glared at him, then neatly folded the crumpled money she had received from the knights and tucked it into her floral-patterned purse.
Carlos let out a faint laugh at the sheer absurdity of the sight. His long fingers gently wrapped around a small potion bottle.
“What are you going to do with all that money anyway? I’ll be taking care of everything you need.”
Elio narrowed her eyes at his nonchalant reply and whispered back,
“We’re parting ways in three months.”
“And?”
“Are you going to take care of me for the rest of my life, then?”
“Money? How much could you possibly cost?”
Carlos casually tapped the ash from his burnt-down cigar.
“…One day, you’ll change your tune. You’ll begrudge even the money spent feeding me. No matter how wealthy a person is, that’s just how human nature works. Once a heart grows cold, everything about the other person becomes an eyesore.”
Elio remembered, deep in her very bones, the suffering and gnawing hunger of her foster mother, who had been beaten daily by her father for being useless and forced to beg for pennies.
She could still vividly see the dying face of that emaciated young woman, barely in her twenties.
She had learned at the age of seven that one had to be useful to survive.
“I don’t have a heart to grow cold in the first place.”
“Yes, I know. So if you wish to show charity, just buy the potion now.”
Carlos gave a short chuckle at the woman’s earnest tone.
Weeping and laughing over a few miserable coins, struggling desperately just to stay alive like a cockroach rabbit…
“My Lord? I believe in you. I might not believe in the you of tomorrow, but I believe the you of right now will buy my potion. Right?”
Elio struggled to pry open his fist, trying to press the potion back into his grasp.
Watching those soft hands strain all on their own, Carlos finally let out a low sigh and relaxed the tension in his fingers.
The moment he curled his hand around the bottle, the woman broke into the brightest smile.
“I need quite a lot of travel funds if I’m to leave the Schuppenhardt territory in a timely manner, you know.”
Her blue-green eyes sparkled as though they held the entire blazing summer light within them.
“The effect is guaranteed! You saw it yourself back then, on my cheek…”
Carlos’s finger gave a slow twitch.
Staring at the woman’s cheek where the bruise had once bloomed, his hand stroked the smooth glass bottle so hard it seemed ready to shatter.
“Didn’t you like it?”
Her clear voice wavered once more.
Carlos inhaled the scent of flowers drifting through the window. Amidst the damp smell of earth and the crisp scent of grass, a vivid fragrance of acacia drifted in.
Watching the utterly silent man, Elio swallowed hard and cautiously reached her hand toward the money resting before him.
“I-I need the travel funds so that when the time comes, I can quickly…”
Carlos turned his head. With a smooth motion, he swept the four thousand shillings sitting on the table back into his coat.
Elio’s eyes went round as she watched the money suddenly drift out of reach. Carlos leaned back against the chair, a calm smile touching his lips.
“I’ve changed my mind. Feels like a rip-off.”
The heir of Schuppenhardt possessed an astonishing degree of suspicion and pettiness.
“A rip-off? When it even has a purification function? This is incredibly cheap for what it does!”
“…Purification?”
Carlos arched an eyebrow.
“You know how to purify?”
“…I, I can do it.”
He tilted his head slightly, then held out a broad hand.
“…What for?”
“Show me.”
Elio hastily looked away from the scar-covered hand placed before her. Staring only at the blooming acacia framed by the picture window on the left, she parted her hesitant lips.
“I can’t right now because I used up all my mana making potions.”
Elio rubbed her burning eyelids hard at her own lame excuse. ‘Pathetic little rabbit. Useless little rabbit.’ The man’s mocking criticisms seemed to pierce her ears.
Carlos watched her without a word, then caught her bowed chin and tilted it up.
“Don’t rub your eyes so hard.”
Elio blinked her round eyes, looking down at her wrist captured in the man’s grasp.
Carlos put out his finished cigar and let out a soft laugh.
“Sleepy? If you’re sleepy, go to sleep. Why torture your own eyes?”
Wanting nothing more than to flee from him today, Elio hurriedly nodded her flushed face.
❖ ❖ ❖
Though she hadn’t been sleepy in the slightest, Elio somehow ended up taking a nap. Now, sitting on the bench in front of the inn, she stirred the dirt with the worn toe of her shoe.
“Can you really do purification?”
“……”
“Telling the Commander you’d show him tomorrow and all that—was that just some load of crap?”
Toby muttered apathetically, draping an arm over the back of the bench.
“My Lord, how could you call it a load of crap? I really do know all the basic spells.”
“Then why couldn’t you show him just now?”
“Well, that’s my business… The reason I called you out here was because I had something to ask.”
The two of them sat on the bench outside the inn, spaced far apart as if they were complete strangers.
“Go ahead, spit it out.”
A desolate breeze drifted between them. Elio hesitated, scratching the back of her neck.
“…My sparring today. Did I… do well?”
Toby, who had been opening a canteen of wine, let his jaw drop slack. He stared at the crazy rabbit with a dumbfounded expression.
“Well, there’s no one else to ask. It’s not like Lord Carlos would give me a straight answer anyway…”
Recalling the man’s icy, rigid demeanor after the spar—without a single word of praise—the strength immediately drained from her shoulders.
Just what, and how much, had displeased him?
Calling her weak, calling her timid. She had clearly fallen far short of his standards. On top of that, failing to demonstrate purification… Thinking about how much more pathetic he must find her made her stomach ache.
Still, they had to live together for three months… Perhaps she should try brewing more potions for him.
Elio rubbed her aching abdomen and kicked the dirt with her foot.
“…Asking Lord Carlos would be pointless anyway.”
Whine! Yip! Yaaang!
At the sudden, piercing whimpers of a puppy, Elio looked around with a furrowed brow.
Shhh, shhh.
Soon after, a rhythmic, gentle voice could be heard soothing the puppy, but no matter where she looked, no one was in sight. Elio cast a suspicious glance toward the other side of the stone wall.
