The Trash Lady Who Stole the Duke's First Night
Chapter 28
The man let out a rough sigh, rifled through the few food items inside the bag, and picked up the red-covered book.
Elio’s eyes went wide. She lunged forward, stretching her arms toward the man holding the romance novel.
“Sir! S-Sir!”
Carlos caught the woman throwing herself into his arms with his forearm, holding her upright as he sat her back down.
“Give it back! How can you just look through someone else’s things like that? Give it here, give it back!”
Elio braced her hand against Carlos’s thigh and yanked hard on the book in his right hand. Carlos curled one corner of his mouth into a smirk and raised his hand higher, flipping the book open.
“The Noble Knight’s First Kiss and Between the Legs? What a title.”
“I’m studying! Give it back. Seriously, going through someone’s things…! You have no m-manners at all!”
“Studying what? Smut?”
“I’ll be having a real marriage soon enough, and since I never received proper education from a nanny, I have to teach myself! Ladies normally receive this kind of education!”
Carlos looked down at the woman’s flushed face with eyes sharp as blades.
“Now that you’re a commoner stripped of your immunity, you choose to study the bridal night instead of the Holy Book?”
Elio barely managed to snatch the book from his hand, scrambled down from his rock-hard thighs, and hurriedly scooted backward on her bottom.
“…D-Don’t discriminate when it comes to studying. Both the Holy Book and the bridal night hold equally important value. Without the bridal night, how could God Himmel have ever been born? Obviously the bridal night comes before the Holy Book.”
Elio muttered rapidly with a reckless disregard for the consequences, hastily shoving the spilled grapes and bread back into the bag as if stuffing them out of sight.
Anger surged and her face burned hot over him prying into her private hobbies.
“…God Himmel was born of his own accord from the light. As the God of Love.”
Carlos pressed a hand to his temple and spoke.
Elio paused, curling her fingertips as she shut the crumpled book, biting her lip in mortification. Her teeth sank hard into the inside of her lip at the explicit, provocative content on the exact page he had opened.
She wanted nothing more than to turn into a handful of sand and vanish into thin air.
“E-Even if he was born of his own accord, he must have spent a bridal night once he became an adult to give birth to the Archangels. This isn’t something to be ashamed of or treat as taboo. For a lady, understanding the erotic desires everyone possesses is merely general knowledge—”
“Erotic desires? Ah. So you hate a man’s power and wealth, but you’re fine with lust?”
Elio faltered, her lips trembling under his piercing, narrowed gaze, before she lifted her chin proudly like a dignified grand dame teaching marital relations. Her entire body burned bright red, but she did not look away from his dark eyes.
“I am talking about instinctual desires and their inherent worth! Every human possesses the urge to propagate the species, and expressing sexual desire toward someone of the opposite sex you love is entirely natural! It is by no means something to treat as taboo—”
“Toward whom?”
Carlos roughly wiped a hand down his face and muttered low through his teeth.
“What?”
“Toward whom did you feel anything to make you even think of studying that?”
She flinches whenever I so much as touch her, and now that she’s barely come of age…
Carlos reined in his breathing, suppressing his chilling voice as if reasoning with a wayward teenage girl.
He was well aware that ladies typically received education on the marital bed at sixteen, or eighteen at the latest. It was true that a twenty-year-old lady of age ought to have long since learned about relations with men from either her nanny or her mother.
While the ascetic doctrines of the Himmel Religion strictly governed daily morals, clandestine balls and free romances flourished in the shadows as a direct counter-reaction.
In truth, the priest’s verification of the bridal night was nothing more than a rigged ritual, and few women truly spent their very first night there.
Most had already experienced their bridal night prior to their debutante season, so he knew they were supposed to complete their education by eighteen at the latest.
At least, rationally, he knew that.
“Who caught your eye? Are you exchanging letters with those scrawny, pretty-boy bastards from the carriage back then? Do you think bastards who hit on a kid sexually are normal?”
He asked again, his voice dropping terribly low as though holding down something surging within him.
“Why are you suddenly reading this garbage? I’m asking who sparked that kind of interest in you.”
“What do you mean, who?”
Elio looked at his well-defined chest muscles heaving beneath his thin tunic and snapped her head away.
“I-It’s none of your business, Sir. Why do you care when you told a lady to become trash?”
Her face beet-red, Elio hauled up the bicycle—which was nearly the size of her own body—with a loud clatter and turned on her heel so fast she nearly tripped. She felt utterly humiliated, as if her entire inner self had been emptied out and exposed like a cleared plastic bag.
“…Stay out of my personal life. It’s not like you aren’t using me too. What makes you any different from Father or Parliament? You’re all the same. No, you’re the worst of all.”
When she glared back at him, he said nothing, his expression hardened terrifyingly. Elio stumbled as though she were a toddler just learning to walk, but she did not look back again and took large, purposeful strides forward.
She shoved the knight romance novel—once the small joy of her life—into the bicycle basket as if throwing it in the trash. Hesitating at the silence of the man who didn’t even try to hold her back, she gripped the handlebars with hot hands and turned them away.
Wobbling along, she kept walking without rest, wheeling the rattling bicycle and hoping the cool breeze would quickly cool her burning ears.
Whoosh.
How far had she walked? The bittersweet scent of lilacs, which she hadn’t noticed in her fluster, drifted to the tip of her nose.
The sound of the stream’s current and the rustling of lush leaves reached her ears. The wind lifting her skirt swept coolly over her sweat-dampened body.
Under the deep violet sky, the creek path where darkness had fallen stretched endlessly, its ripples quiet. Beneath an evening sky deepening as if mixed with paints, Elio parked her bicycle and slumped down alone.
…Jerk.
She tossed a pebble. With a small plop, ripples spread and slowly settled back into silence.
Staring anxiously at the quiet stream, she rubbed her eyes hard and fumbled through the black plastic bag for the loaf of bread. Her fingertips trembled faintly. The coldly hardened expression she had last seen on his face was unmistakably one of anger.
…W-Whether he’s angry or not, why should he be the one who’s mad?
As she struggled to untie the bread bag with trembling hands, a small bird circled above her with flapping wings. Before long, it landed at her feet and let out a soft coo, looking up at her.
When she merely stared back, it pecked lightly at the top of her foot with its beak. A slip of paper was tied to its slender leg.
“…Who sent you?”
She was baffled, unable to guess whose carrier pigeon it could be.
…Older Sister’s carrier pigeon already came at dawn…
Confused as to whether it was really meant for her, she furrowed her brow. Then, holding her breath at the adorably small bear-patterned note, she carefully crouched down and pulled it free.
The moment she unfolded the paper, a forceful handwriting that resembled the man himself caught her eye.
The trembling in Elio’s fingertips stopped.
Just how far are you going?
Home is in the opposite direction. It’s late, so go straight home.
Don’t wander around when the streetlamps come on. Don’t go to the tavern district or the mercenary district alone. If a strange man talks to you, don’t answer. Don’t blindly follow anyone just because they ask for help. Don’t eagerly take food from strangers just because they offer it.
Don’t let anyone into the house except me. And I’d appreciate it if you memorized the streets.
Lovely lady.
Shall we have dinner together at seven?
Blankly reading and re-reading the end of the note, Elio let out a hollow laugh through dry lips. Stunned, she fanned her face with her hand.
To pick a fight like that and then suddenly ask to eat together—he was utterly impossible.
Does asking to eat first make everything okay?
She muttered “lovely lady” in utter disbelief, then shook her flushed face, picked up the bicycle, and bolted toward home drenched in sweat. As luck would have it, a sudden shower broke out, soaking her to the bone. Even as she kept grumbling about what a jerk he was, her body moved as swiftly as a kingfisher taking flight.
She worked up a sweat wiping away every speck of dust from the entrance tiles, scrubbing the marble in every room, and cleaning every nook and cranny of the bathroom. After taking a thorough bath, she even applied strawberry-scented lotion to the damp ends of her hair.
Bothered by the loose threads on the cheap dress she had bought at the market, she folded the sleeves twice, then three times, before anxiously hunting around for a pair of scissors.
“I-If a person is going to visit a lady’s house, they should give at least a day’s notice. Why does he have to come so suddenly? He always does whatever he wants.”
Elio brushed and pinned up her hair again, then gathered fallen strands from the floor with a tearful expression before checking her elbows and the back zipper in the full-length mirror.
Just as he had written at the end of the note, the doorbell rang at exactly seven o’clock.
Peep! Peep! Peep!
“Hey, shh! Be quiet…!”
As the carrier pigeon chirped noisily at the sound of the bell, Elio hissed under her breath for it to shut up. Older Sister’s carrier pigeon, which had somehow found her newly acquired house at dawn, cried out raucously at the mere sound of the front gate bell.
She hastily tossed a treat to the squawking bird, panicked that he might hear her racing heartbeat, quickly snipped away the remaining thread, and dashed out.
And standing outside the courtyard gate she flung open with a flushed face—
“Lady.”
Was Grita.
“Have you eaten dinner?”
Grita’s hazel eyes curved softly.
Elio’s eyes widened at the completely unexpected figure. Standing there in her crisp dress uniform in the dead of night, she looked taller and more striking than most men.
“Sir Grita?”
To the stunned Elio, Grita offered a neat smile and lifted a rattan basket. Her gentle gaze swept down Elio’s slender ankles, narrow waist, and prominent chest before slowly settling on her face.
She wore a smile of indecipherable meaning.