The Villainess Enjoys Her Married Life
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Episode 9. Was She Always Like This?
2023.12.09.
“What corner of the gutter did a beggar like you crawl out of, daring to sneak into the kitchen and steal food, hm?”
As Hemos approached brandishing his knife menacingly, Eshika reached out her hand.
Hemos’s brow furrowed in disbelief—Eshika had caught his blade right between her extended index and middle fingers.
Assuming she was mocking him, Hemos flared in anger.
“You rat-faced wench, what do you think you’re—!”
He tried to wrench the blade from Eshika’s grip, but the knife did not budge an inch.
It felt as if it were wedged deep between colossal boulders.
Hemos’s brows twitched.
He put his strength into it once more.
“…Hm?”
Yet, completely unlike something held in the delicate hands of a maid, the blade remained entirely immovable.
He could not have known that it was a simple feat achieved by infusing just a thread of inner energy.
“L-Let go of this!”
“I merely stopped you when you came flailing about with something so hideous, yet your antics are exceedingly undignified.”
A chilling voice slipped from the maid’s delicate lips.
“A mere maid dares—!”
Watching the bald head chef grunt and strain to free the knife from her grasp, Eshika applied a fraction more force to her fingers.
With a sharp, resounding crack, the kitchen knife snapped clean in two.
“…”
Staring at the broken fragment of the knife clattering to the floor, Hemos’s eyes went wide as he staggered back several paces.
Astonishment and terror flooded his gaze.
“…J-Just who are you?!”
Catching the blade so casually between two fingers had seemed strange enough, but witnessing this made it abundantly clear she was no ordinary maid.
“Who are you to come after me? An assassin sent by Harold? T-The gambling debt… if you just give me a little more time…”
Eshika narrowed her eyes.
Hemos had clearly mistaken her for an assassin sent to collect a debt.
Everyone had a weakness, and seeing straight through the flaws of others was second nature to her.
Hemos’s weakness was ‘money.’
The easiest kind of leverage to control.
“I am Eshika Klaus. Does a man working in the ducal kitchen fail to recognize even my face?”
At the surname ‘Klaus’ falling from Eshika’s lips, Hemos flinched.
After staring at her for a long while, he finally furrowed his brows and asked back in disbelief:
“Could you truly be… the Duchess?”
Eshika tilted her chin up slightly and gave a subtle nod.
With her imperious and perilous aura, he could never have imagined she was the Duchess.
However, if she were the Duchess, that changed the situation entirely.
Brushing back his sparse hair, Hemos looked at Eshika with an expression of sheer annoyance.
“What is Your Grace doing here? Dressed in a maid’s uniform, no less.”
Naturally, Hemos looked down upon the powerless Duchess.
Not a single servant in the ducal estate refrained from tormenting her.
For if anyone dared show her kindness and was caught by the Grand Duchess’s maids, a severe beating would surely follow.
“I came because I require your assistance.”
At the word ‘assistance,’ Hemos let out a scoffing smirk.
He had not the slightest intention of helping a Duchess weaker than a straw scarecrow.
“Cease this nonsense and return at once. If the Grand Duchess learns you are wandering about, there will be hell to pay again. Besides, I am extremely busy.”
Just how on earth did she pull off those tricks earlier?
As Hemos grumbled and bent down to pick up the broken blade, Eshika took a couple of steps closer.
“If so…”
Right then, a cascade of glittering objects clattered before Hemos.
There were more than ten precious pearls—the very ones she had received from Sella before.
“How about this? Surely you are not so busy that you lack the time to pick these up.”
To Hemos, who looked up at her with visibly altered eyes, Eshika spoke:
“I require your kitchen and your assistance.”
“…Well… if you insist, I suppose I have no choice…”
Hemos reached toward the fallen pearls, eyeing her cautiously.
If he just brushed off the naive Duchess’s babble and pocketed the pearls…
“Aaargh!”
However, the hand he had stretched toward the pearls was instantly crushed under Eshika’s boot.
“…What in the—!”
Then Eshika leaned down, locking eyes with the grimacing Hemos.
The moment he met Eshika’s chilling gaze, Hemos felt his heart drop straight into his stomach.
When she caught the blade between two fingers earlier, he had dismissed it as some cheap trick she had practiced.
Yet the Duchess standing before his eyes right now…
“Hemos.”
A vivid killing intent swirled in her eyes, while her lips curled into an effortless smile.
It was not a terrifying expression worn once or twice, nor was it something that could ever be feigned.
Back when he attended the Grand Duchess, seeing such an expression on a woman used to send chills down his spine… yet what stared back at him now was an abyss far deeper.
“It would not be difficult to register these pearls as stolen goods.”
“…Pardon…? What on earth do you mean by…”
“You must have already pawned three of my pearls for gambling funds. Those happen to be of the finest quality even among the Brigitte family’s collection. And since tiny serial numbers are engraved upon them…”
Cold sweat ran down Hemos’s back.
“It means tracing who sold them will be effortless.”
At those words, an even colder dread washed over Hemos’s spine.
“My Lady… why are you doing this to me? You gave them to me as a gift, so why…”
“They were not a gift, but currency entrusted in expectation of a due return. Yet you failed to meet my expectations.”
Hemos felt an agonizing, throbbing pain in his hand, as though the bones were about to snap.
A return. He remembered Sella bringing a recipe, which he had slapped together carelessly and sent out as breakfast.
After all, that Sella was not a maid with any backing, merely a servant attending the Duchess; even if she protested, he could simply ignore her.
“I did not ask for garbage thrown together by guesswork. I expected food with the proper medicinal efficacy, crafted through exact measurement and precise blending.”
“M-My Lady…”
“Therefore, you have already practically stolen my pearls. Furthermore…”
The foot crushing Hemos’s hand pressed down with greater force.
“Even now, you greedily covet a noble’s treasure—a grave crime for which you would have no right to complain even if both your wrists were severed.”
Cold sweat continued to drench Hemos’s back.
Thieving from nobility was met with the brutal punishment of having one’s wrists cut off.
In the past, he would have relied on the Grand Duchess’s backing to brazen it out, but the capricious Grand Duchess would no longer even spare him the time of day.
‘Was the Duchess… always this kind of person?’
The Duchess he had briefly glimpsed in the past was an innocent, naive woman who did not belong in Klaus at all.
Yet the thick killing intent exuded by the woman currently treading upon his hand threw his memories into utter turmoil.
“…I-I was wrong! But what in the world do you want from me that you would come all the way to the kitchen…?”
In the end, he pleaded to Eshika.
With an arrogant gaze, Eshika parted her lips.
“I do not fear the Grand Duchess.”
“…T-That makes no sense.”
“Whether it makes sense will become clear once we clash. At any rate, if you offer me your genuine loyalty…”
When Eshika lifted her foot from his hand, he cradled the throbbing limb with his other hand.
In contrast to the searing pain, her voice was as melodious as jade beads rolling across silk—and just as lethal.
“You will surely gain far more than you lose.”
Where his hand had been pulled back, pearls rolled scattered across the floor.
It took no great skill to pick up what had been cast aside.
“However, if you choose nothing, severing the wrists of a backless cook is no difficult task for me.”
The corners of her lips curved up faintly into a cruel arch.
**
“Keep close watch over whether Eshika’s meals are being served properly.”
At the words of Riona, who sat on the balcony having her nails manicured by a maid, another maid bowed her head and replied.
“Yes, understood, Grand Duchess.”
According to the maids, Eshika’s complexion had been steadily improving.
How could her complexion improve when she lived on nothing but rotten bread?
It was impossible unless someone had taken pity and helped her.
If anyone within the estate dared defy her command, she had no intention of letting them go unpunished.
Once the maid took her orders and left, Riona commanded another.
“Annie.”
“Yes, Grand Duchess. Please speak.”
“Have the musician play a piece. Now that an unsightly face has come to mind…”
Riona’s elegant brow furrowed.
“I must soothe my mood with music.”
The maid promptly bowed her head and answered.
“Understood, Grand Duchess.”
The maid stepped outside once more.
It was to summon the musician whom they had brought in for a handsome sum not long ago.
Shortly after, a sweet melody began to drift up from beneath the balcony.
Riona closed her eyes and listened intently to the performance.
The face of that vulgar merchant girl who had crawled into the ducal house had soured her mood, but the exquisite melody seemed to breathe warmth into her irritated heart.
“Prepare the dresses. I must select an attire befitting tomorrow’s tea time.”
“Understood, Grand Duchess.”
The maid manicuring her nails replied.
**
Lesvan’s gaze rested upon a white butterfly in the garden.
Ripples rising across the lake, shimmering eyes, swaying hair.
And… a dream that had lingered for so very long.
From that day in his agonizing childhood when he first met her, he had wandered long in search of the figure from his dreams.
For after a certain point, he did not even know whether she truly existed in this world or not.
“Your Highness the Crown Prince.”
The aide tasked with the investigation reported.
“I have completed the investigation regarding Duchess Eshika Klaus.”
