/
Rowaine, who shook her head from side to side quickly with a painful sound, apologized.
“I’m sorry! I was wrong! Dimitri must have been shocked, too…”
Seeing her reaction, Dimitri uttered mercifully with a look of no concern at all.
“No. You did a great job. Madam Elbas’s expression was really worth looking at. I was very satisfied.”
Rowaine couldn’t raise her head and tried to run past him. However, Dimitri, with his long legs, easily caught up to her with his stride and persisted with tenacity.
“When are you planning to give birth? What’s the child’s name? Is it okay if I name it for you?”
“No way.”
“How about herbal medicine? That’d be useful.”
“Are you punishing me? I’ll apologize. I’m very sorry for the bombshell remarks without consultation, Dimitri.”
“What are you talking about? I just want to respect Rowaine’s will. Still, from now on, I want to hear about my family plans in advance.”
Narrowing her eyes, Rowaine’s gaze was focused on him to try to figure out his intentions.
“…For what?”
“My fun?”
“I knew it!”
She stared at Dimitri with a burning red face. Seeing Rowaine like that, he chuckled and shrugged.
“What are you going to do if you look at me so passionately you have frivolity in your stomach? Our child seems to be created just by the wife’s imagination, so you have to be careful.”
“Ah, really!”
In the end, Rowaine sped up her pace and ran away.
The smell of the fresh grass left in the air pleasantly stimulated the tip of Dimitri’s nose. It was the first time he knew that making fun of people was so much fun. He continued to laugh out loud.
‘I can’t even imagine how limitless her brain would be.’
It was so exhilarating that the words of Madam Elbas, who was being completely unreasonable, were completely blocked.
Dimitri was really excited.
Whenever he was fighting with Madam Elbas, countless sharp words came and went, and his voice would rise. Because of the bloody tension, he always felt terrible after talking to her. However, when Rowaine was caught between the two, the situation was completely different.
This was already the second time she crushed Madame Elbas with words and actions.
‘An interesting person.’
As he thought so, Dimitri gazed at Rowaine’s back as she ran away and grinned. He actually didn’t realize how happy his face was.
ﾟ･ : * ✧ * :･ ﾟ
“….”
Cayetana’s eyes grew sharper as she saw Dimitri smiling with a very happy face in the distance in the hallway. Her clenched fists were expressing her feelings.
‘…How dare you smile like that?’
She couldn’t tolerate it.
Cayetana inevitably ground her teeth.
‘I can’t let that filthy bastard make a face like that.’
She didn’t come here to play. In fact, she had been concerned that Dimitri might be happy after the marriage and that he might have overcome the loneliness and sadness she had planted.
‘I can’t believe he’s smiling shamelessly while sitting on the duke’s seat that was supposed to be my children’s even after killing them.’
I won’t let it go.
With a flash of hatred in her eyes, Cayetana gave a sharp smile. She then called her own private maid.
“Betty.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Go and find out if the Duchess’s pregnancy is real. In addition, find out if there are any flaws in the Duchess.”
“Yes, Madam.”
Betty, taking her orders, quietly retreated.
Even so, Cayetana stood still for a long while in the same spot, staring at Dimitri until he disappeared.
‘I’ll take revenge for my children… I’ll trample all his happiness and uproot it so that it doesn’t sprout. That mouth will surely make him confess his sins.’
Dimitri shouldn’t be happy.
It should’ve been her children, not Dimitri, who were enjoying everything and laughing happily.
‘…It should have been you who should have died on the battlefield, Dimitri.’
Hatred and anger filled her eyes.
At the same time, her hand trembled as she gripped her chest.
When Cayetana turned her head, her children were everywhere in the Blois mansion. The children who crawled, walked and ran around, became the joy of this place… Her precious children who wouldn’t get hurt because they were always in her gaze.
Even though she always had an upright face and didn’t show it, Cayetana was still trapped at the time she heard the news of her children’s death.
Her irreplaceable despair turned to Dimitri with an arrow of victimization and delusion.
‘You shouldn’t be happy.’
Cayetana’s eyes darkened.
“I wish the Duchess was really pregnant.”
Then, she could present him with even greater despair.
ﾟ･ : * ✧ * :･ ﾟ
The next morning.
Even though Madam Elbas and grandmother Rosanne were visiting, my daily life went on as usual. I was reviewing documents with Baron Seville Placen, who had recently been appointed my aide.
From budgets and greetings to the estate’s welfare issues, there were a lot of things that I needed to know more than I thought. Originally, these were all things Dimitri was handling, but from the moment he gave me his office, he was handing over his work little by little.
‘If you divide these budgets by 2, it’s roughly the same as the Korean exchange rate… This is a reasonable amount.’
Looking at the ledger, my eyes widened.
‘Even if I divide it by 2, the amount is so huge that I’m exhausted…’
Although I didn’t even have a calculator, I was glad that it wasn’t a number like dividing by seven or eleven. If it had been, it’d have been much more difficult than it is now.
Then, I read the documents slowly, step by step, so as not to make a mistake.
It was a huge amount just for the labor cost that went out to the employees of the mansion for a month. In addition to the estate budget, things like the head of each Duchy’s department were added to it as well. Numbers were spinning in front of my eyes.
When I was nervous at the thought that if I made a mistake, I would cause a lot of damage, Baron Placen opened his mouth sternly.
“As I said before, these are documents that administrators meticulously check and submit. They are talented people.”
It seemed that he misunderstood that I was trying to pick a hole in something.
He was the one who was against Dimitri leaving me to do these things. In particular, he didn’t want to show me the documents showing the flow of funds in relation to the Duchess’s budget, saying that it should be handled secretly.
Rather than being angry with him, I understood him. Rather, his boundaries felt like loyalty.
‘He must be worried about Rowaine’s notoriety because she can force it to be spent on the wrong budget.’
Just as Count Larscel and his wife were blinded by money and could sell their daughters away, Rowaine was a person who could sell her parents for money, too. That was how much she loved money and jewelry, and lusted for a lot of luxury.
People who like to gossip were talking about her misdeeds, and there was no way they could have left that out.
Almost all nobles knew that ‘Rowaine’ was a person of extravagance in addition to cruelty, and that would have even reached the ears of Baron Placen of Blois.
‘…When he was appointed as my assistant, the expression on his face was amazing.’
Baron Placen was a man who couldn’t hide his expression well. He greeted me reluctantly with a face almost like an ox being dragged to the slaughter. Either way, I just had to do my job. It was a little bumpy, but it didn’t stop him from doing his job.
‘Dimitri must have figured it out and given me the right person.’
Perhaps Dimitri didn’t want me to fight Baron Placen and divide us into winners and losers, but rather, he wanted the Baron to be on my side… That was what I assumed.
‘Because Baron Placen is a capable and loyal servant.’
I comforted him, who looked nervous.
“It must be frustrating because I’m slow, but I don’t want to be sloppy since it’s my first time learning about this kind of work. Please understand.”
It was an expression saying not to rush.
Baron Placen opened his eyes slightly wide as if he was surprised by my words.
“…It’s all right. Take your time.”
The next moment, I checked the items without taking my eyes off the papers before I saw something. I ordered the Baron.
“Give me the embezzlement ledgers I gave you earlier.”
“Here it is.”
“This part, the regular purchase budget for magic lights hasn’t been revised. So, if it weren’t being embezzled, the number of purchases would’ve been lower than before.”
“You mean it hasn’t been corrected? Could it be?”
He frowned as if he didn’t want to believe that his administrators had made a mistake and that I had pointed it out. However, as I said, the number of purchases of magic lights hadn’t been corrected before or after the embezzlement.
In the end, Baron Placen took turns looking at the documents, me, and the books, and soon admitted his mistake.
“I’ll correct it.”
I comforted him because he looked so sullen.
“It’s a small part, and the amount of embezzlement in the first place isn’t that big compared to other items, so it could happen. This time, there were so many places to take care of. Don’t worry too much.”
I knew that the administrators were very busy with personnel transfers this month and a full-scale investigation into embezzlement. For several weeks, I saw the lights in the office building constantly lit up like a ‘fire that would never go out.’
However, he was even more startled by my consolation and answered in a slightly louder voice.
“No…!”
His voice was so loud that I gazed at him puzzledly. Baron Placen lowered his voice a little before continuing his words.
“When mistakes are made in these little things, errors are bound to snowball at some point. We’ll make sure this never happens again. I’m sorry.”
I was a little angry at the way he was skeptical about what I was going to do with the paperwork. I asked while pretending not to notice his eyes staring at me.
“Do you have anything to say? Tell me.”