RAMHM Chapter 33

The Meeting of Two Problem Children

She'd agreed to play lovers with Rhodness.

Separate from her revenge against Novian—she had to live as Bliea now. Time to bid farewell to those days when she'd lain in a sickened body, unable to swallow even the food others spooned into her mouth. She was grateful for this present moment, when she could actually do something for someone.

Tap-tap.

At the quiet knock on her bedroom door, Adrienne released the nervous tension she'd been clutching tight and turned her gaze. Yona came every evening under the pretext of "caring for the lovely mistress"—and today, as always, she entered carrying a tray laden with various herbs and oils.

Adrienne stretched herself naturally across the long couch and opened her mouth to Yona, who was earnestly mixing fragrant oils with studied seriousness.

"Yona, have you ever been in love?"

"Wh-what?"

Yona, not yet of age, flushed rapidly.

"What do lovers do together?"

"W-well, wouldn't my lady know better than I would?"

Yona answered smartly as she mixed powders into the oil to spread through her mistress's hair.

'Well, that's true enough.'

To the servants' eyes, she'd be the legendary temptress who'd ensnared that iron-blooded Grand Duke himself.

"I'm curious what ordinary lovers do."

"The Grand Duke and my lady being ordinary lovers—it doesn't quite fit somehow..."

Watching Yona's adorable face as she trailed off, Adrienne felt something settle in her chest. She hadn't even tried counting how many years it had been.

People thought Adrienne Swan Pirreta was the woman the Iron Chancellor Novian Trovika had fallen for at first sight—but that wasn't the reality. Adrienne and Novian had courted in secret, for a very long time.

He at the Royal Academy as an imperial prince, Adrienne at the general academy as ordinary nobility. They'd first met in the library—one of the few spaces the two academies shared—and had endlessly exchanged letters, understanding each other, sharing their feelings. What he lacked, Adrienne filled; what she lacked, he supplemented. They'd relied on each other that way, and at some point she'd even pictured a future together with him.

They'd been so young—exchanging letters so earnestly without even knowing it was love. She'd only realized that what they'd done resembled what others called courtship when her debutante was approaching and she'd confessed to Bianca that there was actually someone in her heart.

Bianca had declared what she'd been doing was courtship! They'd never properly met face to face, but they'd exchanged letters to their hearts' content. When Novian had actually faced her at her debutante, he'd proposed in a manner exactly matching Adrienne's imaginings.

Was that ordinary courtship, too?

"Well, they say highborn folk are curious about how common people court."

"Mm, mmhm."

Adrienne, who'd been lost in thought, hastily collected herself and watched Yona thinking hard.

If her lover-act with Rhodness was going to look real enough to turn Novian's insides upside down, she absolutely had to know what normal lovers did. Yona continued speaking as she thoroughly applied the mixed concoction to her hair.

"Actually, I think the safest thing is to do what you've wanted to do if you had a lover, or give them what you've wanted to give. Did you want to give His Grace a gift?"

"Ah, a gift!"

Adrienne clapped her hands together before she could stop herself. Clap!

"Right, I should give a gift!"

Things she'd want to do if she had a lover. Things she'd want to give. She didn't need to write such things on paper—they were vivid in her mind.

'I wish there were something I could do for you.'

Hadn't she always looked at Novian with that thought? She'd wanted to see the person she loved smile and be happy because of her. While receiving Yona's care, Adrienne began enthusiastically jotting down the thoughts bubbling up onto paper. Things she'd never done with Novian before and never would in the future. Things that would sufficiently rankle Novian if she did them with Rhodness.

"My lady, what is all this?"

"Things I wanted to do for a lover."

"Hmm..."

Yona, having finished her work and wiped her hands briskly on her apron, examined the list herself.

"Oh, this one's good."

"Which one?"

Adrienne's eyes lit up.

"Tomorrow happens to be Chocolate Day. This one you wrote, 'Make cookies.' Tomorrow morning we'll make them for you to take. You're going with His Grace on the second day of the birthday celebration, right? If you give them to him then, wouldn't it offer a unique experience?"

"No, read it carefully. 'Make them myself'!"

"My lady... yourself? Why on earth?"

Yona's look of strangeness was now quite familiar to Adrienne. The original Bliea would've been busy finding fault with cookies others baked for her. The thought that she could actually do something she'd only ever imagined—with a healthy body—made Adrienne a bit excited.

"I'm healthy enough to make cookies myself...!"

"Yes, you're tremendously healthy!"

At her mistress's delighted expression, Yona smiled brightly and chimed in enthusiastically.

"Then I'll gather the maids who bake the best pastries in the estate and have them waiting tomorrow!"

"Yes, please tell them I'm counting on them."

How should she wrap them? As soon as Yona finished her work and left, Adrienne lay on the bed, clutching her pounding heart tight. It was time to provocatively plant Bliea Acacia's name in society circles and gossip papers.

Would going to a few balls as partners really produce scandalous articles about her and Rhodness, already notorious as a rake? To look like a truly passionate affair rather than just one of the many women linked to him in rumors—didn't she need distinctiveness?

If his mistress, whom he so desperately wanted to hide, kept coming up in conversation this way, Novian would obviously try to conceal Bliea by bringing her into his domain. He might try to bring her into the Grand Ducal Estate as quickly as possible. The Novian Adrienne knew was like that.

When her thoughts jumped to Novian, the excitement she'd felt thinking about what to do with her healthy body deflated slightly.

'I didn't expect him to try to kiss me so suddenly.'

Her goal was to provoke Novian—to enter the Grand Ducal Estate as soon as possible, not after the "time passing" he'd mentioned. She wanted to know exactly how and why he'd killed her. At the same time, she had to search directly for information that might bring him down.

She mustn't forget to find her corpse and show it to Rhodness. And a small wish had been added this time—that Rhodness would stop hurting so much and live a new life.

'A grateful person.'

A beautiful, grateful person who remembered Adrienne Pirreta so fondly. Adrienne went to the Count's library and rummaged through baking books. With her tension released and the thought that she could do something—anything—for a grateful person with this healthy body, motivation surged.

Adrienne chased Novian, who'd been burning her heart black, out of her mind. And she decided to devote all her energy to achieving her goals while strengthening her bond with Rhodness for now.

Marge watched the estate's mistress bustling about since morning with a jaded gaze. The Countess, who'd gone to the "dawn market" early with several maids, had entered the kitchen she'd never set foot in before and was earnestly kneading flour dough. Considering her previous track record of throwing a fit if even a thread got on her pretty clothes, seeing her wear a kerchief on her head and get flour on her face while learning how to make cookies from the maids was deeply strange.

'Now there's no medicine left to feed her. What to do.'

Ding! Ring!

The moment the bell-shaped clock they'd set chimed, the group gathered chattering before the oven opened it and pulled out the cookies. As heart-shaped and star-shaped cookies baked golden brown revealed themselves through the rising steam, the Countess and maids simultaneously cried out in joy.

"I... made them...!"

Bliea Acacia's face, seemingly moved to the point of emotion, was absolutely spectacular. She covered her mouth with her hand—somehow having gotten soot from the oven on her nose—and opened it to the surrounding maids.

"No, no, we made them! Thank you. If not for you all, I couldn't have made them this quickly."

"I never knew my lady had such skilled hands!"

"That's right, you made hardly any mistakes—at this rate you might open a pastry shop!"

'Oh dear.'

Words you'd say to a friend, to the mistress... Marge shook her head at the young maids' slip, not knowing that telling the Countess she worked well wasn't a compliment. Marge clicked her tongue, expecting Bliea, with her severe mood swings, to scold them immediately—but then saw her docilely nodding her head and looking at them with sparkling eyes.

'Huh...?'

"Marge, Marge, you eat the first one."

'It's poison. Definitely poison.'

Or maybe a laxative! That's what her head was thinking, certainly. But Bliea's face as she smiled brilliantly and offered the first taste looked too innocent to refuse.

"M-me?"

"Yeah. We ate plenty of sweets while making them! I think if you try it, you can evaluate most accurately."

Good heavens. If that were acting—if this were some elaborate method to punish her for behaving somewhat disrespectfully with laxatives or poison in a cookie...! Even thinking that, Marge picked up a still-steaming heart-shaped cookie with trembling hands.

"Please try it, Head Maid!"

"Marge, hurry!"

'Did I scold them too harshly about cleaning properly last time? They might be in on it too.'

Oh, whatever. In any case, the butter scent was enchantingly savory, so Marge bit into the cookie with a "let's eat and die" mentality. Crunch.

"Mm?"

"How is it, Marge?"

"It's..."

She'd never had such delicious cookies. Opportunities to eat cookies made with premium ingredients weren't common. She could only sneak them before throwing away leftovers after parties. The butter scent that wrapped from her mouth to her nose, the chocolate spreading richly within—it made Marge's eyes fly open.

"You really could open a pastry shop."

"Wow!"

"See, my lady! I told you that you have real talent!"

"How did you think to put chocolate inside the cookies? I've seen chocolate chips sprinkled on top, but never like this!"

A kitchen filled with cheers. Eventually watching Bliea hand a basket of cookies to the elderly butler who'd come running at the commotion, Marge chewed and swallowed the cookie still in her mouth. She felt like she might cry.

'I shouldn't look for medicine anymore.'

Marge, making eye contact with the elderly butler watching them with a pleased expression, made a decision. If Countess Bliea Acacia really had gone crazy starting some day—it would be better for this household's peace to leave her in exactly this state.

More beautifully packaged than the prettily wrapped cookies, Countess Acacia was dazzlingly lovely today.

Madame Leblais had received a direct house-call request from the Acacia estate, and despite it being one of the busiest days of the year, she'd rushed to the estate without complaint and devoted all her energy to adorning her.

Compared to the past when she'd worn vulgar, garish outfits that obscured her beautiful face, it was like gilding a rotten pumpkin vine and studding it with diamonds—that level of transformation.

All the servants were eyes gleaming, anticipating Novian Trovika coming smitten to fetch his mistress even during his wife's mourning period. When the grand four-horse carriage's clatter-clatter stopped at the Count's estate entrance, thrown wide open, Marge was excited enough to flare her nostrils—but then, following the long legs extending from inside the carriage, her eyes widened as if about to spill out. She'd seen a face too shocking.

"That's not His Grace...?"

Grand Duke Novian Trovika was one of the most beautiful men in Ronteaux, but the man before her eyes didn't have Novian's intellectual civil official feeling—instead he exuded a military official's aura, overwhelming those around him with his physique. Not only that, but following his straight body upward, you could see a delicately sculpted face—the most inhuman-looking human face Marge had ever seen in her life.

Excluding a few servants standing with mouths agape, unable to look away, Yona and Marge's gazes barely managed to turn toward their waiting mistress. The noblewoman, smiling brightly, greeted the beautiful man at the entrance as if she'd been waiting, her smile smooth as silk.

"My lady...?"

She even waved her hand slightly to them. A silent gust passed before the Count's estate, and the servants murmured in unison with dazed gazes.

"Golden hair and red eyes..."

"Could it be that we've actually seen him, the one we've only heard about..."

"Did we just see Ronteaux's problem child in person?"

The maids, flushed to their hair roots, could no longer hide their excitement and bounced around.

"Wow, wow..."

"I-is my lady having an affair?"

"She already had a lover separately."

"What about His Grace?"

"Everyone quiet! If you want to talk, go inside."

"Marge, your nose is bleeding."

"I'm tired, that's all."

Marge, roughly plugging her nose with the handkerchief Yona offered, made eye contact with the elderly butler, also standing with his mouth open. Not because of the man's appearance—but because the household peace that had finally seemed within reach felt strongly shaken, making the back of her head throb.

Marge and the elderly butler's eyes were shaking just as severely. Birds of a feather, as they say. The problem child who'd been a leaky pot from inside had met the problem child who was already leaking profusely from outside!