Chapter 27

I was standing in front of the door. The door that led to my past, to a life I had left behind. After all the things that had happened, after the first kiss I had with my first love, which was an accident, I thought a lot about it. People in Eclipse Manor looked at me with expectant eyes, but nothing had changed between Nine and me. After that day, Van would sometimes ask me, with hopeful eyes, ‘Where will you be sleeping tonight?’ But I could only reply with an awkward smile.

‘But we’re not like that at all!’

Have they all lost their memories? They all saw that Nine had no interest in me, either before or now. I grumbled to myself and picked up the documents in front of me. But even as I held the documents and scanned the contents, the thought wouldn’t leave my mind.

‘Still, I guess it was a lucky thing that my first kiss was with my first love.’

Even though it wasn’t something we both wanted…

I was looking at the land management records from all over the territory and recalled what he looked like that day. He had a nice scent when he came close, and his hair, which had just barely brushed against me, was soft. His black eyes, which seemed to draw me in the more I looked into them, stared at me. A look of embarrassment came into those seemingly cold eyes, and Nine’s face turned completely red. And the feel of his lips, which had touched mine for just a moment…

“…”

I buried my face in the documents, which were heating up.

Then I remembered that there were servants around and naturally raised my head and fanned myself with my hand.

“Ah, it’s hot…”

Wait, this is the North.

And I had opened the window to let in some fresh air.

It was weather where I couldn’t even pretend it was hot, so I quickly shut my mouth.

“Ahem.”

Still, before that incident, the atmosphere wasn’t bad, as Nine had asked me how I had changed Adel and about the difficulties of internal management. So I had even thought that my dislike stack might have gone down a little.

‘Was I mistaken?’

As expected, unlike me, that incident seemed to be just an unpleasant thing for Nine.

Nine showed his indifference to me again. No, he even seemed to be avoiding me.

Usually, I would have been upset for a moment thinking about that, but…

Recently, there was a different thing that was really tormenting me.

Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

The person who came into the office was my sister-in-law’s personal maid, Nine’s older sister.

‘Again?’

As soon as she came in, she started to apologize hesitantly, looking at me.

“I, I’m sorry, Lady Chacha…”

“It’s okay. So, what happened this time?”

That’s right. The person who had been tormenting me lately was not Nine, who was avoiding me, but his older sister, Roana.

“Well… she got into a fight at a small pub in Iclea…”

Roana’s personal maid always bowed her head as if it was her fault whenever she came to me to clean up the mess Roana had made.

‘The person who actually caused the mess hasn’t said a word.’

I held back a sigh and rubbed my throbbing head.

She didn’t take care of Adel, and she said strange things to him, like not to play with me, so my impression of Roana wasn’t good to begin with.

But now that she was causing trouble on top of that, my favorability towards Roana was plummeting.

‘If it wasn’t for this…’

I looked down at the Duchess’s official seal on my desk.

My honest feeling was that I wanted to avoid getting involved with Roana as much as possible. However, since I was currently managing the household as the lady of the Duke’s family, I couldn’t.

If the problem had been confined to the castle like it was with Adel, it would have been easy to clean up, but the scale of the trouble Roana caused was much bigger.

She was always drunk, and she was the epitome of disorder and rudeness, to the point where it was hard to believe she used to be a knight.

She always carried a bottle of alcohol in one hand, and when she finished it, she would just throw the bottle away, making the servants who were following her clean it up.

On top of that, she was in a state of being almost always drunk, so her moods were constantly changing. Recently, she had gone on a rampage, getting angry at a maid who was cleaning her room and chasing her out.

And when she went on a rampage, she would break things and make a mess of the castle. There were countless servants who quit because of Roana.

If she was like this inside the house, would she be any different outside?

She went around causing trouble outside with her black hair and blue eyes, which made it obvious that she was a person of the Duke’s family.

“She got into a fight with a few men at a commoner’s pub while drinking… she knocked out three men, and she broke a lot of the building and the furniture…”

“…So there were three injured people?”

“The, the pub owner who tried to stop her as well…”

“…I see, so there were four.”

I pressed my lips together to stop myself from sighing at the maid, who looked at me with a lost expression.

She had said she had knocked out three men, but that was a nice way of saying she had turned them into a pulp.

Since she was drunk, she obviously hadn’t controlled her strength, and even though she had been living with alcohol for a long time, the fighting skills of a former knight wouldn’t have just disappeared.

“…”

I cut off my long train of thought, took out a pen and paper, and quickly wrote something down.

Then I handed the sealed envelope with the official seal to Laura and instructed her.

“Laura.”

“Yes, Lady Chacha.”

“Go there yourself and give them my letter of apology and compensate them sufficiently.”

“Yes!”

After sending Laura and Roana’s maid back, I leaned back in my chair.

Annie, who was standing by my side, quickly poured tea into my teacup. It was chamomile tea, which had become almost a necessity now.

I inhaled the fragrant steam rising from the teacup and looked at the clock.

It was time for Adel to be studying with his tutor.

“Sigh…”

I let out the sigh I had been holding back and sadly picked up the teacup.

If only Adel were here when I was so tired, I would have hugged him and rubbed my face in his soft hair. And if I could touch his soft cheeks, I felt like I would feel a little better.

‘I guess there’s no other way.’

I soothed my sad feelings with the fragrant tea and slowly organized my thoughts.

The immediate problem was a problem, but there was an even bigger problem than that.

‘At this rate, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to win Nine’s favor, reveal the truth, and return to the Blueberry family.’

There just weren’t enough opportunities.

An opportunity to talk to Nine, an opportunity to lower his guard and dislike, and a minimum opportunity to defend myself.

I thought there had been a little progress at Adel’s birthday party, but seeing him avoiding me, it seemed to have regressed immediately.

At this rate, I had no idea when I would be able to build a relationship and safely tell him the truth.

As long as he thought I was pregnant, the best thing to do was to resolve this before the lie was exposed…

Tap, tap, the sound of my finger tapping on the desk filled the room.

‘…Before that, if I keep cleaning up after Roana’s messes like this, I’m going to die of frustration.’

What’s more, ever since I changed Adel, the servants had started to subtly overestimate my abilities.

In the midst of that, Roana’s incidents were happening every day, and I was cleaning them up every time, so the servants’ expectations and complaints were starting to gather around me.

Even the personal maid who had just visited me was sending me an expectant look, making it increasingly difficult to ignore them.

‘But it’s different from the time with Adel…’

I rubbed my throbbing head again and recalled the time I had encountered Roana.

It wasn’t a frequent occurrence, but sometimes I would run into Roana in the castle.

Her black hair was carelessly tied up, and she was certainly a beauty who resembled a wolf. However, her face, flushed with alcohol, and the bottle in her hand were ruining her impression.

I greeted her lightly to avoid any friction, but she didn’t return the greeting and instead glared at me with the same blue eyes as Adel, as if she wanted to kill me.

If she had just been glaring, it wouldn’t have bothered me.

But it was hard to ignore, as her momentum was no joke, befitting someone who used to be a knight.

I felt a chill, and the air around me felt prickly.

“…”

No, the bigger problem was that she was an alcoholic.

I still remembered my father, who was an alcoholic in my previous life. This memory kept making me overlap her with my father.

The smell of alcohol, the unfocused eyes, and the hostility towards me.

The news that she had turned someone into a pulp reminded me of my father who used to lay a hand on me.

The sight of her trashing her room reminded me of the mess my father had made in the house.

It was inevitable that my body would instinctively flinch at her, who was provoking such fear in me, and who was even exuding a sharp momentum towards me.

And Roana would snort at me as if I was being hypocritical when she saw me like that.

How should I put it?

‘It was like she was looking at someone with a guilty conscience.’

Since Roana must have heard how Nine and I got married, it was natural for her to think that.

‘But even if I know that she can’t help but think that, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about it!’

It was already hard to clear up the misunderstanding, and it was so exhausting to be ignored and put through a hard time while I was trying to get an opportunity.

Was there a way to solve this?

‘But Roana isn’t a child either.’

How nice would it have been if she was someone I could solve the problem with peacefully, like Adel. But Roana was a drunkard and had hostility towards me. There was no way I could reason with someone like that.

‘I’d be lucky if I don’t get turned into a pulp like those men.’

“Ugh…”

I crossed my arms and leaned against the back of the chair, contemplating for a long time.

“This won’t do.”

I got up abruptly and ran out of the office.