Chapter 20
Have you ever seen the Smile of Gyeongju or the Venus de Milo?
Some people say
that the Venus de Milo is beautiful because it has no arms, while the Smile of Gyeongju is beautiful because part of it has been damaged.
The reason I’m suddenly bringing this up is that today’s Heter resembled both of them.
“Heter?”
“Yes.”
“The clothes are one thing, but what’s with the mask?”
To describe Heter’s current state:
First, he was dressed in the sort of outfit commonly seen in romance-fantasy novels.
A white dress shirt and slacks, a lightly colored vest, and flashy ornaments that gleamed gold.
A long coat draped over one shoulder and concealing one arm, and—my apologies to Ruby—a hairstyle far more sophisticated than anything she could manage.
Finally, a silver mask covering the upper half of his face.
Since he wasn’t directly showing every part of himself, he gave off a mysterious charm like those two works I mentioned earlier.
“Hmm….”
As though unsure how to answer, he carefully bent at the waist and whispered into my ear.
“I feel rather reluctant to show my face in a place like this. As it happened, I had this too, so I decided to wear it.”
Heter lightly tapped his mask with the hand on the side not concealed by his coat.
“Eek…!”
This guy... Dressed up like this, his impact was on another level.
Even I had felt my heart flutter for a moment.
I cautiously guessed that the female guests who saw Heter today might not be able to sleep tonight.
“A-and who might this gentleman be?”
The woman who had been firing barbed remarks at me until just moments ago asked while looking at Heter, her face as red as her dress.
“Greetings, my lady. I’m Heter. I’ve come today as the escort of the head of House Fortune.”
“You mean you’re here to escort the head of House Fortune?”
The duke’s daughter looked back and forth between Heter and me, her eyes seeming a little excited.
‘...What is this? I can understand looking at Heter that way, but why me?’
In any case, this was the perfect chance to get out of there.
“Ah, the person I was waiting for has arrived. I’ll be going now, Lady Clary.”
“…Pardon?”
Leaving her behind with her eyes widened like saucers, I took Heter with me and headed for the bride’s waiting room.
“She knew my name?”
Clary seemed to mutter something behind me, but I believed it probably wasn’t anything important.
“Do you know who she is?”
Heter, following me, asked while pointing behind us.
“Who? Lady Clary?”
“Yes.”
“Well, yes.”
I hadn’t known when I first saw her, but as we talked, I remembered seeing her at the debutante ball.
‘She kept making eye contact with me back then.’
Perhaps she was shy, because she hadn’t spoken to me there. But I remembered her because she sent me so many invitations to her tea parties after the ball.
“Of course, circumstances were difficult then, so I couldn’t reply.”
“How many invitations did she send you?”
“I think I stopped counting after she sent more than five.”
“…She sent that many letters, and you never replied even once?”
I felt as though Heter was looking at me with disappointment.
I knew I had done wrong, but it wasn’t as though I had no excuse.
“I was betrayed by the mages and artisans, which left me buried under a mountain of debt, and then, to make matters worse, my parents died. I couldn’t do anything for quite some time.”
Even remembering that time made my stomach churn.
“Ah, come to think of it, my lady.”
“Hmm?”
“You look beautiful today as well.”
“!”
Thump.
‘What do you mean, thump, you insane heart?’
I’d already heard people call me pretty countless times, so why was my heart suddenly fluttering now?
“Well, it suits you, too.”
Afraid he might notice how embarrassed I was, I deliberately answered gruffly.
“Does it? Perhaps I should dress like this all the time from now on….”
“You look great as you are.”
“If you keep that up, I might start wearing makeup every day too. Got it?”
“Pfft. Understood.”
Heter backed down readily when I said it through gritted teeth, but the corners of his mouth refused to come down.
“Hmm… Is this it?”
Even as we chatted, we never stopped walking, and eventually reached the bride’s waiting room, but something felt off.
‘Are there normally this few people here?’
When I’d gone to a relative’s wedding in my previous life, the bride’s waiting room had been packed with people.
Could there be a rule in this world that one wasn’t allowed to meet the bride before the wedding?
“I don’t think that’s it.”
I followed Heter’s pointing finger with my gaze.
There, I saw a middle-aged nobleman coming out of the bride’s waiting room.
‘What?’
Even if they were from the capital rather than the North, could so few people really have come?
“Could it be that we arrived too late?”
That was possible.
Looking around, it seemed the others had arrived several days earlier.
“That’s not it… It’s probably because of the rumors.”
“Rumors?”
“Yes. I heard the Marquess of Drosselmeyer’s wife is notorious even in the capital for having an unpleasant personality.”
“…Huh?”
A young woman from the capital famous for her bad personality?
‘What is this…? Something about it feels familiar.’
For now, I silently continued listening to Heter’s explanation.
“There are many stories: that she bullied the maids in the residence, insulted her personal mage, and drove away every fiancé she’d ever had.”
“…Huh?”
This... wasn’t just my imagination.
I knew why she had behaved that way.
“As for bullying the maids… that must have been a scheme by her sisters. They bullied her and framed her for it.”
“…Pardon?”
“As for insulting her personal mage, she must have told him the principles any decent person ought to uphold. And as for driving away her fiancés, they must have been the ones to violate their duties as fiancés first.”
“How do you know that, my lady?”
How do I know?
Because the protagonist of the novel 『I Became the Villainess of the Count’s Family.』 that I read was married off to the Grand Duke of the North as though she’d been sold to him because of exactly those things!
“My lady?!”
Ignoring Heter calling for me, I hurried into the bride’s waiting room.
Then, after seeing the bride sitting there, I doubted my own eyes.
Snow-white straight hair in stark contrast to mine, and arms and legs as slender as a fairy’s.
Sharp eyes resembling a cat’s, with blue irises within.
Heter’s eyes were blue as well, but they were different.
If Heter’s eyes were a vivid, highly saturated blue like the sky or a lake, the woman’s were a deep blue like lapis lazuli or sapphire.
A woman who looked exactly as a fairy with haughty eyes would look.
“Lady Ezedia….”
I had never seen her before, but I knew who she was.
“Do you… know me?”
Of course.
I didn’t merely know her.
Perhaps I knew her better than she knew herself.
Ezedia Raindeer.
She was the youngest daughter of Count Ezedia, a nobleman of the capital, and the count’s illegitimate child. After her biological mother died, she entered the Ezedia family and became a villainess because of her half-sisters’ schemes.
‘But why is she here?!’
I froze before Raindeer, who looked exactly as she had in the novel’s cover.
She had come north to marry, just as in the original, but she was supposed to marry a duke, not a marquess.
“My lady? Why all of a sudden….”
“Gasp.”
I barely came to my senses when Heter finally caught up and spoke to me.
“Ah, I mean… I’d heard a lot of rumors.”
“Pardon?”
Surprise flashed in her eyes for an instant before the corners curved upward.
“Even after hearing such rumors, you came to greet me. You must be a kind person.”
“I still had to offer my congratulations.”
When I beckoned to Heter, he took a wrapped soap set from beneath his coat and handed it to me.
“This is a product made in our territory, and it’s a wedding gift.”
“Ah….”
Raindeer gave a wry smile, as if she understood.
“So this is why you came.”
“That wasn’t the only reason….”
“Thank you. I’ll put it to good use.”
“Yes, then I’ll be going.”
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have explained how to use the soap, talked about its benefits, and promoted my territory, but I hurried out of the bride’s waiting room.
“My lady? Why are you acting so unlike yourself?”
Perhaps he had noticed something was wrong, because Heter asked in a concerned voice the moment we came out.
“Sir Heter. This is no time for that!”
I grabbed his arm, my face completely drained of color.
“?!”
Since I rarely grabbed him first, he seemed flustered as well.
“What is it?”
“There must be a mage here. We need to find the mage quickly. Otherwise….”
Many of the guests attending the wedding will die.
Just as they did in the original.