Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 9

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

Looking around, she could see nothing suitable to throw, so Fiona snatched the jewel-headed pin from her hair and hurled it at him. Jayden, infuriatingly, dodged and left the room, leaving Fiona to endure a lengthy scolding from the maid who had been arranging her hair.

* * *

The servants of the Count’s household scrambled as if their feet were on fire, raising a ruckus in their efforts to transform Fiona into the first young lady of the House of Troyes. It was no smooth undertaking. Teaching someone who had lived her entire life like a wild animal to dance, to converse, to handle cutlery, to move with grace—it was harder than teaching a monkey to do tricks.

One day, as the torment masquerading as etiquette training continued, Fiona finally snapped. She hurled to the floor the stack of books balanced on her head for posture practice and shrieked.

“Ah, I cannot f*****g do this!”

She stormed off to find the Count and confronted him.

“From what I hear, my future husband is hardly in good shape himself. Is all this preparation truly necessary?”

The moment she demanded, her voice choked with indignation, an unexpected answer came. The education was, in fact, not for her husband’s sake.

“Before you depart for the north, you will pay your respects to His Majesty. If by then you have not thoroughly corrected your abominable manners and bearing, I shall consider the contract violated.”

Only at the Count’s threat did Fiona realise the reality: that she, a mere butcher, was to meet the Emperor himself.

What am I supposed to do about a lifetime of living like this? How can a girl who butchers pigs become a noble lady overnight?

She snorted at the Count’s odious demand, but a fortnight later, beholding her transformed appearance, she could no longer mock the maids’ efforts. Could a person truly change so much in mere days? Fiona gazed at her reflection in the mirror with a feeling of unfamiliarity.

All she had done these past few days was eat good food, escape from gruelling labour, and sleep to her heart’s content in a soft bed. That alone had brought a lustre to her once-dull skin, and white flesh had filled out her gaunt frame. Her hair, perpetually unkempt as if struck by lightning, now shone with oil, and her eyes, always so fiercely upturned, seemed to have softened at the corners.

Even her hands, once a ruin of scars and calluses from wielding knives, had been smoothed by a magical ointment. Her neatly trimmed, polished nails were as unfamiliar as if they belonged to another person.

I thought these hands, at least, would stay the same until I died.

The stubborn filth beneath her nails, the rank smell that lingered no matter how vigorously she scrubbed—all were now gone without a trace.

Stroking her unrecognisably lustrous red hair, Fiona felt both wonder and a bitter taste in her mouth. A mere fortnight had erased the marks of twenty-three years of hardship. It was a complicated feeling.

Had the Count all along been capable of such easily accomplished things, yet simply ignored them? Had he begrudged even a sum that would have seemed like nothing to him, preferring to let them suffer rather than spare a coin for mother and daughter?

If the Count had shown even a flicker of concern. If he had not so utterly abandoned Fiona, who was, after all, half his own blood, perhaps her mother need not have left the way she did…

Fearing that an old wound might again bare its raw flesh, Fiona quickly gathered up her stray thoughts. And, as was her habit, she shielded her heart with a crooked reasoning.

What good is a plausible shell? The inside is already rotted through.

She grumbled to herself, finding her reflection, now fit for any noble house, unbearably strange. Perhaps it was due to a vague fear of what was to come. The more presentable her exterior became, the more keenly she felt the approach of her wedding day.

But Fiona would not acknowledge her fear. The world she had inhabited until now allowed no room for such weakness. She stifled the unease within her, vowing to face whatever came with equanimity. Worrying in advance would not conjure solutions. Even if this marriage ended, as she feared, in her death, there was nothing to be done.

Rose weighs on my mind, though…

Still, there was the Pact. Rose would live well enough.

With a heart bordering on resignation, Fiona accepted the future that awaited her. Meanwhile, the day of her departure for the Grand Duchy drew ever nearer.