47. The Black Rose of the Inkheart Grand Duchy

Splash. Barbarossa, who had been sleeping until midday, woke up from an unexpected shower of cold water.

As he got up, clutching his head that ached from the hangover of cheap liquor he had guzzled, he saw a woman smiling brightly at his bedside.

She was beautiful. Barbarossa’s lips curved pleasantly.

“Hello, Sir Barbarossa. Oh, not Sir anymore, right? I’m sorry our first meeting is like this. I tried to wake you politely, but you wouldn’t get up no matter how much I called you, Mr. Barbarossa.”

“Who are you? Chesha? Windicat? Are you a new waitress at the tavern…… Sorry, sorry. I don’t usually forget a pretty face like yours.”

“Wow, you really are as rotten as they say.”

Striking orange long hair. A teardrop mark under his eye. He had a handsome face for sure, but the grinning Barbarossa exuded an unmistakable smell of corruption.

His appearance was shabby, and his tall body reeked of strong alcohol as if he had been soaked in liquor.

“Ah, let me think. I’ve seen you somewhere…… Ah! You’re the woman who gave me flowers in the shopping district, right? Did you come looking for me to have a meal together? What should I do? I’m completely broke today.”

Even with his mind still foggy from just waking up, Barbarossa smoothly delivered lines like a playboy.

“Not Chesha, not Windicat. We’re actually meeting for the first time.”

“Huh? Then why would such a pretty miss come looking for me? Meeting a beauty like this in the morning, is today my lucky day?”

The playboy habitually took Anette’s hand and tried to kiss it. Though he had long abandoned being a knight, he knew women absolutely melted when he did this.

“My, a man who’s no longer a knight trying to grab the hand of a strange woman. You really are living a degenerate life.”

“How dare you try to touch her.”

When a low, displeased voice followed the cheerful woman’s voice, Barbarossa finally noticed another visitor.

“Lucion?”

Barbarossa’s face crumpled in surprise as he recognized Lucion, with whom he had shared several difficult years of training.

“Hello. Let me introduce myself properly again. You’ve heard that the Grand Duke got married recently, right? I am Anette Pochet, the Grand Duchess of Inkheart.”

“……Ha.”

Barbarossa’s face completely crumpled at this impossible situation. It had been just another debauched morning where he had drunk heavily until late as usual, crawled into the house of a woman he was seeing, and fallen asleep carelessly.

The woman he had spent the night with would have already left for work, so the empty space beside him was expected.

There was no reason for Lucion, who unlike his hopeless self lived as a model of a diligent and upright knight, much less a woman claiming to be the Grand Duchess, to appear before him.

Barbarossa scratched his hair, which had grown long and flowing because he was too lazy to cut it.

“This miss is the Grand Duke’s wife? I’d like to say that’s nonsense, but seeing Lucion stuck right beside you, it doesn’t seem like a complete lie. Anyway, why did you come looking for me?”

Seeing someone he knew from the past made Barbarossa’s already twisted nature even more crooked.

“For the noble lady of the castle to personally come to this back alley mud puddle. Are you perhaps short on men? Is the young Grand Duke unable to perform? If so, Lucion here…… Ah, Sir Lucion has a handsome face too, but he’s not the type to be fun. Too uptight.”

“How can someone who once dreamed of being a knight of the castle!”

“Sir Lucion, don’t kill him.”

Lucion drew his sword in anger at the crude remarks Barbarossa continued to make even after learning Anette’s identity.

“Oops.”

Barbarossa quickly rolled to the side to avoid the rushing silver blade.

Even though Lucion hadn’t swung his sword with real intent, the fact that Barbarossa could easily dodge it with a body that had just woken up showed his reflexes weren’t bad.

Whistle, Anette whistled.

“I heard you got promoted to knight commander, but your skills seem to have regressed instead? If you want to teach me manners, you should sharpen your blade more. Lucion.”

“His character is garbage, but his skills are the real deal.”

“I appreciate you praising my skills, but I hate compliments from noble ladies. As you know, with my garbage personality, I don’t get along with pretentious types.”

Some trash who seduced back alley women with noble-like manners sneered.

“You were a trainee once, but it seems you’ve never seen the lord who rules the territory? If you had, you wouldn’t have asked if I came because I hate my husband. He’s quite a decent man.”

Though Barbarossa had good looks dripping from his face, befitting someone who dominated the back alleys, no matter how handsome he was, he couldn’t surpass the male protagonist of a romance novel.

“I’m starting a new business, and I think you’re the right person for the job. I want to hire you.”

“Lady Anette!”

“What did you say?”

Lucion’s face contorted at Anette’s words. Barbarossa was equally dumbfounded.

* * *

To put it simply, my proposal was rejected.

I had given former tax officer Nicola his lost honor and wealth, and I had shown the blacksmith who lost his daughter the direction for revenge.

They were easy to persuade because they wanted something. But Barbarossa didn’t want anything. He said he wanted to continue living like that, with his life buried in the back alleys, and added:

〈Get lost.〉

‘At this point, I’m curious how this depraved prodigal will succeed as a mercenary later on?’

“This makes it clear. Someone like Barbarossa is not worthy to stand before you, my lady.”

“You can’t expect to succeed on the first try.”

“My lady!”

“I’m not trying to recruit a knight. So it’s fine. His personality is certainly twisted, but I liked his skills.”

“No! I don’t know how you intend to use him, but I cannot stand by and let you walk these back alleys again.”

The hem of my pretty skirt had fallen into the muddy back alley and gotten dirty.

Lucion’s face was pale as he pointed at it.

Even though the dress was expensive, it was just a hem of clothing, was it really something to turn pale over?

Ah, could it be?

“Are you shocked to see how broken Barbarossa has become after leaving the knights, when you once trained together?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“……”

Sir Lucion turned his head away sharply.

Well. I could try to provoke his guilt by saying something like, you should have guided him better as his peer at the time, aren’t you partly responsible for what he’s become, but…

“Don’t worry too much, Sir Lucion. Even if I come here again, you’ll certainly know about it. How could I come to such a dangerous place without your protection?”

Poor Sir Lucion. He looked relieved at my smile.

I had a hidden card that would allow me to freely roam the back alleys alone without troubling Sir Lucion’s precious conscience.

“Anette.”

But before I could return to the castle and talk to my hidden card, Darius called me first. Why are you calling me, I have things to do right now.

“Where have you been? I was looking for you to discuss the portrait.”

“Portrait?”

“Yes, the official portrait of the couple to be hung in the Grand Duke’s residence.”

“Ah, that.”

He was talking about the portraits that hung along the corridor displaying the history of Castle Inkheart. Even Darius’s parents were exhibited there, preserved in a portrait showing them sitting amicably together.

‘When the female lead comes in, they’ll have to paint it again anyway, so why bother now?’

What would they do with a portrait of a divorced Grand Duchess? Will they give it to me then, or burn it?

Rather than worrying about disposing of a troublesome item, it would be better not to paint it in the first place.

“Well, do we really need to paint it now?”

“You refused for the same reason in the early days of our marriage too.”

“But inviting a famous painter costs a lot of money……”

“Money?”

The Grand Duke, who no longer had money worries thanks to the various cases I had solved, made a puzzled expression as if wondering why that would be a problem.

No, how could you forget the days of poverty so quickly! When you become rich, you should tighten your purse even more!

“Besides, to paint a portrait, I’d have to sit still all day. Do you know how arduous that is?”

Darius narrowed his eyes and looked at me as if sensing something strange.

“It costs a lot of money, and you have to sit all day, so you don’t want to have a portrait painted?”

Darius’s gaze was painful, as if he was reproaching me for making up all sorts of excuses because I didn’t want to paint a portrait with him, but I had to stand firm.

When we divorce, we can’t split a portrait of the couple in half and share it. That would look ridiculous. And it would definitely be a large portrait.

“Is that really the reason?”

Darius asked me again as I was thinking of a bunch of reasons to refuse. Flinch, my body stiffened as if struck at a vital point.

“Ah, that, I think I have an allergy to paint……”

“Paint allergy?”

“Um, er, ah, I mean when I smell paint, my limbs get itchy and…!”

“I see. I can’t force you to do something you don’t like. We should listen to the subject’s opinion too.”

Fortunately, Darius didn’t drag the issue out.

“If we’re done discussing, I’ll be going now. I have some work to do.”

I hurriedly left my seat, afraid that if the conversation continued, I might really end up having a portrait painted.

“Yes.”

Darius smiled weakly, seemingly willing to let it go.

Ah, there it is again. He’s clearly smiling, but something feels off.

“Anette.”

“Yes?”

When I turned around at his call, Darius was just standing there quietly.

“It’s nothing.”

“That’s awkward. See you at dinner. If I can.”

I deliberately ignored that sense of discomfort.