Lena, with her chin lifted by Julia’s fan adorned with dangling jewels, closed her eyes tightly in fear.

“Lena, it’s been a while.”

“Lady.”

Lena dropped the basket she was holding. Plump potatoes spilled out from the basket.

“Pick them up.”

Lena picked up the potatoes with trembling hands and put them back in the basket.

She was surprised to see Julia, but even more surprised to see her looking perfectly fine without any injuries. Mina had told her that the carriage Julia was riding in had rolled down the mountainside.

After hearing Mina’s confession, the two sisters reproached themselves, saying they didn’t wish for Julia’s death. They had hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t be seriously injured.

But there she was, standing with her still beautiful and glamorous appearance, perfectly fine.

Julia turned to the restaurant manager with a dazzling smile.

She spoke in her characteristically thin and high-pitched voice.

“Manager, your name is?”

“It’s Otis.”

“Otis, Lena is working here now due to some circumstances, but she is a viscountess and was my lady-in-waiting.”

“Ah, I didn’t know. Lady.”

“But it seems like she’s been through some hardship? Her face is quite tanned.”

Julia lowered the fan she had used to lift Lena’s chin, as if to check on her complexion rather than to intimidate her, and kindly held Lena’s hand.

Lena got goosebumps from Julia’s duplicitous attitude.

“I have something to discuss with this child, so do you have a reception room or a powder room?”

It was unlikely for a restaurant like this to have a reception room or a powder room. It was a trick to put the restaurant manager in a difficult position and then do things her own way.

Lena, who was well aware of Julia’s brazen tricks, felt frustrated.

“Ah, we don’t have such rooms, but if you don’t mind, I can offer you my office.”

“Hmm, there’s no choice then, let’s go there.”

Julia grabbed Lena’s hand with her gloved hand and pulled her. Lena followed helplessly, thinking in her head.

How should she explain the carriage crash incident?

Lena decided she should claim that she did it, not Mina.

Lena inwardly resented Mina for not listening to her and hesitating.

Last week, when their mother passed away, Lena told Mina to go to the Asor continent. The Osborne Empire on the Asor continent was more culturally and economically developed than the Tane Empire.

Especially, medicine and beauty techniques were advanced. It was said that darker hair color could be changed with two gold coins.

There were rumors that ladies who suffered from severe scarlet fever and had coarse skin traveled to the Asor continent and had their skin transplanted to be transparent and clean in Osborne.

Some had their thick and angular bone contours sculpted to become beauties, some old ladies had their wrinkles removed to look ten years younger, and some even changed their gender, according to heavy rumors.

Lena suggested to Mina that they go to Osborne and at least change their hair color.

The sisters had faded light brown hair, which was not as noticeable as blonde hair, but it drew attention among the black and dark brown hair of the Karsic Empire.

Lena, who expected Julia and the Empress’s knights to be tracking the sisters, had no lingering attachment to this empire without their mother.

However, when Mina’s handmade underwear at Secret Lady became excessively popular and orders poured in, she became greedy. New ideas came to her mind, and she even woke up while sleeping.

She completed them not as ordinary underwear but as fantastic works of art, using decorative flowers, chains, and lace as objects.

Mina fully understood Lena’s concerns, but explained that Lady Julia would have to stay out of sight for a while due to the carriage accident, and promised to make samples for one more month before leaving for Osborne.

Click.

Julia locked the door from the inside, leaving the maid and knight outside.

She turned to Lena with a bright smile.

She glared at the chair made of untreated animal hide with a frown, tapped it with her fan, and then sat down.

Lena was well aware of the punishment the lady inflicted on her servants. Fortunately, this place was not an unknown, confined space, but the office of the restaurant manager.

She won’t kill me.

Lena fell to her knees in front of Julia as if collapsing.

“Lady. I have committed a sin worthy of death.”

“Lift your dress.”

“Lady.”

“Hurry.”

Lena lifted her dress to reveal her kneeling knees.

“More.”

Lena lifted her dress enough to reveal her old underwear. Her hands trembled with shame.

Julia folded her fan with a clinking sound and struck Lena’s inner thigh.

Swish, ah, swish, argh, swish, lady, swish, forgive me, swish, lady, swish, spare my life.

Julia swung the fan, thinking of the coachman and Carolina’s disgusting face. The blue sapphire turned red with blood clots stuck to it.

Julia had seen her coachman climbing into Carolina’s carriage through the window on the day Carolina had sarcastically mocked her and left.

She told the maid to wait for the coachman John and bring him. But the coachman did not return until late that night.

After taking out her anger on the knight Henry, who was searching for the coachman’s whereabouts, she went to the palace.

Carolina was not there, and a gag order had been issued in the palace regarding the Empress.

Julia pressed Carolina’s lady-in-waiting Jeyna. The loyal lady-in-waiting, who had kept her mouth shut like a clam, finally opened her mouth, entrusting the secret to three gold ingots.

She found out that Carolina had packed several dresses and various items and gone to the Heun tribe’s hunting village.

“Lena, I thought you were smart, but you weren’t? You should have hidden well. Not only did you betray me in collusion with your younger sister, but you also stole the Empress’s necklace?”

Lena’s hand, which had been pressing the torn thigh flesh with the skirt of her dress, flinched and stopped.

The lady didn’t know about the carriage accident. The fact that she had come in person to elaborately set up and seek revenge for the betrayal against her, which could have been punished through the knights, meant…… She had a secret task to carry out by placing the knight and maid outside.

“I needed money. Father left a huge debt, and I was threatened.”

“Heh, but did you pay off all the debt?”

“Not yet.”

“Go to the Heun tribe’s hunting village right now and find out what Carolina and the Empress are doing. I’ll give you gold ingots based on the information you bring.”

“The work isn’t finished yet……”

Swish.

Julia threw the fan, covered in thick blood, at Lena’s thigh.

“One egg is missing, but the 13 sapphires embedded there must be worth a fortune.”

Late that night, Lena visited Julia’s reception room and received two gold ingots in exchange for the information she heard from a Heun tribe woman working in the kitchen at the Heun tribe’s hunting village.

Lena showed Mina her thigh. The sisters walked and walked the night road of Kaosan under the flowing starlight of dawn, heading towards Osborne.

*

Harchen had looked at the sleeping Patricia countless times.

After the first round table meeting, he sent an envoy to Tane and sat under a lilac tree.

When she handed him the lilac, he mustered up the courage to sneak in and intended to just look at her sleeping for a moment and leave, but he was caught by the strict Tane lady-in-waiting.

Since he was caught anyway, he wanted to look a little longer, but ended up gazing at her endlessly until Patricia woke up from her sleep and opened her eyes herself. It was a pure and innocent heart.

In the Aster Palace, he looked at her with a heart full of remaining desires that he wanted to continue when he woke up from sleep. Of course, at the honeymoon destination, the seaside of the Torun Kingdom, too.

When he lost consciousness after being hit by a poisoned arrow in the Pana Castle, he looked at her sleeping face with a desperation that felt like suffocating to death.

Now…… indeed, he was filled with the desire to kiss her.

He licked his lips with his tongue. She, who was asleep in a defenseless state, would often open her eyes right away like this.

Even though he knew her eyes were blue, he was always surprised and nervous when her large, bright blue eyes suddenly opened.

“Stop looking.”

Just like now.

Harchen followed her and opened his eyes wide, flustered and unable to find words to respond.

It was just Harchen being flustered, but to Patricia’s eyes, it seemed like he was deliberately trying to enchant her by pressing down on her with his gaze, making her heart feel like it would drop.

“Stop sleeping. You don’t get excited even when I hold you, do you?”

“How could that be? I’m very excited.”

Harchen didn’t expect such an honest answer, and his body muscles hardened as heat quickly spread through him.

Patricia reached out and brushed back the black hair that had fallen over Harchen’s forehead. With his eyebrows and straight forehead revealed, his nose looked even sharper, giving off a deeper sense of decadence.

“I missed you.”

“You’re trying to seduce me right now, aren’t you? Go ahead and do it some more.”

Harchen smiled leisurely and traced Patricia’s eyebrows, nose, and lips with his index finger, just looking at her.

Every place his hand passed trembled, and all her nerves were on edge. Patricia thought he would kiss her, but when he only touched her with his fingertips, she felt anxious.

But when she looked closely, his touch on her body was different from before, perfunctory. No, when she judged coldly, it seemed half-hearted. His arrogant expression looked chilly.

She had actually barely managed to move a single hand while being held in his arms.

But what more was he telling her to do to seduce him here? Thinking that he was pushing the task of seduction onto her sick self, she felt strange. Could it be that his affection had cooled a little?

At that moment, the carriage wheels moved over a protruding stone, causing it to shake and rattle.

Her buttocks pressed against somewhere on his body. They both frowned at the same time.

Patricia felt an intense pain in her back. However, she didn’t complain about the pain. It wasn’t the mood for pain to intervene.

Harchen gritted his teeth. He was in a predicament.

It had been a long period of unwanted abstinence, and the object of his desire, her, was nestled in his arms. He felt like he was holding a bomb that would explode at the slightest touch, with his blood boiling.

She was a patient with deep, unhealed wounds on her back. Moreover, he pondered how he would handle the aftermath if he even gave her a light kiss in this carriage.

“What should I do with you……”

Patricia felt a hot sensation where her body touched Harchen’s. She naturally felt a strange sensation that couldn’t make her think his affection had cooled.

She mustered up the courage and caressed Harchen’s cheek. Hesitating, she slowly traced the outline of his lips with her fingertips. His decadent green eyes flickered with possessiveness. And soon, his wet lips covered her lips.

“I want to hold you so badly that I feel like I’m going to die, I should die, ……seducing me like this, what.”

Harchen’s lips went down her delicate jawline to her supple neck. His hot hand with thick joints slid over her soft body.