“Wh-What?”

Priscilla, who had many things to feel guilty about, deliberately widened her eyes and pretended not to know.

“The gaps left in between, is it because you spent money, or is it because the profits from selling medicine aren’t included?”

“How would I know that! I just organized it as the receipts were sent from the merchant guild! Do you think I might have skimmed some money off?!”

“……”

“Wh-Why are you interrogating your mother like this……”

Priscilla nervously snatched the ledger from Regina’s suspicious gaze.

It was already overwhelming to manage the household accounts, and now she was suddenly burdened with the ledger for medicine supplies as well.

She couldn’t complain about not being able to do it, since she had previously boasted to her husband about her perfect bookkeeping skills, claiming it was the ability of Priscilla Pelt, daughter of the Pelt merchant guild chief, when in fact it had been with Yuan’s help.

“Sigh. Forget it. If that wench Yuan were here, she would have quickly figured out what the problem was.”

Regina felt her breath catch at the name ‘Yuan’ and glared at Priscilla before leaving.

‘Yuan. Yuan. Even if Father is like that because Yuan stole something, why is Mother too?’

Yuan’s departure was no different from losing a maid who worked in the house.

Regina thought so without hesitation.

Her father, Gerret Peliesse, left a perfectly fine noble family in his youth to meet and marry her mother, Priscilla.

Her mother naively believed the words that he was the second son of the famous Peliesse family, not realizing there was no title to inherit, and spent the night with him thinking ‘what luck’, resulting in Frederick being conceived.

The maternal Pelt merchant guild, having just moved to the capital at the time, lacked information. The Peliesse family was already a minor noble house with only prestige, and their closed nature remained unchanged.

The maternal family only realized that Gerret Peliesse was a nobleman with nothing to his name when Priscilla’s belly had already swollen.

Later, while preparing for the wedding, when they found out that Gerret Peliesse had no small title to inherit, no territory, and not even wealth, it was natural for the maternal family to be upset. If not for Priscilla’s pregnancy, Gerret Peliesse would have faced trial for marriage fraud and more.

After much deliberation, the Pelt merchant guild chose to support rather than go to trial.

They didn’t want their daughter to raise a child without a father, nor did they want her to live in poverty.

The Pelt merchant guild provided Gerret Peliesse with business funds in the name of a dowry. However, Gerret Peliesse, who was new to business, was cleanly swindled and the money disappeared into thin air.

After that, two more times.

Until Frederick was born, and even until Regina was born, the Count who had squandered all the business funds provided by his in-laws lost his authority as the head of the family.

Moreover, with the cold indifference of his in-laws, he moved from house to house where commoners lived, maintaining a poor lifestyle without working, still considering himself a nobleman.

In between, only Priscilla went back and forth to her parents’ home, borrowing living expenses to feed her children. As the borrowed money gradually decreased, the number of times his wife and children shot Gerret Peliesse with resentful gazes increased.

The day his life turned around was when the current Emperor Igor, who was then the Grand Duke of the North, suddenly ascended to the throne.

On that day when news spread throughout the country that the First Prince Clard Yufris voluntarily became a deposed prince and sought refuge with his maternal family, along with the funeral of the late Emperor Alexei.

Gerret Peliesse was saved by the words of the family lawyer who came to find him.

The death of his older brother, Philip Peliesse.

The good news that he, as a direct blood relative, should inherit the title because the children who were to inherit the title were too young.

At this time, Regina’s life also completely turned around.

The resentment towards her father flew away like a feather, and the moment she left the house where mice scurried about and saw the mansion of a noble family, her heart was completely captivated.

Even a minor noble was still a noble. Regina was enthralled by the modest dresses that she would now not even glance at, considering them old-fashioned.

Everything placed and hung in Yuan’s room looked precious and beautiful to her. The moment she could wear and try them on as she pleased, it felt like she owned the whole world.

Regina, who had to bow her head every time a four-horse carriage passed by, now felt her heart swell with the fact that she could confidently greet and interact with the beautiful girls of her age who were riding in those carriages.

However, the noble society she had dreamed of was not so easy.

To the haughty nobles, Priscilla and Regina, mother and daughter, were considered only half-nobles.

While Yuan Peliesse was recognized as a perfect noble lady because her mother was also from a long-standing scholarly family, Regina was subtly ostracized among her prestigious peers because she had inherited half merchant blood.

Meetings continued where she was treated no differently than a lady-in-waiting under the name of friend.

Naturally, Regina’s anger was directed towards Yuan, who was a perfect noble but had fallen to the status of an unremarkable maid.

Regina vented her frustrations by ordering Yuan around at home and taking whatever belonged to her.

What made her even more twisted was when, from some point on, her father Gerret Peliesse began to include the crow Yuan Peliesse in his research as his assistant, rather than utilizing his noble daughter.

Regina thought this incomprehensible favoritism of her father was the ‘noble way of thinking’.

That narrow-minded thinking that distinguishes what a noble should and shouldn’t do, judging even one’s own children mercilessly based on bloodline.

Regina didn’t want to have anything taken from her ever again.

She never wanted to envy nobles again or think that refined things were not for her.

‘Now that crow Yuan is no longer in the house. Now everything is truly mine.’

If her status in the household rises, even her father won’t look for just anyone, even a fallen noble, for her marriage partner with the attitude of ‘as long as they can bring some territory, it doesn’t matter who’.

After winter passes, the dream of all Yufris girls begins.

The Imperial Palace debutante ball, which one can only participate in if they have connections to the Imperial family.

It was a stage Regina had dreamed of since her young days when she lived outside the mansion, not even treated as a noble.

A stage that could change her life.

To do that, she needed to raise her value by accompanying a suitable partner who could make her shine the most on that stage.

For example, a man from the Trelloni Count family with vast territories.

Regina quickly hid a letter stamped with the Trelloni Count family’s crest that she spotted among the letters a maid was bringing in a basket.

Regina, who had been pacing the reception room with an anxious face, glared at the wall of the reception room where portraits of the previous Peliesse Counts were prominently displayed. It had been bothering her for a while.

‘Damn crows.’

Whenever she invited peers of her age, they would alternately look at those portraits with black hair and black eyes, and then at Regina.

Regina, with her red hair and green eyes, felt like a foreign substance simply because she didn’t have the same colors as them.

Avoiding the faces of her ancestors that seemed to look down on her, Regina ran to her room, clutching the letter tightly to her chest.

Then she crawled under the bed and pulled out a box.

The box was filled with letters of various sizes.

The letters, full of inquiries about Yuan’s well-being, were ones that Louise Peliesse had been sending to this mansion regularly over the past year.

Regina held one of the letters from the pile up to the light of the chandelier.

Apart from the lengthy greetings, there was nothing suspicious about Louise’s letters.

She had been secretly diverting the letters for the past year, but Yuan had seemed no different than usual at the time.

She seemed to be waiting for letters occasionally, but if she had really been desperate for her sister’s letters, she would have searched the servants’ quarters even if it meant turning them upside down.

‘In the end, she didn’t care about Louise either.’

Otherwise, how could she have left so quickly!

As if she had been waiting for it, how could she have followed Marquis Kompani like a fox?

She acted like a victim and only criticized the family that had taken care of her all this time, but come to think of it, wasn’t that wench Yuan also a cold-hearted person who didn’t shed a single tear over her sister’s death?

Regina roughly folded the letter and tossed it back into the box, then secretly opened the letter from the Trelloni Count family that she had hidden in her bosom.

The letter was densely filled with the handwriting of Dreycoop Trelloni, the third son of the Trelloni Count family.

He seemed to have a lot to say about the quick rejection of the marriage proposal he had sent recently.

It was a letter of persuasion, saying that his desire to marry the Peliesse Count’s daughter was sincere, and that if he truly wished it, his family was willing to give him even a small territory, so he asked her to reconsider.

‘A marriage proposal? That was close!’

It wasn’t just that he simply liked Yuan, but he even sent a marriage proposal?

If Yuan hadn’t left this mansion, it would have been a proposal that would have made Priscilla’s eyes pop out.

Father Gerret Peliesse would have been no different, given his longing for territory.

A young lady who receives marriage proposals even before her debutante naturally attracts attention.

Especially if rumors spread that the daughter of the Peliesse Count family, not even a great noble house, received a marriage proposal before her debutante?

If Regina were the protagonist of that rumor, it was only natural that she would be the center of attention at the debutante!

Regina’s green eyes lingered for a long time on the words ‘Peliesse Count’s daughter’.

A young nobleman who had just been knighted.

The recklessness of wanting to marry someone he hadn’t even spoken to, even if it meant bringing a territory.

Dreycoop Trelloni must have fallen in love just by seeing Yuan’s face, without even knowing her name.

It had been a headache trying to figure out who to bring as a partner to the debutante ball held at the Imperial Palace.

It didn’t look good to have her fat father by her side, and it wasn’t impressive to have her brother Frederick, who was equally ‘half-noble’, next to her.

Moreover, Regina had grown up as a commoner in her childhood, so she didn’t have any noble young men she was close enough with to ask.

‘Dreycoop Trelloni is perfect.’

In terms of beauty, she was far superior to the gloomy crow Yuan Peliesse.

Regina, convinced that Dreycoop Trelloni would surely fall in love with her when he saw her, began to write a reply to his letter.