Chapter 10

Chapter 10

* * *

Deborah hesitated for several long moments when asked what reward she desired.

Why is she pretending she needs to think about this? Duke Seymour was puzzled.

Deborah, who’d appeared to be deep in thought, finally said, “In that case… Please invest in a business project I’ve been considering.”

“Hmm?”

This time it was his ears, not his eyes, that he was unable to believe. He’d expected her to demand the pink diamond since it was going to auction three days from now, but here she was, asking him to make an investment. “You mean to say that you intend to start some sort of business, and you wish for me to fund it?”

“Yes.”

“How preposterous. What made you consider doing such a thing all of a sudden?”

“I had a stroke of inspiration while I was confined to my room.”

“Hmm.” The duke was not convinced Deborah was telling the truth.

The nobility of Asteia tended to hold doing business in contempt since it was mostly nobles who had inherited no valuable land that operated merchant guilds in order to keep their houses afloat. He was rather suspicious that someone who had been raised a proud aristocrat like Deborah would suddenly consider starting a business of her own.

“So, how much do you need?” Though he was dubious, he’d promised that he would honor any request she made, so he didn’t ask for specifics—only what he needed to know.

Instead of replying, she wrote a figure on a piece of paper and slid it across the table to the duke.

He tilted his head in disbelief when he saw the amount. Did she leave out a zero? It was less than the amount he’d spent handling some mischief Deborah had caused involving one of the elders in the Magic Tower when she was little.

She means to start a business with this kind of money? I knew something fishy was going on.

But the look on her face was pure determination, so the duke didn’t ask any further questions. He’d recently come to learn that his daughter was not, in fact, an uncontrollable hooligan. She certainly seemed to have a more delicate side to her these days. It made him want to wait and see what she would do next.

“All right. I’ll have an official send you the amount you requested in gold.”

“Thank you, Father.” Deborah’s eyes gleamed with joy.

He recalled she’d had the same look on her face when he’d used a fire spell to melt the snow. That expression had the curious ability to stimulate the tiny morsel of fatherly love tucked away in some remote corner of his heart. It made him want to give her more, anything to see that smile on her face again.

What is happening to me? This wasn’t like him at all. The duke cleared his throat loudly before getting to his feet. “I must be going. I have some work to attend to. You can give me another letter when next we meet.”

“Yes.”

“No need to see me out. You can continue… studying.” The word felt awkward on his tongue. To think Deborah would study anything of her own accord. It’s like she’s grown more mature overnight...

An odd emotion filled him as he returned to his office. He stopped in his tracks mid-stride. He suddenly realized why his daughter had begun to talk about starting a business and thus asked him for gold.

I see. She really has grown up. It made sense that she’d fabricated the request just to appease him since he’d kept asking her what she wanted over and over. To think she would go about relieving me of that burden in such a sophisticated way.

The duke had loudly declared many times in front of his retainers that he would never buy her the pink diamond. Deborah had simply changed the subject by mentioning her desire to run a business, thus taking his mind off the diamond. This meant he wouldn’t have to go back on his word.

She protected my dignity. In addition, she’d asked for a very small amount of money, ensuring that her request wouldn’t burden him. I’m so impressed with her. He’d assumed she would forever be the blockhead of the family. Who knew that girl would end up maturing so late?

Finished with mentally over-exaggerating his daughter’s good intentions and embellishing them, he summoned his aide with a determined expression on his face. He knew he needed to get her that diamond if only to show that he appreciated her efforts. In fact, he wanted to give it to her.

“Do whatever you have to in order to purchase that pink diamond.” As her father, he could not be outdone in acts of generosity by his child. “Outbid the eldest son of the House of Montes at all costs. I don’t care how much it takes.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Three days later, events unfolded that turned the auction house on its head. Not only was the final bid higher than anything the auctions had ever seen, but the new owner of the famed jewel was not House Montes, but House Seymour.

* * *

Scribbling away in my notebook, I waited for the gold the duke had promised me to arrive. I had requested an investment for three reasons. First of all, it was much more plausible than just suddenly announcing that I wasn’t interested in the jewel at all and was now only interested in money.

Second, my sudden obvious passion for my business project would prove a great excuse to delay my marriage. No matter the era or country, it’s always the unemployed ones who get pestered the most.

And finally, I’d been a slave to a capitalistic society for twenty-four years. I figured that I’d make a passable entrepreneur should I try dipping my toes into the business world here. Now that I had secured my initial funding, I was working on my business idea and it was as I was doing so that an official arrived, a huge box in tow.

It’s the gold! The gold is finally here! Desperately maintaining a mask of indifference, I threw off the lid. Gold makes for a pleasant change. All I’ve been seeing lately are jewels. I gazed happily down at the fat purse of gold I found within, then noticed an expensive-looking velvet case sitting next to it. What’s this?

Puzzled, I opened it and nearly passed out. The inside was lined with black fabric, and lying on top was a necklace with a pink, heart-shaped diamond, shimmering and sparkling in the light. According to the novel, Pilav had purchased the necklace for the same amount of money that would fetch a townhouse in the capital, so I nearly choked seeing it in my hand.

Wh-what’s this doing here? According to the story, the gem should have gone to Pilav, who would then pass it to the female protagonist. This can’t be a fake, can it?

Deeply confused, I blinked slowly as I tried to comprehend what was happening. I found a written guarantee of quality inside the box, in addition to a note from the Duke.

“Deborah. I appreciate the consideration you’ve shown me. I wanted to reward you for the precious letters you’ve been giving me and I simply couldn’t be content with handing over such a piddling sum. I knew full well what you wanted, and as your father, it simply wasn’t right for me to ignore that...”

I felt blood rushing to my head as I read the letter. The sum I asked for is the equivalent of forty million Korean won. That’s no piddling sum! And what consideration did I show him, exactly? Did he expect me to ask for a billion or something instead?

“It’s nice being the villainess, huh?” I muttered to myself, flabbergasted.

Back when I’d been Yoon Dohee, everyone had taken it for granted that I was always so nice. A single mistake and they’d lash out at me like I’d done something unforgivably wrong. But when the villainess finally starts acting like a normal human being, people begin immediately praising her for being considerate.

I guess I need to rethink my life choices. Despite clutching a very expensive jewel in my hands, I only felt oddly perplexed. However, I was also able to unearth an unexpected clue that was much more valuable to me than gold.

Wait, this is…

The Suspicious Woman

“Master, the pink diamond has been sold. It fetched a much higher bid than any other item that went to auction today. Congratulations.”

Gerard, the vice guild master of Blanchard, the information guild, delivered the good news to his superior. The profit was enough to cover an entire year’s worth of the guild’s operating costs, but the guild master was silent as he stroked the golden fur belonging to the gigantic predator lounging at his side.

I can’t read him at all. The man was quite young for a guild master. He had an impenetrable poker face and was harder to get a sense of than even the former guild master, who’d been in a league all of his own in pure craftiness.

Gerard also couldn’t make heads or tails of the young guild master’s abilities. Since early last year, Blanchard’s guild master had secretly invested in an exotic branch of alchemy that allowed practitioners to change the color of minerals. He hadn’t understood why the master was so obsessed with this obscure technique, but it wasn’t long before Gerard’s questions were answered.

Using this alchemical technique, the guild master produced a colored diamond that would become the flagship product sold at the guild’s jewelry shop. A colored diamond? It wouldn’t be a diamond anymore, would it? What a silly idea. Gerard had been very concerned that it wouldn’t catch on, since nothing like it had ever been tried before.

The guild master had sent his spies to find out what color hair Pilav Montes’ new love interest possessed. Then he constructed a diamond that was that same pink, spreading a rumor throughout the capital that a very rare gem was about to go on the market.

As expected, Pilav Montes, who’d been searching high and low for a suitable gift, took the bait. Even Duke Seymour’s daughter, infamous for her vanity, had begun coveting it upon hearing it was one-of-a-kind.

The competition between the two illustrious families attracted even more attention to the gem, and people increasingly began to take an interest in the coming auction. In the end, the guild master sold the pink heart-shaped diamond at a price hundreds of times more than the original diamond’s worth.

The immediate profit was immense, but most promising was that customers had taken so favorably to the idea of a colored diamond. It was obvious that the teardrop-shaped sky-blue diamond he meant to release next would also go on to sell for an astronomical price. The jewelry shop would become famous—known for its monopoly on rare gems.

His business acumen is unrivaled. Said business smarts didn’t apply only to gems. The master launched himself into any field that seemed promising when it came to making a profit, all as easily as if it were a mere game to him.

Just four months ago, he’d purchased a nearly bankrupt bakery and turned it into a luxury dessert shop, which only sold a limited batch per day. Who could have guessed that a dying business would become the most renowned dessert shop in the Iones District? Thanks to the bakery, Blanchard’s coffers were rapidly filling with piles of gold coins.

“How much did it sell for?”

Gerard, who has been lost in thought, an admiring gleam in his eyes, was jerked from his thoughts by the guild master’s terse question. “Here, please confirm for yourself.” He cautiously placed the document recording the pink diamond’s final bid on the table.

The man’s brow was pinched as he studied the document, and the gigantic predator lying next to him growled, opening its fearsome eyes.

Gerard paled at the obvious displeasure on the guild master’s face despite the unprecedented profit.

“So it went to Duke Seymour,” the guild master said, expression strange as he returned the document to his desk. If Duke Seymour had bought the pink diamond, then it meant that his daughter, Deborah Seymour, was now the new owner of it. I expected it to end up in Mia Binoche’s hands.

The guild master’s predictions had been proven wrong twice in a single day. He’d expected that the diamond would sell at a lower price than it had and he’d also been certain it would be Pilav Montes who landed the final bid. Did I underestimate Deborah Seymour?

The man recalled the information his guild members had collected about the girl and ran his fingers over the stacks of gold coins piled on his desk. I thought that the duke had all but disowned the girl… What am I missing? A frown twisting his face, he flicked a coin up and then snatched it out of the air. He repeated this motion over and over until it landed heads up.

Then he said, “Gerard.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Did I not warn you that the higher a noble’s rank, the more attentive you need to be?”

Audibly unhappy, he ordered that the spy assigned to the House of Seymour re-investigate Deborah, immediately. However, a week after giving this command, a completely unexpected client appeared on his doorstep.

How did she find out about us? Isidor Bisconti, the guild master of Blanchard, was utterly confounded as he gazed at Deborah Seymour, standing before him with a dark hood drawn low over her face.