“Lady Helena Winston! Congratulations on your engagement!”

“I saw you two dancing earlier. You make such a lovely couple.”

“Hahaha! I suppose you’ll be heading south after the wedding tomorrow? While your marriage is a joyous occasion, the capital will feel emptier without you.”

Helena stared at her blankly.

Noticing that her face had grown so pale that it was almost bluish, the guests rushed to her in concern.

“Miss Helena, are you all right?”

Helena opened her mouth… then closed it.

She couldn’t find the words. She didn’t know what to say.

In the end, she had to say this:

“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. I think I need to rest for a while”.

As the anxious guests nodded in concern, Helena quickly left the banquet hall and made her way to her room.

Her maids, who had been waiting for her, greeted her with bright, excited smiles.

“My lady, how was it? Count Ishpern!”

“Now that you’ve seen him yourself—was he really as handsome as they say?”

Without a word, Helena sank into the chair in front of her vanity.

The maids, chattering non-stop, began removing her jewelry and wiping away her makeup.

“I have never seen you so dazed, my lady. I think… I think you’ve fallen in love!”

“And with your future husband, no less!”

“Kyaaah!”

“You two must be so happy!”

The maids laid her gently on the bed, showering her with congratulatory words like flower petals, before finally leaving the room.

Left alone, Helena muttered.

“That Bastard…”

Benjamin Ishpern was a bastard.

With that absurdly beautiful face, he had bewitched her, stolen her senses—
and before the wedding was even held, he was already scheming to betray her.

‘A marriage for money? How could he… how could he say something like that…?’

He hadn’t been smiling at her – he’d been smiling at the pile of dowry money rolling towards him.

“That bastard…!”

Helena bit down hard on the edge of the bedsheet.

She was so angry she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

“I won’t forgive you. You’re dead. This is war…!”

And if it was war, Helena had the advantage.

As he had said himself, he saw her as nothing more than a foolish sack of dowry money.

“You picked the wrong woman to mess with.”

Flames blazed in her green eyes.

She would marry him.

As Empress Clarissa’s spy, she would uncover just how evil and vile a man Count Ishpern really was – every last detail.

He was clearly penniless – so penniless that he couldn’t even pay her share of the gate fee. Which meant, at the very least, he wouldn’t dare mention divorce until he’d spent every last coin of her hefty dowry.

“Benjamin Ishpern, your life will be divided into before and after this marriage. Once I’ve gathered every last piece of evidence of your misdeeds, I will dispose of you in the most brutal way imaginable…!”

Rolling onto her side, Helena slipped one hand between the bed and the bedside table – then let out an involuntary burst of laughter.

“Ohohohoho! Even if you’re crawling and begging at my feet and licking my shoes by then… it’ll be far too late… Hoooonk-“

With this satisfying delusion, Helena instantly fell into a deep sleep.

***

As Helena slipped into a blissful sleep, Count Ishpern, who had returned to the ballroom, missed his chance to leave and found himself cornered by Helena’s admirers.

“Pleased to meet you, Count Ishpern.”

“Do you smoke cigars?”

“At least join us for a drink.”

Benjamin, unable to hide the guarded edge in his voice, replied.

“I would love to join you, but tomorrow is my wedding day.”

At his words, a visible twitch ran across the foreheads of the men around him, veins subtly popping with tension.

Someone let out a hearty laugh and shouted.

“That’s right! A wedding! That means we have to drink hard!”

“You’re taking away our queen, so there’s no escaping your punishment.”

“A wedding without drinking is no wedding at all!”

At that moment, all the men were united in a single purpose: to take down the cold-blooded Count Ishpern and make him crawl into the wedding hall on all fours.

“…If you insist, I suppose I have no choice.”

But Count Ishpern – with a dazzlingly handsome face and a body that would make other men do a double take – also had an impressive tolerance for alcohol.

As he downed drink after drink without pausing for breath, as Helena’s followers urged him to do, he looked like the living embodiment of Bacchus, the god of wine.

Helen’s followers could only cry out in despair:

“C-cards…! No drinking party is complete without gambling…!”

“Ugh… poker…”

“Blegh…”

But it seemed that even the god of gambling was on Count Ishpern’s side. He won round after round of poker without breaking a sweat.

In the end, Helena’s followers were completely cleaned out – even their pockets were emptied.

They had nothing to show for it but swollen bellies full of booze and the rising sun on the horizon.

They were out of their minds.

The sky looked yellow. Their pockets held nothing but dust and their stomachs sloshed with alcohol.

Every breath brought a sting of alcohol into their noses, and every movement made the alcohol swirl inside them.

And to those miserable men, Count Ishpern, his expression still perfectly composed, asked.

“Are you satisfied now?”

By this time, only stubborn pride remained.

Sir Stan, the most devoted of Helena’s admirers, forced a strained laugh and said.

“Hahaha… the real challenge begins now”.

The defeated men around him stared in disbelief, as if wondering if he’d lost his mind, but Stan paid them no mind.

“Did you know that the hunting grounds of Winston Estate are quite famous?”

“It is a place of which the Count himself is very proud. Since you’ve come all this way, surely you must see it before you go?”

Count Ishpern, who had been sitting comfortably with his long legs crossed, twisted his lips into a slight grin.

“I’ve grown rather tired of hunting.”

Nevertheless, he rose to his feet, gathering his cloak as he did so.

“If it’s a place that needs to be seen… then I suppose I must.”

His voice, lazy and laced with visible annoyance, somehow struck a chord – a sense of competition.

The men collapsed around him, Helena’s defeated followers, rising one by one, their fighting spirit rekindled.

“Haha, for someone who is tired of hunting…Burwood’s hunting grounds must be something special.”

“……”

“Since it happens to be hunting season, how about we have a light hunting competition to sober up a bit?”

“Oh, what a great idea!”

“Ha, I happen to know this hunting ground like the back of my hand.”

“Well, that makes sense – after all, you’ve been sneaking in and out of the estate just to catch a glimpse of Miss Helena…”

“……”
“……”