The wedding took place just two months later. The preparation period was impossibly short for a high-ranking noble’s wedding.

Eisha had nothing to prepare. However, she had to arrive alone at Pave Castle of the Grand Duke Hebrandt family a month before the wedding. It was to learn the duties she needed to know as the Grand Duke’s wife.

But she could only properly see the face of her husband-to-be after stepping onto the wedding altar.

The wedding took place in a small temple near Pave Castle, with only five witnesses including the temple priest. The witnesses were all Claven’s people—his aide Fino, Knight Commander Joaquin, and knights Rowan and Marco.

It was shabby enough that you couldn’t call it a noble’s wedding.

The prepared wedding dress was a plain white dress without a single decoration, making you wonder if it was really a bride’s dress. 

Still, the bride gladly wore it, held a bouquet woven with white calla lilies and bouvardia, and walked alone down a virgin road without a single flower decoration.

The wedding that began this way consisted only of marriage vows and a declaration of matrimony. It just ended like that, without a kiss or procession between bride and groom.

They said it wasn’t the previous generation’s promise but an arranged marriage forced by the Emperor. Still, she dreamed for a moment. Since they’d formally tied the knot as husband and wife, she hoped that someday she’d be recognized as his wife by his side.

Naively.

It didn’t take long to realize how foolish that thought was.

* * *

When will he come?

Eisha entered the bridal chamber and waited for her new husband, calming her pounding heart. 

Even after trying to settle it down, whenever she recalled the hastily received education about the wedding night, Eisha’s heart pounded fiercely again.

However, the new husband who seemed like he’d enter any moment showed no sign of coming, like he’d forgotten she was waiting.

One hour, two hours. When the wait began to exceed three hours, Eisha couldn’t just sit still anymore.

‘Right, maybe something happened. Then I shouldn’t just be sitting here, should I?’

After all, she’d become his official wife now. Recalling the servants’ unsettled atmosphere before entering the bridal chamber, she worried that something might have happened to him.

That was the only reason. Even though she knew it was unthinkable for a bride to open the bridal chamber door and look outside before the groom came looking, Eisha quietly cracked the door open.

And she heard the reason why her new husband hadn’t come to the bridal chamber.

Through the slightly opened door, she heard the maids’ conversation. Their voices were close to whispers, but since the surroundings were as quiet as a mouse, she could hear them all too clearly.

“At this rate, she’ll crane her neck off.”

“Well, you expected this to some extent, didn’t you? I heard the east wing staff even made bets. Whether His Grace the Grand Duke would enter the bridal chamber or not. And most of them bet on the latter.”

“She’s a bit pitiful.”

“What’s pitiful about her? She came with just her body and no dowry—she should know what to expect.”

Eisha bit the soft flesh inside her mouth.

The maids were completely right. The marriage between the empire’s most prestigious family and a fallen noble family no different from commoners was called the birth of a new Cinderella and stirred up the entire empire.

But everyone in the know understood. This marriage was forced due to the Emperor’s command.

The Emperor had tried to promote an arranged marriage between Princess Shatret and a neighboring kingdom for friendship with the kingdom and the empire’s prestige.

Claven mentioned the marriage arrangement between his father, the previous Grand Duke Alexis, and Duke Shatret, and begged him to stop it. 

However, the Emperor’s answer was to propose a marriage between the Hebrandt family and the empire’s most fallen family. 

His demand was that if Claven wanted to use the pretext of keeping the previous Grand Duke’s promise, he should first keep the promise his grandfather had made.

Everyone felt sorry. For the separation of those called the couple of the century, for one man’s sacrifice for the woman he loved.

And they hated the fallen family’s daughter who seized the Grand Duchess position by the Emperor’s command.

The fallen Demir family, with no reputation, wealth, or achievements, was called the most shameless family in the empire for trying to have Hebrandt, using a promise made carelessly while drunk as leverage. 

Likewise, they were displeased that she—who wasn’t exceptional in beauty, talent, or anything else—stood beside the man every woman in the empire admired.

One of those who didn’t hide that hatred was that maid. She was the one who had attended exclusively to her for a month, and her name was Siyo.

“Still, it’s the first day of marriage. Isn’t it too much to make her spend the wedding night alone?”

“They’ll have many days together ahead, so why worry? There are other things to worry about.”

“Still…”

“Shouldn’t we save someone’s life first?”

“True.”

“How heartbroken must Princess Shatret be right now? She’s been looking at only one person and picturing her future since childhood. I wouldn’t want to live either if I were her.”

“The shock must have been severe, right? Seeing that she took medicine saying she’d die.”

Having heard that much, Eisha quietly closed the door.

She thought she understood through their conversation.

She recalled Claven hurriedly leaving after the aide’s whisper in his ear as soon as the wedding ceremony ended. She’d thought he looked very flustered, but it seemed the man who became her husband today had gone straight to save his former lover.

Right, a person’s life comes first.

She understood well enough in her head, but why did her heart feel so stuffy? Even repeating it aloud didn’t improve her mood much.

Eisha, who’d come back into the room, headed straight for the bed. And she flopped down still wearing her wedding dress.

It was uncomfortable, but it was a dress she couldn’t take off alone unless someone removed it for her.

That someone was supposed to be the groom.

She closed her tired eyes just like that.

She’d only eaten a simple piece of bread in the morning, but she didn’t want to touch the table set for the wedding night. It was fortunate she had no appetite at all.

Starting her preparations early in the morning and exhausted from the relentless schedule, Eisha’s eyelids wouldn’t open until morning came.

The disappointment about the modest wedding, the loneliness of the first wedding night—she hid them beyond distant darkness. It was the only way to overcome emotions too difficult for her to handle.

She just dreamed.

That after this night passed and her husband returned, he’d look at her at least once.

Because she was his wife, after all.

* * *

“Take it off, slowly.”

He finished even that short sentence only after gulping down his saliva.

The boy’s—no, the new husband who’d grown so much—large hands trembled like when he’d once kissed his first love, struggling even to undo a single button on his bride’s dress.

The bride, who was the most beautiful in the world even wearing the hastily obtained dress without decorations, barely escaped from the dress under his clumsy touch. She was so lovely, so adorable that he could only admire her, too afraid to even touch her.

The new bride, her cheeks flushed red, shyly confessed.

“I love you. With all my heart.”

“Me too, I love you too.”

The new husband hurriedly answered the confession and pressed his hot lips against the bride’s.

After the long night passed, the man who pushed back the wet hair stuck to his wife’s forehead as she slept exhausted in his arms kissed that spot deeply and vowed from the depths of his heart.

“I’ll definitely protect you, more precious than my life. I love you forever, Ri…”

“Gasp!”

Waking from the unidentifiable dream, Eisha bolted upright.

Perhaps because of the embarrassing dream, her cheeks were flushed red. However, unlike the dream, her wedding dress remained untouched without a trace of anyone’s fingers.

She couldn’t actually remember the couple’s faces in the dream well.

They were unrecognizable, like smudged oil paint on a not-quite-dry painting, but the wedding dress looked exactly the same. That’s the only reason she thought the couple in the dream were her and Claven.

Just as she was about to sink into thought, she heard a knock.

“My lady, it’s Siyo. I’ll attend to you.”

“Alright.”

Siyo, entering the room, hesitated for a moment, seemingly not expecting Eisha to be awake. 

That was brief—she quickly attended to the morning routine with practiced hands and promptly conveyed the head butler’s message.

“The master has urgent business and won’t be able to come in for a few days, so you should continue with your usual schedule.”

“…I understand.”

She couldn’t look properly, worried her flushed cheeks might be noticed, when Siyo asked.

“Shall I help you out of the dress?”

“…Ah, I should.”

As expected, Siyo was a skilled servant. She never asked questions that would make her master uncomfortable. Whatever her true feelings were.

Only then did Eisha remove the stifling white wedding dress and finish a simple breakfast. Then she headed to her office as she’d learned a few days ago. She’d already completely forgotten about the dream.

Thus began her first day as the Grand Duchess.

It was the same routine every day since coming to this Pave Castle. Just that the title she worked under changed from “prospective Grand Duchess” to “Grand Duchess.”

It wasn’t difficult work either. All she had to do was review and approve documents the head butler brought.

Days passed no different from before the marriage, and she saw her husband’s face again a week after the wedding night.

As usual, Eisha’s hand, diligently processing her assigned documents in her office, suddenly pointed at a number written in the ledger and stopped there.

This is a bit strange.

Since her grandfather became ill, Eisha had practically managed all the Demir baronial family’s household affairs, so she was good with numbers.

But the numbers she looked at today were odd.

Potatoes, carrots, and flour shouldn’t be this price.

The payment numbers for potatoes, carrots, and flour in this month’s expenses she was currently viewing greatly exceeded her expectations.

To verify this, she needed last year’s ledger with the food-related payments used at Pave Castle. 

Head Butler Hector had shown it when explaining how to record ledgers while she was learning the Grand Duchess’s duties after coming to Pave Castle, but he’d retrieved it after the education ended.

She hesitated for a moment.

Head Butler Hector had said this when assigning her this task:

“I’ve taught you how to write ledgers, but you won’t need to pay much attention to it.”

In other words, he was saying she just needed to sign. Those words weren’t meant to disrespect Eisha but were Hector’s way of being considerate. Of course, Eisha didn’t take it that way.

Ordinary nobles considered dealing with numbers beneath them, so they didn’t handle numbers directly. Only when they couldn’t afford to have separate servants handle accounting, like Eisha’s natal family the Demirs, would nobles calculate numbers themselves.

The Hebrandt family was a place where incomparably larger funds were spent than the Demir family’s household. 

So even just the food expenses for the main castle, Pave Castle, far exceeded the entire Demir family budget.