Softer than silk, beautiful, firm, and full enough that one hand wasn’t enough and even two couldn’t quite contain it. It was like looking at herself in her youth. In her younger days, she had gone around with her chest half-bared, quietly proud of having more than other women.

After marriage, of course, Luke had said so much about it that she stopped wearing such clothes. He was, to put it mildly, a conservative man……quite rigid, in fact. If Silvia showed even a little skin, he would say nothing but go silent for days, or simply make the offending garment disappear. The clothes he would then present as gifts covered Silvia’s body more completely than a nun’s habit.

Given that kind of marriage, she had grown less interested in adorning herself as a woman. Part of it was also that if she dressed up any more than she already did, she was fairly certain Luke, who looked at her with starved eyes every single day of the year, would devour her alive.

“It doesn’t just look this way to me, does it?”

“What? How does it look to you?”

“Like……the chest is doing a lot of work. Like it’s saying it could captivate most men all on its own……that kind of confident chest. Is that just me? Really?”

“N, no. Of course not. It really is a beautiful chest. Enviable, even.”

“Is that so? Thank you. But Sera……you haven’t aged a bit either. Husband? Where is he?”

“Husband? I’m not married yet.”

“No, my husband. Where is my husband?”

Sera’s eyes went wide with surprise at Silvia’s question, then she tilted her head.

“Miss, you haven’t even married yet……”

“Me? What do you mean I haven’t married……”

She was about to say she had been married at eighteen and lived as a married woman for thirty years, so what was Sera talking about……but Silvia closed her mouth. She swallowed hard and looked at the mirror again. It was quite a ridiculous sight. The face of Sera, the unmarried maid who had attended to an unmarried Silvia, had gone from flushed to so red it looked ready to burst.

And Silvia, gripping one of her own br*asts firmly with both hands, had her magnificent bare figure exposed in a rather suggestive manner. Her sweet-looking hair was full and voluminous. Her eyes, not quite awake yet, were hazy but held a dewy clarity. Her slightly parted lips were seductive enough to turn Luke into a beast, and her chest……well, there was nothing more to say about that. The sharp tuck of her waist made her hips look all the more pronounced by contrast, her legs were long, and her figure looked delicate. It was perfect. This was herself in her youth. More precisely……herself at eighteen years old.

“How old do I look to you?”

“Huh? Hmm……you look like you’re past, past coming of age.”

“That can’t be right.”

Silvia denied it outright, and Sera’s face crumpled. Technically, Sera had given the correct answer. At eighteen, Silvia had despised being told she looked young. More than disliked it……she had loathed it to an extreme degree. If anyone called her cute or said she looked young, she took it as a declaration of war.

So through several hard lessons, she had made sure to shut those mouths firmly. In a kind of battle of wills, Silvia had never once lost. She went beyond pressing people down to outright crushing them. That was the kind of awful woman she had been.

“How old am I?”

“What? W, well……”

“Honestly. You don’t need to say what you think I want to hear.”

“You’re eighteen. Your birthday is coming up soon.”

Silvia squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or a bad one. Then a memory she had taken for a dream came drifting back. The words that she had to return. That she could not go to the afterlife because she still had lingering regrets.

‘Why on earth would I become a malevolent spirit. What regrets could I have in life? Because I died and left my husband alone?’

Silvia looked at the mirror again in confusion. The moment she looked at her own reflection, all the negative feelings……the confusion, the worry……vanished completely. She gazed at herself with absolute adoration. The way she was grinning made her look slightly unhinged, but she didn’t particularly care.

“Malevolent spirit or whatever, I’m grateful. Ah, I really think I’m beautiful. No wonder my husband loves me……how could he not? Even I would fall for myself at first sight.”

Sitting on the bed, staring at her own face in the mirror, Silvia looked every bit like a woman lost in narcissism, drowning in self-regard. Yet Sera nodded along with complete sincerity. Eighteen-year-old Silvia was that radiant.

* * *

Inside the carriage, Silvia’s mouth fell open. The capital, Melton, was already filling with people who had come to attend the ball hosted by the royal family. The palace lights shone brighter than usual, illuminating the Melton night. The memory of how it had felt like an honor and a joy simply to be invited to that palace as a girl came back to her, and Silvia felt a happiness she could not have asked for more of. Forgotten memories surfaced one after another, and she was buoyant with excitement and anticipation.

How many people could resist longing for the hometown of their prime years? Silvia had been born in Melton and died in Melton, but the Melton she loved most was the one before her official debut in society and before her marriage.

Now, returned to eighteen years old, Silvia trembled for a different reason. It was quite a dramatic way to put it, but her heart was beating so fast she felt she might die again at eighteen rather than forty-eight. Luke was ten years older than Silvia. An unmarried duke at twenty-eight. At the time, he had been a general who had won many battles, and through his shipping ventures, the wealthiest man in Ketus was none other than her husband.

Luke had a rough, cold-looking impression, yet he was an unmarried man coveted by everyone in Ketus. Of course, twenty-eight-year-old Luke had reportedly not thought very deeply about marriage. If he had never met Silvia, he likely would have remained a bachelor for quite some time.

Come to think of it, over thirty years of marriage, Silvia had never once seen even the shadow of a woman from Luke’s past. How had he managed to hide it all? At twenty-eight, it was impossible that he had no experience with women. She found it strange that she had never even thought to wonder about it until now.

This time, she planned to dig through Luke’s history with women thoroughly and use it as material for a good scolding. Would he squirm more than before? Silvia knew that even though he appeared cold and composed in front of others, a single word from her was enough to make him flustered.

In any case, whatever the reason, Silvia was elated to be back at eighteen. She would get to see Luke at twenty-eight again. And tonight, he would fall for her at first sight and propose to her all over again. The corners of Silvia’s lips curved up prettily.

The reason she had dressed up so carefully today was precisely to captivate Luke in an instant. Back then, she had been caught up in another man and treated Luke coldly, but this time she planned to act differently. Silvia would have been perfectly happy to make love with Luke tonight. At eighteen she had been inexperienced, but thirty years of married life had shifted her thinking into something rather more proactive. When it came down to it, the best approach was to do things while the moment was right. Physical stamina had its limits with age. Besides, she trusted that Luke would not do something as irresponsible as enjoying one night with her and walking away. Having been loved fiercely by one man for thirty years, this confidence was not unfounded.

“No, let me rethink that. Start with courtship first. Courtship.”

They had gone straight to marriage without any of that, so starting with courtship this time around wasn’t a bad idea. Silvia also entertained the mischievous thought of making Luke wait a little longer.

“What did you say?”

The noblewoman who spoke to Silvia with a warm voice was Ella, Countess Hutton, who asked with a smile. Silvia turned her head away from the window and threw herself into Ella’s arms. The scent of her ‘Mama,’ whom she relentlessly missed, reached her.

Silvia had become a mother like Ella, and had given birth to five children she would not trade for anything in the world. In those moments when her own children felt so precious and dear, Silvia always thought of Ella. She missed Ella, and sometimes wept wanting to see her.

“Mmm.”

Silvia breathed Ella’s fragrance deep into her lungs. Ella always wore rose perfume, yet the scent was remarkably subtle. The faint rose fragrance mixed with Ella’s own warmth created a cozy, comforting smell she had missed terribly. There had been many times she had bought rose perfume and spritzed it on herself, only to feel dejected that it never smelled the same.

“My goodness, do you still think you’re a little girl? You’re eighteen and you’re acting like a child.”

“Mother, I missed you so much.”

“Silvia Hutton, what is all this fussing?”

Silvia Hutton……that was her name now. Born a count’s daughter, blessed with looks that were the spitting image of Ella’s, and adored by countless men. Silvia…… She would soon become Duchess Silvia Ambrose, but for now she was Silvia Hutton.