“Brandon, step aside. Make sure no one comes near this area.”
“Pardon? Ah, yes, understood.”

Brandon, who had been frozen speechless, quickly stepped away, leaving just the two of them alone.
In Penelope’s heart, the space Brandon left behind was instantly filled with tension.

“Penelope, Countess of Utterback.”

When the Duke spoke her name, his deep voice resonated in her ears.
It was a rich tone, reminiscent of a cello. As the sound passed through her, Penelope found herself unconsciously drawn to it.

‘That voice… I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before.’

Penelope possessed an almost cursed level of hearing.

‘I never forget a sound I’ve heard even once. So why can’t I remember the Duke’s voice?’

It was the first time in her life she had ever failed to recall a sound, and it startled her.

“To boldly claim you want to buy a night with me? Then this promissory note must be your payment.”
“You could put it that way.”

Now that they were alone, the Duke’s demeanor changed entirely.
The formality he had shown on the surface vanished, and he took on an intense presence, as though ready to devour her whole.

But Penelope didn’t look into his piercing eyes. She was staring at something else.

‘So it really was true—what I saw in the newspaper.’

There was a tattoo on the back of Blade Gunner’s hand.

It was the exact same in position, size, and color as the strange flower bud tattoo Penelope had suddenly acquired after her resurrection.
The only difference was that while hers depicted a bud, the Duke’s was of a fully bloomed flower.

According to Lucy and the other household staff, the tattoo seemed visible only to her.

If Penelope’s suspicion was correct, the tattoo was somehow tied to death.
Which meant the Duke, who bore the same mark, may have also experienced a mysterious death and resurrection.

‘But I can’t be certain. Even if he went through the same thing, that doesn’t guarantee he’s an ally.’

And so, even with Duke Gunner standing right before her, Penelope couldn’t reveal the true reason she had come to find him.

For now, she decided to approach him under the pretense of being an investor with a romantic interest, so she could gauge his intentions.

“Why go so far as to pay me just for a dance?”
“Everyone says Your Grace is the most desirable man, so naturally, I grew curious.”

Penelope tried her best to appear calm, hoping to come off as a temptress.
She had to look just like any other woman who approached the Duke with infatuation.

Judging by the secretary’s reaction earlier, it was clear her act was working, and her confidence in the performance grew.
Maybe she could even make Duke Gunner feel pressured, enough to rattle him.

As she stood tall, lifted by that thought, the Duke suddenly closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye.

“What are you—?”

“Here’s a tip, Count. If you want to look like a seductress, don’t let your hands shake. It gives away your nerves.”

In that moment, Penelope was hit with a wave of mortification.
Realizing her efforts had been in vain, the confidence in her eyes and posture crumbled.

‘He’s seeing right through me.’

Blade had grown up entangled in endless schemes from the moment he was born.
He had survived the attacks of royalty and ruthless businessmen alike—monsters in human skin.
To someone like him, Penelope must have seemed no different from a clueless child.

‘What was I thinking, trying to deceive a man like him?’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to just come clean and ask for his help?’

Penelope, who had built up her courage while researching her opponent’s background, felt that resolve begin to crack.
She felt exposed—stripped bare—and the urge to flee from the Duke’s presence overwhelmed her.

‘But if I can’t stay calm over something like this, how will I ever get my revenge?’

She remembered the day she had been left to drown at sea because of Ned and Deva, and she knew she couldn’t back down now.

“Do your hands tremble like that when you play the violin too?”
“You… know that I play the violin?”

“Is it so strange for me to know about Penelope Utterback, once a prodigy of the Royal Academy of the Arts?”

At that, Penelope instinctively took a step back, fear tightening her chest.

“How do you know such a thing…?”

“You’ve underestimated my information network. There’s nothing that happens in Modeston’s noble society that escapes me.”

He knew that she had once been a violinist.

Although Penelope had once shown great promise, she wasn’t famous enough for someone like Blade to be familiar with her background.

And yet he was.

Penelope had charged in recklessly, armed with nothing but clumsy confidence and lacking proper information about her opponent.

Meanwhile, Blade moved his pieces across the chessboard with flawless precision.

They weren’t even close to being equals.

This was a game Penelope had completely lost.

“You’ve realised by now, haven’t you? Lies don’t work on me. So speak up. What’s the real reason you came to find me?”

Blade seemed genuinely furious that Penelope had tried to deceive him.

The pressure he was radiating became too much for her to handle.

To stop herself from shrinking back, she took a deep breath and slowly removed her gloves.

Then, as though placing her final bet in a high-stakes gamble, she revealed the tattoo on the back of her hand to the duke.

She hadn’t expected to resort to this so soon.

“Wait… that’s—”
“So, Your Grace can see this mark too.”

The anger in Blade’s eyes flickered and gave way to confusion.

“Is this enough reason for us to have a longer conversation?”

“It certainly warrants further explanation.”

Penelope steadied herself once more.
If shallow tricks wouldn’t work, then all that remained was a head-on confrontation.
And for that, she needed to stay sharp.

“Your secretary didn’t seem to know anything about the mark on your hand. And no paper in Modeston has mentioned it either.”

The Etronian nobility regarded tattoos as vulgar — something only commoners would indulge in. Had someone like Duke Gunner suddenly got one, the entire capital would have erupted in whispers about the disgrace to noble dignity and the collapse of royal decorum.

After all, there were always journalists waiting to exploit the slightest weakness in his defence.

Yet none of them had said a word.

The silence of those vulture-like media outlets could mean only one thing.

None of them could see what was etched into the Duke’s skin.

But Penelope could see it clearly: The iris engraved into the back of his hand.

Just as Lucy couldn’t see the flower bud on her own hand, Penelope could see the Duke’s.

The tattoo had appeared on her hand immediately after she came back to life.

There was one more thing that changed around that same time: The cancellation of the Iris.

Why had the Duke opposed its launch so fiercely, even at the cost of Gunner Trading’s collapse?

Everything else remained the same, so why did Blade Gunner’s actions change?

‘He went through something. Something massive. Maybe even the same thing I did.’

Her fate.
The flower-shaped tattoo.
The Iris.

After she came back to life, every point of change seemed to converge around one man—
Blade Gunner, standing like a signpost at each turning point.

From the string of connections, Penelope drew the conclusion that the Duke, like her, had died and come back to life.

“Then this mark must be a symbol visible only to those who have gone through something extraordinary. Something that defies all rational explanation. Something like…”

Penelope steadied her breath once more.

“…a person who died and then came back to life.”

“Are you saying, Count, that you died and came back?”

At her difficult confession, the Duke’s expression hardened.

“That can’t be… that was supposed to happen only to me. Why…”

“So it is true, Your Grace!”

Penelope didn’t miss the careless words that escaped Blade’s lips. When she heard him confirm it himself, she gasped and covered her mouth in shock. She couldn’t believe someone else had gone through the same experience she had.

“I never imagined there could be someone else who had gone through the same thing.”
“Nor did I.”

The two of them had now confirmed each other’s secret. Finding someone she could finally talk to about something she thought she’d never be able to share brought Penelope a wave of relief.

‘So I wasn’t the only one who went through something so strange.’

For the past few days, Penelope had been carrying a secret that she had desperately wanted to share, but she had no one to tell it to.

Now, the suffocating pressure inside her had lifted.

That was why she had tried so hard to meet the Duke, even if it was only for the briefest of moments. It wasn’t because she knew he had been through the same thing, but because she hoped he had.

Of course, sharing the same experience didn’t guarantee they were on the same side. But she longed for someone she could feel a sense of kinship with.

“So that’s why I was unconscious for a whole month…”

Blade murmured to himself. It was the kind of reaction only someone who had experienced the same thing could give. Rather than rejecting her for saying something so absurd, the fact that he questioned himself was tantamount to accepting it all.

“So it was you who sent that envelope—through the newspaper boy? You’ve been watching me this whole time?”
“…Yes. That was my doing.”

“Why? Judging by your reaction, you didn’t even know I was alive—so why on earth did you send me those photos?”

Penelope finally released the curiosity she had been suppressing.

“Now it’s your turn to be honest with me, Your Grace.”

Penelope spoke calmly, thinking there was nothing left that could surprise her anymore. But the Duke’s reply far exceeded her imagination.

“Because I want to kill your husband.”