“But we are having dinner.”

“I’m finished.”

Rubica wondered if it was right to get up and leave during a meal.

She was the duchess, after all. Was it really right to behave like that?

She decided not to care about what others said about her and do as she wanted, but it was proving to be harder than she expected. When the maids and servants said something like, ‘our mistress is so wise,’ she felt obliged to live up to their expectations.

‘But Edgar didn’t care about the order of their dinner and had the fish brought first, and, um, he also got up as he wanted.’

Edgar was doing what he wanted, so why would she care about what the others thought even after deciding to become an ill-tempered woman?

‘Is this why I keep getting the opposite results of what I aim for and be praised as the wise duchess?’

She decided to be determined again. She had to be called extravagant and foolish. People had been thinking of her and Edgar as a couple madly in love and it was going to become troublesome if she didn’t do something about it.

“Okay.”

She made up her mind and stood up. However, contrary to what she was thinking, the maids all pitied her.

‘Oh, she even has to leave during dinner only to please him…’

It is hard to break an image once it is fixed, and Rubica didn’t know she only looked like a kind-hearted wife to the others.

Edgar walked out before she even got up. Rubica walked fast to follow him, but the distance between them only increased. The reason why was simple. Edgar’s single step was equal to three of her steps.

“Edgar.”

She was almost out of her breath. In the end, she couldn’t stand it anymore and called him. He looked back.

“Oh.”

He realized what kind of mistake he just made only then. The servant next to him could hear him say a short curse. It was surprising that the duke was using a word only peasants used as he had always been elegant even when scolding others. However, he smiled kindly and went back to Rubica as if he had never cursed.

“I was thoughtless. I apologize.”

He had been popular among the girls, but he had never been on a relationship. That was why he forgot to be considerate. However, Rubica didn’t seem that happy at his apology. Instead, she turned pale and yelled.

“What is wrong with you? Have you eaten something wrong? Why are you acting kind like this? Isn’t this the point where you scold me for having short legs?”

Snap. The servant could clearly hear a corner of Edgar’s reason snapping and saw a glimpse of anger on his face. However, it was gone the next moment and he offered a hand to Rubica with a smile.

“It was a mistake. Let’s move on.”

Rubica stared at him in fear. He was too young to die, so why the sudden change? She wondered if the cook had poisoned the sea bass dish he had eaten during dinner.

“Please.”

Edgar anxiously asked when Rubica didn’t take his hand, but it was so confusing to her. He had been like a venomous beast only a while ago, but now he was so kind. Even though he was smiling, some dangerous energy was flowing around him.

She could instinctively tell something really bad would happen if she didn’t take his hand now. So, she took his hand and the tension slowly faded.

“Then let us go.”

Edgar started to walk again, but then he stopped. He almost made the same mistake again. He glanced at Rubica and tried to walk at her speed, something which he had never done before.

Now he was walking so strangely, trying to walk at a different speed. Rubica had to try hard to not laugh.

‘He’s cute.’

She felt a tickle in her heart. Although it was quite strange and she wished she knew what he was up to, she kind of liked it. To be honest, she liked it a lot. She even wanted to stand on her tiptoes and stroke his hair. The more she got to know him, the more she started to think the image she had about him before could have been biased.

“Here.”

Edgar took her to his study right next to his office.

“Wow.”

Rubica had never been there, so she was quite surprised to see the room looked like the old library of an abbey. There were many books on the black and strong shelves.

“These are the books I often read and there are many more in the west annex.”

Rubica nodded to that while she drew out a book from one of the shelves.

“Oh, that one is…”

“This gold pattern is so pretty.”

Edgar wanted to explain what the book was about, but he wisely shut his mouth. She was interested in its cover, not its content. She was totally fascinated by the beautiful pattern that filled a square. Rubica was so enchanted by the beauty of the book that it took a long time before she came back to her senses.

“Oh, right. Why are we here?”

Oh, you are hopeless.

However, she was so cute. Edgar had to try hard to not smile like an idiot. He brought a box at a corner. It looked really gloomy and was full of all kinds of odd things, but Edgar picked a small pot and showed it to Rubica. It had only dirt in it.

“This is what Lord Sesar came back with when he went missing for the first time. He gave it to me as a gift.”

“A gift?”

“Yes, he said this pot of wet soil had been blessed by an orc.”

“It has the blessing of an orc?”

Rubica couldn’t believe it and repeated what he said. Orcs were extremely hostile to people, and they always smelled really bad. An orc’s blessing was something like a curse.

“The knights had worked really hard for an entire week to find him, but when he was actually found, he looked so relaxed.”

And a little while later, he came to Edgar to say he was going to invent pretty roses and he had to invest on it. Really, he had his unique way of causing trouble.

“And this is the wine he was given from the goblins. Oh, don’t open the bottle. Various experiments proved that it’s full of toxic matters. And, this is a music box he got from the sirens. My, there are still sirens living out there? Of course, that’s impossible, but he sounded so serious that I had to pretend I believed him.”

Then, he took out all kinds of odd things from the box. All of them were junk.

“These were what he was holding each time we found him after he went missing.”

“Oh!”

It turned out Sesar wasn’t just an ordinary weirdo. He was a friend of the monsters. Rubica had never heard of someone who wasn’t killed after encountering so many monsters, much less get gifts from them.

“That idiot… no, Lord Sesar went missing countless times while he wrote his book. At first, we did care about him. We were worried, but when we found him, he always said something like, ‘Oh, I was having great fun at the orcs’ party, but then they kicked me out because you came looking for me.’”

He went missing so many times, and it stopped only after Edgar’s father assigned him a guard to keep an eye on him.

-Oh, there are various rare plants in the dragons’ territories. Some are known, like the dragon’s eye, but many are not. I’ve heard some trees have a really good scent there. I want to see them with my own eyes and write about them… then I will be forever remembered by the botanists.”

Sesar said that from time to time. Once he even asked to be included in the quest party that went to dragon Iber’s territory to get mana quartz. The party was going to face enough dangers, so there was no way they could handle such a troublemaker as well. That was why Edgar had turned him down flatly back then.

‘Still, I thought at least he wasn’t mad enough to go alone into the dragon’s territory.’

And now, he went to Mount Flenus. Edgar was a little mad about it but, at the same time, he thought the man would only come back after making several strange monster friends.

“This is why I’m not concerned about him.”

“Oh, um…”

Rubica didn’t know what to say. She had had quite a pleasant conversation with Sesar about roses, so the first impression she had gotten of him being weird had somewhat faded. But it turned out he was very strange.

“He is an extremely lucky man.”

She finally managed to find an appropriate comment.

“I would rather say he has great talent at making innocent people suffer.”

A corner of his lips curled up as he scolded, and Rubica’s eyes widened and then she laughed. However, he was confused to see her laugh so suddenly.

“Why are you laughing?”

Edgar hadn’t made any joke, but she was laughing. Therefore, he really wanted to know what made her laugh.