Proofreader: somnium

Next Steps

“Lena.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

However, when Lena, who had shuddered every time he spoke, finally calmly answered his call without fear, he felt a sense of accomplishment, free from all doubts and boundaries. If even the gradual changes were acting, she must have had a knack for that.

Anyway, it seemed like they could move on to the next step now.

“The day after tomorrow, an important guest is going to visit me. I’ll leave you to take care of the clothes and dressing for that day.”

Lena, who had been working on attending duty during morning wake up, tea, eating, running small errands, and getting ready for bed in less than a month, was to be the first to touch his bare body. It was kind of a challenge for Kahel, who was extremely reluctant to have anyone touch him. Besides, he didn’t even fully trust Lena yet.

“Yes. All right. Then may I go into your dressing room? I think I will have to pick out the clothes you will wear that day in advance and get it ready.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

He had never let any employees take care of clothes before, so even if he thought about it well, it felt like he missed something.

“Do you have any clothes you have decided to wear?”

“No, it’s not really like that. The clothes are all similar, so pick any one.”

Lena tilted her head slightly at those words. Although not as much as women’s dresses, men’s clothes also came out in colorful and diverse designs. In Lena’s sense, it wasn’t something that could be expressed as ‘they are all similar.’

But after looking around his dressing room, she seemed to understand why he said, ‘they’re all similar.’ Because all the clothes…… are really similar.

Shirts with slightly different details were hung on one side, and vests, coats, and trousers made only in dark fabrics were hung on the other side. The material was obviously of the highest quality, but compared to the status of a duke, the number was too small and the design was also very simple. It seemed that the shirts and trousers were a little loose.

She knew from Arder that the people of the Duchy are more modest than she thought, but it seemed to her that it was more that they deliberately tried not to be noticed than that they were being modest.

And Lena didn’t know, but in fact, the speculation was true to some extent.

In order to fit the clothes, a professional tailor had to come and measure the body precisely, but it couldn’t be harder to measure while touching Kahel’s body. The tailors took two bottles of the purification potion and took measurements, but even that couldn’t last more than 30 minutes. Paying close attention to the change in the tailors’ state of mind in detail, Kahel also had a difficult time being measured.

A few times the knights took measurements instead, but there was no way that crude men who were not experts could measure him delicately, so he could not put on clothes made by the knights and had no choice but to present them to the person who fit them.

Since it is difficult to measure for such clothes, he had no choice but to make them with a basic design that did not require delicate cutting. Kahel didn’t want to wear fancy clothes that caught people’s attention either, so he wasn’t too dissatisfied.

Of course, Kahel’s physique and beauty supported him even when he wore such modest clothes, so no one said that his clothes were out of fashion. They’re too busy just looking at his face, so who cares about Kahel Luave’s clothes? Even if he had spent three or four hours at the party, it was clear that no one would remember his clothes.

But Lena, unaware of that fact, felt a little sad. Whenever she went into Elliot’s dressing room, she could be satisfied just by looking at the gorgeous dresses, but Kahel’s dressing room didn’t seem like much fun at all.

‘It sounds like you have a lot of money, so you need to have some fancy clothes…….’

Even the closet of Baron Fidelia, a country nobleman, was full of fancy clothes. Unlike a woman’s dress, men’s couldn’t be draped in jewels, frills, lace or ribbon, but they could be made with a stunning garment with just embroidery or buttons enough to stand out.

However, she had no authority to tell the master to tailor his clothes on the subject that she was nothing more than a maid. Lena picked with her pitiful taste again, digging through the dark clothes that looked the same, and she picked the one that looked the best. It was a navy blue vest and trousers made of high-quality cotton, and a coat of a darker color. But no matter how much she looked at it, she had a sense of disappointment.

‘Hmm…… I think it needs some decoration. This is why the butler’s clothes look better.’

Lena, who was worried with her brow furrowed, remembered something about it and ran straight to Arder for permission.

The morning that the guests were coming, Kahel opened his eyes to Lena’s visit, which he was now somewhat accustomed to, and washed his face while she attended. When he wiped his face with a towel and lifted his head with a clear mind, her face seemed to be a little different from the usual one. The areas under the eyes were dark, as if a shadow had fallen, and her eyes gleamed as if they were expecting something.

‘Did she read popular novels all night?’

Arder knew that popular novels were popular among the maids of the mansion. Because when female employees came out with a sleepless face, nine out of ten cases, they stayed up at night while reading a novel.

When that thought occurred to him, he wondered what kind of romance this maid, who was almost sold into a fraudulent marriage to an old man, was dreaming of.

A mournful love that transcends the status of a wealthy, rich noble? A comfortable love affair with a man who is similar to him, but who is sweet and docile? Oh, since many young knights came to the Duchy, it would have been possible to draw a passionate love for the vigorous and courageous knight.

Then Kahel realized. He had no idea what it was like for him to be in love. When he thought of romance, the first things that come to mind are carnal lust and monopoly. All those who spoke of love to him were driven by madness, ferociousness, and governed solely by lust.

Of course, he’s heard other people’s love stories, and he’s watched his parents’ love up close. So, he knew there was such a love in his head, but it was a little difficult to imagine what it would feel like.

‘…… After all, it has nothing to do with me.’

Kahel thought that there could be no love or romance in his life. So, of course, he had no expectations for marriage. Thanks to this cursed constitution, he would almost buy a bride, so he would only engage in physical relations for the sake of an heir, and his wife would probably give birth to a child half-mad. After she has a child, he may well have to send her away to the farthest estate, using the excuse of recuperation. Otherwise, there could have been a situation in which Kahel was killed by his wife, or he had to kill his wife.

As he thought about it, his stomach went cold again. Thanks to Lena, he forgot about it for a while, but he was still nothing more than a monster that drove people crazy, and he had to pay close attention to see if even Lena showed strange eyes in today’s dressing.

He emptied his thoughts of love from his mind, sat in the chair in front of the mirror, and looked at her, leaving the grooming in Lena’s hands.

Lena put the lotion made by boiling rose petals on soft gauze and carefully wiped Kahel’s face after he had washed his face. If it was a girl, there would have been a lot of makeup, cream, and even rouge, but the male master was effortless as she only had to trim his eyebrows with a razor after preparing his face with a lotion.

It was a little surprising that Kahel was awkward about trimming his eyebrows, but Lena was worried because her skills were not good enough, so she paid more attention to her hand trimming the eyebrows.

His beautiful face shone a lot just by arranging the eyebrows, but Lena was not impressed. Each person had two eyes, a nose and a mouth, moreover the appearance of her master in particular had nothing to do with her.

However, it was awkward for her to keep quietly grooming. Because when she dressed up Elliot, she constantly had to compliment her looks. At the same time, because Kahel’s black hair was surprisingly good, she spit out praises, although Lena was awkward.

“You have really nice hair.”

Of course, he wasn’t good at talking, so he couldn’t stick to the rhetoric. Unsurprisingly, Kahel’s eyes reflected in the mirror looked somewhat frightening.

‘I’ll just keep my mouth shut.’

Lena avoided Kahel’s gaze, blaming her own stupid lips inside. She finished the grooming by applying a small amount of perfume and trimming his short hair so that it doesn’t stretch out. Now it was the turn to dress.

He went into the dressing room with Lena, and Kahel narrowed his eyes at the prepared clothes. The shirt, coat, and pants were obviously his, but the vest was a little different. It was because it had a colourful addition on his clothes that would never normally be found.

“I haven’t seen this before. Did Arder get new clothes?”

Occasionally, Arder said that Kahel’s clothes were not enough, and Arder took the existing clothes and came to fit new clothes in the same size. But even when he did, he had to pay the bills, and Kahel hasn’t paid the expenses for a recent tailoring of his clothes.

He tilted his head as he thought she was weird and heard Lena muttering from behind her.

“That, I…… I think the clothes are plain, no, they’re definitely good clothes and high-quality materials, but I thought it would be nice to have a little decoration…… With the permission of the butler, I did some embroidery with silver thread…….”

“Yourself?”

“Yes…… If, if you don’t like it, I’ll get another one right away…… !”

Lena, who was in a hurry to make an excuse, looked at Kahel’s hand to see if he would hold it out and say ‘Shut up.’, and she blurred her words.

But Kahel wasn’t scolding Lena. Rather, he was very surprised.

‘Did you do this yourself?’

Along the collar of the front panel of the indigo blue vest, a motif of the Luave family was tightly embroidered. Even if he wasn’t interested in embroidery, he couldn’t be ignorant of how good Lena’s skill was. Thanks to the generous use of silver thread, the vest became more glamorous than before, but it didn’t look frivolous either. Now he seemed to understand the reason for the darkness under Lena’s eyes. In two days, she would have had to stay up almost all night to do it.

“Do you know how to make clothes?”

“Oh, no…… I know a little bit about basic cutting, sewing and embroidering, but I haven’t learned to make whole clothes. If you teach me…… maybe I can…….”

“No, I am not asking you to make clothes. Can you take measurements?”