Isn’t Being A Wicked Woman Much Better? - Chapter 5

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 5
Deborah Dug Up the Rose Garden With a Shovel?
“She didn’t just touch any garden—she went into my wife’s garden and did that?! Where is Deborah right now?!”
Duke Simour’s voice thundered through the halls.
How dare she lay a finger on that garden. She must have been confined to her quarters and, unable to contain herself, vented her frustrations on an innocent place.
‘What a pathetic creature.’
When would she ever learn to behave like a proper person?
My blood pressure spiked, and the back of my neck grew taut with tension. I thought I’d already seen the depths of my daughter’s depravity, but apparently there were basements beneath the basement.
“I asked where she is!”
“She is currently in the Rose Garden, sir. I’m told only a small portion of it has been damaged, so if you could just calm yourself a little….”
“Get out of my way!”
The Duke brushed past his fidgeting Aide with savage impatience and made straight for the garden his wife had cultivated.
The Rose Garden, protected by preservation magic, sat directly adjacent to his Office. Yet he had only ever peered through the windows, rarely venturing inside. Stepping into that space would only resurrect memories of his wife’s absence, and he couldn’t bring himself to cross that threshold.
Under normal circumstances, he would have hesitated before entering the garden, but the Duke, consumed with fury from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, had no leisure to dwell on such sentiments.
He strode rapidly toward Deborah, who stood in the center of the garden, his breathing heavy with indignation.
“You!”
“You’ve come?”
Deborah spoke as though she had been waiting for him. The Duke was about to unleash his wrath when he found himself faltering. Her long hair was loosely bound and draped over one shoulder, and in this moment, his daughter bore an uncanny resemblance to his wife.
That alone was not all. Deborah happened to be wearing a white rose corsage as a hair ornament—the very kind his wife had often adorned young Deborah with.
He had expected her to be dripping with jewels as always. The sight of his daughter, which stirred both cherished memories and a hazy paternal affection, struck the Duke with a sudden cognitive dissonance and confusion.
“…W-what in the world are you doing here?!”
The Duke, barely regaining his composure, spoke with a stern voice. Yet the menacing intensity of his initial fury had noticeably diminished.
“I was taking a stroll through this place and admiring the roses. They’re a variety one cannot see in winter, after all.”
Deborah met his gaze directly with bold composure, her fingers gently caressing a rose tinged with pink—just as his wife would have done.
‘Could it be that she anticipated my anger and deliberately mimicked her mother’s manner?’
How cunning of her.
The Duke’s lips twisted into a cold sneer, his thin mouth curling with disdain.
“What wind blew in to make you admire flowers? It’s unlike you, who has been obsessed with jewels to the point of tedium.”
“…What exactly is the difference between diamonds and these flowers?”
At Deborah’s retort, Duke Simour’s brow furrowed.
“What do you mean by that?”
“These roses have no fragrance, they never wilt, they’re never eaten by insects, and diamonds never change eternally with the passage of time. I thought there was hardly any difference between them.”
Duke Simour found himself caught off guard by his daughter’s words, studying her with newfound interest.
Deborah was right—the roses in this garden and diamonds were, in terms of their properties alone, utterly indistinguishable. Even in their colorlessness and odorlessness.
Yet his pride would not permit him to concede to Deborah’s logic in this moment.
“Mere luxury goods like jewels are no different from the flowers your mother cultivated? Mind your tongue.”
The Duke’s voice turned glacial as he delivered his rebuke.
“What Mother cultivated was not like this.”
Deborah, still touching the roses, lowered her long lashes, which held a violet hue.
“What?”
“Flowers are beautiful precisely because they wither when winter comes, yet bloom magnificently when warm seasons return, are they not?”
“You refuse to acknowledge your wrongdoing and instead spout nothing but sophistry. What a pathetic creature.”
Duke Simour deliberately hardened his expression further. She was attempting to gloss over the matter with plausible words, but he would not be so easily deceived.
‘Surprisingly, she employed some wit, though….’
The act of desecrating his late wife’s garden with a shovel was something he could never simply overlook.
“It is not sophistry, sir.”
Debora suddenly withdrew something from the pocket of her shawl.
“These are words my mother wrote with her own hand. Please verify them.”
Duke Simour’s eyes widened considerably upon seeing the pale purple letter that Debora held. If his eyes did not deceive him, this was the very stationery his late wife had always used. Even the border pattern with its butterfly ornaments was identical.
“It is a letter written by Mother.”
Duke Simour accepted the letter his daughter offered with trembling hands.
Within the carefully preserved letter lay handwriting he had long yearned to see.
“Where on earth did you…?”
His throat tightened, and he could not complete his sentence properly.
“I found it here.”
As Duke Simour gazed upon the excavated rose bushes, he began to urgently scan the letter. Reading Marion’s letter—one whose very existence he had never known—he felt himself transported to the distant past.
* * *
I released the breath I had been holding so tightly, exhaling slowly.
Duke Simour, whose cold expression had been so cutting, softened the ferocity in his eyes and withdrew his murderous aura the moment he saw his late wife’s letter.
‘I nearly wept from fear.’
What kind of terrifying father existed in such a form?
It was fortunate that Debora possessed such natural courage; had I still been my former self, my legs would have given way long ago from sheer terror.
‘I had to risk my life merely to deliver a single letter to Father.’
What a complete scoundrel he must have been….
While inwardly lamenting this, I quietly retreated backward, taking advantage of the Duke’s moment of reverie.
“I shall take my leave now.”
He was so absorbed in the Duchess’s letter that he barely acknowledged my farewell. I quickly slipped out of the Rose Garden, pressing a hand to my rapidly beating heart.
‘Thank goodness I found the letter.’
The reason I had risked danger and wielded a shovel in the Duke’s beloved Rose Garden was to retrieve the Duchess’s letter buried beneath the rose bushes.
Originally, in the novel, the heroine—kidnapped by the sadistic twins—had discovered it by chance beneath the bushes beside the Glass Greenhouse in the center of the Rose Garden.
The novel described it quite vividly.
“Miya, why do you attempt to flee? If you remain by my side, this beautiful garden shall be yours as well.”
Rozard dragged the heroine forcibly into the Rose Garden, which was as much a symbol of the Duchess as anything could be.
“Please, do not do this, Lord Rozard.”
“Why would you throw yourself upon sharp thorns when you could possess these eternal, jewel-like roses? Are you foolish, or are you deliberately provoking me?”
As Rozard tormented the heroine for her refusal to obey him, he shoved her roughly through the rose bushes without regard for whether the thorns tore her skin…—and there, among the thorns, a box corner protruding from the earth caught against her back, alerting her to something buried beneath.
That evening, Miya—claiming she wished to walk through the garden alone—desperately dug at the earth, grasping at even the faintest hope. She reasoned that such a mysterious garden must surely conceal something of importance.
The heroine eventually discovered a box containing numerous letters the Duchess had written to Duke Simour during her lifetime.
“Duke Simour. I shall give you the letters left behind by the Duchess if you will release me from this place.”
Thus, Miya negotiated with Duke Simour—a man who had loved his wife dearly—using the Duchess’s letters as her bargaining chip, and managed to escape the grasp of the sadistic twins.
‘It’s an important item for the story’s progression, but my nose is completely out of joint right now….’
Instead of intercepting the S-rank item, I made a vow to help prevent the heroine from being kidnapped later, and I strode boldly into the Rose Garden with a shovel in hand.
‘I was surprised the Rose Garden was bigger than I expected.’
But since Rozard had been slamming against the Glass Greenhouse wall and knocked Miya over the bushes as she tried to escape…, I knew the exact coordinates where the letter was buried. Besides, if something had been buried, there would surely be traces left behind.
So for the past few days, I’d been rummaging through the rose bushes near the Glass Greenhouse and examining the ground.
‘I got pricked by thorns relentlessly, but it was worth it.’
I discovered an unnaturally bare patch of earth between the rose bushes, dug it up, and was able to hold the box from the novel in my hands!
‘Everything’s fine, but there’s one part I can’t understand….’
In the novel, Miya had only traded a letter with the Duke. Yet inside the box I’d unearthed, there wasn’t just the Duchess’s letter—there was also a diary.
Based on the handwriting, it was undoubtedly written by the same person, so why did Miya only trade a bundle of letters with the Duke?
‘I don’t know the reason, but it’s not a bad situation for me.’
Thanks to the contents written at the beginning of the Duchess’s diary, I learned that she frequently pinned white rose corsages on young Debora.
‘Besides that, there might be other useful information.’
As for the rest—hairstyle and clothing—I mimicked them similarly by looking at the Duke’s portrait of his wife. The reason the cold-natured Duke had tolerated Debora’s reckless behavior all this time was because this face resembled the Duchess so closely it seemed like a carbon copy.
‘It’s a good setting, so I should use it.’
Of course, since it’s such an obvious method, using it too frequently could backfire.
‘It seems to have worked this time.’
After escaping the labyrinthine Rose Garden, I encountered the Duke’s Aide who had been waiting nearby.
“My lady, was there anything amiss?”
“Nothing in particular. Rather, I have a request for you.”
“Please speak, my lady.”
At my subsequent request, the Aide’s thick brows twitched. He was probably thinking it was an unexpected request.
“It’s nothing important, so don’t mention it to Father.”
Though it wouldn’t matter if you did.
Leaving the suspicious-looking Aide behind, I returned to the Annex Building.
* * *
Duke Simour stroked his chin as he gazed at his wife’s letter.
‘So Debora quoted this passage.’
The Duke, worn down by arduous duties, was taking a brief respite while perusing the letter his wife had written.
He had read this letter his daughter had suddenly handed him hundreds of times over the past two days. It felt as though he had reunited with his wife.
The letter was written in the form of casual conversation, and thanks to the vocabulary and particles she favored, he felt the illusion of hearing her voice in his ears.
As he read the phrases in the letter as if engraving them into his eyes, he cast his gaze toward the garden.
The entrance to the garden, which had been filled with roses in full bloom, had reverted to black soil as the preservation magic was lifted.
From now on, he intended to gaze upon flowers that bloomed and withered with the changing seasons. The Rose Garden, which had never experienced seasons—that artificial ornament—didn’t seem to be what his wife had wanted.
‘If I hadn’t cast magic on the garden, I would have discovered this letter long ago while clearing away the flowers and leveling the ground.’
A sigh escaped unbidden at his own pathetic nature. He rubbed his eyes and continued reading the letter.
Each time this passage appeared, he felt a pang of regret and unconsciously brought his pipe to his lips.
Marien typically wrote letters in proper form, containing only the necessary matters. Letters written so freely, following the stream of consciousness like this, were something he had only exchanged briefly during their courtship days.
‘I read through it too quickly.’
I should have savored it more slowly.
Deeming it a childish notion, Duke Simour returned the letter to the drawer and resumed his work with the cold expression he habitually wore.
Winter had already begun to shroud the world in darkness beyond the windows. Despite the late hour, documents awaiting his signature remained piled high like mountains. He rang the bell and commanded his attendant to bring tea.
“Enter.”
At the knock, Duke Simour responded curtly.
‘Hmm?’
He had expected his attendant with the tea, yet Deborah appeared instead, accompanied by the Aide.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————