That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 27

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 27

Bridget came to understand all of this after meeting Milea at the Convent.
Milea, unable to bear watching Bridget crumble under regret and self-recrimination, told her that she had merely been made a scapegoat—nothing more.
“Don’t turn your blade inward. Curse and resent those who used you instead. You did nothing wrong. You were simply unlucky.”
At the time, Bridget hadn’t understood Milea’s words.
Why would people she’d never met choose her as their sacrifice?
Barely in her right mind, she pressed Milea for answers despite her evasions and silences.
Milea was as broken as Bridget then, and both of them were trapped—neither would ever leave the Convent alive.
Bridget was the perfect confidante: there was no risk of secrets escaping.
Perhaps Milea, too, simply needed to unburden herself to someone, just once.
It was then that Bridget heard the name Kensington.
Secrets about him that the world did not yet know—secrets that would someday become known.
“Lord Linchester won’t let the death of Earl Kensington pass unexamined.”
“Lord Linchester…?”
Milea found it strange that Bridget would mention Linchester’s name so suddenly—the man who, by now, was living in complete hiding.
How did Bridget know of him? What made her speak of him this way?
“The Earl was smuggling military supplies abroad to raise slush funds for Lord Linchester.”
“…How did you learn of that? He would have kept such a thing strictly confidential.”
Rather than concoct a false explanation, Bridget offered a way to verify her claim.
“After His Highness struck the Kensington estate, investigate everyone who came and went from there. The ones who moved the bodies, who cleaned up the belongings—or the thieves who may have hidden themselves in what had become a cursed house.”
……
“The Earl must have kept a Secret Ledger, and Lord Linchester would have sought to obtain it.”
“Even if what you say is true, days have passed now. If the ledger existed, it would have been removed long ago.”
“Order the Military Inspectorate to investigate the military supplies. Have them trace where the iron ore for weapons manufacturing was sent. That should suffice.”
Bridget remembered every word that Milea had spoken in her indignation.
“Had we only known that the Earl was engaged in corruption, there were countless ways to uncover evidence. We could have found and questioned everyone who frequented the Kensington estate, or simply moved the Inspectorate. We could have even seized and interrogated his trade company’s employees—any of it would have yielded a thread to pull. There were so many ways.”
Julian had never harbored political ambitions, and that remained true even after he became king.
Julian, who had expended too much of his power seizing the throne and then preventing war with the foreign kingdoms that had supported the previous reign, knew well that his remaining lifespan was short.
Unlike his predecessors, he cared nothing for how his name would be recorded in history, nor for how reviled he would become in the eyes of the masses.
And so Julian had chosen to become a puppet until the day he died.
Countless corruptions flourished beneath a tyrant king who was powerless.
Milea, though she was only a lady’s maid, could not stop it all by herself, and Julian’s faction—its core already rotted through—had no strength to act.
It was a royal power maintained by Julian’s force alone.
Both in his past life and now.
Bridget meant to change that.
She would grasp at what little life remained to Julian, even as he had abandoned it and squandered his days.
At the same time, she meant to stop Lord Linchester—who was gnawing at Julian’s flesh bit by bit, beneath the surface of things.
“Why are you telling me this? Do you have some purpose?”
Milea asked cautiously, and Bridget answered with honesty.
“No one knows that His Highness saved me. They will only think him a tyrant who slaughters nobles on a whim.”
This was true. Already, in the Noble Assembly, voices were rising that something must be done about Julian in light of the Earl’s death—they couldn’t simply allow things to continue as they were.
But before Julian’s power, such debate was nothing but empty theorizing on paper. It always had been.
So neither Julian nor Milea gave it much thought.
They knew well enough that no one could stop Julian.
But that Bridget would care—that was unexpected.
“Public opinion must be reversed. His Highness isn’t a murderer of noblemen—he is a righteous king who executed a traitor who sold military power to foreign lands.”
“That is…not the truth, Bridget.”
“The motivation matters little if the outcome is the same. History judges by results.”
“But to claim he executed the Earl, when innocent servants died as well—”
“They were complicit.”
“Are you defaming the servants to push your narrative?”
Bridget shook her head.
“A maid in that house gave me the Sleeping Draught. The servants who kidnapped me were the Earl’s people. They knew what he was doing. I am not the only victim.”
“A revolting affair.”
Milea’s face twisted in disgust.
“If the servants helped with such filthy work in secret, it means they were well compensated. Would such people have done nothing but aid the Earl’s depravities?”
“Enough. Please.”
Milea covered her mouth with a wave of her hand, as though she might be sick if she heard another word.
She tapped her chest twice to settle herself, then asked quietly.
“How does Bridget know all of this?”
“Information matters less for its source than for its truth, and who wields it.”
Milea’s eyes narrowed.
“You do realize how suspicious that sounds, don’t you?”
“If I can help the person who saved my life, I don’t mind what others think of me.”
Bridget lifted her clear blue gaze and looked directly at Milea.
“If I seem suspicious to you, then investigate me. Watch me. But if you’re going to do it, I’m asking you to do it thoroughly — from the beginning to the end, without leaving a single stone unturned.”
There was something in Bridget’s eyes — a desperate earnestness that left Milea unsettled.
‘She’s actually asking to be investigated. Does she carry some injustice she can’t bear alone?’
If that weren’t the case, how could she speak so readily of laying herself bare for inspection?
Looking back at everything that had happened, Bridget’s life seemed to have been shaped by tragic circumstance.
And yet there seemed to be still more — greater troubles beneath the surface.
“These words you speak to me……I’m only a maid. There’s so little I can do.”
Milea drew a line in the sand.
But Bridget knew she would act nonetheless.

* * *

A few days later, as soon as the scabs on her lips fell away, Bridget left the Royal Palace as she had promised.
She wore an ordinary dress purchased through servants and rode in a hired carriage.
It was necessary to conceal that she had been staying at the palace.
The moment the carriage carrying Bridget disappeared from view, Milea summoned a trusted servant of her own and issued an order.
“Tell Minister Douglas Langston quietly that I wish to meet with him.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And have Bridget Winston investigated. Everything — nothing overlooked.”
Afterward, Milea made her way to Julian’s chambers.
Julian was awake. He had not surrendered himself to sleep, drink, or despair.
Though he surely knew someone had entered, he sat motionless on the sofa, absorbed in thought, like a figure in a painting.
Without knowing that his core was rotting away, his stillness might have seemed almost graceful.
Seeing him appear so composed today only deepened the ache in Milea’s chest.
It pained her that this young man, not much older than her own son Eric, was bearing his suffering alone and slowly dying under its weight.
Had he not been the Illegitimate Child of the Previous King — had he not been born with the Shadow Curse — he might have lived as an ordinary man in his twenties, enjoying parties with friends and courting young women his age.
Instead, he had been dealt a hand no youth should ever have to play.

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