That’s How I Became a Villainess - Chapter 41

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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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41

Penelope’s emotions had been completely swallowed by Miasma.
Bridget hesitated for a moment, then caught Cedric as he passed and whispered something to him before hurrying after Penelope.
‘You can’t die, Penelope.’
What Bridget wanted was not Penelope’s death.
Being paraded through the Gossip Columns and cast aside by Isaac was only the beginning of the torment Bridget had endured in her past life.
Penelope had done far worse to her.
To think of dying over something like this—what kind of spineless mind did that betray? How could she have acted that way toward Bridget in her past life?
‘Dying over this only means you’re even more contemptible and cowardly than I thought.’
Bridget pursued Penelope.

* * *

Behind Winston Manor lay a low hill.
Beyond that hill stood a small Hunting Lodge, left behind by a previous owner who had once owned the estate.
It appeared to have been used as a place to hunt pheasants and small birds that wandered near the hill.
Inside were a bow that the former owner had used, several broken Arrows, wooden crates, Rope, straw and flint, matches, bottles of salt and pepper covered in dust, and other such things.
Occasionally the manor’s servants would use it as a place to share drinks in secret, but it had gone unmanaged for over a decade and had grown shabby and dilapidated.
Penelope discovered the Hunting Lodge and ran toward it.
She was trembling violently.
She hoped no one would find her. She wanted no one’s attention right now.
‘I have no one to trust. I’m alone……! Completely alone! Even Isaac doesn’t understand me.’
A torrent of thoughts assailed her mind.
‘It’s Bridget’s fault. All of this is Bridget’s fault! She’s the culprit. I know it. Who else could have salvaged those Portraits?’
She crept into the Hunting Lodge, wedged herself between crates, and tore at her hair.
‘Isaac will abandon me. What will become of me then?’
Isaac was not merely a man she loved.
She had not surrendered her title and rights as the former Countess of House of Bellingham merely for love.
What she expected from him was a generous pension that would guarantee her a luxurious old age and the possibility of passing a title on to her child.
Penelope wanted to continue living in the City even in her twilight years.
She wanted to be the mother of a son who bore a title.
‘If Isaac abandons me, could I return to House of Bellingham? But this child—from the moment of birth, it will anchor me. Should I let it be presumed dead? Then Bellingham couldn’t cast me out. How do I hide the birth? And if it’s revealed later that it’s my child, what then?’
Then she imagined herself spending each day in the Bellingham Estate, utterly silenced and cowed.
Penelope had visited there a few days after she married the Earl of Bellingham, not long before.
It was simply the countryside. Farmland as far as the eye could see, countryside upon countryside.
The unpaved dirt roads reeked of animal droppings strewn about carelessly, ruining shoes and dress hems, and the perpetual stench of something drying in the estate’s back courtyard was absolutely foul.
Fresh fish, seafood, desserts crafted by skilled patissiers—all were mere fantasies.
Even there, noble and commoner mingled without distinction.
With so few people, one couldn’t even play cards without resorting to servants, and there was no one who understood fine wine.
When she invited retainers, they were all provincial rustics with no refinement, utterly uncouth.
All they spoke of was pig litters being born on the farm or an abundance of pumpkins.
Even worse, people tracked cow dung on their shoe soles everywhere they went, so the entire manor would reek of it after anyone visited.
Penelope was sick of it all. Even after just a few days, she despised the monotonous routine of that place with every fiber of her being. She felt as though she were growing old alongside the Earl of Bellingham.
Words her father, the Earl of Hudson, had spoken echoed in her ears.
“Bear the child quietly where no one will know, send it out for adoption, and return to Bellingham. Live there as though you were dead.”
Even if she could return to House of Bellingham, there was a problem.
Was she to spend her entire life in a place as dreadful as Bellingham?
‘I refuse!’
Penelope had been born and raised in the City.
She adored the lavish dresses made in the dress shops, the jewelers’ stalls at the beginning of artisans’ street, the pretty, tidy restaurants and tea houses.
‘I’d rather die than go to the Bellingham Estate!’
She never imagined that Isaac, the man she had trusted, would shout at her like that.
It was wretched.
What had become of his sweet promise to divorce Bridget and remarry her?
He had been so delighted when he learned that Bridget had gone to House of Spencer—she could still see the grin spread across his face. It seemed he would never divorce her.
She knew.
The fact that becoming the Viscountess of Winston was slipping through her fingers like foam.
‘Better to die. Death would be preferable to this. My life cannot possibly become more wretched than this.’
Beneath the wretchedness, fury surged upward.
Yes—she would exact her revenge through death.
The image crystallized in her mind: Isaac weeping, cradling her lifeless body alongside that of their child. The thought sent a twisted exhilaration coursing through her veins.
Isaac, remorseful and broken, bewailing his ignorance—how could he not have seen how desperately she was suffering?
Bridget, consumed by guilt, wasting away under the weight of her culpability, convinced that every ruin was her doing alone.
Such visions kindled her resolve.
Penelope spotted the rope lying atop the wooden box and reached for it.
Dust cascaded down, swirling through the air in thick clouds.
“Cough! Cough!”
She was still coughing violently when the door burst open and Bridget appeared.
“Penelope!”
The moment Bridget stepped inside, the miasma’s vapors engulfed her face, and she knitted her brow.
A thing wearing Penelope’s shape, its mouth split in a grotesque rictus, clung to her. Its form was wreathed in billowing miasma.
“Don’t come closer, Bridget!”
“Come out of there.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Come to your senses. You’re not thinking clearly—”
You’re being controlled, Bridget wanted to say, but Penelope would never believe it. Not when she couldn’t see it with her own eyes.
Bridget wove Purification through the roiling miasma, inching steadily forward.
To sever the corruption clinging to Penelope, she would need to touch her.
“Stop! Don’t you dare come any closer!”
Penelope glanced about wildly and seized a blade half-buried beneath the rope.
It was a hunting knife—stained with blood, its surface thick with rust from field-dressing game.
The moment she gripped it and leveled the blade at Bridget, her thoughts fractured.
‘This—all of this is Bridget’s fault, isn’t it?’
Her eyes blazed with sudden malice.
‘Yes! It was Bridget who took everything from me! She must be the one who wrote that gossip column! And that portrait—yes, that too!’
Penelope advanced on Bridget with the blade, step by deliberate step, her eyes wild.
“You’re not yourself, Penelope.”
“It’s your fault! If you’d never come back, everything would have been fine! All of this—it’s because you came back! You should have died there with the Earl of Kensington!”
Penelope lashed out with the blade.
In Bridget’s effort to evade, their positions reversed.
Bridget fought to close the distance, but Penelope, now radiating lethal intent, swung the blade again and again.
She drove Bridget into a corner and abruptly smiled—a twisted, mirthless grin.
“Why should I die? If you’re gone, everything will be right again.”
“Penelope.”
Bridget’s voice was quiet, measured.
“If you kill me, you’ll stand trial for murdering a noblewoman. Your circumstances will only worsen.”
Penelope’s gaze wavered.
But the miasma burrowed deeper into her mind, and reason abandoned her once more.
“Silence! What could you possibly know? I won’t kill you. You’ll die here alone, locked in this place!”
Penelope spun and bolted from the lodge, slamming the door shut behind her.
Bridget lunged to stop her, but the bolt was on the outside—this small storage lodge had never been designed otherwise.
Penelope threaded the bolt home through its rings, trapping Bridget within.
Bridget exhaled slowly.
‘Cedric promised to come back with others shortly. He’ll arrive before anything worse unfolds.’
She took solace in the fact that she had at least prevented Penelope from doing something irreversible.
The exertion had left her drained. She steadied her breathing and sank onto one of the wooden crates.
Then she heard an odd sound from outside.

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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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