The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 3

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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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Episode 3
Such cosmetics and glittering jewels were luxuries she could not afford once a bounty was placed on her head and she became a genuine fugitive.
A sharp nose ridge and distinctly defined features.
Silken white hair that fell like a waterfall.
Eyes redder than rubies.
Skin so translucent and bloodless that it seemed luminously pale—almost ethereal.
‘Doesn’t look particularly healthy.’
Not even compared to how she remembered herself at seventeen.
After a brief moment of reflection in the mirror, Roseline made her way directly to the Dining Hall where the Formal Dinner was underway.
* * *
The servant’s mouth fell open in shock the moment Roseline appeared, forgetting even to lower his head.
“Open the door.”
“Oh, um. Roseline, Miss?”
Roseline’s brow furrowed briefly before she grasped the reason for his reaction and nodded once.
The servant, flustered, hastily bowed and flung the dining hall doors wide.
Tap, tap.
The moment Roseline entered the Dining Hall, every eye at the table snapped toward her.
Their expressions varied slightly, yet all held the same look of surprise.
Indeed, in her black One-Piece Dress and crimson Lipstick, Roseline with her scarlet eyes had an air subtly decadent and sensual.
……
As the others kept their gaze fixed on her, Roseline studied them intently in return.
The House Bellion she remembered had already entered its steep decline five years prior.
Every person before her was already dead in the history she knew.
‘So it hasn’t happened yet here.’
Roseline felt her heart constrict faintly with what she recognized as a weak fondness, so she closed her eyes slowly, then opened them again.
‘I was planning to announce I’d be leaving the estate.’
Thinking it wouldn’t hurt to see their faces a few days longer, she took the empty seat at the round table.
As she sat at the quiet table and reached for her utensils, it was only then that Roseline realized her grandfather, the Duke of House Bellion, was attending the Formal Dinner, and she lifted her head.
“…… You, what on earth is that getup of yours? How could you dress that way at an adult’s dining table…….”
“What getup?”
Roseline had come to this Formal Dinner for two reasons.
First, to keep the word she had given—to prove that the future stepmother who had brazenly ignored her warning truly deserved such foolishness.
Second, to make her declaration that she was leaving this house.
“No one should wear something so utterly vulgar with sleeves so exposed! Haven’t I told you repeatedly? A Noble Daughter must always possess refinement, always…….”
Pff.
Roseline let out a small laugh despite herself, and Lady Carmel’s face stiffened slightly.
“That’s strange.”
She tilted her head a touch.
“……Strange how?”
“I’ve lived seventeen years as a Noble Daughter, yet I’m puzzled why Lady Carmel—born a commoner’s child, fortunate enough to be adopted into a Count’s house, who murdered her predecessor husband and seized the proxy Count’s seat in place of the young lord—should lecture me about being a proper Noble Daughter?”
As Roseline spoke with a tint of amusement in her voice, the table fell into a chilling silence.
It was neither fit conversation for a family meal nor particularly something to be said lightly.
“What……? You, you, how dare you……! No matter how much I dislike you, that’s……! Sob……. Father, Cherti. How much longer must I…….”
Watching Carmel appeal tearfully to the Duke of House Bellion and to Cherti, Roseline’s father, she casually cut into her Steak.
The stout old man opposite fixed her with narrowed eyes.
‘Villainous as ever, isn’t he.’
Roseline thought it dispassionately and tilted her Wine glass with grace.
The old man wore a brilliant formal suit in deep crimson tones, and his mismatched eyes were particularly striking.
With his head shaved clean and tattoos visible on the backs of his hands, he was a man refined in a way that seemed at odds with his years.
And he was the sort who died standing—still standing when death took him.
“You seem rather past the age for emotional appeals, yet your sentimentality is still so vivid.”
Roseline smiled and slowly raised her head to meet the eyes of the old man—the Duke of House Bellion.
She placed a piece of the rare, bloody Steak into her mouth and chewed, then suddenly went still.
Deep furrows formed between Roseline’s brows, and the corners of the Duke’s eyes narrowed subtly.
She smoothed her expression and slowly swallowed the meat, her face suffused with rapture.
“This is exquisite.”
Roseline spoke with an easy smile, her eyes glinting with amusement as she cut a generous piece of Steak and slowly opened her mouth.
“My portion is so remarkably delicious that I’d like to share it—would anyone care to try?”
At Roseline’s sudden gesture, the maids who had been standing silently in the background with small smiles froze in their tracks.
“What do you say? Uncle, Father.”
At Roseline’s call, the eyes of both men turned toward her.
A red-haired man with a robust impression—his hair slicked back like a duke’s, the front of his flamboyant shirt completely unbuttoned.
And in stark contrast to him, a man with black hair and a somber demeanor stood watching her, every button fastened up to his neck.
Both men wore expressions of considerable surprise.
Iggis, the red-haired man, brushed his thumb lightly across his lips and broke into a grin.
“Fine, then. Our niece is asking for something for the first time.”
He rose from his seat as he spoke.
“Roseline! Just how much disrespect are you planning to commit? Offering me the food you were eating yourself—whatever should I say…….”
“Never mind that.”
Iggis waved his hand dismissively at Lady Carmel instead and ambled toward Roseline.
“Ah—”
……
Roseline, about to spear the well-cut steak with an unused fork and feed it to him whole, hesitated at the sight of Iggis leaning forward with his mouth open, his defined abdominal muscles plainly visible.
“Go on.”
“Uncle! If you keep indulging his childishness like this……!”
“What? Now listen here—when did you gain the right to meddle in my affairs? And you’re not even married yet, so what gives you the authority to call me uncle…….”
He let out a contemptuous snort, his displeasure plain to see.
The man who had been intoning with that unpleasant expression suddenly turned his head back to Roseline, his eyes widening in a round, eager expression.
‘His mood shifts with his face like a sail in the wind.’
Roseline, noting the strange sight with curiosity, could no longer feign ignorance of Iggis’s beckoning and placed the cut meat into his mouth.
For the eldest of a ducal house, he was rather light, rough, and crude.
‘He was always like this.’
The man who had abandoned the freedom he so cherished and bowed his head here and there, desperate to keep the crumbling ducal house from falling to ruin till the very end.
Yet House Bellion had collapsed nonetheless.
Roseline watched the expressions flicker across Iggis’s face as he chewed the meat.
Gulp.
At last his throat bobbed with difficulty, and he broke into a wild grin.
“Ho, this is delicious.”
He quickly picked up Roseline’s plate as he spoke.
“It’s so good that Father and our younger brother simply must taste it too.”
Roseline, indifferent to his words, quickly washed away the intense saltiness that lingered in her mouth by gulping down wine straight from her glass.
Wasn’t it said that food too salty becomes revolting instead? Her mouth felt raw and numb, as if something had erupted inside.
“Come now, Cherti. You eat some too.”
Iggis crammed the meat unceremoniously into his younger brother Cherti’s mouth.
“Do not act recklessly, Iggis.”
“It is my heart’s desire, Father.”
“How many desires do you suppose you have…….”
The Duke’s words, spoken with eyes narrowed to sharp slits, trailed off.
Iggis had shoved a fork laden with meat straight into his father’s mouth.
……
The Duke stared at Iggis with the savage, contorted face of a rakshasa, then stopped short and began to chew the meat slowly.
Yet he managed only three or four chews before spitting the meat into his napkin, and he sipped wine in silence, closing his eyes gradually.
Iggis had by now abandoned all pretense of composure and was drinking water straight from the pitcher.
“……Who is this fool courting death.”
The Duke drew a hand across his throat as though restraining the fury that welled up in him, his voice grave and rasping as he slowly opened his eyes again.
Two irises of different colors—one crimson, one gold—turned their gaze precisely toward Roseline.
“Why, Grandfather, it’s me.”
Roseline’s voice was calm and collected, her gaze drifting past Carmel toward the three handmaidens standing behind her, their faces gone deathly pale.
The Duke glanced at the three servants, then set his glass down with a sharp click, his savage expression darkening as he opened his mouth.
“Clear this away.”

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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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