RBSP 4

Chapter 4

The Society’s Punching Bag, I’m Retiring!

I could feel the Marchioness beside me taking a subtle step back. With a single gesture of her hand, she smoothly dispersed the other noble ladies who had been staring at us as if we were lions in a zoo.

Hair swept up flawlessly without a single strand out of place. Buttons fastened tightly all the way up to his collar. Clothes so crisp they looked freshly ironed just moments ago.

He possessed the absolute textbook appearance of a proper gentleman, yet the gaze he directed down at me was entirely askew.

Granted, this engagement might not have been something he ever desired. But I hadn’t desired it either.

Honestly, it would have been vastly easier if I had just searched for a marriage partner during the social season instead. Had I done so, I would have married long ago and left this dreadful high society behind.

The obstacle in my life was none other than this man, Karlroy Windsor, yet he stared at me with a fiery gaze as though I were some immense hindrance in his way.

“May I help you with something?”

It was only natural that my words came out dripping with attitude. I could feel the surrounding crowd stirring. Though they kept their distance from us, everyone’s heads were turned in our direction as if their ears were practically glued to our conversation.

Karl let out a snort at my question.

“May you help me? That is precisely the question I wish to ask you, My Lady.”

Karlroy Windsor maintained an immaculate appearance worthy of being called the pinnacle of gentlemanly conduct. However, that mouth of his was a pure ordeal every single time it opened. He wasn’t particularly talkative, but even for someone like me who had been hardened into society’s punching bag, listening to him speak was exhausting.

“I wonder.”

However, that was back when I still gave a damn about reading his mood. Now, I had no reason whatsoever to walk on eggshells around Karl or indulge his prickliness. After all, the moment the mines collapsed in the flood, this engagement was going to be completely off anyway.

“I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

“My Lady!”

His voice rose. Even as the dance music continued to play, it felt as though only our voices echoed through the room. Everyone was holding their breath, shamelessly eavesdropping on our conversation. Even if I intended to break off the engagement with him, I loathed this kind of privacy invasion.

“This is hardly a suitable location for a conversation.”

Only after hearing my words did Karl seem to realize that everyone around us was fixated on the two of us. Hesitating for a brief moment, he soon extended a hand with formal politeness.

“Then this way.”

What is this, a show? Acting like a gentleman all of a sudden.

Even though it annoyed me, I quietly took his hand. Getting out of this open space was the immediate priority.

The place he led me to, holding my hand, was none other than the terrace.

The terrace. I had to fight back the urge to burst out laughing. If I actually laughed here, it was painfully obvious what kind of scandal would grace tomorrow’s front pages.

Stepping into the terrace—high society’s secret haven for lovers—alongside Karl. Truly, if you live long enough, you see everything.

The second Karl set foot inside the terrace, he dropped my hand as if flinging it away. I ostentatiously brushed off my hand as well, making my displeasure abundantly clear. Karl’s expression shifted subtly.

Following closely behind, the Marchioness pulled the heavy terrace curtains tightly shut and volunteered to stand guard. Out on the balcony, there was no telling who might try something disgraceful. Thanks to the Marchioness’s noble sacrifice, Karl and I were able to carry on our conversation.

“You may speak now.”

I summoned every ounce of my patience.

Since our engagement was destined for annulment, there was no real need to respect him, but realistically, a gap in social status existed between us.

The Windsor family maintained marital ties even with the royal bloodline. To begin with, his mother was a former royal princess. In comparison, the Gloucester family was treated as nothing more than wealthy upstarts. While not a family to be looked down upon anywhere, we certainly weren’t in a position to put on grand airs either.

I masked my discontent behind a minimum layer of politeness.

“What are you thinking?”

“I have been telling you that I haven’t understood a word you’ve said from the start. When speaking, one ought to state their intentions clearly for communication to work.”

“Ha. What on earth are you so dissatisfied with? I had no idea you harbored so many complaints against me.”

Karl asked irritably. What am I dissatisfied with? You had no idea I had complaints? Baffled, I tossed the question right back at him.

“Have you not harbored plenty of complaints against me as well, Karl?”

“S-So what of it?”

“Are you saying it’s unacceptable for me to have complaints against you, but perfectly fine for you to have complaints against me?”

“That is a ridiculous leap in logic.”

The tips of Karl’s ears flushed bright red.

Until now, we had never engaged in long conversations, nor had I ever offered a single word of rebuttal in any exchange with him.

Since I assumed he was the person I would be stuck living with for the rest of my life after marriage, I simply refrained from drawing out our talks. If I had known things would turn out like this, I wouldn’t have held back—I would have lived freely and spoken my mind.

“Why did you not ask me to dance today?”

Wow. Isn’t this question… a bit pathetic?

My lips twitched. I couldn’t decide whether to scoff or start cursing him out.

“Is that important?”

“You have done so every single time we attended the same gathering.”

“Ah.”

Having harshly rejected me every time I invited him to dance, now he was picking a fight because I didn’t ask. I reached up and ruffled my hair in frustration. It was hair I had spent all morning meticulously styling, but if I didn’t do something with my hands, I felt like I might actually punch this man in the face.

“Did you perhaps place a bet on it as well, Karl?”

“What?”

“I hear betting is all the rage in the salons. The hot topic this year is supposedly: ‘For what reason will the Junior Duke of Windsor reject Lady Gloucester’s dance invitation this time?'”

His face betrayed that he had no idea I knew. Utterly shameless.

“Since you are an involved party, were you unable to place a wager? Or did you participate in match-fixing of some sort?”

“My Lady! How dare you utter such words…!”

“Then how dare you simply stand by and watch while people gossip and turn the two of us into a tavern wager?”

At my icy question, Karl’s mouth snapped shut. He wouldn’t have anything to say even if he had a hundred mouths. Karlroy Windsor had never once shown an ounce of care for whatever vile words were hurled at me in high society.

“I do not wish to dance with you.”

I enunciated clearly, not missing a single syllable. Karl’s expression went completely blank.

“And I am thoroughly sick and tired of high society gossiping about our marriage.”

“Why all of a sudden…”

“You don’t want to marry me either, Karl.”

The left corner of my lips curled up into a crooked smile. Karl merely gaped, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. As if he had never imagined I would go so far as to say this out loud. It was proof positive that he, too, had viewed me as nothing more than a pushover.

Rage welled up inside me. What on earth was this man that I had endured all this time for him?

“Is this because of the article regarding the Baron of Kent’s daughter?”

After a moment, Karl regained his calm voice. Though the words spilling from his mouth sent my blood pressure soaring into the stratosphere, he remained composed regardless.

“No. Whether you engage in a secret affair with the Baron of Kent’s daughter or take a stroll with the Baron of Pudge’s daughter, I couldn’t care less about those trivial articles.”

“Does that mean you don’t care even if I see another woman?”

“Rather than that, it’s simply because I know you didn’t meet those young ladies with genuine intentions.”

“You speak as though you know me well.”

Karl sneered. The moment he looked down at me with that disdainful gaze, it felt like being slapped back into reality.

I trusted him on that front. At the very least, there was no way he was genuinely seeing another woman during our engagement.

Karl viewed his marriage to me as a duty. That was why he always felt uncomfortable around me. Duty is always heavy and burdensome, after all. Yet, having been raised as the Junior Duke of Windsor, he was not a man to ever abandon his duty.

To him, I was precisely that: a heavy, tiresome, headache-inducing duty he wanted to abandon, yet couldn’t, so he took out his frustration by picking at me instead.

“Indeed. What could I possibly know about you?”

That was the absolute extent of what I knew. What Karl liked, what colors he preferred… I knew none of it. Nor did I care to know.

To me, Karl was a duty as well. There was no way I genuinely liked him out of the goodness of my heart either. We were merely bound by a promise between our families—a relationship meant to persist for the sake of an alliance.

Even if there was a disparity in scale between our houses, Karl and I were in the exact same boat. So why did he act as though he was the sole victim? Wearing an expression like that.

“Neither of us knows a thing about the other. You were never curious, and as for me… it was the same. I never particularly cared to know.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“However, Karlroy Windsor. There is just one thing I am curious about regarding you.”

I locked eyes directly with him. Karl’s ruby eyes—brighter than actual gems—came fully into view. I could tell his eyes were wavering, a telltale sign I had learned over our years of engagement.

It was laughable. How long had it been since we last made eye contact and talked like this? Actually, there was no “how long” about it. This was the very first time.

“Do you even know my name?”

In an instant, Karl’s face shifted as if he had been struck square in the face. I had fully expected it, so the shock on my end wasn’t particularly great.

“My name is Gloria Gloucester. I thought… you ought to write my name properly later on.”

I decided to keep to myself the fact that seeing the annulment letter in my dream—with no name on it, just ‘Lady Gloucester’ lazily written—had been a truly staggering shock.