RHRTD 02

Chapter 02

The moment Ines first heard that rumor, her heart sank.

Not because of her husband, but because of Saintess Elise.

‘Elise again.’

Ines and her younger sister had often clashed when they were children.

Strangely enough, they always seemed to want the same things.

Ines hated fighting with her sister, and she also hated getting caught by their parents and being scolded. So she would obediently give her things to her younger sister.

She had never dreamed that one day she would have to give up even her husband…

“It means you won’t be able to act so stiff and proud for much longer.”

Selena prodded Ines’s shoulder with her index finger as she sneered.

Even at such an insulting remark, Ines could not bring herself to respond.

It wasn’t because Selena was her mother-in-law that she held herself back.

It was because of Elise.

Whenever Ines thought about her younger sister, she always felt herself shrinking.

But…

‘No. If anything, this is an opportunity.’

If Ines had been an ordinary woman who loved her husband, she would have been devastated by the prospect of having him taken away by her own sister.

She would probably have spent every waking moment desperately trying to win her husband’s heart back.

But Ines did not want her husband at all.

Rather, she wanted to finalize the divorce as quickly as possible, become a free woman, and leave this tiresome estate behind.

‘For that to happen, it’s much more advantageous if my husband has another woman.’

After all, for the sake of that other woman, he would be much more willing to let Ines go.

If she was lucky, she might even be able to receive a little alimony.

‘I don’t have to worry about anything anymore.’

The fact that her husband’s new woman was her own younger sister did not matter.

Nor did it matter that this younger sister was the same girl who had clashed with her over everything since childhood.

As long as her husband, Zekard Eberhardt, who was only her husband on paper, agreed to the divorce, everything would proceed smoothly.

‘My husband…’

The word sounded strangely unfamiliar, and Ines turned it over in her mind.

She called him her husband, but in truth, Ines had only seen him a handful of times.

It was only natural.

Their marriage had been brought about unexpectedly through a combination of coincidence and misfortune.

Moreover, immediately after their wedding five years ago, Zekard had left for the battlefield and had never returned since.

What did he look like again?

Ines tried to picture the face of her ‘husband,’ whom she would see for the first time in five years.

Black hair and blue eyes.

Delicate, beautiful features contrasted by a masculine jawline.

The last time she had seen him, Zekard Eberhardt had been only nineteen years old.

He had been astonishingly handsome, but he had still retained the youthful air of a boy who had not quite outgrown his childhood.

Had he changed much now?

He was twenty-four now, so surely he would look noticeably different from back then.

Though Ines found it difficult to imagine exactly how.

‘I hope I won’t fail to recognize him.’

No matter how much their marriage was merely in name, she was still his lawful wife.

If she couldn’t even recognize her own husband’s face, she would have no excuse for being called a wicked wife.

Of course, did any of that even matter anymore?

Ines gave a bitter smile and pulled herself out of her thoughts.

‘Enough. I shouldn’t think about him anymore.’

He was someone who would soon become a complete stranger to her anyway.

It would be far more productive to think about her own future.

‘Divorce isn’t the end of everything. I’ll need money if I’m going to leave and support myself.’

Clearing her mind completely of everything else, Ines began thinking about her plans for the future.

Her thoughts of her husband had already disappeared entirely.

“Hey, you there! Can’t you move any faster?”

People bustled about inside the banquet hall, which had been lit up for the first time in a while.

“Don’t move so slowly! Do you think we have plenty of time?”

The person directing all of this activity was none other than Ines’s mother-in-law and the former Duchess, Selena.

There was only one reason the servants were moving so frantically.

They were preparing a banquet to welcome the return of the head of the household, Duke Zekard Eberhardt.

Ordinarily, it should have been Ines, the current duke’s wife, who was responsible for this.

However, she currently had no authority whatsoever within this household.

‘Because my husband had to leave for war immediately after we got married.’

Of course, even if he had had the time, it was questionable whether he would have handed any authority over to his ‘fake’ wife.

In any case, although the treatment was insulting, Ines did not particularly care.

She had never been interested in wielding great authority in the first place, and after five years, she had already grown accustomed to this sort of treatment.

“You there!”

Just then, Selena suddenly glared sharply at Ines and shouted.

“Why are you just standing there watching?”

All the servants immediately fell silent.

In the silence, so complete that not even a breath could be heard, Selena approached Ines.

Click. Click.

The sound of her heels echoed loudly through the hall.

“…I was waiting.”

When Selena finally stopped in front of her, Ines calmly lowered her head before answering.

Selena was the former Duchess and the second wife of the late Duke, making her Zekard’s stepmother.

For various complicated reasons, she had disliked Ines intensely from the very moment Ines first arrived here.

Originally, Zekard had had another fiancée.

It was a match personally chosen by Selena, a woman who suited her tastes perfectly.

But one day, he abruptly broke off his engagement and brought Ines from the capital to marry her.

‘If I hadn’t existed, she would have been able to control this castle however she pleased. To the former Duchess, my existence must have been like a bolt from the blue.’

Perhaps that was why Selena had been hostile toward Ines from the very first moment they met.

As if that weren’t enough, Selena seemed determined to drive Ines out altogether, spreading malicious rumors about her throughout Eberhardt Castle and even throughout the territory.

Ines, who knew little about this place and could not act recklessly as a contractual wife, had no choice but to suffer helplessly under it all.

“How pathetic. Everyone here is working as hard as they can to welcome your husband. Yet you say you’re simply ‘waiting’ without doing any work? How can you say something like that so shamelessly? You really have no shame.”

Ines knew it was nothing more than an unreasonable attempt to find fault with her, but she had no reason to respond.

She had no authority as Duchess in the first place.

Even if she stayed here, she could neither give orders to the servants nor voice her opinions.

‘If I had moved around and tried to help, she would have found fault with that too.’

For the past five years, Selena had found fault with Ines in every possible way.

Sometimes it was something as trivial as the clothes Ines wore that day.

Other times, it was something as significant as major household events like this one.

It was obvious that Selena wanted to slowly suffocate Ines simply because she had ruined her plans.

Of course, no matter how things stood, Ines was still legally married to the duke.

Even so, there was a reason Selena could behave this way.

‘She realized that he and I aren’t actually close.’

Their marriage had been hastily arranged for the sake of succession, so it was not difficult to guess that Ines and her husband were not particularly close.

The real problem came afterward.

Throughout the past five years, the duke had never once sent a letter to Ines.

Ines herself had never expected to receive personal letters from him.

However, his complete lack of interest in her existence made it easy for others to interpret his behavior as a sign that the duke did not respect his wife.

As a result, an atmosphere of disregard toward Ines had gradually taken root within the House of Eberhardt.

“I’ve always known that you don’t think much. And I know that, being so ‘noble,’ you dislike doing things like this. But how can you say it so openly? Do you think everyone here is a joke?”

Selena was about to unleash another barrage of insults, as she always did.

That was when—

“Th-There’s been a disaster!”

A servant suddenly burst into the banquet hall and shouted.

At the unexpected cry, everyone’s attention immediately turned toward him.

“What has happened that you’re making such a commotion?”

The steward, who had been assisting Selena with the preparations, stepped forward and asked.

His expression was stern, as though he intended to punish the servant for daring to cause a disturbance here.

But at the servant’s next words, even the steward involuntarily raised his voice.

“His Grace, the Duke, has arrived!”

“What?”

For a moment, everyone in the banquet hall held their breath.