This Is Official Business
This was official business. Bearing a son to firmly secure the Grand Ducal line of succession and restoring my husband’s lost masculinity. It was the most urgent duty that I, as the current Grand Duchess, had to carry out. At this point, the barracks that reeked of blood and sweat almost seemed preferable….
‘I can’t feel anything! Honestly, it sucked! And it wasn’t even a regular army posting—it was a place where we fought a war every single day! My current life is so comfortable it’s driving me crazy!’
Still, the desire to move my body was there.
“……The head butler is right.”
I nodded at the butler’s suggestion and followed after Veronica. But the girl who had been quietly guiding the way suddenly stopped, spun on her heel, and thrust a small finger straight at me.
“Listen here, Knight Uncle!”
“……Yes? Are you addressing me, my lady?”
When I asked back in bewilderment, Veronica tried her best to look supremely dignified. Unfortunately, her puffed-out cheeks only made her look utterly adorable.
“I will lead the way and escort Knight Karin to the training ground! Uncle, you stay way back there and follow as quietly as you possibly can! Understood?”
She had seemed to warm up to me after sticking so close to Lady Rebecca in the library. Apparently the petty jealousy and lingering grudge from me stealing her beloved father’s attention at yesterday’s dinner still hadn’t completely faded.
It was the cute territorial display of a little noble girl trying to bring me under her control and sort out the pecking order.
‘Even if you want to lead, it’s not like you actually…’
I barely held back a snort of laughter. Playfulness kicked in, so I answered with a perfectly straight face.
“I will keep it in mind, my lady. However, I only arrived at the Grand Ducal residence yesterday, so no one has shown me where the training ground is yet.”
I spread both hands and shrugged.
“Uh…….”
Veronica mulled it over for a moment.
“U-ugh……”
Her face flushed bright red with embarrassment. She hung her head and hugged her rabbit doll so tightly it looked like she was trying to wring it out.
A sharp killing intent suddenly stabbed into my cheek, cold enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck.
“……?”
Karin, who had been standing silently right behind Veronica, was glaring at me through the slit of her helmet with a gaze sharp enough to cut. It was the look one might give a wicked monster tormenting the fragile lord she was sworn to protect. Her hand was even clenched around the hilt of the sword at her waist, ready to draw at any second.
‘Wait, hold on. Why is she acting like this?’
Startled, I raised both hands and took a step back.
‘You literally met Veronica five minutes ago! This is my first time meeting you too! Why are you staring at me like I’m an insect?!’
But Karin’s gaze did not waver. She stepped forward as if to shield Veronica’s back and completely blocked the space between the young lady and me.
I swallowed a helpless laugh at the ridiculous situation.
‘Ah…… I see. Like in those Three Kingdoms games, there’s an innate compatibility system between generals.’
In the original work, The Rose That Blooms to Be Broken, Karin and Veronica were fated master and disciple who would lay down their lives for each other. Even though this was their first meeting, it seemed that destined pull of their souls and their affinity had already been engraved upon each other’s hearts.
Therefore, to Karin’s eyes, I—who had embarrassed her small, adorable lord with a single remark—could only look like the first villain that needed to be eliminated.
‘Yeah…… I lose. How could I possibly defeat fate?’
Receiving the full weight of Karin’s wariness, I let out a deep sigh. In the end I couldn’t utter a single word of protest. I simply trailed far behind the pair and trudged after them toward the training ground.
* * *
Rebecca headed straight for her husband’s office. Because of his sudden journey to the capital, documents awaiting approval had piled up like a mountain. Taking care of the territory’s administrative affairs was a natural duty for the Grand Duchess, yet right now Rebecca’s mind was completely elsewhere.
‘Oh no, what have I done? Pushing such a suspicious book toward Knight Karin like that. The poor maid must have been mortified.’
Rebecca kept picking up and setting down her quill, unable to sit still. Not a single letter on the documents registered in her eyes. Only the thick bundle wrapped in brown paper that the maid had been clutching on the first floor kept floating through her mind.
Unable to endure it any longer, Rebecca quietly rose from her seat, cracked open the office door, and peeked outside—toward the entrance of the enclosed staircase leading to the fourth floor.
“You can’t! This is Her Ladyship’s errand! You are not permitted to open it!”
“We’re in a difficult position as well. Regardless of whose errand it is, the rule is to lightly inspect the contents of anything being brought to the fourth floor. It will only take a moment, so please open the wrapping.”
Just as expected, an argument was unfolding in front of the stairs. The maid who had returned from her errand was desperately clutching the brown bundle to her chest, while the two guard knights stationed at the fourth-floor entrance were blocking her with troubled expressions.
“The c-contents absolutely cannot be inspected! Kill me instead!”
The maid squeezed her eyes shut, her face on the verge of tears as she defended the package. It was only natural. She knew better than anyone what was inside that brown wrapping. The moment the packaging was torn open and its contents revealed in front of the stern knights who guarded the solemn Northern Grand Ducal residence, the maid might very well want to bite her own tongue in shame.
And the reputation of her mistress Rebecca, who had ordered the errand, would clearly plunge straight down the fourth-floor stairs.
‘No!’
Unable to watch the catastrophe unfold, Rebecca clutched her skirt tightly and burst out of the office.
Tap tap tap tap!
At the sight of Rebecca rushing down in a panic, the guard knights jumped back in alarm.
Breathing hard, Rebecca stepped in front of the maid.
“G-good work! I’ll take the books! Thank you, truly, thank you so much!”
She practically snatched the problematic brown bundle from the maid’s arms. Without giving the flustered knights and maid time to offer proper greetings, she whirled around and tried to hurry back up to the fourth-floor office.
But she had been in too much of a rush.
“Oh dear!”
Her skirt hem caught on her shoe heel, and Rebecca’s body pitched forward dramatically.
“My lady! Danger!”
Thud!
The knights reached out in panic, but Rebecca still tumbled onto the stairs with a loud crash.
“Ouch……”
“My lady! Are you all right? You haven’t injured your precious person, have you……!”
The knights who rushed over tried to help her up, completely flustered. But Rebecca lifted her head sharply and pressed the brown bundle she held with both arms firmly against her forehead.
“I-I’m fine! I didn’t get hurt at all! The b-book protected my forehead, so fortunately I’m unharmed! Hahaha!”
With her face burning red, Rebecca rattled off a string of incoherent excuses, refused the knights’ assistance, and bolted back into the office as if fleeing for her life.
Slam!
With the sound of the door closing, only the bewildered knights and maid remained in the corridor.
“……It seems Her Ladyship has obtained some important scholarly texts.”
“So it would appear. To protect the book before her own forehead—her passion for learning is truly remarkable.”
The knights nodded, warmly reframing the Grand Duchess’s bizarre behavior as academic zeal. The maid who had witnessed everything could only swallow a silent scream, her face flushed crimson.
Inside the office.
“Haa, haa……”
Rebecca slid down with her back against the door and breathed roughly for a long time. Her knee that had struck the stairs throbbed faintly, but such pain was meaningless now. Her gaze was fixed solely on the brown paper bundle she cradled so preciously in her arms.
“Finally……”
She swallowed hard, walked to the desk, and sat down. With trembling hands she began carefully tearing open the brown wrapping.
Rustle. Rustle.
The paper came away, revealing three thick hardcover books. Their leather covers bore no titles, yet the contents filling their pages were none other than that legendary banned book currently setting secret salons in the imperial capital ablaze among highborn young ladies and wives.
It was a high-level erotic novel complete with vivid, explicit illustrations.
“Ugh……”
Rebecca felt all the blood in her body rush to her face from the cover alone.
‘To think I would be looking at such an obscene book that I would never have touched in my lifetime…’
An embarrassed groan escaped the lips of the once-refined and graceful Grand Duchess.
‘Your Grace……’
The memory of the previous night weighed heavily on her heart. Her husband, returning from the Wall after a full year. Yet once they entered the bedroom together, his head had hung infinitely low. Recalling the wide, lonely back of Grand Duke Gareth as he sighed in self-loathing, Rebecca’s eyes stung with tears. He blamed his condition entirely on her lack of charm.
Originally she had ordered these books in advance, intending to use them on their long-awaited night together. She had planned to study men’s secret fantasies, stimulating positions, and dazzling techniques through the described illustrations so she could somehow rekindle her husband’s faded spark. It was to be an act of devoted wifely support.
But the delivery had been delayed, last night’s endeavor had ended in miserable failure, and her husband had left for the capital at dawn.
“Still…… I can’t give up.”
Rebecca slapped her own cheeks several times to steel herself. She didn’t know when her husband would return from the capital, but she had to be ready for that day.
This was official business. Bearing a son to solidly secure the Grand Ducal heir and restoring her husband’s lost masculinity. It was the most urgent official duty she had to fulfill as Grand Duchess right now.
“……If it can fulfill Your Grace’s fantasies, what can’t I do?”
With that resolute murmur, Rebecca took a deep breath and turned the first page with trembling fingers.
Flip.
“……!!”
The moment she turned the page, a detailed and utterly explicit illustration covering half the spread stabbed into her eyes. A robust man and a delicate woman, completely naked, entangled in a bizarre, acrobatic position.
“Eek!”
Rebecca hastily covered her eyes with both hands and collapsed onto the desk.
“W-what is this! Oh my goodness, heavens above! How can a human body bend that way! Their waist will snap!”
Her mind went completely white at the incomprehensible human anatomy and the naked description. Clutching her pounding heart, she buried her face in the desk and groaned for a long while.
“What is there even to see in a novel like this…. Why are people so obsessed…… It’s something only beasts would do……”
A powerful wave of reality hit her. Self-loathing rose at the realization that she was staring at such shameful pictures in broad daylight in the middle of the fourth floor of the Grand Ducal residence. The urge to throw the books straight into the fireplace surged up, but Rebecca once again recalled her husband’s face as he hung his head and sighed deeply.
“……Still, just the first page. I’ll only read the text on the very first page. I only need to learn the theory of how to stimulate him.”
Rebecca slightly parted her fingers and peeked through the gap. Cleverly covering the illustration with her palm, she carefully shifted her gaze to the densely written text beside it.
“Ahh, my lady. Your narrow, hot place is burning my magnificent one.” The rough knight’s large hand grasped the lady’s ample breasts…
“Oh my, goodness…… Why is the knight suddenly undoing his belt there……”
At first Rebecca had frowned as she read, but her expression gradually grew strange.
“No, why would the lady leave the balcony window open like that……”
The intervals between her muttered comments grew shorter and shorter. Before she knew it, the hands that had been covering her face had obediently returned to her lap, and the palm that had been hiding the illustration had long since been removed. Rebecca’s clear eyes moved left and right, following the text. The only sound filling the quiet office was the occasional gulp of her swallowing.
Just as she was unknowingly sinking deeper and deeper into the world of the book—
Clang!
“……Hik!”
At the sudden noise from the corridor, Rebecca’s shoulders jumped. It was probably just a maid cleaning who had dropped a vase or teacup, but to the immersed Rebecca it sounded deafening.
“Hoo, hoo…… That startled me.”
Snapping back to her senses, Rebecca hurriedly closed the book. When she checked the page she had reached, her eyes widened.
“Oh my goodness! I’ve already finished the entire first chapter!”
She had only meant to study the theory on the first page. Yet when she came to her senses, she had devoured all fifty pages of the first chapter in one sitting.
Her cheeks burned as if they would burst at the realization that she had been so absorbed in such vulgar, secret stories that she lost all track of time.
“Y-you’ve gone mad, Rebecca! This is no time to be doing this! There’s a mountain of overdue territory documents!”
In a panic, Rebecca shoved all three erotic novels deep into the most secret drawer at the bottom of her desk and locked it with a click. Then, as if nothing had happened, she cleared her throat, pulled out the top tax-approval documents, and gripped her quill.
“Right. Focus. Focus.”
She fixed her eyes on the text and tried to immerse herself in official work.
But.
“………”
The numbers on the territory’s tax ledger kept transforming into the muscular physique of the knight from the novel she had just read.
‘Really……’
Rebecca toyed with the feather of her quill, staring blankly into space.
‘Do men truly…… like situations like that? And physically, is that position even possible……?’
The stimulating afterimages and intense text that had lodged in her mind refused to be erased. The refined Grand Duchess’s head was now completely filled with worries about how she would recreate those seemingly impossible positions when her husband returned.
Bright afternoon sunlight poured through the office windows onto the North, yet both of Rebecca’s cheeks burned far redder than the sun itself.