Deborah was digging at the rose garden?
"She did not just do it at a normal garden, but at my wife's rose garden! Where is Deborah right now?!"
The Duke of Seymour shouted.
How dare her touch that garden.
He was so angry that he didn't even care about how he was acting.
‘Stupid child.'
Just when is she ever going to act like a normal person?
His blood pressure went up and his neck became stiff. He thought he had already seen the bottommost of his daughter, he didn't know there was still a basement.
(T/N: He thought he already saw her worst, turns out there's still more.)
"Didn't I ask you where she is?"
"She's in the rose garden right now. She only damaged a small part of the garden, so please calm down a little……"
"Get out of the way!"
The duke, who got impatient with his aide, immediately stepped towards his wife's garden.
The rose garden, which is under a conservation spell, is right next to his office.
But he stopped before he could enter the garden.
He was unable to move his feet because he thought he would only remember his wife's absence if he went in.
He normally cannot bring himself to enter the garden, but the duke, who was overcome with anger, could not let such thoughts stop him.
He strode furiously towards Deborah, who stood in the middle of the garden.
"You!"
"You've come?"
Deborah asked as if she was waiting for him.
Then, without realizing it, the enraged duke faltered his steps.
Deborah's long hair was tied loosely and stretched on one shoulder. His daughter looked strikingly similar to his late wife.
It wasn't just that.
Of all things, Deborah just had to wear a white rose corsage as her headdress.
His wife often used white roses to make a hair ornament for Deborah when she was still young.
He knows that the person standing before him is not his wife, yet the duke had a momentary cognitive dissonance as the current image of his daughter stimulated blurred memories of his wife.
"…Wh-What the hell are you doing here?!"
The duke, who finally managed to pull himself together, tried to sound stern.
But his initial ferocity had been slightly subdued.
"I was taking a walk here to see the roses. It's a type of flower that is hard to see during winter."
Deborah fearlessly met his gaze with her own rose red eyes that are similar to his wife's.
‘She expected me to get angry, so she deliberately copied her mother's image?'
How evil.
The duke's mouth formed a cold sneer.
"What the hell are you up to? It's unlike you, who indulge in jewelry, to be fed up with it."
"…Is there a difference between these flowers and diamonds?"
Deborah's retort made him narrow his forehead.
"What do you mean?"
"I thought that these roses, which have no scent, do not wither, and are never targeted by bugs, are no different from diamonds that never change.
The Duke of Seymour looked at his daughter with surprise.
As Deborah said, there is no difference between diamonds and the roses in this garden based on attributes alone. They are both even odorless.
However, his pride in this situation did not allow him to accept Deborah's logic.
"Your mother's flowers are different from a jewel, a luxury item. Watch your words."
The duke shot back in a cold voice.
"This isn't what she used to raise."
Deborah, who was fiddling some roses, lowered her long, purple eyelashes.
"What?"
"Roses wane when winter comes, but isn't that the reason why they are beautiful? Because they bloom when it's warm?"
"You don't want to admit that you're wrong, so you're spouting sophistry. It's foolish."
The duke's expression hardened.
He was trying to get away with it by using plausible words, but it was impossible.
‘She used her brain quite a bit, but……'
The act of digging through the grounds of the garden left by his wife could never be ignored.
"It's not sophistry."
Deborah suddenly took something out of her pocket.
"Check the letter she wrote herself."
The Duke of Seymour's eyes widened when he saw the light purple stationery paper that Deborah was holding.
Unless his eyes are wrong, that is the stationery his wife used all the time. The butterfly patterns on the edges are the same.
"It's a letter from Mother."
With trembling hands, the duke accepted the letter from his daughter.
[Marien Seymour to George Seymour]
On the neatly preserved letter, he saw a very familiar handwriting.
"Where did you get this……?"
For a moment, it felt like his throat was blocked and he couldn't speak properly.
"I found it here."
The duke looked at the ground below the rose bushes, where Deborah dug up, before hurriedly reading the letter.
While reading Marien's letter, which he never knew existed, he had a distant feeling as if he went back to the past.
* * *
I let out a slow breath I didn't know I was holding.
The Duke of Seymour let go of his cold and fierce eyes as he read his wife's letter.
‘I was so scared that I almost cried.'
What a ferocious father.
Deborah was indeed born with a strong heart. If it was me in my previous life, my legs would've already given up.
‘I had to risk my life just to send a letter to my father.'
How insane……
After lamenting internally, I took advantage of the sentimental and quiet duke to return to the mansion.
"I'll be on my way now."
He was so absorbed in reading the late duchess's letter that he seemed to forget about me.
I quickly slipped out of the garden and held my pounding chest.
‘I'm glad I found the letter.'
The reason why I took the risk and dug the duke's cherished garden was because of the duchess's letter that was buried under the rose bush.
Originally, it was the heroine, who was kidnapped by the twins, who found the letter in the middle of the rose garden.
It happened in the novel.
"Mia, why are you trying to run away? If you stay by my side, this beautiful garden will become yours."
Rozad forcibly pulls the heroine into the rose garden, the memento of the late duchess.
"Please don't do this, Lord Rozad."
"Why do you want to throw yourself into a bush full of thorns, even though you can take jewel-like roses that will never change? Are you stupid? Or are you deliberately provoking me?"
Rozad roughly pushed Mia near a rose bush and she was scratched by a thorn from the bush… Hmm?
As she glanced at the scratch, she saw the edge of what looks like a box on the ground, under the rose bushes.
That evening, Mia, who said she wanted to take a walk alone in the garden, dug the ground.
It was because her instincts told her that there is certainly something mysterious buried in the rose garden.
The heroine eventually found a beautiful box that contained a letter, which the duchess wrote before she died.
"Duke of Seymour, I will give you the duchess's letter, so get me out of here."
Mia was able to get out of the sadistic twins' clutches by trading with the Duke of Seymour, whose love for his wife was so great.
‘There's still more to the storyline, but I have to get out of here first……'
In return for intercepting an S-class item by digging it up from the rose garden, I vowed to help the heroine not to get kidnapped later.
‘I was surprised to see that the garden was bigger than I thought.'
But when Rozad stopped Mia from escaping through the glass greenhouse and pushed her near a rose bush… Hmm, I knew the specific coordinates of where the letter is buried because of that.
Additionally, I thought that there must be traces of something being buried.
So these past few days, I've been poking around the rose bushes planted near the glass greenhouse and observed the grounds.
‘She was accidentally scratched by a thorn, but it was worth it.'
I found and dug the unnaturally empty land under the bushes, and I was able to get my hands on the box from the novel!
‘There's nothing wrong with it, but there's something I can't understand……'
Apparently, the only thing Mia traded with the duke in the novel was the letter.
But the box I found contained not only the duchess's letter but also her diary.
Why did Mia only trade the letter with the duke when the handwriting must be of the same person?
‘I don't know why, but it was good for me.'
Thanks to what was written at the beginning of the duchess's diary, I learned that she often attached white rose corsage to the young Deborah.
‘In addition to that, there might be some useful information.'
Other hairstyles and clothes that matched how the duchess looked in her portraits.
The cold-blooded duke endured Deborah's absurdity because her face looked so similar to the late duchess.
‘That's a good set-up. I should use it to my advantage.'
Of course, since it's too obvious, it might backfire if I use it often.
‘I think it worked this time.'
Coming out of the maze-like garden, I encountered the duke's aide waiting nearby.
"M'lady, did everything go well?"
"It did. More importantly, I need to ask you for another favor."
"Go on, m'lady."
The aide's eyebrows furrowed at my subsequent requests. He's probably thinking about what my next request would be.
"It's no big deal. Just don't tell Father."
But I don't really care if he tells him.
Leaving behind the aide who had a suspicious look on his face, I went back to the mansion.
* * *
The Duke of Seymour stroked his chin as he read his wife's letter.
‘So Deborah cited this part.'
[…I thought of this while looking at the snow-covered garden. Because flowers fall, they seem more beautiful and brilliant when they bloom.]
The duke, who was suffering from heavy workload, took a small break and read his wife's letter again.
He has read the letter, which his daughter gave him from out of the blue, hundreds of times in the past two days.
Because it felt like he met his wife once again.
The letter consisted of light and friendly vocabulary, which made him feel as if he could hear her voice.
[Ever since I met you, even the unhappy memories have become meaningful.]
After reading this part, he looked at the rose garden.
[Isn't it beautiful to see them bloom and endure the cold?]
Following the release of the conservation spell, the blooming roses that once filled the entrance of the garden, returned to the dark soil.
From now on, he's about to look at the roses blooming and falling amid the changing seasons.
He doesn't think that the rose garden, which was unseasonably decorated, is what his wife wanted.
‘If I hadn't cast a spell on the garden, this letter would've been found in the process of trimming the bushes and cleaning the ground.'
He sighed at his pathetic self. He rubbed his eyes and continued reading the letter.
[Of course, you're stuck in difficult magic formulas that you don't understand my delicate sensibility.]
[I want to drink hot chocolate, so I'll stop writing this letter now.]
He thoughtlessly blew his pipe. He did it every time he read this part.
Marien usually wrote letters only for formalities.
There were no letters that were written comfortably except for their brief exchange of letters.
‘I read it too fast.'
He should've saved a little.
Thinking it was a childish idea, he returned the letter inside the drawer and went back to work.
It was winter, so the sky quickly began to turn dark.
Even though it was already nighttime, there was still a mountain of papers left for him to sign.
He pulled the bellpull to call in a servant.
(T/N: For those who don't know what a bellpull is, it's an object that can be pulled to call someone from a different room, like a woven fabric, a handle, a knob, etc. It was mostly used in historical times – and until now for some rich people – by masters to call a servant to their office, bedroom, drawing room, dining room, etc. In this case, the duke's bellpull was described in Korean as a ‘rope to call a servant.' It was not stated that it was a bellpull, but the function is the same. We can also assume from the word rope that the type of bellpull he has is a woven fabric – and it's also the most common bellpull –. Not a rope for cattles or something. (Ŏ艸Ŏ))
"Come in."
TOK TOK, the duke snapped his head up when he heard a knock.
‘Hmm?'
Deborah appeared with his aide when he thought it would be a servant who would enter.
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