“Miss, would you also like to see the portrait of Lord Vassily and the inventor.”
“My! There’s still a portrait of the inventor?”
I had never seen it before. Di Santi, the inventor, was renowned for his achievements, but I had no idea who he was or what he looked like.
Receiving a hand-mirror-sized miniature portrait, Ekaterina took one look at it and almost laughed.
“Surprisingly… he looks young, doesn’t he?”
Aurora placed a basket of white beadworms on the table, and by their light I took a closer look at the inventor, who was sitting stiffly alongside Lord Vassily, with a rather childish, or rather pretty, face.
He had pale salmon-pink hair, bright yellow eyes like lemons, and large, bright eyes. He had a mustache on his face, but it was wonderfully ill-fitting.
In a variety show in my previous life, for some reason, female idols would sometimes do a performance called “mustache dance”, but it looked fake. I was thinking of Leonardo da Vinci as an inventor. I was expecting the famous self-portrait of an austere old man, but I didn’t expect a bearded idol. What a surprise.
And Prince Vassily, next to him, was tall like every Duke of Yurinova and had a magnificent physique that showed that he had been working out, so the gap between him and the others was like a majestic waterfall. Lord Vassily, who looked a bit stern but handsome with blue-gray hair and eyes, probably around 30, and Di Santi, most likely in his 20s with a cute baby face – if my friend from a previous life who liked BL saw them, she would immediately go into full delusion. Thank you, ancestors. Excuse me.
“Miss, this one is next.”
Aurora handed me another miniature portrait, and this time I saw it expecting a boy with a baby face and a beard.
The beard was gone.
Or rather, his clothes looked like a dress.
An old-fashioned, loose-fitting one, similar to what the Forest People wear. His hair was short, but he wore a flower ornament that complemented his pretty face, and he was being held by Lord Vassily, who was leaning over him as if to wrap him around his lordship’s tall figure…
Ummm…
With a flash of inspiration, Ekaterina looked at the back of the portrait.
There, in Lord Vassily’s handwriting, was the following inscription.
[Giovanna Di Santi, My companion.]
Giovanna was a woman! A woman!
And his companion!
***
In a panic, Ekaterina traced the family tree in her mind.
The fifth Lord Vassily, like his grandfather Sergei, had been given an imperial daughter-in-law. He would have married at the age of 18 or 19, the typical marriageable age for an imperial noble. The portrait of the young Duchess Vassily can still be seen in the Duke’s residence and in the Yurinova Castle in the ducal domain.
However, she supposedly died prematurely within a few years of her death due to illness. Fortunately, she had a legitimate son, so Prince Vassily did not remarry and remained a widower, according to official records.
But in fact, a few years after his wife’s death, he met a woman whom he called his consort. Well, since a formal marriage involves many formalities, officially he was not really married to Giovanna-san, a lifelong inventor and a man, but only a partner in his heart. I was certain that she was the only woman he had ever wanted to be with.
I was glad to hear that… Thank God, he was not having an affair or anything like that.
First, I apologize for doubting you, Lord Vassily. But if the former prince’s wife had a personality like the Old Hag, I would have supported him all the way, regardless of whether he was cheating or having an affair. I mean, his wife was a fragile beauty in the portrait, so she probably didn’t have that kind of personality.
And that was OK…to think that Giovanni Di Santi, a great man in history who was a renowned inventor, was a woman…hee hee hee. What a shocking backstory!
