***

Edgar could hear noises from the outside. There were many voices, but only the calm and clear laughter of a woman reached his ears. It was Rubica’s. He quickly pushed his wheelchair to the windows. He hid behind the curtains lest anyone saw him, but he couldn’t suppress his curiosity.

He could see Rubica laughing through the clear window. She was probably having a good time. Today she had more people with her than usual. She had hired a girl from the annex as her lady-in-waiting, and it appeared she had made her and her friends join her for the walk.

‘Is that her?’

Edgar could immediately tell who Elise was. Rubica’s expressions were very different when looking at her than when she looked at the other girls. Edgar was looking from afar, but he could clearly see that difference. Rubica glanced at Elise while she slowly talked to the others and smiled happily. It looked like she was eager to compliment the girl each time she did something.

‘She looks at the girl as if she were her granddaughter.’

He raised an eyebrow. He crossed his arms and touched his chin. He did that when he carefully examined something. Moreover, he had a habit of tapping the end of his table when thinking deeply.

‘She sometimes behaves like an old woman.’

He was carefully examining her behavior. She was walking while listening to her maids and the girls, but then she staggered because of a jagged stone. She embarrassedly looked around to see if anyone had seen that, but she was relieved to see everyone was looking at the flowers and soon pleasantly walked away.

“Ha.”

Edgar couldn’t help but laugh. Of course Ann and the others saw her stagger. They were just desperately pretending to have missed it, but that innocent girl didn’t know it and was relieved.

“Haha!”

He really couldn’t help laughing to see her back as she pleasantly walked away. She tried to put on a proud face and talked to a maid. It made Edgar grab his stomach and laugh out loud.

Everyone had seen her mistake and she was the only one who didn’t know it, but here she was pretending it never happened. It was so funny.

That was the reason why he could not miss her every move even though all she did was walking in the garden. She gave him new joy every day. Of course, he couldn’t miss that fun. He managed to stop laughing and look at Rubica walk in the garden. She felt different from usual. She would usually sparkle in beauty under the sunlight, but now she was dazzling.

‘Wait, beauty?’

He covered his mouth with a hand. Rubica hadn’t turned back to look at his office, but he left the windows in surprise.

‘I’m going crazy.’

An ordinary woman. That was who she was, an ordinary woman. She had been like that when they first met. Yes, she had looked amazing at their wedding because of the mood and the dress. She had looked like an angel who had come down to earth only because her lips, face, eyes, and everything had looked misty because of the golden veil, but the girl herself was ordinary. Moreover, that girl now looked prettier than anyone else to him. Was he seeing an illusion because of the stress?

He quickly rang a bell. The sound was going to make Carl appear in less than half an hour.

‘This can’t be. I really can’t postpone it more. I must have Carl call my doctor.”

He was giving that order in advance because he knew he was going to forget everything and go to Rubica as soon as the sun went down. He wondered if that devil-like woman had cast a spell on him. If this was some kind of mental disease, he had to have it treated before it got worse. An illusion that made an extremely ordinary woman look dazzlingly beautiful… he was definitely in a bad condition.

‘… no, she isn’t extremely ordinary.’

He shook his head. That assessment was too harsh.

‘Her eyes are beautiful. That’s a fact. And her skin, too. People prefer white marble-like skin these days and don’t approve healthy milky-white skin like hers. Being bright and healthy is better than being pale. Health is the best, after all.’

Edgar examined each part of her body like that. Her fingers, hair, shoulders, nose, eyelashes, and lips.

‘Her fingers are at the right length, and her big fingernails are good to look at.’

‘Her shoulders are a little small, but they are round and fit perfectly when I hold her in my arms. And its round line shown over her dress is pleasant to look at.’

‘Her full lips are fine too.’

And, to his surprise, every part of her was pretty.

‘Wait, then isn’t she pretty?’

It was quite logical to judge the whole through its parts. Edgar decided Rubica’s name rightfully belonged to the list of Seritos’s beautiful women. His eyes were not wrong. Rubica was beautiful.

But then, why did she look ordinary to him before? She wasn’t extremely ordinary at all. There wasn’t another woman like her anywhere.

‘My eyes were wrong.’

Who had been wrong was the himself of the past, not his present self. However, it hurt his pride to admit that.

He was a genius in engineering who could even find an error of 1mm. And, he had failed to recognize a woman’s beauty?

‘It’s because she was in a plain dress. That old grey dress she was wearing when we first met was the worst.’

Yes, he had always been right, both in the past and in the present. He had just misjudged Rubica only because she had been wearing a dress that was too plain and hiding her beauty when they first met.

He couldn’t see his thought had a huge logical flaw and smiled with satisfaction.

‘Now that she is the duchess, she will never have to wear such an ugly dress. Good.’

He closed his eyes and savored the Rubica he had just seen. Why was she looking many times prettier than usual? What was different? Edgar tried to find out.

‘Yes, her dress.’

The salmon-colored dress she was wearing was completely different from what she normally wore. He was familiar with the dresses she had worn before. His grandmother, the original owner of those dresses, had been alive only six years ago. She was the first to lead the beauty of pale white skin, faint blond hair, and clear blue eyes like Edgar’s.

The dresses Rubica had worn till yesterday had been made for his grandmother, and she had been a completely different type of woman. They were all fine, but they weren’t fit for Rubica.

‘She said she ordered new dresses a while ago. That Kha… um, was it Khanna?’

He had been relieved to know the designer wasn’t a man, although he didn’t know why he was relieved to know the designer’s sex.

‘Anyway, she needs to wear dresses that are right for her.’

Knock knock

Then, he heard the knocking on the door. It was Carl who he had called. It hadn’t been half an hour, but he had come quicker than usual.

“Come in.”

Edgar gave him the permission to come in. Then, the sound of opening the lock with a key was heard and Carl carefully came in. He had just been told what Rubica had said about the mana quartz and was wondering how he was supposed to deliver that to Edgar.

“Did you want to see me, Your Grace?”

Carl bowed and waited for the order. Edgar had called him to advance the appointment with his doctor, but he said something completely different after stroking his chin for a long time.

“How much of my private budget is left?”

“… what?”

Carl asked back in surprise. His master wasn’t extravagant. He ordered only the needed amount of clothes and the only things he spent money on were lab tools and pens. More than half of his private expenses were left every year and was being saved in his personal account.

“Is there none left?”

“No, no.”

Carl quickly shook his head and finished calculating in a short time. There had been a sudden increase in spending this year to pay Rubica’s dowry. Carl subtracted that amount of money plus the average sum Edgar was going to spend from now and spoke of the remaining amount.

“Hmm.”

Tap, tap. Edgar tapped the end of his mahogany table. He seemed to be thinking hard. He had almost no greed for money, so what was he thinking about? Had he gotten himself a new hobby? Carl decided to make a guess, but he couldn’t.

‘I must tell him what Ann told me before he spends that money on something else.’

“Your Grace, there’s something you should know.”