TBHHB 06

Chapter 6

Perhaps it was because she had been completely exhausted by everything that happened at the royal palace. Even though the time she normally woke up had long since passed, Romian remained asleep for quite a while.

My head hurts.

She even felt as though she had a fever. Making little whimpering sounds like a puppy, Romian curled her shoulders and kept burrowing deeper and deeper into her pillow.

It was at that exact moment that the door suddenly flew open.

“Miss! Miss! We have a huge problem!!”

It was none other than Emma who came rushing inside. Normally, Emma would have been considerate and gentle with Romian, but today she was so pale with panic that she grabbed Romian by the shoulders and shook her.

“Miss! You need to get up right now! Something terrible has happened!”

“What is it…?”

A hoarse voice, cracked like a drought-stricken field, escaped Romian’s throat.

Normally, Emma would have fussed over her voice being in such terrible condition, but today she had no time for such things. Her face had gone deathly pale as she screamed.

“Your dress is gone! The dark green dress you wore yesterday!”

“What?”

That was not something Romian could simply ignore.

The moment she heard Emma’s scream, the last remnants of sleep vanished from her mind. Romian hurriedly got out of bed and entered the private dressing room reserved for the King, located right beside her bedroom.

The moment she opened the door, she saw that the dress on the mannequin had completely disappeared.

Gone.

All the color drained from Romian’s face.

She immediately dashed down the corridor.

“Mother! Mother!!”

Because Romian had woken up later than usual, all the servants had already begun their daily work and were moving through the corridors.

Ordinarily, Romian would have straightened herself and paid attention to their gazes, but she had no time for that today.

The Countess, who had been sitting in her bedroom drinking tea, frowned when her daughter burst in without even knocking.

“Honestly, where are your manners…?”

But once she heard what had happened, even the Countess could no longer calmly drink her tea.

She slammed her teacup down with a loud bang and flew into a hysterical rage.

“How could you possibly have been so careless with your clothes?!”

“What?”

Romian had never imagined that her mother would become angry with her.

She blinked rapidly, staring blankly at the Countess. She was so dumbfounded that for a moment she could barely form a response.

But then anger suddenly surged inside her.

In a much lower voice, Romian asked,

“What exactly are you saying? Are you blaming me for this?”

“Of course I am! It’s your fault for failing to take proper care of your belongings!”

“I put it away properly in the dressing room! I didn’t even have it washed! If it disappeared from there…!”

Romian was about to ask whether that meant it was her mother’s fault for failing to keep an eye on the servants when a sly voice slowly brushed past her ears.

—It’s old, but it should still fetch a pretty good price.

The greedy hands that had toyed with her dress.

How had she not immediately thought of him?

Romian muttered the culprit’s name in a low voice.

“…Brother Dukein.”

“What?”

“Where is Brother Dukein?”

Romian’s face hardened. Her hands clenched tightly as though she were ready to grab Dukein by the collar and drag him back herself.

The Countess laughed incredulously.

“Are you seriously suspecting your own brother?”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable suspicion. He was the last person to see the dress before it disappeared.”

“Ah!”

At Romian’s words, Emma suddenly clapped her hands as though she had just remembered something.

“Come to think of it, when I finished putting the dress away and came out, Young Master Dukein was standing in the corridor! He said he had come to check whether you were feeling unwell.”

“He never even came into my room.”

Romian instinctively ground her teeth.

The fact that he had been quick enough to sell the dress she had worn just yesterday made him seem even more infuriating.

Romian asked the Countess again.

“Where is Brother Dukein?”

“I-I don’t know. He didn’t even come down for breakfast… Butler!”

Unable to hide her bewilderment, the Countess called for the butler who managed the household.

The butler answered with a confused expression.

“Young Master has not returned home yet.”

“What?!”

He had caused such trouble and then spent the night outside?

It was unbelievable.

But they could not exactly summon someone who was not there.

So the Countess and Romian sat in the reception room near the main entrance and waited for Dukein to return.

Unfortunately, Count Veldegart—the one person who could actually beat some sense into Dukein—had just left for the family’s territory.

How long had they waited?

It was nearly midday when Dukein finally returned.

His face was puffy and haggard from being soaked in alcohol.

The moment the Countess saw her son, she screamed in a shrill voice.

“Dukein!!”

“What’s all the commotion this early in the morning? Yaaawn.”

He answered while scratching his greasy hair, which he had not even bothered to comb.

Romian immediately sprang to her feet.

She stared at Dukein with a sharp gaze and asked each word clearly.

“Where is my dress, Brother?”

“What? What kind of nonsense are you talking about?”

Dukein frowned at Romian’s question.

His shameless attitude made her even angrier, and unlike her usual self, Romian raised her voice.

“My dress! The dress His Majesty the King gave me!”

“How would I know where some stupid dress of yours is? You waited for me all morning just because of that?”

It was far too late to call it morning anymore.

Romian tightly gripped the sides of her skirt with both hands, refusing to avert her gaze from Dukein.

Amused that his normally meek little sister—the sort of person he considered no more threatening than a pebble beneath his foot—was acting this way, Dukein mockingly poked her forehead with his index finger.

“You seem pretty high and mighty just because you’re the Crown Prince’s fiancée. Go act superior somewhere else. Move aside. I’m going back to sleep.”

Dukein did not stop at poking her forehead. He deliberately slammed his shoulder into hers as he walked past.

Romian instinctively shrank back from the force, but she could not retreat.

The situation was simply too serious.

“Do you know what kind of dress that was? The moment people find out that it ended up in someone else’s hands and was sold back to His Majesty the King, our entire family will be executed.”

“Ha! Making such a fuss over one dress.”

Dukein snorted at Romian’s words from behind him.

But what she said next was impossible to laugh off.

“A fuss? Do you really think this is just a fuss? Illegally trading an item belonging to the royal family is considered treason!”

“H-Hah. You’re exaggerating.”

He tried to maintain his bravado again, but his voice inevitably trembled.

The Countess noticed her son’s suspicious behavior, and her brows twisted.

“Dukein, don’t tell me you really did something like that?!”

“I-I mean…”

Realizing that there was nowhere left to escape, Dukein’s eyes darted rapidly around the room.

He swallowed hard.

Then, instead of shrinking back, he puffed out his chest and shouted,

“I only pawned it because I was a little short on spending money! I was planning to pay the full amount and get it back soon!”

“Oh, dear…”

In other words, he had taken it to a pawnshop.

The Countess covered her forehead with her palm and staggered.

Romian clenched her fists and screamed.

Her voice came out painfully, almost like a desperate cry from someone being strangled.

“Have you lost your mind?! Of all the things you could have touched, why did you have to take something His Majesty the King personally gave me?!”

“Because there was nothing else in this house worth that much! If you’re so worried, why don’t you give me more money?!”

“Ha!”

That was the height of shamelessness.

To begin with, all the money Dukein had been throwing around lately was practically there because of Romian.

If it were not for her, their family would never have received a fief far beyond what they deserved, nor would His Majesty have sent them money under the pretext of helping them maintain their dignity.

The Countess finally realized that her son had committed a genuine crime and frantically tore at her hair.

“We have to get the items back! Quickly! We need to gather enough cash… How much did you pawn it for?”

“Th-that…”

Dukein rolled his eyes again.

He had been the one who committed the act, but now that he actually had to tell his parents, even he realized just how insane it had been.

“Three hundred million dena.”

“…What did you say?”

The Countess could hardly believe her ears.

It was an absolutely horrifying amount of money.

Romian was the first to regain her composure.

She immediately began calculating.

They needed to combine whatever money remained with whatever they could gather right now.

“So how much money do you have on hand? You didn’t spend all three hundred million dena overnight, did you?”

“…”

But Dukein gave no answer.

Romian was so stunned that she simply opened and closed her mouth silently like a fish.

“Ah, dear…”

The Countess let out a meaningless wail and struck the floor.

Then she grabbed Romian’s arm with frantic hands.

At some point, even the way she addressed Romian had changed. Her voice had become almost affectionate.

“Romian, my dear. What on earth are we supposed to do?”

“We have to get the items back somehow.”

Romian swallowed hard.

Three hundred million dena.

It was an amount they could never possibly gather overnight.

But they had to do something.

Even if they had to beg the pawnshop not to sell the items until they could somehow gather the money.

“If word of this reaches His Majesty, it’s over. We’ll all end up as crow food.”

Henri IV cherished Romian immensely because she resembled Queen Nella more than anyone else.

But he was also a man with a temperament as cold as ice.

If he discovered that his goodwill had been treated this way, his anger would undoubtedly be even greater because of how much he had cherished her.

“Yes! Let’s go at once! Hurry and show us the way, Dukein.”

“Wha—me too? I just got home! Besides, I went to the pawnshop yesterday. If I go back today, it’ll look really pathetic…”

“Are you going to keep saying such childish things?!”

And so, after a brief argument, everyone prepared to leave.

They hurried the coachman and raced through the streets toward the pawnshop.

But when the Veldegart family arrived at the pawnshop in such a desperate hurry, what greeted them was not their belongings.

It was the owner’s awkward smile.

“I’m terribly sorry, but all of those items have already found new owners.”