CH 7.9

“Come on, ugly, eat this.”

He picked it up and held it right in front of her lips, and Lila cautiously parted them.

When she took a small bite, Michael squealed.

“Can you taste it? Now, take a bigger bite.”

Lila smiled narrowly and took a large bite of dacquoise.

“Come on, young master, eat it.”

Powdered sugar dripped from her puckered red lips like snow. Lucas narrowed his eyes as he watched Michael and Lila tenderly look after each other.

It was a nice sight, but somehow he didn’t like it.

“Won’t you give it to me?”

Lucas asked, turning to Lila, who is giving Michael a dacquoise. Lila’s eyes widened as she spoke, the bridge of her nose wrinkling slightly.

“What?”

“I think it’s a shame you only care about Michael, when your husband is me.”

Lila’s cheeks flushed with color as he smirked, and Michael, who had been watching from the sidelines, grabbed her around the waist.

“Ah!”

Lucas’s lips curled upward at the sight of his nephew in her arms. He glanced at Michael, communicating something with his eyes.

But his nephew didn’t look at him, just jerked his head and looked up at Lila.

“I want some iced tea.”

“Oh, here.”

Lila picked up the iced tea in front of her and offered it to Michael.

Lucas, puzzled by his nephew and wife’s behavior, asked for a reason.

“Why did you come to my office?”

The lowered tone of his voice brought Lila to her senses.

“Oh, I wanted to ask you about a servant I’d like to have as my exclusive maid.”

“Hmm… wouldn’t it be better to be served by a man, my lady?”

“No, that’s not what I meant… I was just teasing him because he looked a little nervous… I don’t even want to look at his face now.”

Lucas’s glare deepened at her trailing off.

“He’s an asshole.”

Michael muttered, never one to complain about his employees. Lucas’s eyes narrowed, remembering their expressions and words.

“Do you know the name of the servant you wish to have as your personal maid?”

Lucas asked, and Lila answered with a smile.

“She told me it was Jessie Lou Collins.”

“I see, I’ll take care of that.”

He turned away as he spoke and gestured lightly toward Owen.

Owen, who had been listening to their conversation, replied.

“Okay, I’ll go see Vincent.”

Tucking the papers away in a filing cabinet, Owen stood up. He bowed lightly to Lila and Michael and left the room.

“And what else? For example, getting a dress readjusted…”

Lucas stared at the gemstone his nephew had given her, then slowly turned to look into her cobalt eyes.

The intensity in his gaze made Lila’s lips curl. She felt like she had to say something.

“That… I’d like to have empty bottles.”

“An empty bottle?”

“Yes, the kind of glass jar you can put beauty cream in.”

“Hmm… that’s all?”

“Well, I think I need to get my dress readjusted, too.”

“Sure. Isn’t that dress you’re wearing from yesterday, and besides, it looks a little big on you…”

As the mint-colored eyes lazily scanned her dress, Lila straightened strangely at the waist, a cold sweat running down her spine at the strange current.

“Well, do you want to go to the dressmaker with me tomorrow?”

Michael pleaded, not wanting to give in to his uncle.

“You won’t have anything to wear right away once the dress is fitted, so we’ll go to the dress shop, buy a few dresses you like, and I’ll show you around the Northern Streets.”

Lila smiled broadly at the wise Michael’s suggestion.

“Shall we?”

“I’ll take you to the most famous dress shop in the North. Since you have an ugly face, you deserve something nice to wear!”

Amused by her reaction, Michael blurted out the words he’d always heard. Lucas’s eyes narrowed and Lila’s expression hardened for a moment, but she quickly responded.

“Thank you, young master.”

She ran a hand through his fuzzy chocolate-colored hair. Lila wanted to help him forget the words he had grown up hearing. To let them fade away naturally, not forcefully.

She smiled, hoping he’d say he’d heard them at some point, or that he couldn’t remember.

Michael’s face flushed, beautiful even for a face full of freckles, and Lucas stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded.

“Instead of the most famous dress shop in the north, we’ll go somewhere you like.”

Lucas said, remembering something he had momentarily forgotten. Puzzled by his words, Lila also remembered the dress she wore at his coming of age.

“Yes, Duke.”

Lucas pulled a cheque from his jacket pocket. The cheque was crisp and white with no amount written on it.

He took the check back to his desk and stamped it with magic ink, and it glowed for a moment before returning to its normal color.

Returning to the couch, Lucas held the cheque out to Lila.

“Buy whatever you want, whatever it is.”

* * *

Lucas let Lila go and talked to Michael first. As he watched her go, he had a lot on his mind.

He decided to take care of the first thing first, and pressed the bell with the magic stone.

Knock knock.

“Duke, it’s Connor.”

“Come in.”

Connor stepped into the office, not noticing the uncharacteristically cold tone in his voice.

“You called for me?”

Lucas studied him carefully, his tone seemingly polite, but his expression not so much. In fact, it was more accurate to say he was rude.

The sight of the ugly duke simply staring at him without saying a word made Connor uncomfortable.

He had always found people of the Duke’s family ridiculous. High nobility was one thing. Dukes and young masters who couldn’t speak to their servants were just as ridiculous.

“If you have no further orders, I’ll leave you to it.”

The wind whipped up behind Connor as he turned to leave, his words filled with disgust.

BANG!

A hot hand grabbed Connor by the nape of his neck and shoved him against the wall. Connor struggled to his feet, pinned to the wall like a picture frame.

“What, what’s this!”

Lucas said in a sullen voice, his thumb pressed firmly against his throat.

“If anyone sees you, they’ll think you’re a duke, huh?”

Connor’s mind seemed to turn white at the thought of a different kind of duke, one he usually paid little attention to.

But even so, he opened his mouth, remembering that he was an ugly duke and that he was not interested in what his employees were doing.

“If you treat me this way, kuh, if, my father, won’t, kuh…”

The grip on his throat tightened, and Connor couldn’t get a word out. The grip, so tight that he couldn’t breathe, seemed inhuman.

Never before had he seen a man’s body lifted by a single hand. He realized that even a knight could barely lift him, and a shiver of fear ran down his spine.

“People are so contradictory. They think they can spit, but they don’t realize they’ll get spit back.”

Lucas gritted his teeth as he remembered Michael’s words. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard some crazy shit in his life, but he’d never been this angry.

“Keugh…”

Lucas clicked his tongue at the sight of the man’s purple face, unable to breathe. With a little more breathing room, he continued.

“I didn’t just leave it because I didn’t know what you were doing, I just left it because I wasn’t interested in you. You should have known the difference. You’re making all other servants work for you, you annoying…”

“Hey, let go…”

Connor felt his entire body freeze at the cold voice in his ear. Instinctive fear took over, and he couldn’t quite make out Lucas’s words.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been so bold, then I wouldn’t be bothered and you could have lived.”

Thud.

Lucas released his grip and Connor coughed as he fell to the floor.

“You… ugly…”

Lucas swung his foot lightly at the bloodshot-eyed Connor, who glared at him from the floor.

Puck-!

Even with his light kick, Connor’s body floated up and slumped into the corner.

“When a person says good things, you should lie flat on your stomach. What do you believe in and play around with?”

With his hands in his pants pockets, Lucas swung his foot lightly. Not like he was kicking someone, but like he was playing with a light object with his foot.

“Ow!”

After kicking him relentlessly in the face and abdomen, Lucas grabbed Connor’s midsection and lifted him up. Dangling him with one hand, Connor struggled with all his remaining strength.

“Hey, get off me, I’ll tell my father the whole truth, keuh, and you think the Senate will let you off the hook?”

“Hmm… you’re from that side, so what?”

“Wh, what.”

“Yeah, so what, what do you want me to do if the Senate doesn’t go along with it. I think you’re misunderstanding something…”

Connor seemed to come to his senses at Lucas’s’ expression, which was so different from his usual indifferent face.

Lucas coldly interrupted Connor, who was lost in thought, trying to think of something to say.

“If the position of Duke is based on appearance, then someone else should have been duke a long time ago. Don’t you think?”

“That, that…”

“Just because you’re handsome and I’m ugly doesn’t mean you’ll be the duke and I’ll be the butler.”

“S, sorry…”

As Connor tried to open his mouth, Lucas spoke in a low voice.

“How dare you speak to my wife like that, you impudent…”

Lucas grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him against the wall.

BANG-!

Thrown unceremoniously against the wall, Connor rolled around on the floor, swallowing a groan.

Nervously, Lucas ran a hand through his hair. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to reach out and kill him.

He was about to raise his foot and crush his neck when Owen, who had been standing silently beside him, spoke up.

“Duke, I beg you to leave it to me.”

“Why.”

Stopped in his tracks, Lucas shot Owen a glare. Unfazed, Owen pushed up his glasses with his fingers.

“Wouldn’t it be more practical to send him to the ruby mines, put him to work, as punishment for not doing his butler’s job properly?”

“What?”

“There’s always a shortage of labor down there, and I’ve heard it’s hard work, even when you’re digging deep into the earth and wearing the tools of a mage. It’s a place that pays a modest wage, and an extra hand could help.”

Lucas grinned ferociously at Owen’s calm explanation.

“Yeah. There was something about it that just wasn’t quite right for me to just kill it.”

“Well, I’ll take care of it.”

Owen took out a magic tool from the inside pocket of his jacket. Connor heard them both and scrambled to his feet, trying to make a run for it, but in vain.

With both of Connor’s wrists bound and his mouth gagged, Owen rang the magic bell to summon a knight.

Despite the exertion, Lucas didn’t even breathe. Save for a flush of anger, he seemed calm.

Owen handed Connor to the dispatched knight and left the office. Lucas slumped against the back of the couch, his back against the backrest.

He stared at the office door for a moment and came to a conclusion.

The reason he was so angry right now was more because Lila had been insulted than anything else.

And he liked that fact quite a bit.