Chapter 4

Eve woke up to the voice of the maid waking her up. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was an antique ceiling.

As she stood up, the maids bowed to greet her. Eve let her body be bathed by them, and let them dress her as they always did.

Just a month after Eve became the Countess, she had perfectly adapted to the life of a lazy and extravagant capital noblewoman. After she signed the contract, everything after that went smoothly.

The wedding was held privately and discreetly, and Eve gave half of her first allowance to her sister, Cynthia, for her wedding expenses.

Cynthia’s marriage partner and the father of her soon-to-be-born nephew was the successor of a Viscounty, but it was a small rural estate.

1.000 gold was enough for the wedding’s dowry of a country nobleman. Cynthia was worried about Eve as she received the dowry, but she was content with her current life.

When Eve and the Count Hound got married, the attention of the capital people who expected new gossip was focused on them, but Eve refrained from outside activities, making it difficult to spread rumors.

Nothing else could be heard other than the rumors about her beauty that had spread in the Jenna estate, a small territory.

There is a saying that without firewood, the fire will extinguish itself, and people’s interest has also been extinguished recently.

She had nothing to worry about, and her life was prosperous, so she couldn’t help but be happy. The Countess’ room was as beautiful and magnificent as the Count’s, and everything she wore, the food she ate, and the hobbies she could engage in in the mansion that was given to her were incomparable to her life in the past.

“You are so beautiful……”

Eve, who had entrusted her body to the maids as comfortably as ever, looked in the mirror at the murmur of one of the maids, and then she noticed that her appearance was a little different from usual.

It was true that the maids usually did their best to dress Eve up, but Eve in the mirror was surprisingly extraordinarily beautiful today.

Eve, admiring her appearance, asked the maid who was staring at her blankly. “You paid more attention today than usual.”

The maid, who met her eyes in the mirror, blushed and answered in a high voice, “Today is the day when the first Young Master comes back.”

“The first Young Master…?”

The Count Hound’s eldest son was the successor to his first ex-wife, the Duke of Ceratin.

The maid continued, “He is the Duke of Ceratin. He rarely stays in the capital due to wanderlust, but he came back after a long time.”

It seems that the Duke of Ceratin, Eve’s stepson—who was one year older than her—would have finally returned to the Count Hound’s mansion.

For a moment, Eve nodded her head softly. It didn’t seem like it would make much of a difference just because he was the eldest son.

The Count’s children, whom she met once after marriage, were not very interested in her. Even though the youngest seemed to be a little interested in Eve’s appearance, he didn’t even dare to approach her, perhaps he was conscious of the gazes around him.

Moreover, the Count’s children were independent or each lived with their mothers, so there were few encounters. Because of his position as the Duke, Azazel, the Count Hound’s eldest son also spent half of the year at the Duke’s mansion with his mother, the Duchess.

Eve took it easy and accepted the touch of the maids. Her white neck and round, elegant shoulders stand out thanks to her neatly braided red hair and the off-shoulder dress she is wearing.

“So are we going to have lunch together today?” Eve asked one of the maids.

“Yes, he has a schedule in the evening, so he asked for lunch together. If you come down now, I think the timing will be right……”

Although the preparation time was not long, Eve was not the type to wake up very early. Eve, who checked the time, nodded, and suddenly one of the maids rushed into the room.

She said, “Madam, the Master is here!”

Eve and the maid’s eyes met.

Eve asked back, “What?”

“The Master……”

Before the maids could finish answering, the door opened and the Count Hound entered the room.

“Are you ready?”

Eve and the Count Hound’s gazes met. The Count approached Eve, ignoring the stares of the maids. When Eve saw the Count whose eyes widened as if surprised by something, she sighed and beckoned for the maids who were staring at her to leave.

When the maids quickly left the room, leaving only the two of them, Eve looked back at the Count.

“In the mansion, you have to treat me as the Countess,” said Eve.

If the Count really respected Eve as a Countess, he shouldn’t have entered her room without permission as he does now.

Hearing her words mixed with criticism, the Count stood still and looked blankly at Eve.

“Count?”

The Count blinked his eyes a few times, scanning Eve up and down.

Then he said, “Yeah, I am sorry for that. By the way, do you usually go around like this?”

It was only natural that he did not know Eve’s usual appearance. At first, they didn’t see each other often. No, today Eve saw the Count for the first time since the day the contract was signed. He didn’t even show up at the wedding in the mansion.

Rumor has it that from the wedding day with Eve, the Count spent days in a widow’s house. Eve recalled an article written in the gossip newspaper.

「 The appearance of the Count Hound’s new lover was decadent and lewd. At a ball full of pleasure and lust, where men and women covet each other bodies, there was Count Hound.

There were many beautiful women around the Count. However, the most striking among them was the face of the Count Hound himself, who was drenched in pleasure. The Count’s lover shrieked and screamed when his large object was thrust under her. Perhaps stimulated by her own voice, the woman sat down on the Count Hound’s face…… 」

Roughly speaking, the journalist wrote about the love affair between Count Hound and his lover in such detail that it made the reader wonder whether it was okay to write such an article.

Eve stopped thinking about the contents of the lewd article and answered the question from her husband, whom she had seen after a month of marriage. “It seems the maids have worked hard in dressing me up since His Grace has returned.”

“His Grace?”

The Count looked at Eve with a displeased look. In fact, Eve was also awkward with that title.

Eve asked, “What should I call him? Your other children are younger than me, so I was comfortable talking to them informally, but your first child is a year older than me. Or should I just call him Duke?”

For a moment, the Count frowned and asked Eve, “Are you younger than Azazel?”

“I am.”

That’s surprising. The Count didn’t seem to have considered her age at all when he sent the marriage proposal.

The Count, who seemed quite embarrassed by Eve’s affirmation, coughed and said, “You don’t have to speak honorifically to him. Even if it’s only on paper, you are his mother, so treat him like my other children. In this mansion, you are the Countess of the Hound no matter what anyone says.”