If her letters were made public, they would be labeled after her name for the rest of her life. Such was the nature of a servant’s affair with a woman of rank, and even if it was a contradiction in terms that she was determined to abandon all that was noble in her life, she didn’t want to irreparably stain her family and her name. She’d rather disappear without a trace than be remembered as the poor victim of a crime. Ambivalence tightened her throat.

Why Aiden would leave such a letter under his bed was beyond her comprehension; it must have been part of some sinister plan in his mind, but it was hard to calculate what he could possibly gain by revealing their relationship to Lilliette. Perhaps it was his plan to ruin her escape plan altogether; if she were to take the letter to the newspaper or to her father, her plans would be put on hold for a long time after her marriage, perhaps forever.

Now it was Belviana who was pleading, and she grabbed Liliette’s arm urgently with a cold hand.

“Wait, Lily……. I, I have a situation.”

“…….”

“Wait, listen……. I’m leaving the mansion completely in ten days.”

“What do you mean completely?”

“I was sick and tired of being Lester’s princess, sick and tired of the thought of being married to a duke I didn’t care for, sick and tired of it all. I was going to run away and live as a commoner where no one would recognize me. That’s why I made the deal with Aiden.”

She was going to disappear anyway, so it made sense to take advantage of whatever she could get away with, whatever her situation was. Thanks to her clever mix of lies and truth, Belviana’s words rang true.

“Aiden isn’t as nice as you think he is, and if you give him your heart, you’ll only hurt yourself and…….”

“Are you out of your mind, running away and living as a commoner for the rest of your life?”

Liliette interrupted Belviana’s rambling, cutting her off mid-sentence. She looked more shocked than Belviana had realized. Liliette stuttered and opened her mouth.

“You’re going to spend the rest of your life at the bottom of the world……. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

“I’ve made up my mind.”

Belviana’s firm reply surprised Liliette, and she opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. It was a strange feeling. After a long moment of silence, the woman suddenly looked up. Her eyes, which had always feigned kindness, were filled with envy and contempt. Her face, stripped of hypocrisy and pretense, showed nothing but dried poison. For all the intimacy they had shared during their stay at the manor, it was as if Belviana had caught her first glimpse of Liliette’s nakedness. A chill ran down the nape of her neck.

“If that’s the case, I don’t want you to be alone with Aiden, ……and I don’t want you to use him anymore.”

The words spilled out between Liliette’s clenched teeth. As if she were dirty to even touch, Liliette took a deep breath and shook off Belviana’s grip on her arm. She took two large steps back and looked Belviana up and down. That look of utter contempt, like she was looking at someone who was already beneath her.

“I hope this goes according to plan, and please don’t ever, ever, ever come back to Dietrich.”

“…….”

“Because if I ever see you and him together again, I can’t guarantee the whereabouts of that letter.”

* * *

Lately, it had been difficult for Belviana to recall exactly when she had last seen Aiden. She’d been denying him for a week now, using her period as an excuse to avoid Liliette’s scrutiny. The strange thing was, he hadn’t tried to force himself on her. When he stopped coming to her in the middle of the night, she was a little freaked out. Perhaps his interest in her had waned completely, perhaps there was nothing else for her to do for him at night, she thought coldly and sarcastically.

The Countess’s tended hydrangea garden had a white canopy to shade it from the hot summer sun, and the large, round tea table beneath it had been a favorite spot for Belviana lately. The shade was cool, and as the countess’s private garden, there wasn’t much foot traffic in this area. There, she would spend hours poring over the materials for her vacation assignments.

She’d given up a lot when she’d decided to choose Liam, but her university degree had been the hardest to give up. She’d been a very good student, never missing a scholarship in all six years, and her excellence had earned her a generous offer— one that had been reserved for a future duchess, of course— to substitute her final semester with a thesis instead of attending lectures.

Until then, it hadn’t even been a consideration, but a diploma would come in handy when she was on the run. After all, once she got outside the capital, the commoners were often illiterate, and she was determined to live among them for the rest of her life.

She had been stuck on a line for days. In her white dress and wide-brimmed picnic hat, Belviana looked less like a countess and more like a common gentry girl from the countryside. She set down her finished teacup haphazardly and buried her face in her book. Her head wouldn’t turn. How could she possibly know the connection between the peasant revolt of 363 and the financial reforms of 414, three hundred years ago!

Belviana stretched, slumped over the table, as she bent to pick up a quill that had fallen to the floor. She heard the heavy iron gate to the garden open, scraping against the stone floor. She straightened her slackened body and tensed her grip on her quill, knowing that it was far enough away from the main house that she couldn’t have heard her wrong. It wasn’t long before she spotted a man walking along the pathway, which was dotted with peonies. It was Aiden.

His face was still fresh, though she hadn’t seen him in days. She’d expected him to have a deathly illness, or maybe he’d been beaten to a pulp by another woman’s lover, leaving a huge bruise on his rugged face, or he’d forgotten her forever. Belviana pressed her red lips together tightly. She felt terribly unpleasant.

Pretending not to see him, Belviana turned her attention back to her parchment and books she had spread out. Just as the shade was falling over the table, Aiden sat down across from her without asking permission. Her eyebrows shot up at the brazenness of it all, but she didn’t even look up, feeling as if words of resentment would spill out of her if she were to look him in the face. She swallowed a heavy breath. Resentment. For what?

“It’s been a while. Aren’t you going to look at me?”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?”

She retorted sharply. He nonchalantly pulled the quill and parchment in front of her toward him, and after a quick glance, he effortlessly scribbled down what had been bothering her for days. Aside from his dry demeanor, his handwriting was fluid, and the arguments he was developing took her in directions she had never considered. Belviana forgot her irritation and stared at him in amazement. Aiden stroked the parchment with the nib of his quill as if it were no big deal.

“The Peasants’ Revolt of 363 began with the fall of House Barcina. You do realize that Barcina was a financial family that held a tight grip on the bills of exchange at that time, right? It’s in Berkel’s Monetary Theory.”

“…… I’ve read that book.”

It was odd that she could remember a couple lines of narrative from such a thick book in the first place. She sneered to herself.

“From there, a series of bank failures led to farmers selling their land cheaply or borrowing money against it, which naturally led to usury. The problem was that the church at the time saw lending money and charging interest as inherently unfair because you’re selling something that doesn’t exist, and that’s where it started.”

“…….”

“If you go back and look at the people who argued for the need for the Reformation, they were loan sharks, or at least had connections to them. They sold indulgences, but maybe the church wasn’t as corrupt as they claimed.”

“……So in order to get rid of usury laws, usury lenders accused the church of evil and staged a reformation?”

“Yeah.”

His causality was so neat and perfect that she felt unfair for staying up all night. But more than that, Aiden’s smirk twisted her judgment. It was like when she was a kid and he’d praise her when she understood a book he’d taught her…….

She hated this. Sometimes, when she felt like a kid again, she realized just how low they had fallen. Belviana bit her lip tightly. The emotions she’d been feeling became clearer. She pretended to be nonchalant, to be bold, but she’d been wanting to ask this question since the beginning. She snapped,

“Why are you suddenly pretending to know?”

“What do you mean suddenly?”

It was bearable when she believed Aiden was obsessed with her. But now she couldn’t be sure of anything. She thought she’d fallen to hell with him, and when she woke up, she was alone, covered in dirt. And that scared her, because all he was obsessed with was her body, and even that was a fleeting whim. Everything she’d endured was nothing more than a fleeting pleasure for him.