Dirty Heart - Chapter 4

As evening fell and the sun slowly sank, the day’s work finally ended.

From cleaning the stables to pulling weeds in the garden, doing laundry, and washing dishes. She’d taken on every kind of nasty job, and her whole body ached.

Her back and shoulders especially felt like they were about to break. It was because Head Maid Ella had deliberately picked out only the heavy loads and shoved them onto her.

“You worked so hard today too, Courtney. If your back hurts, tell me. I’ll let you carry even heavier loads tomorrow .”

How could someone be this vicious? Ella’s sneering voice still seemed to linger in her ears.

“If I’d known it’d be like this, I should’ve asked the Young Duke to cut off her head first.”

She’d thought that if she just played along in moderation and worked hard at her job, things would get better in their own way, but she’d been far too naive.

Looking back, it also felt like she’d thrown away the card of the Young Duke’s favor too hastily. If she’d used her head just a little, she could’ve taken advantage of it as much as she wanted.

For example, acting cute in moderation to squeeze out gold and jewels, or preventing nuisances like the head maid from even daring to approach her in the first place.

“Did I really have to say we should break up?”

Just as she started to regret the breakup she’d blurted out without thinking, only obsessed with protecting her heart.

Lionel’s face from that morning suddenly came to mind. The way he’d stared at people all day from the window, so darkly….

“How handsome he is.”

Heh. In the middle of all this, she pictured that beautiful face and grinned like a pervert.

A pallid face drained of all color, cold eyes, even that sickly male lead’s uniquely prickly, sensitive edge.

There wasn’t a single corner that wasn’t a top-tier place, which made it even more of a shame. If it was going to be like this, they should’ve possessed her into the heroine instead.

“He looked really sick, though. What if he collapses again?”

She was unconsciously worrying about Lionel, then startled.

“What’s wrong with me?”

Anyway, she needed to get a grip. No matter how pitiable a handsome man he was, to Courtney, Lionel was nothing but a dangerous man.

When she reached the servants’ quarters, she threw herself onto the bed. Thanks to her roommate not being back yet, everything around her was endlessly quiet. Because of that, Courtney could enjoy some time alone.

“Still, how am I supposed to survive here?”

It was time to seriously think it through. She couldn’t keep avoiding Lionel forever just because they’d broken up.

Soon enough, Lionel would come at her head-on to change her mind, and she needed to make plans in advance for that.

“Should I run away?”

The first option was to escape.

But even thinking about it a little, it seemed close to impossible.

The meticulous Duke Erhardt would’ve already put watchers around Courtney, and even if she somehow slipped past the strict surveillance and left the ducal residence, she’d still run into another problem.

“I don’t have any money saved. How would I live?”

Moreover, Courtney Balkan’s financial situation was extremely bleak. Not only was her maid’s wage not that high, but she was also sending most of it elsewhere. To her orphanage.

“What an idiot.”

The more she learned, the more she thought there was no idiot like this. Even while being used by a man, she still donated to the orphanage without fail, and on top of that, the orphanage director was making a fuss every month, demanding she send more.

Staring at the yellowed ceiling and clicking her tongue, she immediately thought of a second plan.

“What if I fell from somewhere high?”

It was a rather primitive method, damaging her body so the surgery itself would be impossible, but this didn’t seem like a very good solution either.

“What if I get hurt for no reason and end up on the operating table right away?”

It might make her heart get ripped out even faster, and if it failed, she couldn’t rule out the risk of being crippled for life.

“Ha, this is driving me crazy.”

Either way, it was a dilemma with no clear answer.

Nothing had been resolved cleanly, but maybe because the work was so grueling, drowsiness washed over her. It was always like this lately. She’d think and think, then fall asleep without any conclusion.

“I have to find a way….”

Today too, she sank into a deep sleep, as always.

***

The next afternoon, Lionel came looking for Courtney openly.

“Let’s talk for a moment.”

Courtney, who’d been pulling weeds in the garden, snapped her head up. A face so impossibly handsome, no matter how many times she saw it, was looking down at her, but she forced herself to put on an indifferent expression.

“Mm, I don’t have anything to say to you, Young Duke.”

In that moment, everyone nearby froze in shock. To dare refuse the Young Duke’s order to his face was something that couldn’t happen.

“Still, I have something I want to say.”

“I really don’t. Please move. I have to pull all the weeds here.”

“Courtney, please.”

With everyone watching in held breath, Lionel suddenly dropped to his knees.

When the rightful heir of House Erhardt knelt before a mere maid, Courtney was flustered too and waved her hands.

“What are you doing, seriously!”

“It’ll only take a moment. Yeah?”

“I said I don’t want to!”

“I’m going to stay like this until you make time for me.”

With so many eyes focused on her, she finally set the shovel down and let out a deep sigh. It wasn’t that she’d been swayed by Lionel’s desperate gaze. She just wanted to wrap this up quickly.

“Just for a moment.”

The moment she allowed it, a smile spread across his face. He smiled so beautifully that even the maids watching from a distance looked like they’d be entranced.

As soon as he turned his head and swept his gaze sharply over the area, the servants who’d been murmuring scattered in an instant.

And so, the garden where only the two of them remained.

“Courtney, what did I do wrong?”

Lionel carefully took her hand in his. His delicate hand was cold as ice, and she flinched and trembled without realizing it.

“That thing about liking another man, that was a lie, right?”

“…It’s not a lie!”

“Do you really have another man?”

His blue eyes, like the deep sea, took on a strange light. Staring straight at Courtney, he kept asking again and again.

“It was just an excuse to push me away, wasn’t it? Please tell me it was, Courtney.”

“Young Duke. Why do you think I’ll like only one man forever?”

“Well….”

He looked flustered for a moment, then answered shamelessly, “Courtney, you like handsome men. Is there any man in this estate as handsome as me?”

“….”

She hated that confident expression on Lionel’s face, but absurdly enough, it was true, so she couldn’t refute it.

“Fine. Young Duke, of course you’re handsome. But like I told you before, I want the man who’ll become my husband to live a long life.”

As he listened to her, the man’s expression gradually hardened.

“You get sick too often, Young Duke. What if you suddenly collapse later and die? What am I supposed to do then?”

“….”

If someone who didn’t know the inside story heard it, it might’ve sounded like a truly cold, cruel thing to say, but she kept her mouth moving without stopping.

“So even if he’s a little ugly, I’m saying a healthy man is better, that’s what I mean.”

“I’ll… promise I’ll get healthier.”

“How are you going to get healthier? Do you have a specific method?”

The eyes fixed on Courtney gleamed dangerously. The only way he could become healthy was by receiving a transplant of her heart, but of course he couldn’t tell her the truth.

“Courtney. Do you… not love me anymore?”

Suddenly changing the subject, he clung to her with a desperate expression. His flawless features twisted with sorrow made him look exactly like a gumiho. A monster that slowly gnaws away at human organs.

‘Not even a damn womanizer, what the hell is this?’

Maybe it was because, in her past life, she had been just as weak to good looks as Courtney. Even knowing Lionel was a devil-possessed bastard, her heart kept softening, so she hurried to draw the line.

“Yes. I don’t love you anymore, Young Duke.”

Lionel’s face turned deathly pale in an instant. It had already been ghostly white before, but now it looked nearly transparent.

“Ah.”

With a small groan that slipped from his lips, a drop of red blood trickled down from the tip of his nose. It looked like a drop of paint falling onto a canvas as white as snow.

“Young Duke! Your nose is bleeding!”

Courtney shot up in shock. Just like the last time she’d found him collapsed in the washroom, her body reacted before her mind.

“S-stay still!”

Flustered, she untied her apron, pressed it under Lionel’s nose, and hurried to stop the bleeding.

“Lean forward. If it goes down your airway, it’ll be dangerous.”

Watching Courtney panic and fuss around him, Lionel’s lips curved faintly.

“Courtney.”

His large hand closed gently around her wrist. Then, like a cat softly purring, he rubbed his face lightly against the back of her hand.

“That thing about not loving me, that was a lie, wasn’t it?”