A Marriage of Convenience /The Marriage Business

Chapter 3 - The Villainess, Bianca (3)

Bianca had been married off to the Arno family at the young age of 7. Despite being a young 20-year-old man himself, Zachary was nothing but big and scary to a child.

He was a brusque person with hands as large as Bianca’s face and his humble, dark, wool clothes gave off the scent of death. He was handsome and masculine, but that was also what made him look like a gravekeeper in the eyes of the young Bianca.

Zachary wasn’t used to interacting with children and Bianca wasn’t used to interacting with grown men aside from her father. Bianca avoided Zachary and, in turn, the latter was unable to approach her easily.

Though Zachary did make efforts to treat Bianca well in his own way, the problem was that instead of using warm words or smiles, he used money and gifts to try and win her favor.

That had been the starting point of Bianca falling further into loneliness.

With her back still leaning against the headrest, Bianca surveyed her room. The floor was covered with a carpet made from high-quality wool that felt extremely soft under her feet. Its rich hues and intricate patterns were indicative of its high-value, and yet Bianca was sure she had been dissatisfied with it in her past life, grumbling about how it was inferior to a carpet made of silk.

The Arnos were well-off thanks to Zachary’s impressive feats, which garnered all sorts of valuables and rewards from the king, but they were still incomparable to Bianca’s family, the Blancheforts, which remained prosperous for generations.

Zachary was a blunt and unsophisticated warrior, and he wasn’t one to wear extravagant clothing. This was reflected in how his castle was decorated as well. Even so, he had made an effort to match the lavishness Bianca would have grown up with under the Blancheforts.

Dull carpets, drab ornaments, and wooden furniture decorated Zachary–the lord of the castle’s room. In contrast, Bianca’s room held vibrant tapestries, gold-trimmed furniture, and cloth dyed in precious colors. But Bianca had still been dissatisfied. No matter how hard Zachary tried, it was not easy to meet Bianca’s standards.

The Bianca in the past had belittled Zachary’s endeavors, calling them pathetic. Even when he had brought back priceless purple-dyed cloth from a foreign country, Bianca only grumbled about how there was no gold thread to embroider it with.

There was one time when the usual amount of allowance given to Bianca had been slashed. As war continued, warhorses needed to be bought constantly while arrowheads and swords were always in short supply. Bianca had been wanting to redecorate her room before the weather got colder, so she became angry once she realized she did not have the funds to do so.

Decorating her room was not just a simple act of indulgence for Bianca. As she had practically been deposited in an unfamiliar place with no one but her nanny, Bianca was on awkward terms with everyone in the Arno castle, including her husband. Hence, she had no person or thing to grow attached to. Decorating her own space was an action done to alleviate some of the loneliness she felt. She was able to feel a sense of familiarity whenever she spent time in the room she decorated similarly to the one she had back in Blanchefort castle while dressed in expensive garments.

However, an absurd amount of money was required to adorn the desolate Arno castle and have it resemble the opulence of Blanchefort castle. Having her allowance cut was such a dire problem for Bianca that it had made her go find her husband herself, despite normally always avoiding him.

‘Why in the world do you have to participate in the war? What’s the point of winning if it just makes us poorer and poorer every time?!’

‘This will be the only time your allowance is cut.’