I Reincarnated Just to be Unemployed

[Lucielle’s POV — Continuation]

Now I won’t go into detail about how I spent the next fifteen minutes, or maybe twenty; time had completely lost meaning. Let’s just say... I screamed like a dying kettle, roared like an angry duck AND questioned every god in existence.

Tried to negotiate with the ceiling and attempted to jump out the window because my sleep-deprived brain somehow concluded,

If gravity brought apples down... maybe it’ll bring me back.

Spoiler... It didn’t.

Apparently gravity only works on apples, not overworked salarymen.

Instead, I was tackled by three maids before I even reached the window. Apparently, noble ladies weren’t supposed to swan dive out of second-floor windows before breakfast.

So after exhausting every possible stage of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, and more anger. I finally accepted one horrifying truth.

"I BECAME A WOMAN WITH NO DICK!!"

Silence.

One maid quietly sniffled, another crossed herself, and the third one looked like she’d witnessed the apocalypse.

Meanwhile... I sat in front of the massive mirror, my legs spread apart without a shred of elegance, and this stupid vintage dress wrapped around my body like an overprotective snake.

"How do women breathe in this thing?" I tugged at the corset. Whoever invented corsets... I hope they stepped on a LEGO.

I glanced downward. I poked my boobs, because they looked fantastic when they belonged to someone else; now they’re just heavy. They’re literally installed weight DLC.

I let out the deepest sigh of my life.

I poked my chest again.

"I used to be your biggest supporter."

Poke.

"Huge fan."

Another poke.

"...Now I’m paying the subscription fee."

Behind me the maid from earlier was still trembling while carefully combing my ridiculously long blood-red hair. I watched her through the mirror; she looked one accidental blink away from fainting.

I narrowed my eyes.

"...YOU."

She jumped so violently that—

YANK!

"Aaaaaow!"

She accidentally pulled a fistful of my hair, the comb flew out of her hand, and she immediately collapsed to her knees.

"I-I APOLOGIZE, YOUR GRACE!! I DESERVE PUNISHMENT!! I APOLOGIZE!!"

. . .

I blinked. Is walking illegal here? Because this woman had spent more time kneeling than standing. At this rate, she’d evolve into a coffee table.

I rubbed my sore scalp. "It’s okay; my hair survived."

She looked up in complete disbelief.

"...Eh?"

I ignored her. Actually, this wasn’t entirely bad. If everyone were this terrified of Lucielle... Maybe I could use that.

"Ahem... You..."

She immediately bowed again. "Y-Yes, Your Grace!"

"Do you know...who I am?"

The maid froze. "...Pardon?"

I stared at her coldly and deadly, and then she looked like her brain had just crashed. "Y-Your Grace...you are Lady Lucielle Ashcroft, the mistress of House Ashcroft."

My soul left my body for what had to be the fifth time today because...it’s comformed that I am married to the Villain already.

...FUUUUCK!! This is the worst possible save file! I didn’t even get reincarnated before the marriage! I spawned AFTER it?! Who designed this world?!

The maid looked absolutely horrified. "Madam, I...I don’t understand what happened to..."

"Neither do I!"

. . .

. . .

Okay, crying isn’t going to uninstall this world. I stood up, my legs naturally spread apart, comfortable and stable. Exactly how I’d always stood.

The maid gasped. "Madam!"

"Hm?"

"...L-Ladies don’t stand like that..."

I looked down and then looked back at her. "Then how do they stand?"

She awkwardly demonstrated, tiny feet together, straight back, and hands folded.

I stared at her flatly, saying, "That’s not standing; that’s buffering."

Without another word, I started walking, or rather striding, like I was about to attend a company meeting. The maid hurried after me in absolute panic.

"Y-Your Grace! Please wait! You forgot your posture!"

I sighed.

"This world is exhausting already."

I grabbed the door handle. The maid reached toward me.

"Y-Your Grace, wai—"

CREEEEAK...

The massive wooden doors swung open.

SHHHHHHHHHH—!!

An icy gust of wind slapped me directly across the face.

. . .

. . .

"...HOLY—" I instantly became a human popsicle. "W-W-WHY IS YOUR HOUSE A REFRIGERATOR?! I CAN FEEL MY ANCESTORS SHIVERING!"

Before I could retreat inside, the maid quickly draped a thick fur-lined coat over my shoulders. "M-My Lady...It’s winter."

I blinked.

"That explains a lot." I pulled the coat tighter around myself, saying, "Thanks."

The maid froze completely. She stared at me as if I’d just started speaking fluent dragon. "What?"

"Nothing, Your grace."

I furrowed my brow and stepped out of the room to the enormous hallway. Dark and silent, only a handful of candles flickered along the stone walls. The cold made the entire mansion feel less like a noble residence...and more like the final dungeon before the Demon King.

I looked around.

"Why are there so few candles?"

The maid answered quietly. "Y-Your Grace ordered it."

"I did?"

"You instructed us to light only the minimum number of candles."

I stared at the dim corridor stretching endlessly ahead.

Past Lucielle, she was living in a billionaire’s mansion. WHY WAS SHE SAVING CANDLES? Was she planning to pass them down as family heirlooms?

I stuffed my hands into the oversized sleeves of the coat and continued walking with the relaxed swagger of an office worker heading to buy coffee.

"I wonder...what kind of woman Lucielle Ashcroft actually was."

The novel barely mentioned her. She wasn’t a heroine. She wasn’t a villainess. She wasn’t even important enough to have a personality. Just the Grand Duke’s first wife, a woman who existed only to die. I rubbed my forehead.

***

[Lucielle’s POV — Later, House Ashcroft]

Turns out walking around a giant mansion while your personal emotional-support maid followed behind you wasn’t actually a bad way to gather information.

Correction.

She wasn’t my emotional-support maid. She was...The Shivering Maid.

Seriously, at this point, I was convinced trembling was part of her job description. Cold? Shake. Scared? Shake. I looked at her? Extra shake.

She kept shivering so badly I was half convinced the poor girl had been raised in a freezer instead of a nursery, and yet somehow, between one panic attack and the next, she narrated Lucielle Ashcroft’s entire tragic life story like her life depended on it.

Which, knowing this house, probably did.

So...Lucielle Ashcroft, only daughter of Count Alaric Duskbane. Married off to Cassian Ashcroft at a very young age because the family finances were apparently doing backflips into the ground.

Ten years old.

Ten.

I stopped walking.

"...Ten?"

The maid nodded with the expression of someone ready to be executed for merely existing. "Yes, Your Grace..."

I stared at her, dumbfounded. Who the hell marries off a ten-year-old child? Why would anyone choose basic decency when they could choose crime?

I kept listening.

According to the shivering maid, Lucielle had been distant with the servants from the beginning. Cold. Sharp-tongued. Miserable. She threw tantrums, never attended parties, isolated herself completely, and treated every person in the mansion like they were inconvenient furniture.

Which, apparently, had earned her the title of The Ghost Grand Duchess.

So the original Lucielle was a terrifying shut-in. That explains the candles; it also explained the almost-empty wardrobe I’d seen earlier, and it also explained the silence in the hallway; there was not a single knight.

The servants acting like they’d rather be cursed than make eye contact. It explained why this mansion felt less like a home and more like a beautifully decorated punishment.

Honestly, if Lucielle had been miserable enough to save candles in a mansion this big, then she wasn’t just stingy; she was spiritually broke.

Well, she cannot be blamed; her father’s financial ruin apparently made him look at a ten-year-old daughter and said,

Ah yes. A valuable negotiation asset.

He basically sold his daughter.

I sighed and continued walking, my slippers whispering against the polished stone floor. A little farther ahead, the corridor opened into a covered balcony; the cold air here was worse; it slapped my face like an unpaid bill.

I stepped out anyway.

Because apparently my second life had decided that all important revelations should be delivered in weather designed to punish the weak.

And then—

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Steel rang out below, sharp, cold, and violent. The sound sliced through the winter air again and again, echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard below.

I looked over the railing; down in the open training grounds, several knights were standing in formation, their breaths white in the freezing air.

Two men were sparring in the center; one looked exhausted already, like he had been dragged out of bed by force and personally betrayed by existence.

The other—tall, broad-shouldered, and powerful enough to make the entire courtyard feel smaller just by standing in it.

Silver hair, ocean-blue eyes, and a body so ridiculously built that the word "manly" felt insultingly inadequate.

The muscles in his forearms flexed as he raised his sword, veins standing out beneath his skin like they were trying to escape. And the sun, for some completely unfair reason, was hitting him like he was the main character of the universe.

. . .

"...Who is that hot guy?"

I said it before I could stop myself; the maid beside me froze so hard I thought her soul had actually left her body. She turned to look at me with wide, trembling eyes.

"Y-Your Grace... you’re asking very strange questions today..."

I blinked.

"That is His Grace...Grand Duke Cassian Ashcroft."

My brain took one full second to process that sentence, then another, and then it crashed, then rebooted, and then crashed again.

"...Oh."

I stared down at him, at the silver hair, at the sword, at the giant terrifying body, and at the face so cold and handsome it could have been carved from winter itself.

And then, very slowly, the rest of the information slammed into place like a truck with terrible brakes.

Cassian Ashcroft.

The Grim Grand Duke. The villain of the novel. The man everyone in the empire feared. The one who ruled the North like he had personally invented winter.

My husband.

I kept staring at him; my stomach sank lower and lower until I was pretty sure it had moved out of my body entirely.

"Why is he..." I narrowed my eyes. "...why is my villain husband built like a war god?"

The maid looked like she had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, which was fair, because neither did I.

Cassian raised his sword again below us. The knights backed away instinctively. Even from this distance, I could feel it: the pressure, the danger, and the sheer authority radiating off him like heat off a forge.

He wasn’t just strong; he looked like the kind of man who could end a conversation just by breathing in your direction.

The maid swallowed hard. "Your Grace... is there something wrong?"

I did not answer immediately. I could not because the problem was not that something was wrong. The problem was that everything was wrong.

"Better maintain distance."

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