My Villain Husband - Chapter 104

Her lips clamped at the sound of her name from his lips. As the emperor, indeed, he should know her. It was quite strange that he, the emperor, knew her, who was nothing but a count’s daughter. All the more, he knew about the cat she used to have?

People normally don’t know that. And I never let him know that. Angelica thought. Moreover, she was not an empiricist aristocrat, but a neutral one. Of course, if he were to say that he was interested in her, she might know, but was he in fact interested in her at this time?

Angelica squinted her eyes and studied him. A weird atmosphere fell over Rael who was staring at her, and a bizarre smile spread across his face, which was very unusual. Somehow Rael didn’t seem like the Rael whom Tiana knew from the original story.

There was still a lot of time left before it got started. No way Rael could already know Angelica. The time when he became interested in her was from after he had seen her proudly bumping into him after he had found out her secret and made an excuse to threaten her.

How in the hell did he gain interest in her now without even knowing her secret? And how did they meet so quickly?

Tiana wondered whether she had an impact on the change of the story, especially since she hadn’t intended to follow the original story. She was just a little embarrassed at the progression, which was going faster than she’d thought. She was lucky to have seen them meet for the first time. Thanks to Rose bringing her here, the two could meet with no problem. Tiana almost didn’t even know the story was starting.

Meow!

Rose, who had behaved well up until then, meowed as if she had been forgotten, attracting their gazes like a magnet. When Rael saw Angelica stroking Rose again, he approached her smiling.

“She gets jealous easily. She wants you to focus on her, Angelica.”

“I think she wants you to go, your Majesty.”

“She’s doing that because you keep looking at only me. She was jealous because we were talking to each other. Oh, not there, but just above her neck; that’s where she likes to be petted.”

Rael, approaching closer, naturally reached out to grab her hand, positioning it in the right place. Angelica’s body froze at the sudden physical contact. When he inched a little closer, he slowly let go of her hand at a close distance from her; then he opened his mouth and said, “Sorry… I didn’t know.”

“So small, your hands. Still…”

“Pardon?”

Again. Again with the still. His voice was lower this time around, but Angelica could definitely hear it. She looked at him oddly, but soon he made some space between them and said in a small smile, “Rosemary. You can call her Rose. She will be happy if you remember to call her that. The next time you see her if you pet her on the spot I told you… she will like you more.”

Meow!

Angelica, who saw Rose purring and smiling as if Rael had said the right thing, flinched with a dumbfounded look on her face. Somehow Tiana knew how she felt, so she had the same look on her face.

*

During the entire carriage ride back to her mansion after the tea party, Tiana couldn’t stop thinking about Rael and Angelica’s first encounter from earlier. She had witnessed the beginning of the story, but that wasn’t the important thing. It would be meaningless to nitpick over the original story now, but that was separate from the suspicion of what had happened today.

The two of them meet in an unexpected place and Rael’s strange behavior. The way he had treated Angelica so naturally was very different from what Tiana knew him to be like.

Could there be another set-up of them that was different from the original story? The fact that Lucius and Tiana were lovers was different from the original, so there was a high possibility. And there also seemed to be a reason for Rael knowing about Angelica beforehand; did Lucius happen to know the reason?

“We’ve arrived, madam.”

“Oh, okay. Thank you.”

Before she knew it, a driver opened the door for her in front of the mansion. Upon exiting the carriage, Lucius came out to meet her with the servants.

“Tiana.”

“Lucius!”

Having just been thinking about him, she approached him with open arms. They smiled face to face, and he hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.

“Come here. Did you enjoy the tea party?”

“Yes, very much. Alexandra prepared so much. I also got to meet Viscountess Garnett and have a good conversation with her, and I met some other friends of Alexandra.”

“Sounds like you had fun. Let’s head inside to eat, and you can tell me how everything went.”

“All right.”

Tiana followed him inside, heading to the dining room. She had returned right on time because the dining room was already filled with the smell of freshly cooked food. Her stomach growled as the delicious scent filled her stomach.

She had talked to Viscountess Garnett and cared for Angelica so much at the tea party that she could barely eat the dessert that Alexandra’s maids had served. Having only drunk two cups of black tea all day, she was starving.

After sitting down, she ate the delicious food while telling Lucius all about the tea party. Tiana felt thankful that he was such a good listener, and she set her fork down and said to him, “Lucius, there’s something I want to ask you.”