I Had No Complaints About This Marriage - Chapter 31
The vials sent by the furious women shimmered with red powder. These flowers, symbolizing farewell and bloodshed, carried an effect perfectly aligned with their meaning—
“Who knew I’d live to receive contraceptive pills as gifts?”
Though the accompanying letters were gilded with false courtesy, half the senders clearly hoped she’d consume them unaware. Esina shook her head lightly.
If they thought her ignorant of high society and floral language enough to fall for this, why had they been so incensed when she merely smelled the flowers?
‘Well, I’ll chalk it up to their ignorance.’
Nobles were baffling creatures. Yet their pettiness was working in her favor.
‘…One spoonful equals a silver ingot?’
Thanks to the botanical guide’s emphasis on Flemmel flower contraceptives being exorbitantly expensive, she’d learned the truth.
A single silver ingot matched a month’s salary for mid-tier imperial officials—a staggering sum. Esina reread the passage several times before smiling sweetly at the vials in her hand.
‘How much is this worth?’
Each vial likely held ten, no, fifteen spoonfuls at least.
‘I’ll gather and sell them all.’
Though they wouldn’t rival the diamond necklace Herman had draped around her neck, they’d fatten her emergency fund nicely. Money, after all, was best accumulated in abundance.
Meant to spite her, the gifts only delighted Esina. She almost wished they’d send more. If they were going to be petty, why not go all out?
‘How can I provoke them into another windfall?’
Perhaps she should kiss Herman in public next time.
Lost in visions of profit, she absently studied the contraceptives—which naturally led to thoughts of heirs. The rumor from the department store resurfaced.
‘…Herman has a bastard, they said.’
It wasn’t shocking. Frankly, for a man who’d bedded half the empire, not having illegitimate children would’ve been stranger.
‘Things were going too smoothly, I suppose.’
Her carefully selected diamond of a husband had another flaw.
‘No wonder he’s avoided women lately!’
But Esina, tempered by years of navigating trash men, found this barely a hurdle. If anything, it was liberating.
“Honestly, I’d been growing more uneasy lately.”
Herman kept treating her so well. It seemed like he didn’t even glance at other women anymore.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that some colossal betrayal was looming—one she couldn’t even foresee.
‘Turns out, that betrayal was the illegitimate child.’
Now that this flaw had surfaced, she doubted anything worse could follow.
‘Surely there’s no greater downside waiting to reveal itself.’
Esina pressed a hand lightly against the faint discomfort in her chest and exhaled a short sigh.
If there was any consolation, it was that the child was likely conceived before he met her.
‘A baby takes over nine months to be born, after all.’
And it didn’t seem like he was currently seeing the mother. If he were, he’d frequently be absent—and Esina would’ve noticed.
Or perhaps he didn’t even know about the child. Maybe some past fling had given birth without his knowledge.
The more she thought about it, the more plausible that seemed.
‘He doesn’t strike me as the type to ignore his own child.’
The Herman she knew certainly wasn’t.
For all his rakish looks and decadent reputation, he woke early, exercised religiously, and buried himself in paperwork with single-minded focus—a man who lived with disciplined regularity.
When the topic of his failed engagement to Princess Cloe had come up…
‘He’d even joked, half-seriously, that raising the girl himself would’ve been better.’
‘It didn’t seem like he disliked children. If he’d known I had an illegitimate child, I think he would’ve offered to bring and raise it himself first.’
‘…Thinking that, a strange sense of relief came over me.’
‘At least Herman…’
Even if he was a womanizer, at least he wasn’t trash enough to get his wife and another woman pregnant at the same time—thank goodness.
Therefore, he was still her diamond trash.
‘I can take comfort in this.’
Still, she couldn’t help but be bothered by the illegitimate child and the woman who bore it. After all, Esina had also once met a man in her past life who was married. Though she hadn’t known at the time.
‘Raising a child alone isn’t easy for a woman.’
