I Became the Duke’s Male Servant
Amidst the gloom, his blue-tinged eyes felt chilling. They carried the grim weight of dawn or the bite of a honed blade—the look of a predator tracking prey.
“Um… Duke Baltezar?”
A warning bell tolled in my mind. Klaus De Baltezar, master of this estate. The man before me was a far cry from his usual cold, detached self. His navy eyes, stripped of all reason, raked over the nape of my neck. His massive hand, easily large enough to crush a skull, looked ready to snap my throat.
But to my surprise, Klaus’s hand moved slowly toward my hair. The time it took for those thick-knuckled fingers to reach me felt agonizingly drawn out. My pitch-black hair, hacked short—far too short for a woman’s, ending right at the earlobe—was tangled in his grip. I, Roselia, pressed hard against the wall, stared at the Duke with a bewildered expression, my shoulders hunched to my ears.
“Um… did you call me because you have a task for me?”
At my naive confusion, Klaus let out a dry, airy chuckle.
“A task…? Ha… yes, I do.”
He slammed his hand against the wall beside my head with a thud, growling as if he were displeased—or perhaps furious—with the situation.
“I need to verify something.”
A cold shiver raced down my spine. Verify? What…? Could it be… had I been found out? I’d spent three months convinced I had hidden it well…
My hair had been sheared like a boy’s, and I wore the quintessential servant’s attire: a white ruffled shirt tucked beneath a crisp black tuxedo vest. To be precise, a male servant’s uniform.
“What exactly is it that you wish to verify…?”
Despite my calm voice, I couldn’t meet his gaze, my eyes darting toward the floor. Seeming irritated, Klaus grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. His navy eyes, locked onto my emerald green ones, were a volatile mix of confusion and rage.
“Antonio De Hessink.”
The name of my adopted brother. I could never get used to hearing it. As it pierced the silence, my pounding heart slowly found its rhythm. *Stay calm. Right now, I am Antonio. I must not show even a flicker of agitation. If he discovers I’m a woman, that man will kill me. Or worse, he’ll use me and discard me, just like in the original story. I was possessed as an extra maid destined to be ruined by the black-hearted Duke, but I’m safe for now. As long as he doesn’t realize the truth.*
“Antonio…”
His face descended until he was nearly brushing my nose. I didn’t know why, but his breath sounded even rougher than usual.
“Dammit, didn’t I tell you not to wear that perfume?”
At Klaus’s growling warning, a surge of indignation rose in me.
“I told you, I do not wear perfume.”
“Ha… for someone sent to pay off the debt of a ruined barony, you always have a sharp tongue…”
“…”
It was true. I was a servant who had entered the Baltezar Duchy to settle a debt. As the daughter of the fallen Hessink Barony, I had been sent here to answer for the family’s ruin. I was the foolish woman who would eventually love the Duke, sacrifice her body and heart, only to be used, discarded, and killed. That was the extra I had possessed.
But knowing the story inside out, I had no intention of meeting that fate. I had disguised myself as a man to avoid his gaze entirely, but this damn Duke had dragged me along regardless—a development that never existed in the original plot. Did he not care that I was a man? Or had my presence already shifted the trajectory of the story?
My eyes, now composed, stared intently at his, full of questions. Perhaps viewing this as defiance, Klaus twisted his lips into a smirk and pressed his body closer, trapping me between his arms and the stone.
It was meant to be an act of intimidation, but instead, a strange, electric tension coiled between us. Klaus, sensing the shift, fell silent for a long moment.
“Duke…?”
I broke the silence. I could feel his hot breath spilling onto my forehead. My heart hammered against my ribs, terrified that this proximity would reveal the chest I had tightly bound with cloth.
“I told you, Antonio. I find what is hidden as if I were a ghost.”
It felt as though he were speaking about the very secret beneath my vest, and cold sweat broke out along my back. Klaus’s hot lips hovered near my ear.
“I need to know what it is you’re hiding.”
The spot on my ear where his breath touched, and our thighs pressed together like they were fused, felt as if they were burning. I was trapped in a haze of heat; my mind reeled.
I met his piercing navy eyes in confusion. An invisible thread, pulled taut by the tension, hung dangerously between us.
I screamed inwardly at the impossible complexity of this situation. *Look here, Your Grace. Are you really saying it doesn’t matter if I’m a man!*