The man stood up straight and announced, "I'll tell the lord about this good news," then offered a courteous bow and walked out of the room.
Good news? For whom, exactly? Not for me!
At last I'd had a chance to really think—think really, mind you—about my own predicament, and the sinking dread seeped into my stomach like sour cafeteria food. Nothing was working for me.
First of all, I hadn't even read the blasted book.
I loathed it so vehemently that I quit after a few chapters and sent it back to the library as if it had personally wronged me—which, admittedly, it had. The pacing was garbage, the plot was maddening, and the characters? Despicable. The only thing I recall was that there was a doomed noblewoman named Lady Alexandra who was wealthy, despised, and completely doomed.
Wait… Lady Alexandra…
No.
No, no, no.
I gasped, laying a shaking hand on my potentially pregnant belly as the horror became clear to me.
I was Lady Alexandra.
The same Lady Alexandra who hated her guts because her cold, aloof husband did.
The same one who became pregnant after he confused her for his very first love during one drunken, foggy evening.
The same Alexandra who, if my awful memory does not fail me, dies when giving birth.
WHY MUST I DIE? I WAS A VIRGIN IN LIFE. HOW IS THAT JUST?!
I didn't even get to hold hands with a person I liked before I died the first time, and now I'm supposed to give birth to a child for a man who can't even look me in the eye without imagining someone else?
As I descended into the deepest depths of existential terror, the door opened ominously. Naturally. Because nothing screams "villainess life" so much as a dramatic entrance.
A man entered.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and good-looking in that icy, brooding aristocrat sort of way. Excellent jawline. Hair neatly brushed. His eyes, a glacial gray-blue, swept the room like they didn't really see anything.
His face was—flat. Stoic. Dead.
No, actually. His face resembled someone having hurled a frying pan at it and crushed all traces of emotion.
Was this the husband? The notorious cold-hearted lord? The man whose only passion was reserved for his deceased first love?
I felt a strange, fiery irritation spark in my chest. Was it the pregnancy hormones? The reincarnation stress? The fact that I'd died a virgin and woken up in a cursed love triangle?
I didn't know. I didn't care.
I sat up (well, more like flopped dramatically against the pillows) and barked,
"What do you want?!"
He blinked once. Slowly. As if shocked that I, his legally married wife, had the temerity to speak with actual feeling.
This should be good.