Venus Rouge

To The Victor Go The Spoils

I sighed inwardly, feeling utterly bored but maintaining a somber appearance on the outside as a neverending stream of well wishers came up to express their "sympathy" for my loss.

I've now officially attended the second biggest farce of my second life time in the name of Richard Verne. The first was his wedding and then there's this. His funeral.

I don't know who these people thought they were fooling with these empty words of sympathy. Perhaps they thought my head just as empty, because I knew for a fact that they couldn't casre less whether Verne kicked the bucket or not. What they cared for instead was the potentially exploitable widow with the huge fortune.

It didn't matter either way, that man was already in the ground. And I was completely free from suspicion. I was prepared to use any means necessary to make sure his dead weight didn't pull me down too, but it was surprisingly easy to literally get away with murder in this world if you had enough hush money.

The thought of it still tugged lightly at my sense of guilt, having Verne killed... but then I thought of who it was I was talking about and I was over it. The world was better off.

Those wagging tongues were a problem though. The nobles were like circling vultures over Verne's corpse watching to see if the survivors were going to keel over as well so they could swoop in. I'd already had a seemingly endless stream of lower nobility trying to take advantage of my "grief" to attach their children to me as playmates or weedle information out of me about the going on of the estate so they could gossip to their hearts content. Really.

If this was how they gossip then the servants in their homes must be the most base kind of gossip mongers. I won't complain about this fact though, because it was this same fact that allowed me to have an opening to put an end to Richard Verne.

You see, the servants on the Verne estate were just that: gossip mongers. Furthermore, they were quite easily influenced by hearsay. Verne was far too busy living his hedonistic lifestyle to look into the quality of the hired help too.

The servants from Onyx house on the other hand were the complete opposite. Many of them were past adventures or simply people from Onyx fief who have a limitless amount of respect for my late father. They would go to hell and back for Ronnie and me and their circle was airtight.

I simply had Maddie and the others lower themselves a little front of Verne's staff, make the fact that they were from a baron house very apparent in almost subservient conduct. Along with "letting slip" Claire's commoner origins, I subtly manipulated them into subconsciously looking down on her. It wasn't outright scorn. No. These people had at least the barest minimum of professionalism, but their pride as servants of a wealthy, high ranked Ducal house was clear as day in their gazes and willingness to carry out orders. Sowing the seeds of discord was easy.

And, of course, Claire could only ever have the best. She also had her inflated pride from her promotion to Duchess, she definitely wouldn't stand for being looked down upon by the help. In the inevitable clash of authority it was obvious who would win. It lead to Claire getting rid of the majority of the servants and replacing them with the Onyx servants who she still believed were loyal to her.

It was a bit difficult to get rid of some of the more higher ranking staff but there wasn't even a single really capable person in the entire house so once those were taken care of with a little sabotage the rest were easy pickings. It couldn't be too fast or it would have raised suspicion of the new Duchess throwing her power around to bully the servants and roused Verne, so this was done gradually.

I basically borrowed Claire's pristinely manicured, jewel covered hands to hollow out Verne house. Beneath the paper thin name "Verne", Onyx house came back into existence, and once my people took ahold of the estate it officially became my domain.
Once it became like this, if I were to say, have Verne tossed down the central staircase and claim it was a drunken stumble, no one would refute it. It would also be helped by Verne's reputation of being an unsociable drunk even before he got hitched to Claire. There would have probably been a few questions as to why he was missing an eye, but glossing over such facts is what I paid the coroner and undertaker to do..... Hypothetically.