Chapter 2
"Stop!" Adrian looked like he was about to faint. "Princess, eating greasy food this late will wreck your stomach."
"Then maybe I'll have..." Roselyn began.
"I'll just have the kitchen whip up a bowl of soup." Adrian cut her off without hesitation. "Simple, easy on the stomach."
Roselyn glared at him.
Adrian remained perfectly calm. "With an egg."
"...Deal." Roselyn muttered.
That was Roselyn Carter's first night in the Grant residence. She got a bowl of plain noodle soup from Adrian Grant, with one egg added. According to an old servant in the Grant household, that egg had been taken from Adrian's own breakfast portion for the next morning.
This life, it seemed, would be a long, hard slog.
By the third day after the wedding, Roselyn had realized one cruel truth. Adrian Grant's stinginess was not an act. It was in his bones.
"My lady," the steward, Freddy Ford, handed her a ledger. "The master asked me to give this to you. It's the household accounts. He wants you to review them."
Roselyn was touched. Was Adrian really handing over the management of the household to her?
She opened the ledger and fell silent.
The Grant residence had thirty-seven people, and the total monthly allowance was just 1200 dollars.
"1200 dollars?!" Roselyn stared at the page in disbelief. "I used to spend more than that on cosmetics in half a month!"
Freddy gave her an embarrassed smile. "Madam, our residence has always lived frugally..."
"Frugally?" Roselyn pointed at the ledger. "Adrian only gives himself 300 dollars a month? 300 dollars? I heard his annual salary is over 4 million dollars. So where's all that money?"
"He's saving it." Freddy replied.
"Saving it for what?" Roselyn pressed.
Freddy shook his head honestly. "No idea. Ever since I entered the residence, Mr.Grant has lived like this. If his clothes tear, he patches them. If his shoes split open, he sews them and keeps walking.
"One winter, his padded robe got burned through, and he refused to buy a new one. He stitched the hole up himself. And do you know what he used for the patch? An old account book. You could still faintly see the words 'Ministry of Revenue' on it."
Roselyn was speechless.
This was no longer simple thrift. This was an illness. And it needed treatment.
That night, when Adrian got home, he found the main hall lit up like daytime—over twenty candles were burning bright. Roselyn was sitting right in the middle of all that light, cracking melon seeds at leisure.
"Madam." Adrian's face turned stormy. "What's all this about?"
"Lighting the room," Roselyn said as if it were obvious. "It's dark after sunset. A few more candles make it brighter."
Adrian took a deep breath, trying to keep himself cool. "Do you even know how much one candle costs?"
"Nope," Roselyn replied.
"Five cents. Twenty candles—that's a hundred cents. That's about what a regular family would spend in a whole day," Adrian said, his voice tight.
"Oh." Roselyn blinked, "Then how many candles can my husband's yearly salary buy?"
Adrian was left speechless.
"One hundred sixty thousand candles," Roselyn calculated for him. "If you burn twenty a day, that's over eight thousand days—more than twenty years' worth. Seems worth it to me."
Adrian: "..."
For the first time, he realized this princess was not someone you could mess with.
But that was just the beginning.
Over the next few days, Roselyn proved to everyone what it meant to be a true master at blowing through money.
She ordered the Grant residence garden redone and planted with expensive flowers brought over from the imperial garden.
She had all the old furniture replaced on the grounds that "if guests came, they'd think they had wandered into a pawnshop."
She ordered more than ten new outfits for herself because "a married woman ought to own a few proper clothes."
She even raised the monthly allowances for every servant in the residence because "who would keep working for a master this stingy without better pay?"
Every time Adrian tried to stop her from spending, Roselyn always had a clever retort ready.
"Hubby these flowers came from the palace. They didn't cost money.
"Hubby, that furniture was bought on credit. We haven't paid yet.
"Hubby, the seamstress gifted me these dresses because she admires my beauty.
"My husband, yes, the allowances have gone up, but I cut other expenses. For example, that padded robe you patched with an old ledger? I already threw it out. Now you don't need more thread and patches. That saves money."
He found himself unable to refute her.
What was even scarier was, he was starting to get used to it.
He got used to coming home to a courtyard filled with the scent of flowers, to the main hall glowing with candlelight, to extra dishes on the dinner table, and to that lively, talkative presence always bustling around him.
One day, Roselyn went out shopping and came back with a brand-new inkstone for him.
"A gift for you," she said. "Your old inkstone is practically worn through. The ink leaks when you write. People might think you cry while doing paperwork."
Adrian looked down at the inkstone in his hands, standing there, lost in thought for a long time.