The villainess will not die twice

Magic and business

Its been a month since i moved into the west wing and things are going smoothly, one if the buildings in town are already restored and waiting for me to go take a look, I've had the female servants take noble etiquette lessons, something no other noble house does and they are fairing quite well with their lessons, all of them have also been given spacific gowns to wear in case we have important guests, the male servants have gone through the same but much worse, they had etiquette lessons, are being trained by my fater personally for emergency combat, butler training and have been given black and crimson suits for the same reason as the maids.

And on weekends we all get together in a study room in the west wing for studying, i decided that I would teach all of them about business and accounting together, all of them hated it at first but now just as me, they look forward to the weekend, the other day when i was talking to my father because he had a problem and wanted my input, one of the maids were able to find a solution to the shock of my father, he gave her high praise and this was a new found motivation for all of them, servants generally dont have education, so to be able to have a valid input on a noble situation is far above what anyone would expect,  after this I held a meeting telling them that if they studied hard enough in all aspects, i would have them handsomely rewarded,not to mention that i would need educated and trustworthy people helping me with my businesses for a permanent fixed salary of course, afte that they've even started studing in their spair time. In reality though , I would need trustworthy and well educated people infiltrate the the black market.

For me on the other hand, ive been studying as well, I've been reading up on almost everything from simple mathematics to distant country customs, i have to be a well rounded noble lady, the world of business is almost as vicious as the nobility, id have to be a master of all subjects if i want to be successful.

But today i have something else planed, you see, magic in our world us extremely rare, only nobles and a few commoners can wield it, no one knows why, some believe it is a gift from the gods while others say it was a magical beast , there are many more theories around the gift of magic. In my previous life, i had levitation magic, but i could only use it on extremely light objects such as a empty tea cups or feathers and even that was difficult, in the end i gave up on trying to use my magic completely having deemed it useless.

Thus im in the woods, a few years before i was executed, the prince had found a tree in these woods, it bore black fruit and eating them could give you emense magical abilities greater than those you had before, unfortunately he had it up rooted to plant in the royal garden, when they arrived they had realized their mistake, the fruit had gone wrotten and the tree was but a dead branch compared to what it was, a single fruit was left, of course this was given to the king, no one knew how much he was effected, all they knew was that the king could one day only use fire magic and the next he could use water and wind magic as well.

I wanted this tree for myself, thus i was searching for it. But these woulds were known to hold magical creatures within, none that I had seen this far though.

Finally after hours of wandering the forest i came to a small clearing, in the middle was a sight to behold, it looked like a small apple tree, but the bark was covered in patters that glowed green and the leaves were purple, the fruit looked like black deformed apples. I stepped closer and decided to do something stupid, i picked all the apples on the tree and put them in my bag, next i carefully cut of a small twig that was starting to grow on one of the branches and headed home.

That night i had counted the apples and realized i had 25 of them, i went to the kitchens and turned 5 aplles into apple juice,  and used 5 others to bake a few small apple crumpets, leaving me with 15 apples, when Angelina kept me away from gatherings in the past, I had taken up baking along with many other hobbies to keep myself busy, no one found it strange for me to be in the kitchens at this point, i had decided to plant the twig with seeds from the apples in my hidden garden close to the main garden, it seems that there was once a separate small garden, probably for tea, but vines had grown over the door making it impossible to see, i had found it while examining the vines, the garden had been overgrown with weeds and the grass was unsightly tall, never the less, i would do the landscaping later, in the middle of the garden, i planted the twig with the seeds and gave it some water, hopefully it would work, if it didn't, at least i hadn't cut down the original.

I went back to my room and started eating the crumpets along with the juice while i was looking at the plans for my stores, if i really wanted to survive this time around, i don't think being an upstanding noble would help me that much, after all, it didn't before, id have to not only infiltrate the black market, but I'd have to rule it, after a while of planning and eating the crumpets i started feeling dizzy, i went to my room to lie down, but i was instantly asleep.