Let me summarize the events first: Tessa's castle (the Marquisate of Jutert) is invaded by an unknown aggressor, which Tessa quickly realizes is her old childhood friend Hert who she was tricked into selling into s*avery (lol). He drags her by the hair, roughs her up, and then gropes her and pulls his engorged g**italia out to have s*x with her but she objects and he relents. Afterward, Tessa regrets objecting to the s*xual assault because she has a masochistic desire for punishment because she blames herself for Hert's ens*avement. (We're going to set aside whether this deranged train of thought counts as "consent".) Hert calls for Tessa the next day, and feeling that she can't object, she goes to him despite being feverish. During the encounter, she starts trying to take off Hert's pants to perform fellatio on him as she assumes that's why she has been called. Fellatio is a task she was periodically made to perform on her dead husband Marquis Jutert (despite his smelly, shrunken old d*ck - the author REALLY wants you to be impressed with the size, smell and youth of Hert's dong lmfao). Hert decides to accept and the fellatio is performed. (Thus far, I think this is dubiously consensual. Hert has threatened her physically and sexually; she's not in her right mind; she's also being emotionally blackmailed into pity s*x.) However, Hert then drags Tessa up onto the desk and starts groping at her c*otch because he isn't satisfied. Tessa trembles with fear, as she has never been penetrated before, but keeps quiet while resolving to let him punish her via s*x (this is yellow light territory if not a full red - verbal consent to fellatio =/= verbal consent to penetration). Hert goes forward in attempting penetration without checking in with Tessa, who is immediately in intense pain and begs him to stop. He is enraged at her rejection and purposefully ignores her verbal pleas and attempts to physically escape while forcing himself on her. This is very unambiguously r*pe. Stop means stop, no means no, people desperately clawing their way out of your grasp does not count as "enthusiasm", etc etc etc.

TBQH, the smut is neither hot nor interesting enough to tempt me to go back in and document every nonconsensual interaction. Tessa states that her feverish state saved her from the worst of the pain and their second attempt at penetration was even more painful. Hert also thinks to himself that he purposefully tried to make their s*xual encounters as degrading and uncomfortable as possible for at least the first week or so of their reunion, and Tessa ends up needing medical treatment for her vulva and a break to physically recover from Hert's s*xual abuse.

Hert will go on to consistently treat Tessa's rejections and verbalizations during s*x as immaterial for the rest of the story.

So, the event goes like this:

Tessa is getting ready to say goodbye to her friend Janet, who is secretly a spy for Marquis Borwen (Hert's benefactor) and also faking a pregnancy (it's never explained why she faked a pregnancy). Tessa practices writing a farewell letter to Janet (she has been receiving literacy lessons from Marchioness Elena Jutert, the first wife of her dead husband). We find out outside of Tessa's POV that Janet is leaving ahead of schedule that night and the Marchioness is plotting something. We also learn that Hert has discovered Tessa's jewelry is being sold on the market and he weighs whether someone is stealing or Tessa is selling the jewelry herself, and decides to go see her. Tessa hears that Hert is coming and changes clothes because she got ink on herself while practicing writing. Marnie, her trusted maid, offers to burn the practice letters and Tessa accepts while thinking that she should seek the Marchioness's help the next day in writing the letter. She asks Marnie what gift to give and Marnie responds "money", then apologizes and acts fidgety and distracted. Tessa recalls that Marnie has been disappearing from work recently and she once caught her coming out of Hert's room. She thinks about asking Marnie about her suspicious behavior but then reasons that she, Tessa, is a useless person who can't help anyone and lets it go. (This thought process doesn't make sense to me either, idk) Tessa seriously considers gifting Janet money for some reason before remembering that she has no money, is too embarrassed to ask Hert for money, and briefly considers selling her jewelry before deciding against it, because she doesn't feel it really belongs to her (Hert paid for it). Hert arrives, and they share an overwraught, emotional conversation. He considers asking her whether she is selling her jewelry (as opposed to someone stealing it) but then doesn't because he's afraid she'll say yes... because then she might be saving money to run away... and he would prefer not to know that, even though he would need to know in order to stop it. And for some reason, he's fine with the possibility of a servant pilfering the jewelry he gave her. (It's hard for me to describe these characters' thoughts when they literally make no sense but I honestly tried.) Anyway, Tessa finally decides to tell Hert about the misunderstanding from 7 years ago (in which he thinks she tricked him into s*avery to become a noble, but actually they were both tricked and sold). Hert says she doesn't need to say it now, she can say it "when he gets back" (I'm rolling my eyes from how obvious the writing is, ugh) as long as she promises not to leave. Tessa goes back to her room and practices writing farewell letters to Janet while waiting for Hert to get back from his task.

Marnie (btw the translation switches to Mani at some point for inscrutable reasons, but I prefer Marnie) tells Tessa that Hert has been injured and she needs to come with her, and Tessa very gullibly follows Marnie through the door connecting her bedroom to Hert's bedroom, which is not being surveilled, into a secret passage in Hert's bedroom, and follows her for some time through the secret passage before realizing something is wrong and Marnie is hurting her, and then follows her some more until the passageway ends. God, this novel is killing my braincells.

We find out through omniscient POV that Janet is coincidentally leaving at the same time, and the Marchioness is surveying Tessa being kidnapped while feeling sorry for someone (possibly Tessa, possibly Janet? it's never clarified). She holds up a card from Marquis Beatrice Borwen that reveals her maiden name is also Borwen - she is Beatrice's aunt - and they have cut a deal of some kind. It's also insinuated she's doing this to curry favor with Hert. (We find out from Hert's perspective that the Marchioness warned him of the "danger" of Janet, i.e. that Tessa might try to run away with Janet.)

Tessa is drugged (seemingly with chloroform, though idk how these medieval dudes got that) and carried off in a wagon. When she wakes, Marnie begs for forgiveness while saying her family was threatened and cuts Tessa free while "holding off" the kidnappers (this makes no sense because the kidnappers seem to have vanished but Tessa is s*upid and so am I for reading this). Tessa runs away in the pitch black night, thankfully in the intended direction of this convoluted scheme as she runs into Janet. Janet drags her along without asking questions or giving explanations and stuffs Tessa in her runaway carriage without even asking where Tessa is going, why she is here, or if she even wants to be on this dumb runaway carriage. Unbelievably, this is not because Janet is in on it, but rather because she's also very dumb. Tessa starts to explain herself on the carriage but is interrupted by Hert's absurdly convenient timing. (He has, btw, found a practice farewell letter to Janet that conveniently has no identifying information on it and interpreted it as a very haphazard and incoherent goodbye letter to himself. And ofc the other letters have been burnt.) Tessa has been caught running away, oh no. 😑

Tessa is locked in her room. Improbably, Marnie comes in and starts rambling about how she stole jewelry but she didn't mean to blah blah blah and Tessa believes it all. Hert interrupts this nonsense, demands to know why Marnie was let in the room (the Marchioness ordered it - he doesn't follow this up), and then gets angry on the assumption that they're scheming to run away again (even though Marnie wasn't even in the runaway carriage? It's not even explained how she got back to the castle). Anyway, Hert is now furious: he becomes extremely verbally abusive; he screams questions at Tessa then interrupts her before she can say anything; when she manages to stutter a reply, he accuses her of being a liar; then he claims her answer doesn't matter anyway and he was a fool to trust her, etc. Tessa sobs and begs him not to hurt Janet or Marnie, which he gets offended by for no reason (he has thrown Janet in the dungeon and had Marnie dragged away, and threatened to interrogate both of them multiple times to Tessa???). Anyway the conversation goes nowhere because Hert is an egregious c*nt and it culminates in him forcing more uncomfortable s*x on her in what, for me, was by far the absolute worst s*x scene of the novel. Yeah, nothing gets me hot like annoying and unjust accusations + verbal, emotional, & physical abuse. f*ck this novel.

This event is where the "Wasn’t this not pure s*upidity?" quote comes from. Hert is berating himself for the s*upidity of trusting Tessa while actually falling for the s*upidest, most looney tunes ass frame-up ever conceived. I'm not going to address how s*upid this framejob is on its face. Tessa is all scraped up from the manhandling, she's not dressed to run away, she doesn't have any of the money from selling the jewelry, and there are 3 other witnesses in the carriage that can attest Tessa wasn't supposed to be there, the secret passageway presumably still exists and can be pointed to (for some reason, how Tessa was never seen being dragged off is one of Hert's objections and despite easily being demonstrated, it never is), and countless other things can point to Tessa's innocence. None of it matters, though, because Hert would rather cling to his loathesome self-pity than listen to the woman he "loves". This was really the point where it felt very definitively like Hert only saw Tessa as a convenient fleshlight. He doesn't know her; he doesn't want to know her; he prefers to believe that she's a duplicitious person so he can justify using her sexually however he wants, even though it doesn't even justify it, because Tessa should be able to leave if she wants to anyway. He should be trying to make her want to stay, not screaming at her like a child throwing a tantrum. Everything about this event is overdramatic and hateful in the extreme. (Tessa confesses that she was tricked 7 years ago with predictably poor timing and Hert just flat-out calls her a liar. 🙄) It makes so many characters (Hert, Marnie, the Marchioness) into unlikable, disgusting people.

The biggest problem is that it makes no sense for anyone to do this. We later find out the Marchioness wants revenge on the Marquisate of Jutert and blows up the castle. None of this is served by her faking Tessa's escape. As for Marnie, she's allowed to continue serving Tessa because both Tessa and Hert are just the f*cking dumbest rocks on the planet. Her involvement casts no suspicion on the Marchioness even though it should. Janet has to continue to be unjustly imprisoned until the castle gets blown up because Hert is an ass. None of this is ever sorted out. Hert never has to apologize for his appalling behavior. THE WHOLE EPISODE WAS POINTLESS AND MADE NO SENSE AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Basically, what happened was that the FL "accidently" sold her best friend into s*avery when she thought she was signing him up to be a knight. Like I understand that she wasn't educated and didn't know how to read or write, but seriously? She snuck into his room in the middle of the night to get his fingerprint... who on earth wouldn't think that is sketchy as hell? It was all because she wanted to surprise him. And in a way it was a surprise. Surprise all your freedom is taken away!

So its no wonder the ML is angry as hell when, after 7 years, he meets her again. He thinks she sold him to become a rich pampered housewife. Then, when he demands that she give him a reason for why she did it, she is silent. I get the first time why she stayed silent. He was blinded by rage and probably wouldn't have listened to anything she said, but the second time? She could at least say something... but no. Not even a sorry. Instead she is quite and thinks everything will be alright if she just gives him s*x.

When they were children, Tessa and Hert used to be best friends, and they both lived in the same orphanage. One day, some sketchy guys arrive at the orphanage and trick Tessa into signing a s*avery contract for Hert, knowing she was an orphan who couldn't read or write (yes, this all happened because Tessa was illiterate). The orphanage director was complicit in this as well, saying the contract is for Hert to be made into a servant to work at a noble's house. Anyways, Hert is unknowingly sold into s*avery, and to top it off, Tessa's farewell letter to him was forged by the orphanage director, saying horrible things about how Tessa just used him to get a comfortable life as some noble's consort, convincing Hert that he was just a tool and Tessa never cared about him, enraging him to no end. Tessa, unknowingly, also signed a contract to become a noble's consort, and was hoping that at least Hert would be together with her at her new home. Well, turns out her new "husband" is abusive as hell, and she was just a replacement for another woman he couldn't add to his harem. She spends the next 7 years being tortured by both him and his son, and pretty much treated like garbage by the rest of the harem. As for Hert, he was turned into a gladiator, and made into pretty much a killing machine. He eventually works his way up to be a knight captain, but he's traumatized by the whole thing. They meet again when Hert tracks Tessa down and kills everyone in the noble's castle, save for Tessa and her husband's son, with the full intent of taking revenge.

the female lead willingly offers herself to him