“Hah.”
The ticklish sensation that had spread to the bottom of her throat burst out as a cough-like laugh. Grace hurriedly bowed her head and swallowed the muffin in her mouth.
Ares, who had been watching her from beside, looked at Eliza with an incredulous look.
“You give such strange praise that she doesn’t know what to do with herself.”
At Ares’s words, the laughter Grace had barely held back finally burst out.
“Kuk... kuk...”
Even covering her mouth with her hand, the laughter tickling her throat wouldn’t stop easily. Flustered by the silence hanging overhead, she tried to hold her breath altogether, but a cool voice spoke from beside her.
“Just laugh. Why hold it in so much?”
Then another voice was heard.
“Indeed. Dying from laughing too hard would be funny, but how much funnier would it be to die holding one’s breath?”
“Duchess...”
“Did I say anything wrong, Arwen? I’m telling her to just laugh.”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer.
The jujube tea, the blanket, the scent rising from the fur draped over her shoulders, and the warm foods—she tried to swallow the laughter that had been building up with all of these but couldn’t. Grace let out a breath mixed with laughter. She raised her bowed head and just laughed, covering only her mouth with her hand. The fatigue that had built up from running without a moment’s rest seemed to melt away in her laughter.
Eliza, who had been quietly watching her from across, lifted her teacup.
“Continue eating well as you do now.”
Though her voice was cold as always, the corner of her eye visible beyond the teacup curved up slightly.
“Yes.”
“I don’t mean force yourself to eat until you’re sick.”
“I understand, Duchess.”
“You eat a lot too, Duke.”
Ares, who had been leaning back in his chair looking at Grace, turned only his eyes to glance at Eliza.
“I shall.”
Though he answered listlessly, a faint smile hung at his lips.
Eliza quietly watched the sight of him—sharp and fierce—quietly smiling, and spoke in a very low voice as if muttering to herself.
“Since Grace found the gold, you must have sent people, Duke.”
Ares and Grace looked at her simultaneously.
Eliza nodded toward Ares.
“I have made my decision as well.”
“...”
“A blade wind will blow tomorrow, it seems. So let us settle things today.”
Grace felt that Eliza’s voice was composed yet suffocating, like a tree enduring winter.
Ares too gazed at Eliza in silence, then slowly opened his mouth.
“I shall seal the castle gates...”
However, he stopped mid-sentence and turned his head back. Eliza and Grace also turned their heads following his gaze.
Sure enough, one of Eliza’s maids revealed herself.
“What is it?”
She, who had been breathing roughly from running urgently, barely steadied her breath and opened her mouth.
“An urgent dispatch has arrived from the citadel.”
“From the citadel?”
“They say someone bearing the plaque of an Imperial Inspector has arrived. She introduced herself as Head Maid Ivanka...”
The maid looked at Ares and asked.
“What shall we do?”
The moment she heard the name Ivanka, Eliza’s eyes narrowed. A cold, hard energy rose in her black pupils that had been filled with suffocation.
“Hetby’s head maid from Saxony has come as an inspector?”
A bony fist hidden within the fur clenched tightly.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Hide!”
As one sharp-eyed maid spoke urgently in a lowered voice, the maids walking together quickly hid their bodies between pillars. They peeked out with only their eyes to watch the corridor, and soon Flora appeared with a stiff expression.
Her face was pale, but her expression was unusual. Her tightly bitten lips, clenched fist, and fiercely raised eyebrows clearly revealed her mood.
Even after Flora passed by like a gust of wind moments later, they carefully exhaled their breath.
“That was close. We mustn’t be seen.”
“The girls who clean her room cry every day.”
“At least yesterday Lady Isaac threatened the maids that if they were struck even once more, she would refuse to manage that room altogether, so they say no one was hit today.”
Meanwhile, Flora, having passed the maids, climbed the stairs and turned the landing almost at a run. She felt like her stomach would burst.
Recently, she had been feeling in her very skin that Richmond Ducal Castle was not her home, and that it did not belong to Count Linco’s house.
The maids only did exactly what was needed, and even then only at appointed times; they did not wait upon her. They didn’t come even when she pulled the bell cord, and even room cleaning was done only to the bare necessity. Making the bed, dusting the floor, and restocking supplies was all. She had merely advised them to do their jobs properly, yet Lady Isaac had given her tremendous humiliation.
When she closed her eyes, the figures of her father, mother, and older brother fading away in shabby appearances came to mind one after another, so she couldn’t even sleep properly.
Thoughts led to more thoughts in a long, long night. The end of the terribly long night ultimately led to that woman’s figure.
From the beginning, that woman had appeared wearing a mask of hypocrisy. Having been deprived of Taylor by her adoptive parents, she had undoubtedly sought to claim the ancient House of Richmond instead. She seduced the Duke, hid her identity, and confused everyone. In the end, the first victim was her simple-minded father.
“How... how could she.”
Flora muttered, driven by malice.
As Grace and the Duchess moved away, Flora, who had been returning with Countess Linco, broke away from the group as if bewitched. And she wandered searching for where they might be.
Then, when she finally discovered them sitting beneath a huge deciduous tree, Flora had no choice but to hide her body in the bushes.
A garden where faint, lukewarm sunlight shone down. Over the shoulders of the golden-haired woman was draped a large fur that undoubtedly belonged to the man sitting beside her, and the man’s gaze kept turning toward her.
Grace was surrounded by everyone. The Duke, who had been so cold to her father, pulled up his lips and smiled at her like that.
Flora could no longer watch that scene. She ran toward her room, muttering with malice.
“Grace, Grace...!”
If only she could kill that woman, she felt she would gladly devote her heart.
But there was an unannounced guest in her room. Edward spoke calmly to the startled Flora.
“I’ve come because I have urgent matters to discuss.”
Flora closed the door. Perhaps because anger was etched on her expression, Edward slipped his hand into his pocket and asked lowly.
“Do you want to take revenge on Grace Taylor?”
“...”
“Do you want to kill that woman?”
“...Isn’t that obvious?”
Recently, Edward had looked hazy, as if concentrating all his nerves on the thoughts inside his head like a chess player.
“Did you come here to ask me that?”
When Flora asked, scanning him with a questioning gaze, Edward slowly shook his head.
He turned his body and looked out the window. From an hour ago, the movements of the knights in black armor and red capes had become unusual. The Duchess and the Duke had undoubtedly made their decision. So if he had been even a day late, it would have been very difficult.
Edward slowly let out a long breath in relief. He spoke to Flora reflected in the window.
“There is something you must do for me.”
＊ ＊ ＊
The door of a brown carriage engraved with a lattice pattern burst open, and a woman of small, plump build appeared. Her unusually thick, brown curly hair and round brown pupils looked cheerful and cute at a glance, but the words that shot out were fierce beyond compare.
“Hasn’t a dispatch arrived from the Ducal Castle yet?!”
“Please wait a little longer.”
“Just how much longer do you intend to keep me standing on the street?! I have come as an Imperial Inspector! You surely know what this black tiger emblem means, don’t you?!”
She pointed at the tiger emblem attached to the carriage with her finger, and the ring on her index finger glinted. The squad leader in charge of the citadel’s defense was pacing with a stiff expression, and Ivanka Thirien clicked her tongue loudly and closed her fur coat with an irritated hand.
“It’s already freezing to the bone here! I can’t even have a brazier inside the carriage, so what more do you want me to wait for?!”
At that moment, unusual hoofbeats were heard from afar. As the defenders all turned their heads toward the direction of the sound, Ivanka also turned her head, twitching her lips.
A moment later, the citadel’s massive gates opened, and a knight in black armor revealed himself. The red cape fluttering behind his back was oppressive even from afar, so Ivanka’s eyebrows hardened.
As the knight approached, the defenders all saluted at once. But Ivanka stood on the carriage steps and merely stared at him fixedly. The knight too, without any thought of dismounting, received the identity verification certificate the defense leader handed over and quickly checked it. Then, without warning, he raised his eyes and gazed at Ivanka.
They said knights of the front lines shaved their heads in case of head injuries. Because if hair clings to blood, treatment is delayed. When she first heard such a story, she had worried that she might burst out laughing upon seeing a knight who had shaved his hair. But contrary to expectations, no laughter came out. The knight in black armor looked like death itself. Even the scarred warhorse he rode was the same. As the warhorse breathed roughly, white breath scattered like smoke.
The knight dismounted and approached, then held out the certificate to her.
“I am Crimson Isaac. Thank you for your cooperation, Baroness Ivanka Thirien.”