Chapter 6
After that, even without anyone nagging him, he began tidying up the small garden on his own initiative.
The head maid asked him about various suspicious aspects before returning to the kitchen. She looked half-resigned.
“Mm.”
Standing at the back of the kitchen, the head maid eyed Lu outside the window with deep thought in her gaze.
In the meantime, Lu was engaged in close conversation with some contractor from who-knows-where. Hearing words like garden trees, fountain, and koi fish, it seemed he planned to undertake a major overhaul.
A gardener hired to tend the garden was calling in professionals to tear it all up and redo it?
‘I’m jealous.’
Suspicious, sure, but handsome, rich, and owning his own house to boot. Meanwhile, I—who’d devoted this one body to world peace—could barely make ends meet scraping by as a maid.
‘So that kind of guy didn’t kick the assassin out of his house.’
Could Lu possibly be the client who’d commissioned the surveillance of Viscount Weatherwoods? I needed to confirm.
In place of the indecisive head maid, I pointed at Lu and declared—no, proclaimed.
“Fired.”
The head maid turned to me smoothly.
“Who? Mr. Lu?”
“The suspicious one.”
“Is that about yourself?”
Myself? …No way am I on that level compared to him.
“Of course, Mr. Lu is definitely not an ordinary person. In all my years doing this job, I don’t think I’ve met anyone quite as unique. Except for you, that is.”
“So fire him.”
“No need to rush him out, Miss Daisy. If he’s dangerous to the mansion, Viscount Weatherwoods will handle it. Don’t worry too much.”
How was the nonexistent viscount supposed to chase off a guy like that?
The head maid was far too complacent.
I nearly explained, ‘An assassin snuck in at dawn, so I beat him up and locked him in the neighbor’s house. But today, I saw Lu keeping that assassin close. They must be spies here to watch Viscount Weatherwoods.’ But I clamped my mouth shut.
Saying that would make me look suspicious too.
Truth be told, I didn’t care how others saw me. But if it was the head maid of Weatherwoods Mansion, my position changed.
‘A place as weird as Weatherwoods is the only kind of house that would take me in.’
If I got kicked out from even here, I’d have nowhere to go.
Money was so dangerous. It kept me from openly exposing a spy threatening the master’s daily life!
“Besides, firing a gardener who’s offering to renovate the garden himself for half wages would be a loss, wouldn’t it? The Weatherwoods family is tight on funds like that. Let’s keep an eye on him for now.”
The head maid was a true slave to capital in this era.
Money was so dangerous. It made her leave a potential spy in the mansion without a second thought!
“Well then. Shall we get to our own work?”
Today’s task was cleaning the second-floor windows. For the record, it was my least favorite chore. Right after scrubbing the ceiling in terms of difficulty.
True to form as an excellent maid of this era loyal to her master, I didn’t forget to keep an eye on the spy even while cleaning the windows. What wouldn’t I do to protect my one precious job?
The spy was half-heartedly pulling up the dead weeds in the garden.
Even the way he yanked weeds was so suspiciously graceful. So I watched him even more intently.
‘In a situation like this, you pick a fight over something trivial, have a physical conversation, and draw out their true intentions.’
Just like I’d done with the assassin at dawn.
But against Lu, no such opening presented itself. Surprisingly, he showed not even the slightest vulnerability.
It was absurd. Handsome, rich, owns a house, and not a single gap to exploit?
‘What the hell is his goal?’
That was when it happened.
Lu, who had been gathering the weeds he’d pulled, suddenly looked up.
“Do you have something to say?”
His voice was ordinary, yet it pierced my eardrums with crystal clarity.
Dressed in a white shirt and pale yellow vest while tending the garden… it suited him perfectly. Well, what wouldn’t suit a handsome man?
I might not get a physical conversation, but I wouldn’t pretend nothing was wrong—not in front of the head maid.
Resting my chin on the windowsill, I asked him.
“Who are you?”
“I introduced myself as Lu earlier, didn’t I, Miss Maid of Maids.”
Maid of Maids. I knew he was teasing, but it still irked me.
“Not your name.”
Lu’s eyes narrowed slightly. He wore an expression that should have looked amused, but it didn’t quite reach that.
“Does that mean you want to know more about me? We’re not close enough for that yet.”
“Stop slithering around like a weasel and answer. Who are you? Why are you here?”
It had been so long since I’d spoken at length that I was panting by the end.
“Your fan.”
What?
He tilted his head, looking up at my face, and let out a smirk.
“I heard you caught some pervert last night and tied him up in my house. Boldly locking up a total stranger like that was pretty impressive to me. If I could, I’d want to give Midwintree’s Bravest Citizen award or something…”
“Are you saying you came to the mansion because of that?”
Again. It was so ridiculous that words spilled out of me unbidden.
My voice felt so foreign that my shoulders trembled, and Lu shrugged with an infuriating smile.
“As if?”
So he had no intention of opening up easily. Fine, then. I’d corner him and grill him face-to-face.
I hopped out the open window into the garden.
“You.”
Striding toward Lu, who watched leisurely with arms crossed, he suddenly shouted toward the inside of the mansion.
“Head Maid! This Maid of Maids keeps slacking off and groping me. Is this okay? Doesn’t Weatherwoods protect its employees’ rights?”
His despicably cunning act left me with only one response.
To march right past him, through the mansion’s back door, and into the kitchen.
My teeth ground together.
‘Suspicious and vile on top of it.’
Of all things, bringing up the head maid?
Like a thief with guilty feet, I threw myself into window cleaning. I worked so hard I broke one pane, but the head maid didn’t scold me much. My pay for the month was just docked a bit.
Thanks to that, my mood was utterly foul by dinnertime. And as always, only the head maid and I sat at the table.
“The cook-slash-gardener?”
“He said he’d eat dinner separately. Our mansion has formal work hours, after all, so dinner comes after. It’ll be the same from now on.”
No need to see him after sunset. That part, at least, was a relief.
I shoveled the tasteless vegetable stew down my throat in peace.
The next morning.
After finishing the morning chores simply, I ran into Lu in the passage to the kitchen. As yesterday, he greeted me in an impeccably groomed look that didn’t suit a gardener at all—or rather, one that would fit a mansion owner perfectly.
“Good morning, Miss Maid of Maids.”
I ignored him and went into the kitchen. A small chuckle followed from behind.
Lu poked around the kitchen here and there before uttering a single remark.
“The ingredients for today haven’t arrived yet?”
The head maid, who was already seated sipping tea, answered first.
“We don’t order ingredients—we buy them ourselves at the market, Mr. Lu. And today’s are right there.”
Lu glanced at the potatoes, carrots, and onions scattered in the wooden crate under the table and let out a short exclamation.
“Oh dear, I thought these were food scraps left over from eating.”
For the first time since being hired, he wore an expression of facing hardship and adversity. For the first time, I felt a sense of kinship with him.
Yeah, this house just has a fancy name—it’s moderately poor. You walked into a world of hurt.
“No helping it. We’ll make do with these for lunch today. At least we have plenty of butter, pepper, salt, herbs, and milk. Miss Maid of Maids?”
He pointed at the crate with a smile.
“Peel them.”
I peeled the ingredients without a word.
In the past month living like a beggar, I’d learned one thing: obey the person who feeds you. At least until they do.
I peeled the potato skins leisurely while watching Lu.
He rummaged through the cupboards, pulling out a square container I’d never seen before, then a seasoning holder I’d also never noticed.
‘Was there stuff like that in this kitchen?’
He cleaned the dusty container thoroughly, then sliced butter from paper and melted it slowly over the fire. He lined the container with butter, expertly wielded a kitchen knife to slice the potatoes thin.
He artfully stacked the potatoes in the container, seasoned them with pepper and salt, and covered them with milk.
His skill was so masterful that I found myself staring blankly.
“Miss Maid.”
Lu called me while crumbling dried herbs.
“Can you see the rat on the wall beyond the window?”
Suddenly? I tore my eyes from him and looked out the window. Sure enough, a small gray rat was scampering along the top of the wall.
“That rat will peel potatoes better than you. Your peeling speed is ridiculously slow.”
“……Mm.”
He was the cook. At least in this moment, not the gardener—the cook.
The only escape from the head maid’s hellish cooking duo. Better not rile him.
I peeled faster. Lu waited silently until I finished the rest, then repeated the exact process twice more in different containers. All that was left was baking them in the oven.
And finally.
“Eat up.”
The moment I placed the potato gratin, fragrant enough to send my soul flying, on my tongue.
My body froze at the intense, brain-piercing sensation of ‘flavor.’
‘How is it this good?’
Indeed. Incredibly, Lu was a seasoned chef.
He knew perfectly how to make use of good ingredients or bad. The wilted, pathetic potatoes had been reborn as perfect potato gratin in his hands.
It was a taste incomparably superior to the head maid’s cooking from the same kitchen.
“Eats well.”
Lu, who had been watching me steadily, left those words and headed to the garden.
Not hungry? I polished off his untouched portion of potato gratin too.
A comfortable life and satisfying meals are inseparable twins. The head maid wiped her mouth and let out an admiring sigh, half-enchanted.
“I haven’t had a more satisfying breakfast in years. Mr. Lu’s cooking skills are truly impressive. I almost feel bad for hiring him at half pay.”
Seeing the head maid’s eyes smitten with potato gratin reignited my deflated sense of crisis.
‘No. If this keeps up, she’ll fall completely for that con artist.’
Maybe because of who he was, even this delicious food felt like a masterful scheme.
‘Sly fox.’
Living under the same roof as someone who grated on my nerves this much didn’t suit my temperament.
‘Especially since he’s flaunting his suspiciousness with his whole body. It rubs me the wrong way.’
So confident, huh?
I had two hypotheses about Lu’s true identity.
One: Like the assassin, he’d infiltrated to spy on Viscount Weatherwoods.
Two: He knew my past and had come chasing after me.
‘……How likely is the second one?’
