Ch#17
“Pretending to be cultured to the bitter end, how annoying. Hey! Who do you think you are, trying to lecture your master?”
“That wasn’t my intention...”
“Shut up! Always talking back like that. Do you think I don’t know what you nobles are up to? Do you think I wouldn’t notice you summoning someone and subtly mocking them left and right?!”
Linia ground her teeth as if recalling something.
“Snobs! Liars! Do you even know whose grace lets you live without getting your hands dirty? It’s all thanks to the people! My brother managed all those thug-like mercenaries and won the wars too...!”
Her words grew increasingly incoherent, but Edel listened silently.
She could guess why Linia was angry.
And she realized Linia was trembling with impatience and fear.
After ranting on and venting for a long while, Linia finally threw up both hands upon seeing Edel listening with a calm expression.
*Spoils of war*
“Get out! I don’t even want to look at you!”
“.....I shall take my leave.”
Duchess
Edel quietly stood and backed out of Linia’s room.
As she closed the door, a name she hadn’t uttered in ages escaped her lips like a sigh.
Truly written by Lemon Frog
“Lin.....!”
“Unnie, when I turn twelve, can I become as smart as you?”
“What are you talking about, Lin? You’re already plenty smart.”
“………Father called me a stupid girl though?”
At that moment, Edel was speechless.
Her younger sister and the family’s youngest, Lin, had been only ten then.
- 2 -
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The verbal abuse inflicted on her little sister pained Edel deeply too. But she couldn’t badmouth their father, so Edel comforted her in the gentlest voice she could muster.
“Unnie, I... I can’t take it anymore.”
“Ah, Father’s words are always a bit rough. He probably meant it to make you try harder. It’s not heartfelt.”
“Lin, just hang in there a little longer. Things will get better once I’m married.”
“You think so?”
“You can endure because you’re not in my shoes. I’ve really reached my limit. Anyway, it’s a worthless life not worth living anymore.”
“Lin! What are you saying? You can’t talk like that!”
Lin’s eyes grew desolate.
“Don’t you start talking like Father too, unnie! I have a mouth, thoughts, and feelings! Why can’t I even say one word I want?”
Edel had been only twelve herself then, but she instinctively knew a ten-year-old girl’s eyes shouldn’t look like that.
The unstable sixteen-year-old Lin grew ever more sensitive that way.
“Lin! Shall we go downstairs for some cookies? Snack time’s almost here.”
The horrific news she never imagined arrived just a few days later.
From the maid’s disheveled hair as she rushed in frantically, Edel sensed something ominous.
“Ah, miss! Lin miss...!”
“I don’t deserve snacks. Snacks are banned for a while.”
“Why? Why Lin?”
“Ugh...... She fell from the third-floor balcony.”
“Unnie, go eat. I’ll just read here.”
“What......?”
Lin forced a smile, picked up the book beside her, and sat in the corner chair.
Her mind went blank.
The emotion she’d felt then was too tangled for twelve-year-old Edel to pinpoint, but she knew now.
She had been angry.
Wondering how badly she was hurt, she ran to Lin’s room where people had gathered.
But her father sent her away, telling her not to make a fuss.
She’d been furious at her father for daily hurling abuse at the utterly lovable and clever Lin, and at their ‘rearing’ like this.
Edel could only wait anxiously in her room for more news.
And she loathed and grieved herself for being powerless to change anything.
‘Para nim, please let Lin recover quickly. She’s too young to be crippled. Please…..’
“Lin! Can you sleep after writing crap like this? Do you think I hire a teacher with my money just to see this garbage?”
“I’m, I’m sorry, Father.”
“If you’re sorry, write out the correct answers for this exam ten times each by tomorrow morning and put them on my desk. Not one letter wrong.”
“Yes…”
Yet God had prepared an even crueler end.
“Lin is dead.”
“Answer short and clear!”
“Yes, Father.”
Her father’s announcement was so curt and dry it was impossible to believe.
Bursting into his daughters’ rooms in pajamas after bedtime prep, unleashing a tirade before leaving.
“What… what do you mean?”
And Lin, silently draping her shawl and sitting at the desk, rifling through a book.
“What do I mean? Have you turned idiot too? She’s dead—what more explanation do you need?”
Even then, Edel couldn’t help Lin at all. Her own position wasn’t much different.
.
Edel trembled violently before collapsing to the floor.
If it was the cold, cruel side of noble society, Edel knew it all too well. Her life hadn’t been that long, but she’d witnessed high society elevate and crush people countless times.
Yet her father offered no comfort.
Edel herself had basked in cloying praise as the empire’s top marriage prospect, only to face endless gossip the moment her union with the Lancaster Duke was announced.
“Lin slipped while gazing out from the third-floor balcony. That’s the story—keep your mouths shut about anything useless.”
*People’s attitudes flip faster than a palm.
Only then did she understand.
‘Lin… committed suicide.’
Still, thanks to years of training, she knew how to weather it: Smile with composure until interest waned. Act profoundly as if harboring secrets others couldn’t fathom.
But Linia probably couldn’t manage that.
The whole world seemed dyed pitch-black with despair.
Amid it, the one thought filling her mind was even harder to accept.
Speculation, but she likely couldn’t utter a proper word outside either. And she’d take out that rage on the house’s easy targets—the maids.
‘Lin found her freedom.’
Venting fury at the powerful by becoming powerful yourself is wrong, no doubt. But no one was there to teach her that.
That’s when she realized it. She herself had always pondered the same escape as Lin.
Laslo was too busy at the palace and too curt to properly look after Linia.
No—even if he tried, lacking knowledge of noble society, proper advice would be hard.
‘If only Count Criserus had hired a governess for his sister... Should I drop a hint?’
Walking the dim corridor, Edel recalled the anxious, prickly sixteen-year-old Lin.
Lin and Linia.
But who was she to offer such counsel?
The two with eerily similar names resembled each other.
Perhaps circumstances prevented hiring a governess.
‘Both forced into things they never wanted.’
‘Governesses shying away due to Count Criserus’s background...’
Lin had been innately free-spirited and lively. Shoehorning such a child into Father’s ‘proper lady’ mold—she’d never endure.
Especially a debutante’s tutor, drilling etiquette from head to toe, required not some poor noblewoman but a lady from a solid house.
Linia was no different.
Forget fees—who’d send their wife to House Criserus, shunned by nobles?
Surely cheerful and endearing, she’d become a count’s lady overnight because her brother was made count.
Not her business, yet Edel sighed.
Ignorant of noble etiquette, poise, speech, or sensibilities, she couldn’t possibly handle her sudden status.
Nobles likely summoned her for mockery—easier prey than her brother, or pretext to strike at Laslo via Linia.
*Not my concern. Stay out of it.
Thus her rage at nobles. Yet she probably craved their approval too?
Edel steeled herself that way and returned to her room, but a nagging unease and flutter lingered in her chest.
- 6 -
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