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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Unsettling Atmosphere
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“Well, that’s true. They say she had a love marriage with the Master, but there’s a subtly distant vibe between them.”
When someone eagerly took the bait, Rosalyn seized the opportunity and pressed on.
“Could it be that she doesn’t actually like the Master much, but married him anyway?”
“Oh, come on, no way. Why would the Lady do that?”
“The Master is a renowned knight and from the Vandermir Ducal Family. Even if they married and then divorced, the Lady wouldn’t lose anything…”
Rosalyn whispered in a very secretive tone. Her voice, swaying like a fox’s tail, had an extraordinary talent for instilling hostility in some, suspicion in others, and unease in still others.
“Then is the Lady… someone who will soon leave us?”
“We don’t know for sure yet, but it’s clear she has no interest in the household management or in us.”
Rosalyn ended the conversation at an opportune moment. Pushing it further might have seemed excessive.
Even after she closed her mouth with a glum expression, the maids buzzed with whispers, exchanging words among themselves.
The main point was that if Aracilla truly was a passing breeze who would only stay for a short while, there was no reason for them to genuinely serve her with loyalty.
‘Good. I’ve created a crack; next, I’ll provoke the Lady to widen it.’
Among the whispering maids, Rosalyn, seated in the very center, her eyes gleamed ominously.
* * *
Aracilla made sure to have breakfast every day. It was a habit ingrained since childhood, as the Hugo Marquisate never skipped breakfast.
Even if lunch or dinner could be eaten outside, breakfast was difficult to skip. So, every morning, she made her way to the Vandermir Manor’s dining hall.
To serve the Lady’s meal, the maids bustled between the kitchen and the hall.
That’s when the incident occurred.
“Ah! Lady, are you alright?”
Rosalyn, bringing tea to be drunk after the meal, accidentally spilled a little on Aracilla’s clothes.
The attention of all the maids present was drawn. While a startled Audrey rushed over to check on Aracilla, Rosalyn prostrated herself on the floor, trembling.
“I’m so sorry, Lady! Please forgive me just this once!”
Though she appeared utterly terrified to others, bowing low, she was secretly laughing inside.
Nobles, by nature, tended to react with great anger even to a maid’s slightest mistake. Rosalyn aimed to exploit this.
Spilling the tea wasn’t a genuine mistake to begin with; it was a deliberate act meant to provoke Aracilla and make her angry.
‘No matter that it’s my mistake, if the Lady gets angry, the maids will empathize with me.’
And if I shed a few tears after this is over, they’ll side with me even more, thinking Aracilla was being too harsh.
Then, Aracilla’s reputation, which had been moderately maintained, would quickly crumble.
“It was truly an accident! Although I made a big mistake, please, I beg for your mercy!”
Rosalyn repeatedly offered excessive apologies, as if about to bang her forehead on the floor. That way, she would appear more pitiful in the eyes of the surrounding maids, and Aracilla would get subtly annoyed and even angrier.
‘Over-apologizing is annoying, you know.’
She eagerly waited for the Lady to get angry. And finally. *Scrape*, came the sound of a chair being pushed back.
Aracilla slowly rose from her seat and bent down to touch Rosalyn’s shoulder.
“Rosalyn, you…”
Aracilla’s expressionless face made it difficult to read her emotions.
*Is she really angry?*
It was when Rosalyn was secretly bewildered, while outwardly trembling even more.
“You did that because you were stealing glances at my face, didn’t you?”
“…Huh?”
*What is she suddenly talking about?*
The corner of Aracilla’s mouth quirked up playfully. Rosalyn, without realizing it, stared at her with a blank expression.
The Lady, who was expected to be angry, seemed completely unfazed by the maid’s mistake.
“You’ve been stealing glances at my face from the beginning. Rosalyn, just stare openly. I’m used to it, so I won’t get angry.”
Aracilla brushed back her voluminous, flowing lavender hair and helped Rosalyn to her feet.
Rosalyn, bewildered, blinked her eyes. *Usually, they’d get angry in this situation…?*
“Besides, you’re my maid, so I won’t charge you extra. Look all you want.”
Aracilla gave a melting eye-smile. Her beauty was such that even saying something so brazen couldn’t be refuted.
“However, don’t make such mistakes next time.”
“…Ah, yes. Understood. Thank you, Lady.”
Rosalyn bowed her head in greeting, but inwardly felt a sense of defeat. This made her look like the only one who had foolishly made a mistake.
Her original plan was to be excessively reprimanded for her mistake, thus becoming a pitiable, unfortunate maid.
But now, only Aracilla had become a generous and witty Lady.
‘Damn it, this is harder than it looks.’
Going to stand by the wall, Rosalyn bit the soft flesh inside her mouth. If Aracilla had gotten even a little angry, she would have provoked her further, letting it escalate into a bigger fire.
With her reacting like that, Rosalyn couldn’t do anything.
After that, every provocation against Aracilla failed.
No matter what mistakes Rosalyn made or what she said, Aracilla would simply let it pass without much reaction. Rosalyn felt that if she pushed further, her own image would just become strange.
What to do now? As Rosalyn pondered, her eyes fell upon Audrey.
“Rosalyn, aren’t you making too many mistakes lately? Get your head straight and serve the Lady properly.”
When Audrey gave her stern advice and left, Rosalyn felt annoyed, but at the same time, she thought, ‘This is it!’
In truth, Aracilla spent little time at the manor, making it harder to scheme against her than expected. Slander, after all, is only effective when the target is somewhat visible.
Just badmouthing someone who hadn't done anything was merely gossip.
‘But Audrey, she’s almost always at the manor.’
Rosalyn changed her plan: instead of attacking Aracilla, she would attack Audrey, Aracilla’s exclusive maid.
And she immediately began her groundwork.
“Audrey, I’ll do all the cleaning.”
“Huh? That’s too much for you alone. Let’s just do it together, Rosalyn.”
“No, I’ve made a lot of mistakes recently. I want to reflect and learn more.”
“Really…? Hmm, if that’s what you want, then alright. Just don’t overdo it.”
Rosalyn nodded with a sweet smile at Audrey’s words, then immediately headed towards where the other maids were.
As if she had never smiled, she sighed heavily, swaying with a gloomy expression.
“Rosalyn, where are you going?”
“Oh, to clean the annex.”
“By yourself?”
“Yeah, Audrey told me to do it alone… She said I’ve been making too many mistakes lately, and the Lady seems very displeased, so I should reflect.”
At those words, the maids’ eyes widened, and they gathered around Rosalyn.
“Even so, telling you to clean the annex all by yourself, isn’t that too much?”
“What mistakes did you make? Even then, the Lady didn’t really get angry, did she?”
“…It seems the Lady’s words on the first day meant something like that. She said she would convey things to us through Audrey from now on.”
Although she had actually said they *could* convey messages through Audrey, over time, that memory had faded.
So when Rosalyn said that, the other maids also came to believe that was what had been said.
“What? So, was the Lady actually angry then…?”
“It seems so. But at least she didn’t scold me directly and embarrass me. I’m fine.”
“But… Then we’ll help you clean!”
“Yes, let’s do that. We’ll help you too!”
“Really? Thank you, everyone.”
Rosalyn choked up as if deeply moved.
On the way to the annex and throughout the cleaning, the maids kept saying Audrey was being too much.
After the cleaning was finished, Rosalyn entreated the maids.
“Audrey ordered me to do it alone, so she might get angry if she finds out someone helped. So please keep this a secret, everyone.”
Thanks to that, Audrey remained completely unaware of what Rosalyn had been doing behind her back.
This wasn’t the end.
Rosalyn took her time, slowly fostering an atmosphere. One where Audrey was riding on Aracilla’s coattails, exploiting the other maids.
“Audrey asked me to tell you to clean the restrooms for her. She said she has to go serve the Lady.”
“What? I just saw her lounging around!”
“Audrey apparently made this schedule. Did you see it?”
“Really? No wonder she’s the only one assigned easy tasks. How absurd.”
“Girls, Audrey says she wants us to play by ourselves. She apparently didn’t find it very fun last time.”
“That’s ridiculous, she was laughing so heartily then. Is she drawing a line because she’s the Lady’s close maid, or what?”
Subtly moving back and forth between Audrey and the maids, Rosalyn sowed discord.
In any case, few people would openly bring up conversations that happened behind backs. If anyone did, Rosalyn quickly shut them down.
“Don’t bother saying anything to Audrey. Don’t you know she’s the Lady’s most cherished maid? Only you will suffer disadvantages. Let’s just bear it.”
“There’s a limit to everything! She’s always pushing her work onto others, dumping all the difficult tasks on them!”
“What can we do? It’s all the Lady’s will. As long as the Lady shows favoritism only to Audrey, maids like us have no recourse.”
In the end, Rosalyn finally achieved the desired outcome.
Before long, negative opinions about Aracilla and Audrey formed within the Vandermir Ducal Residence, and Audrey became isolated among the maids.
* * *
Again.
Audrey narrowed her eyes, watching the maids scatter in all directions as if on cue the moment she appeared. This was already the umpteenth time this had happened.
The maids of the Vandermir Manor, who had seemed to get along fine at first, were suddenly acting with something akin to territorialism.
‘Why on earth?’
Even when she reflected on what she might have done wrong, she couldn’t pinpoint anything.
Without reason, the maids subtly distanced themselves from her. Then, they huddled together, ostracizing Audrey.
If only that were all. Lately, there had been many small mistakes among the maids serving Aracilla.
But somehow, to Audrey’s eyes, all of them seemed deliberate. However, they were minor mistakes, making them ambiguous to pinpoint.
Moreover, it wasn’t just one person doing it, but several taking turns, making it even more so.
“Hey, she’s here.”
“Let’s go, let’s go.”
When Audrey appeared carrying a laundry basket, once again, the maids gathered at the wash area rushed out without fail.
Audrey paid close attention to the blonde maid at the center of the group.
Rosalyn.
For some reason, she had been an annoying maid from before. Her instincts, which were quite good, told her Rosalyn was unsettling.
The Head Maid had supposedly hired her specifically for Aracilla, but the attitude of the maids gathered around her towards Aracilla was peculiar.
‘Hah, but there’s no concrete evidence, only suspicion, so it’s hard to confront her.’
Audrey let out a deep sigh, handed the basket to the maid in charge of laundry, and turned away.
And once she had completely disappeared, Rosalyn’s group returned to where they had been.
“Did you see her just put the basket down without a word, so impudently? We’re not maids working under her.”
“We’re the ones who originally worked at Vandermir Manor, so shouldn’t she, as the newcomer, be below us?”
In truth, Audrey was Aracilla’s exclusive maid, so there was no reason for her to do such odd jobs.
However, from the perspective of the maids who already disliked her, it was unpleasant to have a maid from outside acting as their superior.
Rosalyn, who had carefully cultivated such an atmosphere and feelings, smirked.
“It’s all because the Lady shows favoritism only to Audrey. Of course, she’d see us as beneath her, wouldn’t she?”
“The Lady only thinks of using us, whether it’s the Master or us. Look how she only dotes on the maid she brought from her family home.”
The gossip about Audrey naturally led to animosity towards Aracilla.
However, objectively, Aracilla had never shown favoritism to Audrey. Even if she had, it was customary for any noblewoman to make the maid brought from her birth family her closest confidante.
Even though it wasn’t wrong, the maids whispered as if she had committed a bad deed.
“Are we supposed to revere and serve someone like that as the mistress?”
“Honestly, I also find it hard to acknowledge the current Lady as our mistress.”
“Exactly, if we don’t acknowledge her, the Lady can never truly become the mistress. In fact, the qualifications of a mistress are practically up to us.”
Rosalyn filled the maids’ heads with absurd notions.
Even the maids who were initially hesitant gradually began to agree with her words without realizing it.
Everything was proceeding exactly as Rosalyn had planned.
