Chapter 10
People of the Black Manor
Although Yuan was a Pellieresse, she was no longer a person of Pellieresse.
As Yuan hesitated, Henna interjected abruptly.
"Hille! Didn't you hear? She's Yuan Pellièse, the mistress from the Count Pellieresse family!"
"To think I would be able to care for someone from the Pellieresse family! It's an honor!"
Hille, who had been sitting for a moment, jumped up and bent his waist almost in half.
Considering the influence Pellieresse had on all of Euphris in medicine, it wasn't an incomprehensible action.
Anyone who studied medicine at the academy would have used books made by Pellieresse as textbooks or read their papers.
Hille began to comb his towering hair with his fingers, a bright smile on his face, and neatly tied it up.
"I will serve you with all my heart! Yuan! No, Ma, Mistress!"
"Oh, Hille, that's great! You've been like a dead man, always getting your medical treatments rejected by the master!"
"I'm busy in my own way. I make painkillers, and this time I rummaged through the entire medicine storage to make frostbite medicine!"
Hille blushed and defended himself.
Indeed, as he said, there were quite a few scratches on his hands, as if he had been hastily making things.
Yuan widened her eyes and worried about him.
"It looks like you've hurt your hands."
"Ah, yes. I was trimming the elm tree myself... Haha. I'm just a useless eater, so I have to do such chores."
He meant that he had been injured while hurriedly making medicine for Yuan.
Yuan looked at the wound with trembling eyes.
It wasn't a big deal, but it was the first time since Louise that someone had been hurt for her sake.
"Showing off! I'm the one who twisted my back while cleaning this room this morning! Ah, I'm not showing off, Mistress."
"You are showing off! I'm not showing off, I'm just stating the facts as they are!"
Yuan watched the two of them start arguing about who was more hurt and quietly opened her mouth.
"Doctor. May I use your medical bag?"
"Do, Doctor...!"
Hille, who had been heated, handed over his medical bag in a fluster, his face as if he had been showered with rain of emotion.
To a doctor, their medical bag was like their life, but Pellieresse was an exception.
"Doctor, Doctor, a member of the Pellieresse family calling me Doctor."
Hille murmured dreamily.
With Hille's help, Yuan picked up a famous ointment jar called 'All-Purpose Ointment' with her unbandaged hand.
It was an ointment used for bruises, scratches, and sprains.
Doctors often added other herbs to this ointment to create new ointments, so the frostbite ointment applied to Yuan's hand was probably made based on this all-purpose ointment.
"It seems like you got hurt because of me, so let me take a look."
"You can't!"
"Mistress! Just have Hille do things like this!"
"I'll take care of Henna too."
At first, Hille was surprised, saying, "I'm receiving treatment from Pellieresse!" but then Henna was surprised at the mention of treating the maid, her eyes widening.
Yuan couldn't overcome the strangely bubbling emotions and applied ointment to the places where Hille and Henna were hurting.
The pain seeping through her fingertips was at a level that Yuan could endure enough, and even that was only taken very slightly.
Louise never allowed Yuan to use her ability on her, and the other times Yuan had used her ability were all by her uncle.
So now, it was Yuan's first experience of choosing to take on pain herself.
"Rubbing it counterclockwise makes it work better. I've learned a lot, Mistress."
"I, I've never shown my body to a doctor like this before, Mistress. You're a doctor too... right?"
"The Pellieresse are a family of honorable medical scholars for generations. It's a family that studies medicine much more deeply than most doctors!"
"I'm just saying thank you, why are you making such a fuss, Hille?"
The pain of small cuts grazing her fingertips. The throbbing pain in her back.
The pain that I want and can handle isn't so bad.
Yuan looked at the flushed faces of the people who were expressing their gratitude, their eyes sparkling.
She was exhausted, but for the first time in her life, she felt that it wasn't so bad that others were happy even if she was in a little pain.
When she woke up after a short nap, a lavish meal was prepared.
"Oh, dear. What's with all the greetings?"
"His Highness brought her here himself for the first time! How can we just send out the food!"
The chef, with plump cheeks, was an elderly man.
He was short, but his plump body looked quite sturdy, and with a flushed face, he began to explain how special this soup was for patients.
Yuan, who was sitting at a makeshift table with Henna's support, looked into the steaming potato soup and soon blushed when her stomach growled.
It had been almost ten years since someone had personally prepared a meal for her.
At the Pellieresse mansion, no one properly took care of her meals, so Yuan and Louise had to sneak into the kitchen when everyone else was asleep and put all the leftover ingredients into a soup or swallow hard bread that was about to mold with water.
Yuan took a bite of the delicious-smelling soup with trembling hands.
The rich aroma of meat broth filled her mouth and stomach.
Yuan, chewing on the mashed potatoes for a while, savoring the taste, finally realized that she hadn't eaten or drunk properly for days.
Only after she had cleaned out the small bowl of soup.
"Ah, it's been so long since I've had something so delicious..."
Yuan blushed, wondering if she had eaten too greedily, and looked at the chef.
But the old man with the shaggy beard covered his gaping mouth and had a much more emotional face than Hille had before.
"Uh... did I do something wrong?"
"In my life, since coming to this mansion, you're the first person to eat my food so deliciously."
The chef burst into tears like someone was wrong, blew his nose into a handkerchief, and stuffed it into his pocket.
Then, he opened the lid of the soup pot on the trolley and filled a huge bowl with it.
"Eat! This Ralph has no mercy for those who complain about food, but he can make food for those who eat well until they're bursting full!"
"Grandpa Ralph! What are you saying to the Mistress!"
"Ah, Mistress and Mistress's grandfather! Everyone who eats my food deliciously in this mansion is like a grandchild I have to fatten up!"
Henna, looking pale, tried to stop the chef, Ralph.
Yuan smelled the potato soup filling the washbasin-sized bowl and looked at Ralph's thick hands through the steaming vapor.
Ralph's hands, covered with orange fur, were also full of roughly applied bandages.
"Did you get hurt while cooking?"
"Mistress! Don't worry about things like this! He probably did it carelessly when making the master's food, but he made a fuss when he heard that the new Mistress was sick, so he got hurt!"
"You rude little brat. How much food have I fed you since you were a kid? I made your plump belly!"
"Don't talk about a lady's belly so carelessly! Grandpa Ralph!"
"Lady my foot. A little potato who isn't even an adult yet..."
Even as they were arguing, Yuan drank the soup that warmed her heart.
She felt like her frozen body and mind were warming up.
Yuan personally moved the cleanly emptied bowl to the trolley that Chef Ralph had brought, and then grabbed Ralph's arm, who was staring blankly at the sight, as if to encourage him.
"Thank you, Chef. It was the most delicious soup I've ever had."
The pain that he had suffered while working for Yuan slightly permeated Yuan's fingers and wrists.
'He must have been burned too.'
Yuan sincerely thanked the chef who had worked hard for her, whom she was seeing for the first time.
Her heart was so warm that it was hard to bear.
Chef Ralph, who had shed tears a little while ago, hugged the bowl that Yuan had emptied and vowed to make a new patient meal every day, then disappeared.
In a short time, the servants of the Black Manor came to greet Yuan one by one.
Mr. Mazarin, the groom and stable keeper who diligently managed the few horses, and two young maids named Monica and Canaria. And some elderly servants glanced at Yuan with blunt faces, then disappeared shyly.
After a short greeting, Yuan lay in bed, listening to the sound of the wind blowing outside, blinking her eyes.
Whoosh-. It was the sound of the winter wind knocking on the carriage door, as if telling her to cross the river of death.
The sound was faint.
As if it were a wind that had nothing to do with Yuan anymore.
"Claude Euphris."
Yuan finally tasted her husband's name, which she hadn't shown a single strand of hair all day.
What kind of face did that man have?
It was backlit, and she wasn't in her right mind, so she didn't have the luxury of checking his mood.
A tall height like the black iron fence that blocked the carriage, and shadows under his eyes.
Only the shadow of his broad shoulders came to mind.
And a sign that he didn't welcome her.
But one thing was certain.
This black mansion, close to ruins, that Yuan had so wanted to enter.
The man was the mansion itself.
So much so that his hair and features, which sparkled like precious treasures, were insignificant.
An aura close to black and white.
Her impression of her 'husband', whom she had met for the first time, was intense but very lonely.
The rumors that your whole body would rot and your hands and feet would freeze if you looked him straight in the eye were also just rumors.
Rather...
Once she endured the face that was rumored to be hideous, only a normal face came into view.
Come to think of it, he had a somewhat sensitive impression.
