Chapter 16
“Hmm.”
Her skill at hiding stolen goods was downright sloppy.
I shrugged my shoulders and snatched the long chain of the necklace.
It wasn’t like I’d invested time just to find something this trivial.
I turned my body lightly.
Now, only the desk remained.
‘Is it here?’
I searched the desk thoroughly and noticed something odd.
‘What’s this?’
The desk drawers on both sides fit perfectly snug when closed, without a single gap.
All except for one.
The top drawer on the right stuck out ever so slightly, unlike the others.
As if something had caught on the back of the drawer.
I opened the protruding drawer and reached inside.
Just as I’d suspected, something was hooked in the space behind the drawer that should have been empty.
‘Found it.’
A triumphant smile spread across my face as I pulled out the item.
It was a fairly thick black leather notebook.
Inside, it was stuffed with pages listing names and numbers.
It was a ledger.
“Well, well.”
As I looked over the numbers densely packed onto the pages, a laugh escaped me unbidden.
“I thought her sleight of hand with hiding stolen goods was amateurish, but even her misdirection is pathetic.”
I’d had my suspicions from the start, and now I had hard evidence. It was certain.
I tapped on the documents and scanned the head maid’s office.
“Indeed, when you possess things beyond your station, it’s bound to show.”
The bookshelves and display cabinets were filled with expensive ornaments and books.
Items far too costly for a head maid’s salary.
“That’s enough gathering evidence. Time to go.”
I tore out a few pages from the notebook and tucked them into my bosom.
Now, it was time to return what I’d received in kind.
* * *
“Where on earth did it go?”
A look of dismay was etched on the head maid’s face in the 3rd Prince’s Palace.
Something that absolutely shouldn’t have vanished had disappeared.
The ledger recording the origins of every bit of money she’d skimmed.
And out of it, the five most crucial pages.
Exactly those five pages had vanished without a trace.
Those pages were her ambition—and her lifeline.
She could never lose them, nor let them fall into anyone else’s hands.
“No, it has to be here somewhere. It has to be!”
Cold sweat beaded on the head maid’s forehead and trickled down.
She upended the desk drawers one by one, then swept all the books from the bookshelves.
“Why isn’t it here—!”
Her shrill scream echoed through the room at that moment.
“H-Head Maid!”
“I told you not to barge in without knocking!”
“Kyaa!”
Thud—!
The book the head maid had flung in irritation hit the floor.
“My.”
Behind the knight who had blocked the flying book stood a woman.
None other than Countess Failin Katrina, known as the flower of high society.
“No matter how angry you are, you must maintain the dignity befitting a noble, Head Maid.”
Why is that woman here?
In an instant, terror flooded the head maid’s eyes.
She was once a woman the head maid had served with genuine loyalty, but no longer.
From the beginning, she had been merely a connection forged to reach the Second Imperial Consort.
After gaining the status to speak directly with the Second Imperial Consort, they had cut off contact.
Why had this woman come to see her in person?
“It’s been a while, Head Maid?”
“I-I greet the Countess.”
Meanwhile, the crimson eyes of the countess, Failin, blazed with fury.
Yet her lips retained their smile—a true flower of high society.
“What are you searching for so diligently? Care to share with me?”
“I-I lost some important documents, so I’m looking for them…”
“Is that so? It couldn’t be that those important documents are these, could they?”
The head maid, who had been staring only at her own feet, slowly raised her eyes at the ominous premonition.
Between the countess’s white, slender fingers fluttered a few sheets of paper.
The very pages from the secret ledger that the head maid had been desperately seeking.
“H-How did you…!”
The head maid’s face drained of color in an instant.
Failin watched her and curled one corner of her mouth upward.
“A very righteous maid sent them to me anonymously.”
What? A maid sent them?
The head maid’s eyes trembled finely with shock.
Betrayal and bewilderment left her at a loss.
“Head Maid, you should have managed your subordinates better.”
Failin clicked her tongue and scanned the contents of the documents with her eyes.
Carrots, 100 crates. Onions, 100 crates. Beans, 200 sacks. Turnips, 50 sacks.
“Yes, a palace with only twenty maids must need a hundred crates of carrots every day. Right?”
At Failin’s pointed remark, the head maid’s face flushed bright red.
“But what intrigues me most is this part.”
The countess pointed to one item on the list in the documents.
“Why are ‘return gifts from the House of Count Katrina’ valued at 300 gold each?”
The blood drained from the head maid’s already reddened face in a flash.
“When I haven’t done anything warranting gifts from you as head maid.”
Failin’s voice sank low.
“You’re not about to claim that this cheap necklace I sent for my birthday is worth 300 gold, are you?”
She pulled a pearl necklace from her bosom and flung it to the floor.
The pearls from the broken necklace scattered in all directions in an instant.
Watching the scene, the head maid trembled from head to toe.
Failin approached the terrified head maid one step at a time.
“And that’s 300 gold every year. The last gift I received from you was three years ago, wasn’t it?”
She roughly seized the head maid’s chin and forced it up.
The countess’s demeanor shifted in an instant.
“You thieving bitch.”
The countess’s beautiful face twisted into a demonic snarl.
“I put a country bumpkin baroness’s lackey like you in the imperial palace, and you dare stab me in the back?”
“N-No, th-that’s not… I never intended anything like that!”
“You thought a wretch like you could take my place?”
“Th-that’s not…”
“Shut your mouth.”
She cut off the head maid’s words decisively.
“Yes, mingling words with Her Highness the Second Imperial Consort must have made you feel like you’d risen in status.”
Failin shook off the head maid’s chin as if brushing away filth.
In that instant, the head maid’s legs gave out, and she collapsed to the floor.
“You thought you could tarnish my name with your petty theft? Ungrateful bitch.”
Failin glared down at her with eyes full of contempt.
“An ungrateful bitch like you deserves punishment. I’ll decide what kind later.”
Her gaze was utterly icy.
“So for the time being, go down to your hometown. If you cross my path, that neck of yours won’t stay intact.”
“M-Madam! Please wait! Madam!”
The head maid clutched at the hem of the departing countess’s dress and cried out.
“It wasn’t me, Madam! There must be some misunderstanding! I didn’t write that ledger!”
“You think I can’t recognize your bitch handwriting?”
But Failin merely shook off her hand.
“Madam—!”
The head maid tried to cling again but was immediately blocked by the countess’s guard knight.
Failin glared down at the head maid kneeling before her and spoke once more.
“You’d better leave this imperial palace on your own two feet—and soon, Head Maid.”
“Countess, please… anything but that…!”
“Why? Now that it’s time to return to that cesspit of a life, you can’t bear it?”
The head maid bit her lip.
The reality she had forgotten came flooding back.
Her husband, who drowned in liquor and women every day, would resort to violence against her on a whim.
Just because she was a mere country baron’s wife. Just for hanging the hollow title of baroness.
The head maid bowed her head and clenched her fists.
To escape that place, she had been ready to lick even the soles of this woman’s feet in loyalty.
But now it was all for naught.
Though she had discarded the opportunity herself, the head maid never realized it.
She felt only resentment and fury that her plans had come to ruin.
“If you don’t leave on your own, you’ll end up in far worse shape.”
Failin said to the head maid with a smiling face.
“It wasn’t a position you claimed by your own power anyway, so don’t cling to it.”
“Madam, please…!”
“Or do you need your limbs torn off for imperial funds embezzlement to come to your senses?”
In front of the shuddering head maid, she tore the ledger to shreds.
“You should be grateful you haven’t ended up like this.”
It was at that moment, as the countess turned to leave.
The head maid’s eyes met those of someone standing at the doorway.
That woman. The new nanny, Rachel Brown.
Rachel gazed at the head maid with a face as serene as if she were watching a fire across the river.
Then, as the countess stepped out the door, she greeted Rachel.
“Thank you for the kind guidance, Lady Brown.”
“Take care on your way, Madam.”
Rachel bowed deeply and courteously to the countess, then straightened up once she was gone.
She looked indifferently at the head maid slumped in the middle of the office.
Of all people, to be seen like this by that woman.
As the head maid bowed her head in shame-tinged humiliation.
“Why did you have to go and do that?”
At the cool voice devoid of any sympathy, the head maid doubted her own ears.
She slowly raised her head.
The nanny, Rachel, was looking at her with cold eyes.
“You said lying is bad, after all.”
The head maid stared blankly at Rachel.
In that moment, she saw it.
The sneer curling at the lips of the nanny before her.
With a dazed expression, the head maid staggered to her feet.
It was clear.
She didn’t know why, and there was no evidence, but she knew.
The misfortune that had befallen her was undoubtedly the doing of the woman standing before her eyes.
