Chapter 24
23
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The maids who brought the food wore blatant sneers on their faces.
“Acting like a great noble, are we?”
Jessie’s lips curled upward. She watched the maids’ backs and quietly cracked her knuckles.
The maids, not seeing Jessie’s expression, exchanged glances.
A little while ago, Flora had called them and said,
‘You’ll have to serve that woman her dinner.’
‘Us? What about serving the young lady her dinner….’
‘Go and find out about that woman. By the way, the woman His Excellency brought is not a noble. She’s a commoner without a surname. Yet she’s pretending to be a noble.’
‘Then the woman brought like a maid is….’
‘His Excellency’s consideration, perhaps? He’s such a kind man.’
The woman who didn’t know her place and occupied the Chandelier Room didn’t even glance at them when they arrived. She seemed to think she was some great noble.
The maids’ gazes turned fierce.
To become a maid in the Duke’s Main Castle, one had to have a clear background, even among commoners. It was a given that no direct family member could be a criminal, and the family had to have some financial means.
Serving lower nobles was acceptable. Of course, it wasn’t entirely satisfactory, but at least they were nobles. However, serving a commoner, especially one with a more obscure background than theirs, was extremely unpleasant.
A separate table was set for meals in the room. But the maids pushed the trays all the way to the work table.
It was against etiquette to eat at the work table. Light tea was acceptable, but even finger foods were rarely placed there. Servants were trained to quietly set the dining table and retreat to wait if the employer was working. But the maids opened the food domes in front of the work table, laughing.
“Are you hungry? We’ll set up the food for you.”
“Nobles usually eat alone. Unless there’s something special, they eat in their own rooms.”
Then, before Grace could even give her permission, they began setting the table.
They didn’t wipe the table, nor did they put down a table mat. They placed an excessively large plate in front of Grace, with only a palm-sized piece of meat sitting on it. The meat was charred black and looked hard.
Then, they set the cutlery on the unwiped table as if displaying it. Unlike the unappealing meat, five types of knives and forks, and two types of spoons, were spread out around the huge plate.
Finally, they placed a champagne glass and poured water into it. After setting up the ridiculous arrangement, the maids stared at Grace, laughing.
No matter how elegantly she pretended, she wouldn’t know the proper dining etiquette. She would drink the water like champagne and cut the steak with the wrong fork and knife. And she would eat the meat covered in salt and pepper. Spitting it out would be funny, and swallowing it would be even funnier.
They intended to watch Grace eat without any grace and tell Flora about it.
But Grace, who had been sitting upright and looking down at the table, raised her eyes and met their gaze.
“……”
There was a very strange feeling as those green eyes stared intently. The smiles momentarily disappeared from the maids’ faces.
Then, Grace, who had been silent, opened her mouth.
“Who told you to do this?”
“…Pardon?”
The surprised maid asked a beat late.
But Grace didn’t repeat herself. She leaned back in her chair and said something else.
“I’ll give you another chance.”
“……?”
“Correct the mistakes right now. It would be good to look around this entire room and correct them, if possible.”
“…….”
The maids’ breathing gradually grew louder.
Their instincts were telling them not to fight with the woman in front of them, but at the same time, they remembered Flora and the Marchioness’s triumphant expressions.
‘That girl will definitely be kicked out. The way His Excellency looked at me was unusual.’
As Flora’s voice echoed in their minds, the strange fear they had felt for a moment vanished completely. One of the maids smiled kindly again and said gently,
“This is the Chandelier Room where the past Duchesses have stayed. But, what do you not like about it?”
Encouraged by her colleague’s words, the other maid joined in, smiling.
“That’s right. This room is perfect. Perhaps you’re just hungry and feeling sensitive. The meat will get cold. Please, eat.”
“Ah, are you perhaps dissatisfied with the size of the meat? But noble ladies usually leave even this much. They consider it vulgar to eat a lot. That’s… well, a poor habit, isn’t it?”
The way they were trying to demean the other person’s character reminded her of Duke and Duchess Taylor. It was utterly tiresome and sickening.
She didn’t want to argue with them any longer, nor did she need to. Grace precisely picked up the main fork and knife. And as the maids hesitated, she cut the meat. The way she held the fork and knife, even the tips of her fingers, was perfect. Grace cut the meat exactly in half, then put down the fork and knife and commanded,
“Take it away.”
“…….”
When they still didn’t move, Grace stared at them intently. In the end, the maids had no choice but to clear the dishes without making Grace eat the meat covered in salt and pepper.
As if they were very dissatisfied with that, the way they took away the food was noisy, and they left without even saying goodbye.
“Those things, really……!”
Jessie muttered, grinding her teeth, but Grace calmly organized her thoughts.
“Those maids just now, weren’t they the ones who guided me and His Excellency to the Chandelier Room earlier?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
For a maid, not even a lady-in-waiting, to be so rude to the Duke’s lover who had occupied the Chandelier Room, huh. This would never have happened if a reliable backer hadn’t provided reliable information.
“Keep a close watch on those maids.”
“Should we just watch them?”
“Where they go, who they meet.”
“Understood.”
＊ ＊ ＊
The maids who came out into the hallway were startled to see Joseph leaning against the wall. Just as children are influenced by their parents, servants are also influenced by their employers.
In a situation where contempt for the knightly family had continued for a long time, the maids didn’t even offer Joseph a polite greeting. They tilted their heads slightly, barely noticeably, and walked away with unpleasant expressions, glancing at the door.
A little later, when Jessie came out of the room, Joseph quietly informed her.
“They went that way.”
“Thank you.”
Jessie’s smile deepened at Joseph’s words.
“Sir Knight also seems to be in a bad mood?”
“They were rude.”
Joseph stood leisurely and looked out the window.
The darkness that had chased away the twilight was painting the world black. And there was a man crossing through it.
He could tell how thick and dark Walter’s aura was as he approached the Main Castle, even without seeing him. Very occasionally, Walter took off his mask. At those times, even Joseph, who prided himself on having experienced all sorts of hardships, felt a chill down his spine. The fact that he was perfectly concealing that fierce and violent energy already felt like madness.
But one thing was certain: if Walter hadn’t been that crazy, he would have already been torn to pieces by Magical beasts. At the same time, he wouldn’t have been able to return alive with all the knights who had gone with him.
The Richmond knights were ready to charge even the Imperial Palace right now if Walter ordered them to. They would follow his orders unconditionally. In the past 10 years, Walter had never disappointed them.
But sometimes, Joseph was worried about Walter. What would resolve the madness that he had been suppressing? Could it even be resolved?
He sighed, then chased away a servant who was hiding behind a pillar and trying to listen to the sounds coming from the Chandelier Room.
“If you come here again and put your ear to the door, know that you’ll live with only one ear for the rest of your life. Understand?”
“U-… Yes, yes!”
＊ ＊ ＊
The darkness that had settled like a fog was not even a hindrance to Walter.
Like the old saying that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, he grew stronger by devouring pain.
As he dealt with the unseen, he had learned to read even the smallest signs, and he could maintain his sanity even without sleeping for days. Those in this comfortable castle, struggling to protect the wealth and honor they had acquired, didn’t know that. So they had attached those pathetic things to him as surveillance.
Walter knew that there were exactly six people watching him.
The veins on the back of his hand bulged. He felt the urge to grab those things by the scruff of their necks and tear them apart miserably. He felt the urge to unleash the accumulated madness, just like when he had been subjugating Magical beasts at the Wall of Death.
Walter held his breath and said to himself.
Endure. Now is the time to endure.
It felt like swallowing a huge fire.
He didn’t know what he was thinking when he entered the Main Castle, but he was already climbing the stairs. Then, when he saw his reflection in the huge window on the landing, he was reminded of a monster.
The blue veins on his neck were throbbing, and his black eyes contained flickering flames. Like a man who had become a monster while trying to catch one, the monster inside Walter was already awake and ready to burst out at any moment.
When he arrived in front of his bedroom, his gaze turned to the Chandelier Room right next door. After standing there for a moment, he told Joseph, who was waiting, to take care of it and quietly opened the bedroom door.
