Translator: Nox

19 - Chapter 19

“I’m off. Be good to your mother.”

Eloise gave a bitter smile at Mr. Suberton’s words as he boarded the carriage.

“Father, I’m twenty-six.”

Wasn’t it too much to use a greeting meant for children at this age? Mr. Suberton clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“You said the same thing when we went to Newham last year. And what happened when I returned?”

“……The stable almost collapsed because one of the pillars was missing. But that was……!”

Just as Eloise was about to protest her innocence, Mrs. Suberton pulled her daughter’s arm.

“Enough. I’ve heard your excuses about how it wasn’t your fault the horse was startled hundreds of times. That’s enough, so please depart, dear. Your godmother must be waiting for you this very moment.”

“Yes. I shall depart now.”

Mr. Suberton’s face darkened again at the mention of his godmother.

The coachman, hired from Cambon, lightly tugged the reins, and the horses soon picked up speed. Mr. Suberton’s carriage quickly disappeared into the distance.

“He was so healthy until last year, what could have suddenly caused this?”

Eloise embraced her grieving mother. At the same time, she prayed that he would live a longer and more comfortable life.

Several hours after sending Mr. Suberton off, a messenger boy from the village arrived with a letter.

“A letter from Blissbury!”

“Thank you. Take one of these.”

Eloise picked up a cookie that Emily was cooling and gave it to the boy. Watching the boy run off excitedly, Eloise quickly wiped away her smile and looked at the letter from Blissbury.

“To the esteemed Mr. Suberton…… From your friend, Sergeant Thornton.”

She thought he was truly unlucky. The father he was looking for had left far away just a few hours ago.

If that was all it said, she would have put it on her father’s desk and not worried about it any further.

He would wonder why there was no reply, but she had no obligation to tell him, and more than anything, if she opened a letter that wasn’t addressed to her, her mother’s nagging would never end.

Of course, she was also afraid of the scolding she would receive from her father when he returned.

But the moment she saw the words “Reply Requested” at the bottom of the envelope, Eloise sighed.

‘Is something urgent?’

Eloise thought of the books he had taken last time.

She had re-examined the study afterward, but there were no more books from Blissbury.

‘Could there be another problem besides the books?’

But most things would have already been discussed with her father.

Eloise stared at the envelope for a moment, then went to the desk and picked up a paper knife. She opened the envelope and found a short letter inside.

Dear Mr. Suberton,

I recently heard about the Summer Ball in Blissbury. It is said to be an annual event, but I don’t recall hearing about it during your last explanation, so I have been unable to give any answers to the residents who are looking forward to it. Would you be willing to visit Blissbury at your convenience? Ryan Thornton, who is always ready to welcome a friend.

As expected of a soldier, the letter contained only the necessary information, almost frighteningly so.

Of course, it wasn’t a love letter, so there was no need for flowery rhetoric, but even among friends, letters usually began with praise of the weather and nature.

But Sergeant Thornton’s letter was as dry as if he would die if he wrote such words.

‘What am I going to do about this?’

Seeing the letter, it was clear that her father hadn’t told Sergeant Thornton about the Summer Ball.

In the past, she would have suspected that Sergeant Thornton hadn’t listened properly to her father’s explanation.

But this year, Eloise had noticed that her father’s memory was failing considerably. He was increasingly repeating things he had already said to her. Moreover, he often forgot things he was supposed to do.

‘But Father won’t be back for a while.’

The place her father had gone to was a full week’s carriage ride away. And she didn’t know how long he would be staying there.

After hesitating, Eloise went up to her room, sat at her desk, and took out stationery from the drawer.

Then, she pondered for a moment. How should she write the letter?

Eloise soon made up her mind. She would write only the main points, omitting all the flowery language, just like Ryan had done.

She didn’t want to send a letter to that man as if they were close.

The letter was simple. She asked for his understanding that she had read the letter in her father’s stead because he was away on business.

Her father seemed to have forgotten, and as Sergeant Thornton had heard, the event was held every year in Blissbury according to the wishes of the owner, Lord Stanford.

And here, she was sending things related to the ball. These were documents that had been ruined by rain, and newly written copies were in Blissbury. He could compare them to those. She hoped it would be a wonderful ball.

Eloise quickly wrote the letter, then got up and went to the study.

She opened the wooden box where the documents were kept and checked the contents one by one.

“Cough! Surely there’s a record of last year’s transactions here…… Cough!”

These were documents that should have been in Blissbury. But last year, when the mansion’s roof leaked, some of the documents were damaged, so she had brought all the wet documents home and neatly transcribed them onto new paper.

The newly written documents had been sent to Blissbury, and the wet ones had been set aside to be used as practice paper for calligraphy, but who knew they would be needed again like this.

Eloise found all the documents related to the ball, brought them back to her room, and placed them on her desk.

Then, she wrote on the documents with a pen. Which grocery store in Cambon was used to prepare the ball food, which numbered boxes in the warehouse contained the dishes to be used at that time, where and how the rest areas for people to relax during the long ball were prepared, and so on…….

She rewrote the faded letters from memory, and also wrote down what each clear letter was about.

Eloise organized the documents until her eyes became blurry after sunset, and then fell asleep.

“Yawn…….”

The next morning, Eloise woke up with swollen eyes.

She occasionally stayed up late reading books, but it had been a very long time since she had fallen asleep so close to dawn, so she couldn’t quite come to her senses.

“Eloise! Are you awake?”

Just as she had barely finished washing her face and changing her clothes, she heard her mother’s voice from downstairs.

“Yes! I’m awake!”

Eloise quickly smoothed her hair and went downstairs. Mrs. Serverton sighed as she watched her daughter come down the stairs.

“Sleeping in the very next day after your father is gone. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I had something to do.”

“Something to do? Is it because of the child who came looking for you?”

At the word “something to do,” Mrs. Serverton pointed to the boy standing at the door.

It was the boy who had delivered the letter yesterday.

“You’re…….”

“I came from Blissbury! They told me to get a reply!”

It seemed that writing “Reply Requested” wasn’t just a formality.

“Wait here for a moment.”

Eloise took a cookie from the glass jar and placed it in the boy’s hand. The boy nodded with a smile as bright as yesterday’s.

Eloise hurried back to her room and organized the documents she had fallen asleep writing yesterday.

Fortunately, they were almost finished. She had just been too tired to organize them properly before falling asleep.

She hastily gathered them together, organized them into one bundle, and put them in a document bag. Then, she put in the letter she had written yesterday, tied it with a string, and went downstairs.

The waiting boy had already finished his cookie and was sucking on his fingers, which were covered in crumbs.

Eloise smiled and gave him another cookie, then handed the bag to the boy.

“They seem to be eagerly waiting in Blissbury, so please take this quickly.”

“Yes! Leave it to me! Thank you for the cookie, Lady!”

The boy took off his hat and gave a clumsy imitation of the nobles’ greeting, then ran off with excited steps.

Lancelot, the goose in the yard, seemed displeased with the boy’s actions and honked loudly at his retreating figure.

“Miss! I wondered why the cookies kept disappearing!”

At that moment, Emily came out of the kitchen and jumped as she saw Eloise closing the lid of the glass jar.

“You gave them to the errand boy again, didn’t you? They know that and act cunningly! They must have been staring at the glass jar so eagerly!”

“I baked a lot, it’s good to share.”

“Those are made with lots of nuts bought from Cambon!”

Feeling that Emily’s resentment would deepen if she stayed, Eloise said she needed to tidy up her room and went back upstairs.

It wasn’t a lie that she needed to tidy up.

Her desk, where she had hastily swept up the documents, was a mess as if it had been bombed.

Eloise began to tidy up her desk, organizing the remaining papers one by one.

After finishing organizing the Blissbury documents she had taken from the study, she looked at her desk.

Eloise realized that something was missing.

“Where did my letter go……?”