Chapter 14

I took Annie and Laura and left the room.

It was a bright and sunny one in the afternoon. It was a bit early for afternoon tea, but I was heading to the conservatory for a tea party.

‘I’m hungry…’

It had been a few days since the servants’ mischief began.

As a Korean, I live on the power of rice, and though the meals kept coming out terrible, I stubbornly ate them all. However, my nonchalant attitude seemed to encourage their spite even more.

At first, the food was edible, but it gradually became difficult for even me, who never skipped a meal, to eat. Discolored bread, soup of unknown ingredients, and poor-quality meat.

‘Is it okay to give this kind of food to a pregnant woman?’

Thank goodness I wasn’t actually pregnant; if I were, something would have already gone wrong.

For this reason, I was having afternoon tea every day instead of a meal and eating plenty of desserts. Fortunately, they didn’t play any tricks on the afternoon tea prepared by Laura.

However, only the tea time was safe. Just like with the meals, they didn’t fix the heating magic tools afterward, so my room was still cold. I had no other place to go besides my room, so I had been drinking warm tea in the chilly air, but today, Laura had pulled me out of the room.

‘There’s a great conservatory for having tea!’

Honestly, I didn’t particularly want to leave the room. But in the end, the desire to drink tea in a warm place won out.

‘Nothing much will happen today, right?’

As I descended the stairs with a positive mindset, I suddenly heard the servants’ conversation from the floor below.

“Really?”

It wasn’t a pleasant thing to run into the servants, but it was unavoidable. As I was about to pass them indifferently, I heard them say, “Lady Chacha.” When I stopped, Annie and Laura, who were following me, also seemed to sense the situation and stopped.

“I saw it with my own eyes! The day May took the meal instead of me, she came back with a swollen cheek! She said she was hit by Lady Chacha because she made a mistake, but how can you hit a kid like that for making a little mistake?”

“She pretended to be kind, but she’s showing her true colors. Huh! I didn’t like her from the beginning.”

“Right, honestly, isn’t it because May is prettier than her, so she did it on purpose?”

The servants, unaware that I was eavesdropping, continued to giggle and talk among themselves.

“That’s why a footman named Gon still hasn’t replaced the magic stone for Lady Chacha’s heating magic tool.”

“It makes sense. That guy, Gon, has liked May for a long time.”

“The assistant chef also says that Lady Chacha is taking the Eclipse servants for granted because of May, so he’s making her meals carelessly.”

“Oh, really? But she’s not striking them?”

“She hasn’t even received the Duchess’s seal yet. She can’t, even if she wants to.”

In the end, Annie and Laura, who couldn’t listen anymore, bristled and tried to step forward. But I stopped them and shook my head. The voices, which had been chatting arbitrarily, grew quieter and eventually disappeared.

“Lady Chacha…”

“It’s okay.”

I firmly pressed down on my pounding heart. I could still bear it. For now, at least. I patted the shoulders of the two people whose faces had turned bright red and resumed my steps toward the conservatory.

Honestly, neither Annie, Laura, nor I were in the mood for tea, but I didn’t want to go back to my cold room and feel miserable. Listening to the footsteps following behind me, I recalled the voices I had just heard.

‘The day May took the meal instead of me, she came back with a swollen cheek!’

“Hah.”

I quickly understood what had happened. The servants’ attitude had worsened dramatically right after I met that maid. Hearing that story made it certain. I was a neglected, abandoned duchess, and the other side was a colleague with whom they had already built a good relationship. It was obvious which side they would believe: the person they had always looked down on or the person they looked favorably on. It seemed the rumor had spread quickly enough for them to chatter about it in the hallway.

‘Why does she hold such animosity?’

To the point of hitting her own cheek. I had only met that maid for the first time that day. As I pressed my brow at the question swirling in my head, my wedding ring on my left ring finger caught my eye.

‘Ah.’

The answer came quickly as I recalled our first meeting. The way she bragged that the Duke had ordered her to do something and the way she scoffed at my appearance.

‘She likes Nine.’

And she was jealous because I, a seemingly insignificant person who was being neglected, was in the position of the Duchess. A sigh came out on its own.

‘I can’t help it.’

It wasn’t something I could solve right now anyway. I just had to hope she wouldn’t cause trouble, as my previous life’s romance novel reader’s intuition had told me.

***

The conservatory wasn’t far away.

When I opened the door to the surprisingly small conservatory, warm air enveloped me gently. My stiff body relaxed. It was a warmth I hadn’t felt in a long time. As I walked to the tea table in the center, I looked around the conservatory. The trees and flowers inside were species that were hard to find in the cold north.

“Wow.”

As I sat down, still looking around in wonder, Laura explained with a proud face.

“There’s a bigger conservatory, but it’s far away, so I brought you here. This small conservatory is a space that the late Duke created for his wife, Lady Kate. If you look, it’s decorated with flowers and trees from the southern regions because Lady Kate was from the south.”

“I see.”

I nodded, looking at the familiar flowers. They were definitely flowers I had seen when I went on a family trip to the south.

Unlike the cold and static atmosphere of the north, the conservatory was vibrant and colorful. As I took a fresh breath among the colorful flowers and lush trees, my heavy heart felt much lighter. I smiled and said, “Thank you for bringing me here. Can we have tea here from time to time from now on?”

“Of course. I’ll prepare it here from now on.”

I could see Laura and Annie looking relieved as they had been watching my mood.

“Lady Chacha, I prepared chamomile tea today.”

“Please try the sandwich, too. The madeleines are also baked very well today.”

Perhaps because of what happened earlier, the two of them were more proactive in talking to me than during a normal tea party.

While I was smiling and responding, I suddenly saw a uniquely colored flower behind the two of them. It was a purple tulip.

“A tulip?”

Tulips weren’t special flowers. However, the most common tulips were red and yellow.

“Are there purple tulips too?”

“Yes, there are. They aren’t common, though. The flower language is special, so the late Duke himself grew them.”

“What’s the flower language?”

“It means ‘eternal love.’ They say the late Duke proposed to Lady Kate with this flower.”

“Oh my! He must have been a truly romantic person!”

Annie, who loved such stories, exclaimed with an excited voice.

“I know. He must have loved her very much.”

After hearing the story, the conservatory looked different. The conservatory made for his wife, the southern plants planted for his wife, the special purple tulip. This small conservatory was filled with his affection.

‘I didn’t know because it didn’t appear in the original novel.’

Listening to Laura’s story, I could guess how much of a romantic the former Duke was. Laura chattered on for a long time about the famous love story of the former Duke and Duchess.

It would be a lie to say I didn’t feel a little envious while listening to the story. But I didn’t feel jealous at all. Rather, it made me reflect on my own situation. I just nodded appropriately at Laura’s story and slowly sorted out my bitter feelings.

***

By the time the tea party was over, my thoughts were organized, and my heart felt much lighter.

‘People really need to get out.’

If I had gone back to my room and stayed cooped up, I would have still been feeling miserable. I asked Laura to clean up after the tea party and left the conservatory with Annie first. The only resolution I had made was this:

‘As the servants said, there’s nothing I can do, so I might as well feel at ease.’

But they say enemies meet on a narrow bridge, don’t they? This world had been too unkind to me ever since I got involved with Nine. It hadn’t been long since I had shaken off my gloomy mood when I ran into a servant on the main hall’s central staircase. And it was May, the maid who was at the heart of the servants’ gossip.

“…”

It was an unspoken rule for servants not to use the central staircase except when cleaning. If she had used it and run into me, she should have greeted me and then made way. But she came down the stairs and stood in front of me as if to show off.

“Hello, Lady Chacha.”

Her posture seemed polite at a glance, but it wasn’t at all. She was looking down at me from a step above, with a sneer on her face. Her intentions were transparent.

‘Is she hoping I’ll get angry?’

If I were to get angry and corner her, it would be easier for her to create a rumor. But maybe because I had already heard the rumor and sorted out my feelings, I wasn’t as angry as I thought I would be.

‘You’re more polite and courteous than the bullies I knew in my previous life.’

Unlike my previous life, this was a world with social status. That meant there was a limit to how much she could torment and harass me.

‘Is she going to hit me or what?’

I looked at her with clouded eyes, as if she were a difficult customer, and just gave a slight nod.

“Yeah, hi.”

I could see May’s face scrunch up at my calm attitude. Her crumpled face gave me even more peace of mind. I smiled faintly and passed by her leisurely. But then, I heard a laugh from behind me.

“Haha… Lady Chacha. I hear there are a lot of rumors going around the Duke’s castle these days. Have you heard?”

‘Yes, I already have.’

I answered her in my head and was about to continue up the stairs, but the next words I heard weren’t the false rumors I had heard.

“They say you clung to the young lady of the duke’s house at the Academy like a leech. Was that because you’re so plain, you needed a trick to stand out?”

My steps on the stairs came to a halt. The servants of a noble’s estate were usually good at listening to rumors. The stories they heard while serving someone, the stories they heard from outsiders coming and going, and the stories circulating inside. I had never properly introduced myself since coming here, but it seemed they had found out bit by bit. I turned around and looked down at May, who was climbing the stairs step by step to meet my eye level.

“That’s how you became the Duchess, isn’t it?”

“…”

“But don’t you think you’re way out of your league? People should know their place.”

I could endure her sarcasm and insults.

“How great is Blueberry County anyway? Did you hand them a lot of money?”

But not my family.

“May.”

May seemed a little surprised that I had responded. I gave her a carefree smile. After all, when the person you’re trying to torment doesn’t react the way you want, you get angry in reverse.

“Right now, I’m the Duchess, aren’t I? Shouldn’t you be the one who knows your place?”

Normally, I wouldn’t have brought up my position as the Duchess. But what she didn’t have, while looking down at me arrogantly, was this position. The effect was certain. May bristled and shouted,

“You’re not a proper Duchess!”

“And do you think you can be a proper Duchess?”

“Of course-!”

“I’m certain of it.”

I cut off May’s words and recalled <White Plum Blossom at the End of Winter>. Iris, who had a pure, optimistic, and kind heart. The woman Nine would fall in love with was that kind of woman.

“You’re not Nine’s type. Even if I wasn’t in this position, you never would have been.”

Unable to contain her anger, May’s clenched fist trembled.

‘This should be enough.’

I didn’t want a long fight. I was about to turn away after saying enough, but May came closer.

‘Huh?’

Thud-

May’s hand instantly pushed my body down the stairs.