CH 1.04

Collecting information was the way of the world.

There were chatterboxes everywhere, and rumor mongers here and there.

Today was another day I was going to do my laundry.

Merely wearing a servant’s dress could make someone quickly become one of the undisputed servants of the Duke of Lindbeld’s mansion.

To my surprise, I found it in my closet, and I wondered why it was there.

It was probably a form of harassment, but I was overjoyed.

Thank you, Mrs. Miriam.

I’ll never forget your gift!

So, I dressed up as a maid, and while happily doing my laundry, I had a nice chat with the other maids.

They were very well informed.

Moreover, they sometimes took pity on me and brought me gifts, which was great.

They were mostly beauty-related stuff.

Thanks to them, I’ve become considerably decent in the past month.

I’ve been able to get a good night’s sleep, thanks to all the leisure time I’ve been wasting.

It was said that lack of sleep was the natural enemy of beauty, and it was true. Thanks also to the wonderful bedding, I slept with the angels, and the dark circles around my eyes disappeared. Even my pale face was regaining its original complexion.

I didn’t want to admit that it was not only because of my sleep, but also because of the terrible highly nutritious livestock food.

By the way, I ran out of patience after ten days and haven’t eaten anything since.

“It’s great to be young! If I stay up all night even once, my skin will be a mess, and it takes months to restore it to its original state…I believe you were seventeen, right?”

She was the first elder sister I met at the laundry, and her name was Lil.

She was older than me, with dark blue hair and eyes of the same color that revealed an intellectual glow and a sisterly feistiness.

At twenty-five years old, she lamented that it was getting late for her to get married, but she didn’t seem pressured at all.

“Really, it’s so smooth. I’m so jealous. Plus, it’s so white. How can I acquire this complexion?”

As my elder sister, Layla, said this, she stroked my skin and took both of my cheeks in her hands and looked into my eyes.

Her pink hair swayed fluffily and softly touched my face.

She was only nineteen, and her skin was still tight, but she was touching my skin enviously.

Speaking of which, the whiteness of my skin was a family trait.

I was born with fair skin.

White skin seemed to be a dream for women at any age, and was envied by many people.

“By the way, did you know that the housekeeper was super angry?”

It was Lina, an eighteen-year-old newcomer, who usually gossiped while doing the laundry.

Her bright orange hair and eyes were vibrant, and she was always happy.

She loved gossiping, and knew so much about everything that I wondered where she obtained her gossip from.

At any rate, like this castle, she knew not only the inside of the mansion, but also the rumors around the city and even the happenings in the society. I sometimes wondered seriously who she was.

“I don’t know, but her voice is loud enough. It won’t take long for it to spread.”

“She’s taking advantage of the Duke’s absence to do as she pleases, but without the Duke at the heart of it, I’m afraid there’s nothing she can do.”

The target of the rumor was Mrs. Miriam.

If you shout in a place where there were only a handful of servants, rumors about it would spread fast.

For me, it was something that made me think like: Isn’t that how it’s always been?

The subject was that my husband had never approached the castle ―― or rather this mansion.

I hadn’t seen him here for a month, and Mrs. Miriam was annoyed.

Evidently, she was trying to get her daughter to be my husband’s mistress, but it was impossible without him, wasn’t it?

She seemed confident enough to be favored, but since her daughter was still untouched, why didn’t she just give up?

I wanted to kindly advise her before it was too late for her daughter to get married.

That aside, from what I’ve heard, Lady Miriam’s daughter, Elise, was twenty-three years old.

In aristocratic society, she fell into the fine category of spinsters.

It was not a lie that the former duke pampered Elise like his daughter, and it seemed that she would be given a good amount of dowry.

The Duke’s family was an easy subject of conversation in social circles, but if you were wondering why I had never heard of her, it seemed that the Princess had something to do with it.

The Princess found it repulsive that a woman was living in the mansion of the Duke she was planning to marry.

In other words, Elise was as good as ignored by her, as if she had her kicked out of the social scene completely. Since the princess had such an attitude, it was only natural for the others to follow suit.

She was never invited to any social gatherings.

Besides, my husband didn’t seem to want to make an effort for her either.

Therefore, only a few people knew about her. By the time I, who was younger than the Princess, entered the scene, she was completely forgotten.

I believed my half-sister probably knew about her.

But the reason she didn’t bother to tell me about it was probably to torment me.

Now that I thought about it, I felt like that was another reason why my husband chose me.

Still, Elise’s dowry was known to a certain extent, so there were people who were attracted by it and proposed to her.

But living in this Duke’s house, where Elise could have anything she wanted, she considered all other families as inferior, and in the end still hadn’t married.

Moreover, she’s been feigning illness, pretending to be a fragile beauty.

I now understood what my husband meant when he said that she was not always…sick.

Rather, it was a feigned illness.

“Now that our Madam has appeared, I heard that she’s in a pretty bad position. What’s going on now?”

“So far, it looks like our Madam has been lying low. I haven’t heard of her making any moves. The maids and the footmen are all on Mrs. Miriam’s side to begin with, so she can’t do anything about it even if she wanted to.”

Yes, yes, spot-on.

And to change the status-quo, my first step was to collect information.

So far, these three people were the best source of information for me.

They were also my source of nourishment.

At present, the power structure in this mansion was completely in Mrs. Miriam’s favor.

If she didn’ do anything to me, I wouldn’t do anything to her.

However, there was a time when I thought that I would do everything in my power to deal with them ―――― because they had become a threat to my idle life.