Chapter 10
“If she’s Miss Jessica’s friend, she’s my friend too. Miss Gretchen, you’ve got a good face. Mm! Not that I’m one to judge people by their looks. But you look like you work awfully well.”
“Haha, thank you.”
“Good. At least you won’t run off. Unlike somebody I could name.”
“Oh, Frederick, she won’t. Gretchen is such a responsible friend. Right?”
Jessica had been busily defending me, but out of nowhere she turned and asked me directly.
Her jet-black eyes were fixed on me.
“Right? Gretchen won’t run away, will she? You’ll keep working here, won’t you?”
“Well…”
“You’ll work hard. Right? You said you like money too, Gretchen.”
Two pairs of eyes turned toward me. The kitchen was stifling, yet a chill ran down my spine.
Shouldn’t I be fleeing this mansion right now?
I hid my trembling voice and acted calm.
“Of course. I only got here on a letter of recommendation, after all. I was a rather capable maid in the capital, too. You can trust me.”
I deliberately laced my words with boasting, like a flighty maid, and Jessica, apparently satisfied, clapped her hands loudly.
“See, I told you! Gretchen is different! Gretchen is one of us.”
“Then that’s a relief. Miss Gretchen, I’m counting on you to look after our Grand Duke’s mansion.”
I only wanted to try being a Grand Duke’s maid, and my heart won’t survive it.
The moment Jessica and the head cook looked away from me, I secretly pressed a hand to my chest in relief.
The two who had been grilling me were laughing merrily, as if nothing had happened. The mood turned warm and friendly at once.
After a few more unfunny jokes, the head cook came back to the point.
“So, what brings our Miss Jessica and Miss Gretchen here?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Know what? I won’t know unless you tell me.”
“We’re hungry, Frederick. Now that we’ve come all this way, you won’t make me lose face, will you?”
“Hmm…”
“I’ll help out in the kitchen later.”
“I’ll help too.”
I had to play along here. When I chimed in at just the right moment, Frederick chuckled.
“Miss Gretchen. You’re so quick on the uptake, I wonder if you won’t climb all the way up to Head Maid in no time.”
“Sounds good. But for that, you’ll have to help me a lot, Frederick.”
When I shot back, Frederick, who had been stroking his beard, widened his eyes. Then he clutched his belly and doubled over with laughter.
“What? Ahahaha! Jessica, you’ve brought me not a maid but a future Head Maid candidate! Fine, I’ll help with all my might. Let’s start by helping with breakfast, shall we?”
As if he’d been waiting for this, Frederick heaped both our plates full.
By the time we stepped out of the kitchen, the plates were already overflowing.
Jessica and I carried our heavy plates and took seats in a corner of the dining hall.
‘You really do need to have good friends.’
Frederick had even slipped dessert into our pockets on the sly.
“Goodness, Gretchen! Frederick must really like you.”
Jessica made a fuss, saying white bread was hard even to catch sight of.
I picked up a freshly baked wheat roll.
I was hungry, so, manners be damned, I tried to stuff the whole roll into my mouth.
“Gretchen!”
Jessica had just sat down at the table and suddenly called my name, and I nearly dropped the bread.
“Who eats bread like that?!”
I glanced warily at Jessica and slowly took the bread back out of my mouth. Pah, pah. Tooth marks were left in the roll.
“Why?”
“It’s not a crisp cookie, so you dip it in the soup first!”
“Can’t I just eat it as it is? I’m hungry.”
“No. That’s how a true Northerner eats it.”
I’d wondered whether servants had their own etiquette, like the nobles’ manners. It turned out to be nothing but Jessica’s Northern pride.
“Strictly speaking, I lived in the capital, so I’m not a Northerner… But now that I work for the Grand Duke’s household, I’m a Northerner now. Yes, absolutely.”
When Jessica set her spoon down with an audible clink, clearly displeased, I hurriedly changed my tune.
I obediently dipped the bread in the soup, just as Jessica said, and put it in my mouth in one bite.
“…!”
Dong. It felt as though a huge bell were ringing inside my head.
“What did I tell you. Incredibly good, isn’t it?”
“No, wow! Jessica… Is Frederick a genius? These aren’t even fancy ingredients, just basic ones, and the flavor is incredible!”
“He’s another pride of our Grand Duke’s household.”
I buried my nose in the bowl and ate like a starving wretch, until the soup had hit bottom.
With my empty stomach filled, it was time to gather information.
“Jessica, um, can I ask you something?”
“Hm? Sorry, what?”
While we’d been eating, the dining hall had grown as rowdy as a tavern. It was a cheerful atmosphere, which was nice, but so loud that I couldn’t even hear the person next to me.
“I said I have something to ask!”
Jessica must have heard my shout, because she stopped talking to the maid in the next seat and yelled back.
“Oh, hold on, Lucy. Gretchen says she has something to ask. Of course! Gretchen, you can ask me anything!”
“Thanks! Um, I’m curious about Young Master Theodore!”
“Who are you curious about? Gretchen, I can’t hear you! Louder!”
“Young Master Theodore Lindal Francis!!”
The instant I shouted the male lead’s full name, the coachman, who’d been belting out a song at the top of his lungs, fell silent.
Jessica, who had been ready to answer anything all this time, was no exception.
The dining hall went quiet in an instant.
The servants’ eyes swung toward me. The kitchen maid carrying plates and the footman heading off with the dishes to wash all stopped what they were doing and stared at me.
“Um, excuse me…?”
“…”
Jessica, the coachman, the maids, all of them had shut their mouths as if their lips were glued together.
“Did I make some kind of mistake…”
Black, dark, murky eyes scrutinized me without blinking. The faint unease I’d felt ever since meeting Jessica and the head cook surfaced into plain view.
What? Why are they looking at me like that? Why all of a sudden—
“Gretchen, it’s better not to talk about him.”
The silence that had seemed it would last forever was easily broken, ending with Jessica’s warning.
The dining hall turned noisy in an instant.
Lucy pulled a rosary from her pocket and shook it as if it were a lifeline, muttering frantically.
“Goddess, forgive me, I beg you. I’m only a servant, and I have committed no sin. Please be merciful and forgive me, keep me from falling into profaned dreams, and if I have lost my way, peacefully…”
The maids who had been playing poker with fierce intensity threw down their cards and spat out words that could have been screams or wails.
“Goddess, we’ve done nothing wrong! Save us who suffer from the evil spirit!”
“Oh God. Protect us. We who have no power at all…”
The atmosphere, crowded in a different sense than before, left me suffocating.
Listening to the countless prayers, I backed away.
This place is insane. They must all be insane. If I stay here long, I’ll go mad too.
I scrambled to my feet. The servants’ black eyes followed my every movement, clinging to me stubbornly.
I hurriedly set my tray on the serving counter and burst out of the dining hall. I ran down the corridor, almost fleeing.
Only after I’d gotten well away from the dining hall did I realize that my green tunic was soaked through with sweat.
＊＊＊
I knocked on the door of the steward’s office in the east annex.
“Yes, Miss Miller. Come in.”
How much anguish it had taken to get here.
Crazy people, a crazy household, and a gloomy mansion where every layer I peeled back revealed nothing but ghost stories, and I had to work in it.
But unfortunately, I couldn’t give up the maid’s job.
‘There’s no other way for me to go back.’
However it came about, I had to see the world’s destined ending. Luckily, I’d heard the ending, at least in brief.
I absolutely had to go back. I had lived nineteen years in Korea to begin with. If I had to adapt here, I could, but not to the point of giving up my original life.
Grandmother had said I had to see the ending. If I didn’t, no matter how well I adapted, it would all be for nothing.
‘Since it’s come to this, I have to see the young master marry the fairy.’
If reaching the destined ending was the only way to go home, then that was what I would do.
“Here’s the employment contract. Miss Gretchen, please sign here. Do it quickly, if you would. I have quite a backlog of work.”
But gloom was gloom, and a contract was a contract. They always said you should keep public and private matters strictly separate.
While I was at it, I’d better check thoroughly whether there was any funny business in the contract.
Sitting glumly in the steward’s office, I began scrutinizing the contract with a hawk’s eye.
Huh? But this employment contract…
Something about it was off.
