TMWDS Chapter 19

"…Thank you for letting me in, my lady. Please forgive the rudeness of coming to see you at an hour like this."

"Tell me your business first. Whether I let this slide or not, I'll decide after."

At Ionna's answer, the maid spoke up, her face tense.

"I know this will be hard to believe, my lady, but I've come to tell you that Master Nils is plotting to harm you."

"Nils is planning to kill me?"

Ionna tilted her head, showing not the slightest sense of danger.

Perhaps thinking this meant Ionna didn't believe her, the maid hurried to explain further.

"I heard Master Nils go to Lady Yvonne's room and plot the whole scheme. He said if you were done away with, it would stop the marriage to the Duke, and Lady Yvonne could be sent as the bride instead. I was chased out partway through, so I don't know the full details… but it didn't sound like idle talk."

It wasn't that Ionna doubted this whistleblower and so remained unbothered.

It was only that Nils's conduct struck her as recklessly, unbelievably careless.

'Does he really have so little attachment to his life?'

She'd already meant to kill him eventually, in the not-too-distant future—but not this soon.

And on her end, she had no memory of her life having been threatened like this before.

No, that wasn't entirely true—but if it had happened, it hadn't happened around this particular time.

'I suppose he didn't like it that I've been so bold lately.'

Fair enough—in her previous life, she'd never rendered Nils's teeth useless, nor shown the Count's family any disrespect.

In short, she'd probably felt like nothing more than a punching bag to him.

There was no reason to tear up a drum you could beat any time you liked, when you'd just found the chance to sell it at a high price.

But things were different now.

Since she hadn't hidden her hostility, it made sense that Nils would have developed some wariness toward her.

Thinking of it that way, Nils's quick action seemed almost clever, in its own way.

Die sooner or die later—either way, as long as Ionna existed, their fate wasn't going to change.

Making one last thrash, at least, might raise their odds of survival a little.

"Why did you come to me?"

There was one thing she was curious about—why this maid had bothered coming all the way to her with the truth.

The chance that she'd been sent by Nils or the rest of the family as a plant seemed low.

If they'd wanted to set something up, they'd have had her use some other pretext. Making Ionna cautious this way, of all things, would gain them nothing.

"Who'd want to get tangled up in something like this? None of us know who'd get blamed if it ever came out."

The maid said, on the verge of tears.

Ionna murmured quietly.

"I see. You didn't want to be seen as being on the same side as Nils and Yvonne."

"It's how most of the maids under Lady Yvonne feel."

An already self-indulgent, violent mistress. And on top of that, no proper rewards to speak of, so there was no loyalty left to hold onto.

Even so, no one had ever come to Ionna before when similar things had happened.

She simply hadn't looked like the kind of person who could offer them any protection.

Even when Marsha, the one person who'd ever taken Ionna's side, had been driven out—Ionna hadn't objected in the slightest.

It was almost funny. How easily the eyes turned on her could shift, after all.

'I lived believing the world had abandoned me—but it seems it was really me who abandoned myself.'

Ionna gave a fleeting, mocking smile at the thought, then looked into the maid's eyes and asked,

"I take it you've come here because you'd like to work for me from now on?"

If all she'd wanted was to avoid responsibility, there were more roundabout ways to go about it.

If most of the other maids felt the same way, and she'd still come forward herself, it must have been because she'd judged the risk was worth taking.

Ionna was to become a duchess, and even so, she had no one around her she could truly trust yet. From the maid's perspective, this looked enough like a chance at advancement.

"If you need it, I'll bring you every piece of information you want from now on."

"Tell me what you want in return."

"…At this point, I can't very well keep working under Lady Yvonne. If you'd take me with you when you leave here, my lady, I'll serve you with all my heart."

"What's your name?"

"Cornelia."

Cornelia.

Not a name she recognized.

Most likely, in her previous life, the girl had been let go during the process of reorganizing the household staff after Ionna herself had become the Countess. She'd cleared out everyone who'd directly served the Modrov family, without exception.

And those dismissed that way, without any letter of reference, would have had a hard time finding decent work again after.

At the very least, this maid had made the right choice for her own future, without a doubt.

"And this…"

"Invitations."

Ionna commented briefly, glancing at the letters Cornelia had pulled out from inside her coat.

Cornelia nodded.

"These are the ones Lady Yvonne has been intercepting all this while. I thought you might need them, so I brought them along."

Quick-witted enough—she'd be genuinely useful going forward, it seemed.

Ionna had originally planned to ease into her social calendar more slowly, but now that she was actually confronted with the backlog of invitations she'd never received, a clever idea came to her at once.

Ionna took the invitations Cornelia handed over and began going through them one by one, checking each sender's name.

Her gaze stopped on one in particular.

This is…

Eirene Kruger. An unexpected name.

The young head of House Kruger was known for both her sociable nature and her generous, freewheeling spending.

A comfortable atmosphere and good wine drew people naturally to her gatherings.

Thanks to that, any young noble with an interest in courtship made a point of showing their face at every party House Kruger hosted.

Every young noble except Ionna, of course.

Ordinarily, even if the invitation had reached her on time, this would have been a gathering she'd have skipped. But things were different now.

Ionna mulled something over for a while, then, after a moment, wore a small, unreadable smile.

"A duchess in name—you'd normally expect that to come with a certain standing in society, wouldn't you?"

Of course, even the ambition to become a social fixture was something only permitted after clocking out for the day.

Once at the palace, Ionna made her rounds around Rihardt's chambers as she always did.

Naturally, there wasn't so much as an ant in the vicinity, let alone an unfamiliar face.

Finding danger in the depths of a palace like this was about as difficult as finding an ocean shark in a river.

After reporting no irregularities to her replacement, Ionna headed straight for the cafeteria for breakfast.

The Knights' mess hall, under the order's jurisdiction, was generous enough to provide breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even a late-night meal.

In other words, the order kept people working, from breakfast through dinner and straight through the small hours.

Sure enough, the place was already crowded—with people who'd just clocked in, or who hadn't managed to clock out yet.

The moment Ionna took her food and sat down, a fellow knight nearby recognized her at once.

"Dame Ionna, I heard you went to a matchmaking meeting?"

Why did people take so much interest in other people's love lives?

Not that she and the Duke were bound together in any romantic way, exactly…

'No—wait, this time I've decided to make it a real marriage, so… maybe?'

It occurred to her, belatedly, that she'd been far too businesslike with the Duke during their last meeting.

She'd been so focused on making the case for how much he stood to gain by marrying her that she'd probably come across a bit too intense.

She still needed to convince him first before she could move on to the next stage, so it was hard to say outright that she'd made a mistake, but still.

'Last time, walking into that wedding hall wasn't nearly this difficult.'

There was, undeniably, a shortcut she'd already walked once before—but she had no wish to take that same route again this time.

She'd sooner bite her own tongue off and die a second time.

Having settled that much in her mind, Ionna cut off the pointless question at once.

"You've got the leisure to be gathering gossip like that? I'll be sure to tell the commander your training load needs increasing."

"Well, everyone in the order already knows about it—how could I not have heard?"

"Fine. If you'd like to argue your training's already sufficient, follow me after you're done eating. I'll be happy to check that for myself, seeing as it's been a while."

"Ahem, enjoy your meal, senior. I've already got a sparring session with Theobald, so I'll be off."

His tail thoroughly tucked, the junior knight rose and left, tray barely a quarter finished.