Lionel preferred staying by the side of the kind Lady Adelaide as plain orphan Lionel, rather than being a nobleman in name only with nothing to his name.
“Nonsense! When I think about how much your father must resent me from above, I can’t even sleep at night.”
“Funny, considering how loudly you snore.”
“When have I ever snored!”
“I’ve heard it myself! Your Grace snores! Loudly, loud enough to shake the estate, and the servants attending you can’t stand it and come sleep in the corridor!”
This was information Amy had passed along. Amy was as loose-lipped as she was skilled at spreading rumors.
“Benjamin, do I snore? Tell me!”
“Your Grace has simply been overworked, and it shows.”
“You’re supposed to say I don’t! Isn’t the correct answer here ‘You do not snore, Your Grace’!”
“I cannot very well say something that isn’t true. A loyal servant does not tell falsehoods out of fear of a scolding, Your Grace.”
“Benjamin! Out! Get out!”
Lionel now understood where Adelaide’s booming voice and talent for throwing people out came from. Awkward as the situation was, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Why are you laughing at a time like this?”
“It’s just, the two of you resemble each other.”
“You’ve finally gone blind. Amy, this boy has gone blind, so please have a cane made to order for him.”
Adelaide turned and found that Amy wore much the same expression as Lionel.
“The guest is right. My lady and His Grace do resemble each other.”
“I suppose you’ll need a cane too.”
“What’s so strange about a daughter resembling her father…”
Duke Berthier let out a small cough and let a little of his true feelings show. Adelaide squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Duke Berthier had been ranting and raving, and his cufflinks had come undone, leaving his sleeves hanging loose.
“Your Grace, your buttons.”
“Even now it’s Your Grace, Your Grace, so cold, that’s why I can never quite bring myself to, what are you doing?”
“Stop going around looking like a shabby old widower!”
Adelaide fastened both of Duke Berthier’s cufflinks neatly.
“Adel…”
“It’s Adelaide Charlotte Berthier! If you’re done, I’m leaving!”
Duke Berthier was old but his eyesight was sharp. So he had not imagined it: his daughter had fastened his cufflinks with her own hands, and she had fled with her ears burning red from the embarrassment of it.
“Ha, haha… hahaha…!”
“Your Grace, maintain your dignity.”
“There’s no one here but us, what dignity! Lionel, I’m counting on you to look after our Adelaide. That child may have a temper, but she has a warm heart. You saw it just now.”
Lionel held back his laughter, gave a bow, and went after Adelaide. Before the door closed, Duke Berthier caught a glimpse of Adelaide catching Lionel by the arm, grumbling all the while, as he stumbled.
“Benjamin.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Don’t they suit each other rather well.”
“They do, Your Grace.”
If Lionel only reclaimed his status, there was no reason he couldn’t become the husband and aide of the next Duke Berthier.
“See that he is properly educated. So that he can assist Adelaide wholeheartedly.”
“I have already filled his lesson schedule, Your Grace.”
“Good, good. Well done.”
Without knowing it, Adelaide had not only become the next Duke Berthier, the very thing she had declared she wanted nothing to do with, but her husband and aide had been decided for her as well.
***
The rumors that had been quietly spreading within the Berthier estate began to leak outside, little by little. It was only natural. Noble households saw a constant stream of outside workers hired on short-term contracts as needed, in addition to the live-in staff.
A maid who worked at the Armetia estate one day might work at the Lesatino estate the next, and be sent to the Berthier estate the day after that.
The rumor that the Berthier family’s troublemaking lady had been reborn spread from mouth to mouth and swelled to absurd proportions.
“I hear the Berthier lady has finally grown up?”
“Oh, no. What I heard is that Duke Berthier threatened to send her to a convent, and she’s only quiet for now.”
“None of you know the real story. I think what I heard is the most accurate. Apparently the person at the Berthier estate right now isn’t the real lady at all. She’s a fake.”
“A fake?”
“Yes. His Grace decided things couldn’t go on as they were. So he found a girl with no connections who looked exactly like Lady Adelaide and put her in as a stand-in.”
“Goodness, goodness.”
The gossip about the Berthier troublemaker who had shut herself in and refused to show her face gave the social circles a richer variety of topics to enjoy.
Even before her unwanted second life, Adelaide had shown no interest in social activities.
Opportunities had not been entirely absent, but the small tea parties, flower viewings, soirees, and dinners Adelaide had attended had, without fail, never sent a second invitation.
Duke Berthier had earnestly searched for gatherings suitable for Adelaide and applied pressure on the other parties.
It is no small thing for a man holding the title of duke to suggest, “I hear your daughter is quite well-mannered and gentle, why don’t we have her befriend mine.”
But Adelaide had kicked every single one of those opportunities away, each one that Duke Berthier had obtained at the cost of his pride.
Her accuracy was remarkable. If the opportunities Duke Berthier had secured were actual balls and Adelaide had been kicking them not with her foot but with a polo mallet, she would have been a polo talent anyone would covet.
But Adelaide’s staggering accuracy produced no result other than the hole it punched through Duke Berthier’s heart.
Duke Berthier had recently patched that hole a little with Adelaide’s “family, father and daughter, parent and child” remark.
It seemed Adelaide had finally grown up, and he felt the time was right to launch the make-a-friend project.
Benjamin responded to Duke Berthier’s resolve with skepticism, but Duke Berthier believed in the power of “family, father and daughter, parent and child.”
“Ahem. Adelaide.”
“Please don’t speak during a meal. You’re not a farmer plowing a field.”
Duke Berthier’s first attempt was stopped by a firm tackle. Benjamin, who had been attending the meal, gave a quiet shake of his head.
But Duke Berthier was the father of the troublemaking lady. Which meant Adelaide’s stubbornness had not fallen out of the sky one day. It was inherited.
“My lady, please eat slowly.”
Lionel took Adelaide’s side in plain view of everyone. Duke Berthier told himself that the son of his savior was simply oblivious, not deliberately trying to be irritating.
“You just focus on not spilling your soup. If Viscount Lavota came back from the dead and saw your dreadful table manners, he’d weep and go right back.”
Adelaide spread a napkin across Lionel’s lap. Duke Berthier glanced at his own spotless front and gave his napkin a flap.
“Deaf in one ear, blind in one eye, and now losing your mind too, Your Grace.”
“Losing my mind!”
“You’re doing things you’ve never done before.”
“I spilled something and was going to wipe it with my napkin.”
“Benjamin, it seems His Grace’s hands are starting to shake too. The day we have to feed him ourselves can’t be far off.”
“Oh, it’s hot!”
“Why are you so careless? Spit it out and don’t put it back in your mouth! Lyle, bring a fresh plate.”
Duke Berthier told himself it was just his imagination that the son of his savior had glanced at him and lifted the corner of his mouth. The servant called Lyle followed Adelaide’s order with more deference than ever.
“You even know the servants’ names. Well done, Adelaide.”
“I can’t very well call them hey or you, can I. I suppose that’s how you do it, Your Grace. Benjamin, you must have it hard.”
It wasn’t as though Adelaide had made a point of memorizing the names of the servants and maids.
She hadn’t noticed before, but the people working in the Berthier estate were surprisingly unreliable. They were sharp and attentive when someone was watching, and the moment they thought no one was looking, their minds went completely elsewhere.
Adelaide had missed things she would have walked past without a second glance, but the meddlesome curse made her step in and help with each and every one of them.
Running into them so often meant she had grown too familiar with their faces to keep calling them hey or you. They weren’t strangers she had met once or twice, so referring to them only by pronoun would make her look not just unpleasant but genuinely strange.
“I have always thought of Benjamin as a friend, so don’t worry.”
“A friend? That’s for you to say, Your Grace. What employer has an employee who thinks of them as a friend? You’re not planning to cut Benjamin’s wages, are you?”
“Cut his wages!”
“I recently learned there are dreadful people who do that sort of thing. We’re like family, they say, don’t stand on ceremony, you know my situation, so please accept this much for your wages…”
The source was Amy, naturally. Before coming to the Berthier estate, Amy had worked her way through a number of noble households.
The more a declining noble family struggled to keep servants, the longer the speech that came with the job. Amy had at first taken the words at face value, thinking how hard it must be for someone who had lived comfortably all their life to see their family fall to ruin, and had been burned one time after another for it.
