The dining room was wide, like the other rooms in the Berthier estate, and its ornate decorations cleverly concealed the places that needed concealing.
Adelaide searched everywhere: behind the sculpture holding a fruit bowl, behind the wine cabinet, even behind the display case holding swords that had no business being in a dining room.
Grumble. Her stomach insisted it could not hold out any longer and pressed her to hurry. In a dark and quiet place, the only sound felt far louder than it actually was.
“Be quiet. I’m looking.”
At last Adelaide found the magic passage. Deflating, she discovered it was hidden behind nothing more than a thin curtain. The concealment was so flimsy she would have found it immediately with just a little more care.
“I’m only eating one piece of bread.”
Grumble.
“Not a bite more. I have no interest in waking up to rumors that a large rat crept through the kitchen in the night and devoured all the provisions.”
Gurgle. She gave her stomach a pinch for answering in a sound that was strange bordering on bizarre, then Adelaide opened the door with resolve.
“Hm. Cleaner than I expected.”
The kitchen was spotless, not a speck of dust anywhere. Adelaide decided to try the cupboards. When she had been thrown out of the Berthier household and started living alone, the cupboard was where she had kept most of her food.
“Nothing.”
She opened the cupboards one by one. The only thing she found was neatly arranged tableware.
A large household like the Berthier estate stored its provisions in a pantry. Adelaide didn’t know that, and only after opening every last cupboard did she sink to the floor, worn out from hunger.
“What is this? Are we actually poor? Is the old man drowning in debt somewhere and putting on airs?”
Her temper fully frayed, Adelaide flung a silver utensil that was entirely useless against hunger.
“Ugh!”
“Who’s there?”
A dull thud rang out, followed by a low groan. Adelaide jumped to her feet and glared at the unseen intruder.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to steal anything, I… my lady?”
D*mn it. It was Lionel. When he spotted Adelaide, he stared at her with his eyes and mouth stretched as wide as they could go.
“You’ve been here less than a day and you’re already scurrying around like a rat.”
“A rat… you might not be wrong. I was hungry and came to see if there was anything left.”
“You could simply have a servant bring you food. Why go to the trouble yourself?”
“A servant?”
Lionel repeated the word with obvious unfamiliarity and scratched his head.
“I never thought of that. I don’t even know how to call for one.”
“Your servant would naturally have been sleeping under your bed. Are you going to tell me you don’t know how to wake a sleeping person either?”
“Well. There was a very soft rug under my bed that I would have felt bad stepping on, but there was no servant, my lady.”
Adelaide belatedly registered that Lionel had not yet been named the next Duke Berthier. Right now, Lionel was nothing more than a guest of uncertain standing.
“Are you here because you’re hungry too, my lady?”
“Me? Are you suggesting that I, Adelaide Charlotte Berthier, could not resist something as trivial as hunger and crept to the kitchen?”
Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble.
Blast it all. A heavy silence settled. Adelaide found herself wishing, desperately, that her mind were a little less sharp. Was this not precisely the moment to faint?
“Pfft…!”
Lionel barely managed to clap a hand over his mouth before the laughter could escape. But the brief, clipped beginning had already reached Adelaide’s ears, and her fists trembled with humiliation and fury.
“Don’t laugh!”
“Yes, I’m not laughing, my lady.”
“You are laughing! Stop it right now!”
“I simply smiled because I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Adelaide and Lionel were not on terms where running into each other would produce a glad smile. Adelaide tried to think of something cutting enough to put him in his place, but Lionel moved first.
“There’s nothing here.”
She watched with scorn as Lionel searched the kitchen the same way she had. But Lionel paid no attention to the cupboards already hanging open and reached for a place Adelaide had never thought to look.
“Surely you’re not thinking of lighting the stove and cooking something.”
“Of course not. What I’m looking for is the bread the kitchen staff hide away to snack on during the day.”
Lionel reached deep into the stove and pulled out a small loaf of bread, about the size of his palm.
“What, why is that in there?”
“Everyone who works here keeps a secret stash. During the day they keep it in the cupboards and eat a little here and there, and when they’re done for the night they hide whatever’s left somewhere they’ve set aside.”
Lionel split the bread in two. To be precise, one half was a generous chunk and the other was barely more than crumbs.
Adelaide assumed Lionel had made a clumsy mistake.
“Please have some, my lady.”
But Lionel held out the larger chunk to Adelaide. He held the crumb-sized portion for himself, the way someone does when it’s only natural.
“I won’t. I told you I didn’t come down here because I was hungry.”
“Yes, I just want to give it to you. My lady gave me perfume as a gift, and this is all I have to offer in return.”
Something felt off. Adelaide’s stomach clamored at her to take it and chew it up without delay. Adelaide wavered between overwhelming hunger and pride.
“Please. Take it.”
A strange sight: the one giving something was the one pleading.
Adelaide noticed, in the moonlight, that Lionel was not as unpleasant-looking as she remembered.
The boy was painfully thin and slight, but the eyes that took up half his face were clear, like a frozen lake.
“If you’re going to beg like that.”
“Yes, if my lady will accept it, I would even get down on my knees.”
“I didn’t ask you to go that far.”
Adelaide took the crumb-sized portion rather than the large chunk. It was a familiar phenomenon by now. She had half expected it, so she wasn’t even surprised.
“My lady?”
“When did I say I’d eat something you gave me.”
“But that piece is too small.”
“Are you calling me a pig who wolfs down a whole loaf of bread?”
“No! That’s absolutely not what I meant…”
“Then close your mouth and eat your bread.”
Lionel watched in dismay as Adelaide picked at the crumbs.
He felt strangely close to tears. The only person who had ever given up food for him was his late mother. At the orphanage, every day was a scramble, and Lionel had always been on the losing side.
“This is too much for me, my lady. Please take a little more.”
Adelaide wiggled her fingers behind the folds of her skirt for a moment. Since Lionel had asked directly, the curse did not seem to activate. There was no way crumbs could fill her up, so Adelaide tore off a corner of the bread he held out and took it.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes. Thank you, my lady.”
“Thanking someone for giving away your own food. There’s a limit to how foolish a person can be.”
“I’ve never heard anyone say that to me before.”
“You’ll hear it often from now on, so get used to it.”
Lionel laughed even after being insulted. Adelaide had a grim feeling that he and Amy might be a match made in heaven.
Adelaide and Lionel chewed their bread in silence.
Every time the bread in Adelaide’s hand shrank, Lionel quickly broke off another piece of his and gave it to her, and hungry as she was, Adelaide accepted each piece without hesitation.
All the while wondering what on earth determined when the curse activated.
“My lady.”
“Don’t talk while you’re eating.”
“I’ve finished mine.”
“Already?”
He had given nearly all of it to Adelaide, so his portion had run out long ago.
“I’m still eating, so wait.”
“Yes, my lady. Take your time. Shall I fetch you some water?”
“Don’t fuss. Just sit there.”
If Lionel got up to fetch water, the wretched curse would never stand by and watch. It was better for him to sit quietly.
“Now then. Say what you came to say.”
“It’s nothing much. I simply wanted to tell you how grateful I am.”
“You must have something wrong with your ears. I believe I declared that I would drive you out.”
“You’re the first person who has ever been kind to me. Thank you.”
“You definitely have something wrong with your ears.”
It had been a roundabout journey, but Adelaide had achieved her goal of filling her stomach, and she made to head back to her room. She stood up, glanced at the kitchen she had turned upside down, and gave Lionel a pointed look.
“Oh, I’ll tidy this up. My lady should go and get some rest.”
“Fine.”
But Adelaide ended up tidying the kitchen alongside Lionel, and only after stuffing another hidden loaf she found along the way into his pocket did she finally make it back to her room.
A week had passed since Lionel came to the Berthier estate. Adelaide had steadily looked for reasons to make his life difficult, but the results were meager.
“Goodness, you won’t believe what I just saw.”
“What?”
“The guest fumbled with his cutlery and made a mess of things, and my lady saw it and cut his meat for him herself, right then and there.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. The other day my lady was out on a walk and ran into the guest, and apparently he didn’t know roses had thorns and pricked his hand. And my lady took out her own handkerchief and pressed it to the wound herself.”
“Really? Who told you that?”
