Chapter 37
****
The last, fading words stung like a thorn in Louise's heart. She remembered the butler's explanation of the training grounds for private soldiers at the east end of the mansion. His emerald eyes narrowed slowly.
"No benefits. Elizabeth Ermoli taught her for twenty years."
He had chosen her, absurdly, for the pearl and the name.
For all his resentment, he didn't lower his opinion of her mother, and so he pinned his hopes on what she would have taught her.
He trusted her to somehow fulfill the role of hostess of this great mansion, to be his helper, as Ermoli had been. Her mother's old instructions rang in her ears.
"You may wear a shabby cotton dress, but you are Ermoli, Heidenberg's most valuable servant."
The bitterly cold winter sky was open above the white linen-strewn clearing.
Louise slowly stretched her back and straightened her shoulders. As she breathed in the cold air, the fog in her head seemed to lift.
The whole time, she had felt like she'd been dumped here in Burg. She felt like she had been abandoned on the battlefield, alone, with no shield or armor, let alone a sword to strike with.
But the man was right.
She had spent the last twenty years learning everything from Elizabeth Ermoli, the highest noblewoman in the empire. From how to breathe, to what to eat, to how to write, to how to speak.
She hadn’t just been dropped like a foreign object into an unrelated position, but the time has come for her to prove herself worthy of her mother, who had taught her all her life to be a servant of Heidenberg.
If she was going to walk this path, she might as well walk it right. As the man, and as her heavenly parents expect.
***
Three days later, in the mansion kitchen.
"See, the only thing that's shrunk in front of the lady is the oatmeal porridge, right?"
"Well, grubs eat pine needles, and maybe the oatmeal porridge you ate was just because you were born poor."
"Nonsense! If I suddenly became a nobleman, I wouldn't even look at oatmeal!"
The bustling kitchen fell silent at Pauline's entrance. Pauline glared at the last maid who had finished speaking.
"I must correct you, my lady did not suddenly become a noblewoman. She was always the daughter of a marquis."
"What? Yes..............."
The embarrassed maid replied meekly, showing some signs of remorse, but the problem was Pauline's position.
Pauline was still too young and hadn't been around long enough to be her master's maid.
The maidservant could not interfere, as Louise had chosen the most literate of the literate, but the other servants had reason to be jealous of Pauline's meteoric rise.
But Pauline's unwillingness to talk about her mistress in broad daylight in the kitchen was too much for her to bear.
At that moment, one of the maids, about Pauline's age, asked sulkily.
"You’re the hostess’s maid, and I'm wondering if you could tell me one thing, please?"
The question was asked with a hint of respect for the higher-ranking maid.
"What is it?"
Pauline asked in disbelief.
But the maid lowered her voice and whispered her question in a low voice.
"I heard the hostess was called to the master's room on the first day she came and didn't come back for a long time. That was already that day, wasn't it?"
Pauline's face flushed red on behalf of her humiliated master.
It was not in her master's room that she lingered that day, but in the empty hallway in front of Lady Miriam's room. The butler had told her to keep a close eye on her that day, and she remembered it well.
The servants didn't see them because they didn’t have duties there and lady Miriam didn’t want anyone. How dare they suspect the innocent mistress with their lowly position?
Pauline was indignant, but the maid, who had just shut up, interrupted her.
"Well, I'm sure it was that day," said the maid, unable to hold her tongue, "so he must have been joking about catching the fox the very next day! When has my master ever been joking, for it's been about two months since that day................"
Pauline paused in disbelief at the story, then interrupted.
"You want to take a pay cut, don't you? Or do you think you can stay here in Burg after speaking such blasphemous words to my mistress?"
At once, everyone fell silent.
Except for the maid, who was Pauline's age, who smiled and cooed.
"Just take one look, Maid. By the way, she’s pregnant, isn’t she? Actually, I think the head maid is secretly wondering about it................"
The sneaky remark was even worse.
Pauline suddenly understood the maids' audacity.
How they dared to stick a pin in her mistress's towel, and how they could gossip about her pregnancy in the middle of the day in the kitchen.
Maid Verena turned a blind eye to it all.
Pauline's eyes glazed over at the thought of going through this with a mistress as young as her, but then she gathered herself and placed her hands on her hips.
"I'm only going to tell you once, and you'd better hear me."
The truth was, she wasn't sure.
How could she know what was going on between an adult man and woman when she had never been in a relationship?
Mistress Louise was a pretty woman in her eyes, so maybe the master, a man, would have liked her at first sight.
But Pauline remembered Louise, who always seemed to falter at the master's call.
She remembered how she had put his gift in the deepest drawer, and how it seemed a sin to even look at it. So she spoke boldly, as if she really knew.
"Madame is not pregnant!"
Inwardly, she hoped she was absolutely right. So that the mean maids would stop talking so frivolously.
"She's leaving the workhouse right now, very healthy, and if you want to get in trouble, you can go ahead and talk all you want."
Pauline thought the same thing all the way through the arduous work of the almsgiving.
****
The next day, Louise's room.
There was a knock on the door, and Verena, the head maid, entered.
"You don't have a good appetite, my lady. I know you must have been exhausted from your visits to the almshouses, but you skipped breakfast."
The tray she held out was laden with fresh tangerines.
Louise blinked. This was the same Verena who had stiffened her neck the day Caius had professed their marriage and handed her the hostess's keys with a grunt.
The day before at the workhouse, she had walked far ahead of Louise, her shoulders raised, claiming the job she had held until last year.
She felt awkward for a moment when she suddenly came to her in a friendly manner.
"Thank you, Verena. I guess the more tired I get, the less appetizing it is, although I don't mind it too much.............."
Louise started to reply, but stopped when she felt Verena's gaze on her. She was smoothing the tablecloth, pretending to work but had obviously been glaring at her.
Louise swallowed hard a sigh. It was pathetic that she had wanted to believe for a moment that she cared.
Perhaps all the stories Pauline had told her in her sassy way were true.
The maids were merely curious. They wondered if she, who had announced her marriage a month after entering this house, and who had risen to the position of hostess within another month, was now pregnant.
Trying not to let her agitation show, Louise picked up a tangerine and slowly peeled it. She was already there, so she had to start the conversation.
"How are the new hires doing?"
On her visit to the almshouse the day before, she had hired several women with children because it seemed more urgent to help them become self-sufficient than to hand them a few coins.
Verena shrugged her shoulders, returning to her usual nonchalant demeanor.
"It's their first day, so I'm sure they’ll be joking around already, and since we're bringing in outsiders, I hope they don't bring in the plague............."
They were seen and examined by a pre-employment doctor, who said the same thing. At this point, Louise was not sure if the outsiders Verena referred to include Louise herself.
Stifling a sigh, the maid shuffled off as if she'd remembered something she'd forgotten. She seemed disappointed that Louise hadn't forthcoming.
Louise hadn't spoken to her husband for the past ten days, far from the expectations of her employees.
Louise was still floating around Burg like oil on water.
The rumors that she was pregnant would die down, as they were completely unfounded.
But then their fake marriage would be known, and she wouldn't be able to fulfill the role of the good wife Caius wanted her to be.
She didn’t want to be the second Ermoli to disappoint him, even if it was not her will. Louise stared at the doorway where the head maid had disappeared.
***
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