“Come to think of it, you left without eating this morning. I’m worried our lady will collapse again at this rate. You need to stay in your room this time. Lie down nicely. Promise me, my lady?”
“Why would I make promises with a mere maid.”
Adelaide’s hand betrayed her mouth. It happened so often now that she felt no shock at all. Amy was nothing but delighted by Adelaide, who had just offered her pinky finger with a sour look on her face.
‘She’s finally going to use her head.’
Amy left, and Adelaide savored the brief quiet that followed. She decisively abandoned the hypothesis that had nagged at her since the water soaked her that morning: that this was a dream.
“So someone put a curse on me. On me, of all people.”
Since she had heard the voice while unconscious, there was a chance it was nothing more than a hallucination she had conjured herself, but even so, it was the only thread that could explain this absurd situation.
“She said she’d give me my past life back.”
There had to be a reason she had been sent back to seventeen specifically. Seventeen was the most turbulent period of Adelaide’s life.
Lionel had appeared, she had been told the nonsense about making him the next Duke Berthier, and she had pushed him down the stairs and ended up expelled. All of it had happened at seventeen.
“And of all times to collapse.”
From the moment her encounter with Lionel took shape, Adelaide’s life had plunged into the mud. She had no idea what the voice in the fog wanted, but Adelaide had not the slightest intention of taking a different path from her previous life.
Adelaide decided to put her mature mind to work and devise a more cunning scheme. Last time she had naively shoved him down the stairs without a thought for witnesses, but this time she would consider it from every angle and make Lionel leave the Berthier household of his own accord.
“My lady, may I come in?”
A knock interrupted Adelaide’s burning resolve.
“Come in.”
She assumed it was Amy returning with breakfast. Adelaide had never paid close attention to what others said, and she never bothered to tell one maid’s voice from another. That carelessness was why she gave permission without a second thought.
“I was worried about your injury and came to check on you.”
“Lionel?”
“You know my name?”
It was not Amy who stepped in, but Lionel. The slight, scrawny boy had at least washed and changed, so he was no longer in a sorry state.
Hearing his name fall from Adelaide’s lips without a thought, Lionel’s cheeks flushed red.
“I heard you were hurt on your way to meet me…”
“Who told you that?”
“Amy said that my lady never runs no matter how pressed for time she is, but today you ran through the garden, and on top of that you were hurt while tending to my untidy appearance.”
Amy. Adelaide pressed her fingers to her forehead. Misunderstanding things was one thing, but spreading those misunderstandings to Lionel was another matter entirely.
“Let me be clear. I didn’t go out there to meet you. I went to drive you away.”
“Yes…”
“You don’t believe me? I distinctly remember telling you to go back.”
“But my lady wrapped your shawl around me…”
“That was!”
“That was?”
That had not been Adelaide’s intention. The wretched curse had activated on its own and given away a shawl she was fond of. Lionel smiled softly, the way someone does when they already knew the answer.
“Amy was right.”
“Whatever she said, it’s all lies.”
“She said you’re easily embarrassed. That the sharp way you speak is all for show, and that you’re actually a kind person.”
Lionel whispered, fidgeting with his fingers. Adelaide wanted to summon Amy on the spot and demand to know exactly what she had been going around saying, but she had no idea what her cursed body might do, so she barely managed to take a slow, deep breath and leave it at that.
“I’m not.”
“You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m telling you, that’s not true.”
“You stroked my hair even though I was filthy.”
“Is there something wrong with your ears? I’m telling you, I’m not.”
“And you worried about my health too…!”
The more she said, the deeper the misunderstanding grew. Just looking at Lionel made Adelaide’s temper flare, yet Lionel’s eyes shone the way they would at the arrival of a saint.
“I dislike you. I dislike you so much that I tried to drive you away before His Grace could bring you inside. I failed, but I’ll keep trying.”
“My lady… it’s hard to take that seriously when you’re retying my cravat…”
She was. Adelaide was straightening and retying Lionel’s sloppily knotted cravat.
A warm, pleasant scent drifted from Adelaide at close range, and Lionel felt his head go light.
“You smell wonderful, my lady…”
“Stop sniffing at me like some kind of deviant!”
But Adelaide had already gone to the vanity, rummaged through it, taken out her own perfume, and spritzed it on Lionel. Lionel buried his nose in his wrist and murmured in a daze.
“The same scent as my lady…”
“I’m throwing that out! I’m never using it again!”
Lionel snatched up the perfume bottle the moment she tossed it aside. He seemed to believe she had acted that way out of embarrassment at giving it as a gift.
“No! It’s not a gift! I threw it away!”
“Since you threw it away, I’ll pick it up. I’m used to picking up and using things other people throw out. I don’t mean your things are trash, it’s just, anyway, I’m used to it, so don’t worry, my lady.”
Adelaide had been on the verge of shouting when she froze. The fabric had shifted, and she felt blood seeping from her back again. It wasn’t a serious pain, but the sensation of blood trickling down her spine was not pleasant.
“My lady! Please lie down right away. Amy told me not to bother you, and I let my own selfishness get the better of me. I’m sorry. If the wound gets worse because of me.”
“Get out! Get out right now!”
Adelaide helpfully opened the door for Lionel. She even grabbed his arm to steady him when he stumbled from looking back at her too often.
“Don’t come back!”
“I’ll come again. Thank you for the gift, my lady.”
Only after Lionel had finished his bow could Adelaide slam the door shut the way she wanted to. Bang!
“Aargh!”
Adelaide let out a furious shriek, staggered to the bed, and flopped face down onto it.
“There was never any regret in my life…”
‘Let this become a life of regrets.’
The voice from the fog surfaced clearly in her mind. Regret was already piling up in heaps. This would not do. In her cursed state, she could neither torment Lionel nor stand her ground against Duke Berthier.
“I need to find whoever cast this.”
But she had no leads. All Adelaide had was a voice, and even that had been swallowed by fog, a muffled, indistinct sound whose very gender she couldn’t determine. Adelaide pounded her pillow furiously.
“I am going to live without regret, no matter what!”
One punch, one declaration, and Adelaide went down in glorious defeat.
Fainting twice in a single day. At this rate, she feared rumors would spread that the troublemaking Berthier lady had become a frail little deer who keeled over at the slightest thing, and that would only bring a parade of hollow suitors lining up to court her.
The two fainting spells meant Adelaide had gone without food for the entire day. The second one, perhaps because Lionel had made it worse, kept her unconscious for the better part of half a day.
“I’m not hungry.”
In the still-dark early hours of the morning, Adelaide placed a hand over her stomach and made her intentions clear to the rumbling that had no sense of timing.
“You think I’m going to creep to the kitchen like a rat in the dead of night and scrounge for leftovers?”
Grumble. The empty stomach kept making its case.
It conveyed a shameless certainty that it would keep sounding off without pause unless she put at least a bread crust in it, and that the one who would be humiliated was its owner, Adelaide, not itself.
“I’m not waking Amy either, and I’m not getting out of this bed.”
Grumble, grumble.
“Stop making strange noises. I’m not hungry. No noble lady clutches her empty stomach in the middle of the night and goes hunting for food.”
Grumble. Grumble. Grumble, grumble, grumble.
“You dare talk back to me? You’re nothing but a stomach trapped inside my body. I’m the owner here. So follow my orders and be quiet this instant.”
Grumble.
“What do you mean, grumble? Are you picking a fight with me? If you’re going to make noise, make a normal noise.”
Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. A mere stomach full of defiance beat Adelaide. Instead of waking Amy, Adelaide carefully swung her legs out of bed.
She had no interest in rumors spreading that the Berthier lady had been stuffing her face in the dead of night like a starving ghost.
Had Amy known, she would have insisted she would never spread such a rumor and that she could have brought food without anyone finding out, but Adelaide’s trust in Amy was bottomless in the wrong direction.
The girl was a hopeless maid who couldn’t walk straight and knocked over and dropped everything in her path.
Adelaide was firmly convinced that Amy would wake the head maid before even reaching the kitchen, then the steward, and ultimately Duke Berthier himself, putting Adelaide’s shame on full display for all to see.
The night was dark, but bright moonlight poured through the large windows and served as a guide. Adelaide found her way to the dining room without much trouble.
“Where is the door to the kitchen?”
The dining room was empty, naturally. Adelaide had expected as much. She was not foolish enough to believe some tireless fairy would be hard at work preparing a meal at an hour when everyone was asleep.
What Adelaide was after was the door to the kitchen. The magic door the serving staff passed through constantly during meals, carrying dish after dish.
“It should be around here somewhere.”
