The Duke’s Study
Lucia didn’t know why she had been summoned by the Duke, she was apprehensive to leave Mos and Bos to Kain’s care but given that they were in Hound Master’s fenced area maybe she was worrying too much about it, after all the dogs have been warming up to Kain and it shouldn’t take her too long to sort whatever this was out.
The Duke might want to simply ask some information about Lady Veronique and Lucia knew she didn’t do anything wrong.
Still Lucia was nervous regardless as she came to stand before him
“Do you know why I called for you?” the Duke had asked, his unusual calm voice sent shivers down her spine
“N-no m-my L-lord” Lucia said back feeling intimidated by the man
“Are you really going to deny it?” the Duke had accused her, which made the blond slightly panic
“I-I don’t k-know what y-you are t-talking a-about my Lord” she shuttered, Lucia had no idea what he was referring to and couldn’t even imagine what this could be about, after all they hired her despite what her brother did so what could be the problem?
“You think I am stupid?” the Duke questioned her
“Of c-course n-not my L-lord” Lucia was quick to deny such unfathomable thing, the Duke was smart without any doubt, way smarter then most nobles.
“Then tell me, why are you really there? Is it revenge for your brother?” the Duke inquired and Lucia immediately understood what must have happened.
It wasn’t that she got hired despite Pietro’s wrongdoings, it was that they mustn’t have noticed she was Pietro’s sister and only found out later, probably while they were investigating Margaret’s disappearance.
Could it be they were suspecting of her for it? Was she about to join her brother?
“I-I-I mean n-n-no h-harm” Lucia shutter got worse as panic got over her “I-I j-j-just w-wanted”
“You wanted?” the Duke urged her on as if to make her confess for Margaret’s disappearance, but she truly had nothing to do about it.
“To b-be on Veronique’s s-side” Lucia ended up saying as she got an hold of herself and poured her heart out holding on the Duke’s accusing gaze as she did “She’s my b-brother’s daughter y-yet my f-family hates her, and I k-knew t-things would have been even w-worse there s-so I decided to b-be on her side”
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“I am sure you can understand why I find it hard to believe you” the Duke ended up saying
“It’s the truth” Lucia affirmed then bowed and started pleading “P-Please my Lord l-let me stay, Veronique doesn’t h-have a lot of a-allies in t-this Household”
“I don’t trust you” the Duke concluded and paused making Lucia think of the worst “but I will allow you one chance, only because of Veronique on the condition that you keep your relationship with her a secret” he gave a pause “You are to be nothing more then a maid to her, and remain as such for as long as Veronique lives under the banner of the Aurelia and nobody has to know otherwise”
“U-understood, thank you my Lord” she had nothing but gratitude towards him and Lucia hadn’t been planning to reveal her connection to Veronique in the first place
“Don’t thank me yet, I got my eyes on you and I won’t hesitate to have you executed if you dare to bring harm to my family, understood?” the Duke warned her and he clearly wasn’t joking about such thing
“Yes, my Lord” Lucia affirmed half wondering if she had bitten more then she could chew, should she have heeded her family’s warnings? The Duke seemed a fair man and she had always assumed he wouldn’t have had her brother executed if he was innocent, yet recently had a taste of how ruthless the Duke could be and wondered if there wasn’t some truth to her family’s words.
Should she have stayed at the farm?
‘No, if I didn’t come here, then Veronique would have stayed alone with a staff that didn’t care about her’ Lucia thought ‘it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, I have to stay here to protect Veronique’ she concluded ‘it’s the least I could do to honor Pietro’s memory…he would have loved her so much’
Veronique’s room
Having came back from dinner Veronique was lying face down on her bed looking utterly miserable as her stomach protested from hunger, while Mos and Bos were playing on her back and munching on her hair.
Both actions which Veronique had no strength to stop.
An unwanted development, since the previous doctor ended up in jail and the librarian was fired, was a change in the food at Veronique’s Dinners, for some reason she started getting the fancy things from the Main wing and she didn’t like such thing at all.
Veronique had hoped that it was just a temporary thing, something that the cooks responsible for her meals would stop doing in a few days, just enough time for them to grow more comfortable and for the Duke to calm down.
Given that the staff was already on a warpath with her, Veronique didn’t want to say anything to make them mad or get them into trouble with the Duke himself.
Chances were the cooks would think she was trying to get them fired by having them make things inferior to the accepted standard and then going to tattletale to the Duke, so she had decided to wait and hope things would go back to normal.
It didn’t and she was getting cranky from being always hungry.
Such crankiness was even noted by the Duke, who ended up assuming it was the mana excess making her that way and had suggested to up her foul tea dose to twice a week.
Veronique wasn’t going to let such thing happen so she was trying to devise a plan to get back to her previous food.
The idea came to her all of the sudden.
She would write an explicit request, one with her signature and everything so even if the Duke ended up getting mad at the cooks they could just pull back this document and get out of trouble.
This would probably lead to her having a talk with the Duke, but Veronique doubted he could get mad at her because she liked a different kind of food.
However she would do such thing in the morning, because her puppies had fell asleep on her back and she didn’t have the heart to wake them up by moving an inch.
Is Lucia's shuttering annoying to read?
