I made a mistake. What should I do? I shouldn’t be criticized. I need to be perfect.
Kaela obediently followed behind Peon, her hands tightly clasped together. The back of her neck felt chilly, and cold sweat broke out.
In Lusenford, where small mistakes and seemingly insignificant oversights could pile up to drag her down, she had made such an error. She had been too careful and messed things up.
What should I do? What should I do? What should I do? How can I avoid being suspected as the Emperor’s spy?
You never do anything right. If you’re not smart, quick, or pretty, you should at least be perceptive, but you’re not even that and you’ve messed up again, this time too…
“Doesn’t it look better now that it’s been torn down?”
Kaela quickly lifted her head and looked forward. The man who always walked briskly ahead of her was not there.
Huh? Then where is he? She turned her head. Peon was standing beside her, looking down at her. When did he come to her side?
“Pardon?”
“I’m talking about those curtains from earlier.”
“Ah, yes.”
She actually hadn’t heard what he said. Kaela thought her own voice sounded foolish.
“It seems more open now that they’re torn down… Were those curtains to your liking?”
That hideous hot pink? Did I like it?
“No!”
Kaela answered almost shouting before she realized it. Her so-called ‘foolish voice’ echoed in the large corridor.
When Peon looked slightly surprised, her face instantly turned red and she lowered her head again. How foolish. Really foolish. Not sophisticated, just rustic and clumsy.
“Then I’m glad I tore them all down. Please have new ones made in whatever color you prefer.”
Time spent face-to-face with Peon was always short and hard to come by. Conversations ended in seconds, and he usually just swept past her.
So it felt strange and awkward that he was standing by her side, listening and responding to each thing she said. At times like this, she wished he would just leave, but he remained in place.
“I’ll take care of it today, definitely today.”
“Take your time. We have plenty of it.”
But as long as Kaela was staying in Peon’s bedroom, she didn’t have much time. She needed to retreat to the opposite bedroom as soon as possible.
It was clearly a problem that the Grand Duchess, who had recovered enough to attend ladies’ events, was still in the Grand Duke’s bedroom. People would surely talk about how she had driven her husband out into the cold and taken the most comfortable and safe room for herself.
This place is too tiring. She decided to retreat to the room where the hideous curtains had all fallen and first look for a way to quietly send the maids back to Ostein.
For that, she needed to hang new curtains first. That was easy. They had just changed the curtains in Peon’s bedroom to deep blue, so it could be done quickly.
Kaela hurriedly placed an order for curtains. The butler, who had seen Peon tear down the curtains with one hand, made arrangements for the order to be processed quickly without saying a word.
“Your Highness, I’ve ordered the curtains.”
“Well done. But Your Highness, in my opinion, this chair doesn’t seem to match the color of the new curtains.”
Peon looked closely at the old chair in the Grand Duke’s bedroom with renewed interest.
“Don’t you think this should be replaced as well, given your eye for these things?”
The butler would say it’s perfectly fine at that level. After all, one can still sit on it.
Although it would hurt to sit on for long periods and the lining was worn out and faded. But before Kaela could answer, there was a snap from Peon’s hand as he touched the chair.
“…Your Highness?”
The chair split strangely in half and collapsed to the floor with a thud. The remaining half that hadn’t fallen was in Peon’s hand.
“Oh dear.”
He casually muttered, opening his hand to let the other half drop as well. The chair, though old, would have been difficult for an average adult to break, was now completely destroyed.
“We’ll have to use it as firewood. But what shall we do without a chair to sit on?”
Goodness. The Grand Duchess couldn’t answer, and the butler’s jaw dropped. The Grand Duke smiled slightly.
“I’d be grateful if you could choose this one as well, Your Highness. I tend to accidentally damage furniture due to my carelessness, so I’ll be relying on you in the future too.”
From that day on, the Grand Duke began diligently proving just how careless he could be.
****
“Your Highness, the Grand Duke has again…!”
Ah. Kaela really didn’t like this butler, Baron Rolf Anderson, who had just burst in, panic-stricken.
Like the head maid, he was an insolent man who treated Peon as if he were his own son, and to him, Kaela was either an unsatisfactory daughter-in-law or a poor spy sent by the Emperor.
Moreover, he was an extreme miser, never considering improvements even when the castle furnishings were worn out and the Grand Duke’s bedroom was in such a state. He had likely played a significant role in Kaela’s confinement as well.
“He’s broken a perfectly good sofa, of all things, a sofa…!”
However, these days, with the Grand Duke seemingly showing off his strength and breaking the excessively old castle furnishings almost daily, this butler was the only person with whom she could share her thoughts on the situation.
“Which sofa are you talking about?”
“The one in the study!”
“Calm down. Surely there must be parts that can be repaired and reused.”
“No, Your Highness, His Highness just tore off the armrest with his bare hands!”
This petty miser, already stressed by the Grand Duke ordering kitchen renovations without the head maid present, was now on the verge of a nervous breakdown as the Grand Duke continued the terrible act of destroying perfectly good furniture.
For Rolf Anderson, who considered saving, recycling, and repairing as virtues, every day was torture.
“Was the Grand Duke not injured?”
“Only the sofa was badly injured…”
Two days ago, while deciding on the decorations for the curtains in the Grand Duchess’s bedroom, the Grand Duke had “accidentally” broken one of the four posts of the bed in that room, claiming his hand had slipped.
With a cracking sound, the canopy fell over, crashing into and breaking a perfectly good display cabinet.
Kaela, who had rushed in at the loud noise, was left speechless, and the butler staggered.
Naturally, with the bed in such a state, Kaela couldn’t return to her long-desired bedroom. And from that point on, the list of furniture that needed to be replaced due to the Grand Duke began to grow exponentially.
Kaela pressed her forehead, looking at the butler who was now on the verge of fainting.
“At least we can use it as firewood.”
“Yes.”
The reason the butler kept running to Kaela whenever these incidents occurred was because the Grand Duke had instructed that Kaela personally select and purchase all the new furniture and interior decorations that needed to be replaced.
Moreover, the butler quite liked that the young Grand Duchess took measures to somehow repair and reuse the broken furnishings.
He was particularly pleased that she wasn’t just focused on recklessly spending money like he’d expect from a Princess of Ostein supposedly swimming in gold, but surprisingly economical, suggesting things like turning torn curtains into blankets or using them as fabric.
“I’ll meet with the furniture craftsman myself. There’s a lot to do, isn’t there? You may go.”
Normally, the butler would have sought out an artisan who could produce a decent looking product at a cheap price by beating down the unit cost.
But the list of additional furniture that the Grand Duchess had added with a troubled expression was too long and varied for the butler, who was already on the verge of suffocating under his workload.
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
