Chapter 31

Even Lea, wilting like a plant kept out of the sun, had started wandering through the residence. Until then, adjusting to her suddenly changed life had been difficult enough that she had no sense of how the house was laid out, which corridors led where, or where the staircases were. Now that she had a little more breathing room, she walked the halls with the thought that even if she was eventually thrown out, she should at least avoid getting lost in the meantime.

It wasn’t an unfounded worry. The residence was wide enough to lose oneself in without much effort. The Tetias estate had one main building at its center, with corridors branching off either side like the wings of a goose, and two annexes at the ends of those corridors. The right annex held the glass greenhouse, the indoor garden, the banquet hall, and the guest rooms. The left housed the servants’ quarters, storage, and everything needed for their daily living.

On the first day she explored, Lea managed to cover roughly half of the main building. The next day she went through the rest of it. What remained were the two annexes at either end of the corridors and a scattering of smaller outbuildings. But when Lea headed toward the left annex where the servants lived, a coachman stepped into her path.

“My lady. You mustn’t go any further.”

His manner was polite, but his eyes were firm. Lea blinked. She had already been everywhere else. Why was the left annex, where the servants mostly stayed, the one place she couldn’t go? It was also the most familiar kind of space to her. Having once worked as a maid herself, she knew it well, and she hesitated before asking:

“May I ask why……?”

“The master has instructed that you must not enter the left annex.”

The coachman smoothed his mustache and held his ground in front of her. It was something he would never have dared do before the previous duchess. But the servants of the ducal house had already decided Lea was in much the same position as Lady Ellarod near the end, and the coachman stood his ground without a flicker of doubt.

“I see……”

Hearing that Owen had given the order, Lea turned away without protest. She didn’t even shoot the coachman a reproachful look. The sight of it was less like a duchess and more like a new maid, and that manner only added more evidence to the theories circulating about her.

But after turning away, Lea paused for a moment, struck by something odd. It wasn’t the coachman’s attitude that gave her pause. She realized his face was somehow familiar.

Back in her room, turning it over in her mind, she eventually realized he was the coachman who had driven her carriage to the marchioness’s residence. The mustached coachman had been on the box when Garrick introduced himself, which meant the only explanation for Owen knowing Garrick’s name was that the coachman had reported it.

Knowing that didn’t surprise her. She had already understood that believing Owen would simply leave her alone was the more foolish assumption. He had told her himself, more than once. Don’t run.

Lea had nowhere to run and no means to do so. From the moment Owen had appeared before her in that small, cramped inn room, she had known she could no longer escape. The life he had mocked as too easy to find had been the result of her living with every breath held tight. Even if she walked out of this residence right now, she wouldn’t know where to go, and she was certain Owen would find her quickly. But Owen seemed to want to eliminate even that single remaining possibility. He didn’t trust her at all. Her circumstances, her thoughts, her feelings, all of it seemed to hold not a shred of value worth trusting in his eyes.

So she would have been more surprised if a man like that had not given orders to watch her when she went out.

Owen didn’t distrust Lea specifically. He distrusted every person. He simply distrusted Lea more than most, because of what she had done. But as one day became two and two became three, the surveillance began to suffocate her. Even though she had expected it, once she knew someone was watching her, she became acutely aware of every other pair of eyes as well.

It wasn’t only when she left the residence. She quickly noticed she was being watched inside it too. When she slipped into an empty guest room for a moment of solitude, two or three servants would appear almost on cue, claiming they had come to clean, and would proceed to dust an already spotless room or rearrange pillows and blankets for no reason. They stayed until Lea left, lingering in a room that had nothing left to be done.

Even in the mistress’s room Amelia had given her, Lea couldn’t help noticing that a servant was always standing in some corner of that large room, blinking quietly. My lady, shall I bring you some tea? My lady, would you like a small bite to eat? My lady, is there anything you need?……

The servants who ordinarily never spoke to Lea beyond what was necessary would smile and say these small, inconsequential things whenever she was in her own room. Lea noticed it wasn’t because they had grown suddenly kind. They were finding excuses to stay in the mistress’s room.

The servants didn’t particularly try to hide their surveillance, and that was how Lea became certain it wasn’t just her imagination. Every servant watched her words and movements as she passed, and when Owen asked, and sometimes even when he didn’t, they reported everything about her to him. Small words, small actions, even the placement of her belongings.

Owen, for his part, never said outright that he had instructed them to do so, but he made no effort to hide it either. He seemed to take an almost satisfied pleasure in the fact that he held her entire day in his hands.

Lea, meanwhile, was nearly losing her mind under the weight of attention she had never experienced in her life. Until now, she had lived like a common stone or a weed on the roadside, drawing no one’s eye, and that unremarkable, ordinary existence had given her a kind of peace. But now she had to live every hour under unwanted scrutiny and surveillance, and on top of that, the obligatory encounters with Owen that gnawed at her mind, and Lea found it increasingly hard to bear.

“I’m sorry, but I’d like to see Owen. Where is he right now?”

So Lea broke her silence. She sought out a maid other than Amelia and spoke in a quiet voice. The maid, who looked to be around forty, froze and stared when Lea addressed her. This young mistress had almost never spoken first to a servant or made a request of anyone, and the shock of being addressed directly left the maid blinking before she managed to answer.

“You’re looking for the master?”

“Yes.”

No one in the residence had called Owen by his name since the previous duchess had disappeared, and the word sounded almost foreign to the maid. She was briefly flustered, but then remembered that the person speaking to her was the master’s wife and replied.

“The master will be in his study. Or possibly the second-floor library. He always works in one of those places at this hour, after breakfast.”

“I see.”

But Lea quickly realized she didn’t know where the study or the library were. The residence was too large. She had been to most places except the left annex, but she still didn’t know the names of specific rooms. She could think of at least four places that might be called a library. Lea hesitated and asked:

“Could you tell me where the library and the study are?”

“Oh, of course, my lady. Come, follow me.”

The maid stepped forward without hesitation.

Her name was Mrs. Colden, a woman who had spent twenty years in service and knew the work of a maid through and through. She hadn’t been with the ducal household from the beginning like Amelia but had transferred from another noble family not long ago. Her experience meant she had already learned the layout of the ducal residence well. It had taken some effort to memorize where everything was in such a vast interior, but with only one young duke as master, there had been no need to memorize the guest rooms, and the work had been manageable enough.