It was tea that would hinder pregnancy rather than help it. More precisely, it should be called medicinal herbs. It could even cause miscarriage if someone was already pregnant.

Reina’s expression as she smiled at her seemed like a lie.

“…I should send my thanks to Marquis Melanian.”

Her own voice thanking the woman who handed her poison with a smiling face was surprisingly shameless.

Her spine still ran cold.

What if she hadn’t gotten the information beforehand from that back-alley pharmacy?

“Since we’ve finished eating and Reina brought tea as a gift, how about we have tea time together?”

When the Grand Duchess chimed in from the side, Reina’s eyes sparkled like she’d been waiting for this.

“Oh, right. Astaire probably can’t join us, right? I heard you’ve been busy with trading company work lately.”

It was essentially a statement assuming Astaire wouldn’t be able to join the women’s tea time. Her intention for Astaire to leave this gathering was subtly revealed.

As expected, it was behavior unlike Reina’s usual self.

“That’s true, but it’s not so urgent that I need to leave our guests.”

“…Are you sure that’s okay?”

At Astaire’s words that he’d join them for tea time, Reina’s voice trailed off reluctantly, but she quickly fixed her expression.

* * *

The dishes spread across the table were quickly cleared away by the maids’ hands. They also collected the spotlessly white tablecloth.

The time until tea and refreshments arrived felt incredibly long.

Daphne squeezed into the conversation she couldn’t focus on at all.

“I need to excuse myself for a moment.”

As expected, no one stopped Daphne from leaving the dining room.

The sound of the remaining three people chatting gradually faded.

Daphne headed not to the bathroom but to the kitchen.

Just then, the chef was taking freshly baked muffins out of the oven. A young maid in charge of the kitchen busily took teacups and a tea tray from the shelf and transferred them to a cart.

“M-Madam?”

The maid’s eyes widened at discovering her mistress bursting in without warning.

The maid’s eyes filled with anxiety. It was quite rare for the master and mistress she served to come all the way to the kitchen.

Daphne looked down at the maid, who was smaller than herself, and asked.

“What kind of tea are you serving?”

“…We’re preparing the tea leaves that Lady Melanian gave as a gift.”

The duchess’s question lacked context. But the maid opened her mouth before thinking deeply. She had to follow any instruction.

“I thought so.”

Daphne muttered while nodding her head. The maid’s eyes filled with questions again. When she made eye contact with Daphne, she quickly bowed her head deeply.

Meanwhile, her clasped hands were trembling.

Daphne stared at the maid before her for a moment.

After a servant recently bought by the Second Prince’s faction was discovered, the ducal estate had to replace almost all its servants. As many existing people left, new people entered the mansion. This maid was one of them.

“Rennie. The head maid is looking for you.”

“What? She’s…looking for me?”

The maid was startled. Her face showed she couldn’t have imagined her name coming from the noble duchess’s mouth.

The maid surely wouldn’t know in her dreams.

That Daphne was someone who could perfectly remember everything she’d seen just once.

It had been enough to skim through the roster of new maids from the head maid just once for review.

“Y-Yes!”

The maid, snapping to attention, answered while tensing her stomach this time, then scurried out of the kitchen.

Daphne watched the maid’s retreating figure growing distant. When she was completely alone, she glanced around.

No eyes watching her were visible.

Daphne threw away all the tea leaves in the teapot’s strainer.

Reina’s gift, which concealed deadly poison with a sweet fragrance, was now just refuse in a trash bin.

She looked on the shelf for other tea leaves with a scent similar to the poisonous herbs she’d received as a gift.

What she could remember wasn’t limited to just what she saw and heard.

She could vividly recall even scents and smells she’d detected with her nose. She quickly compared the fragrance of these tea leaves with the countless scents she’d encountered in her memories.

She finally found tea leaves with the perfect matching fragrance and put them in the strainer.

Even if she poured hot water and steeped it like this, it wouldn’t be noticeable.

The thought alone still made her spine run cold.

She hadn’t expected they’d try to feed her poison through a gift. She hadn’t known Reina was evil to that degree.

Daphne examined the tea leaves intently. Whether by appearance or scent, they were no different from the high-quality tea leaves Avont nobles commonly enjoyed drinking.

For a moment, she wondered whether she should tell Astaire that Reina had given her such tea leaves as a gift. She ultimately decided to keep quiet. At least for the time being, that was better.

First reason.

The pharmacist had said the ingredients and mixing ratios in each preparation varied tremendously.

She couldn’t honestly and openly reveal to Astaire how she’d identified these tea leaves.

The pharmacist’s existence would inevitably be exposed too.

Most importantly, she’d have to reveal why she’d needed to seek out a pharmacist.

Contraception was a clear breach of contract. It went beyond simply being expelled from the ducal family.

Actually, if she were just expelled, Daphne would be willing.

However, the contract prepared by the lawyer who’d handled the Seyfried ducal family’s legal matters for generations detailed very specifically the cases of contract violations due to clear fault by either party and the scale and scope of compensation.

Money. Astronomical amounts of money at that.

Stripped of her duchess title, Daphne was just the daughter of a poor viscount family. To raise that much money as a mere individual would surely take more than a lifetime.

If she wanted to divorce Astaire safely, she ultimately had no choice but to wait and see.

Until she successfully settled somewhere she could live her own life completely apart from Astaire. Until she repaid all the debts owed to Astaire in her name.

And the second reason.

Astaire was having an inappropriate relationship with Reina.

Though he’d entered into a political marriage with Daphne, whom he didn’t love, the man secretly held Reina truly in his heart.

Would Astaire really take her side when Daphne revealed Reina’s truth? She couldn’t be certain herself.

The truth was, she was afraid.

To face Astaire abandoning her and standing by Reina’s side.

She didn’t want confirmation that the one filling his heart was truly Reina.

Having finished preparing the perfect tea time, Daphne’s eyes were shadowed more deeply.

She left the kitchen and returned to the dining room before the maid came back empty-handed.

It felt like a very long time had passed in the meantime. However, glancing at the wall clock as she passed, barely even ten minutes had elapsed.

* * *

The color of the tea in the elegant teacup was quite lovely.

Daphne’s peaceful face reflected on the surface.

“You’ve given me such a precious gift. Thank you, Lady Melanian.”

“Reina is truly thoughtful.”

The atmosphere flowed warmly for once. When their eyes met, they smiled beautifully at each other without anyone going first.

“As I mentioned earlier, it’s a blend made by an artisan mixing four types of tea leaves grown in various regions.”

“I see, no wonder.”

Daphne nodded while listening to Reina’s brazen lie.

She was rather glad Reina looked down on her. Getting caught off guard by someone you originally despised hurts the most.

“Astaire, are you curious about the tea’s taste too?”

“Not particularly.”

“Since it’s tea to help women’s pregnancy… as a husband, it might be a bit awkward to taste your wife’s portion, right?”

Reina laughed merrily like it was a joke. She didn’t seem particularly hurt by Astaire’s silent response.

Daphne suddenly felt doubtful.

Astaire was cold to Reina to a degree that made their long childhood friendship seem meaningless. His attitude, like an unbreakable ice sculpture, was terribly consistent.

On the other hand, Reina smiled brightly and warmly like she’d somehow melt him.

However, Astaire was a frighteningly thorough man. He probably just didn’t want anyone to discover his secret romance with Reina.

Either feelings for Reina had developed only after marrying her, or his romance with Reina was actually just amusement, not sincere.

Still a cruel man.

After ending her one-sided love, she could finally see this man’s shadow bit by bit.

The more she learned about Astaire’s shadow, the more Daphne felt the light within her gradually extinguishing.

He was a husband she no longer loved.

Despite turning away to leave him and live her own life, why did this man keep weighing on her heart?

She kept chewing over that psychology, pondering it.

After finishing tea and standing up, the sky had grown considerably darker.

“I enjoyed today, my lady.”

Before boarding the carriage home, Reina turned to Daphne and spoke. Her excited emotions showed in her voice, higher and more cheerful than usual.

Daphne smiled calmly. Watching someone thoroughly mistaken was rather interesting. Especially if that person was an enemy who believed they’d successfully taken revenge on her.

Since Astaire had received an urgent summons from his assistant and left early, Daphne handled seeing off Reina and the Grand Duchess entirely alone.

After Reina left, only Daphne and Grand Duchess Seyfried remained at the ducal estate’s gate.

It wouldn’t take long for the coachman to bring the horses. Yet time seemed to flow particularly slowly.

Neither Daphne nor the Grand Duchess felt the need to face each other. The two women kept their mouths firmly shut for a long while, stubbornly looking only straight ahead.

The ducal estate’s high, thick iron gate completely blocked the outside scenery. It was a heavy, towering iron gate that Daphne could never open alone.

To open that gate and go outside, someone ultimately had to help. It couldn’t be helped.

“As expected, you don’t exceed my expectations.”

The Grand Duchess was the one who broke the silence first.

“Consistently inadequate, shabby, and pathetic.”

With direct words a noble would rarely utter, the Grand Duchess gouged Daphne’s heart deeper than an awl.

She probably felt no need to speak prettily to Daphne. That was likely why.

The Grand Duchess’s position was understandable.

“I didn’t know back then. That that tiny child would be seeing me off like this.”

“…”

“No one could have imagined a puppy would climb onto a person’s bed, eat human food, and even try to speak human words.”

The Grand Duchess recited endlessly calmly while despising Daphne without end. The old Daphne might have burst into tears the moment she turned away.

But the Grand Duchess wouldn’t know.

That her words now rather cooled Daphne’s heart.

“I understand you, Grand Duchess.”

“…Understand?”

What returned was, as expected, ridicule. How dare you say you understand me. She seemed to say exactly that.

“Yes, now I do.”

Regardless, Daphne continued in a calm voice.