Chapter 12

“Yes, My Lord.”

“You mean Teacher Diane Lina, she’s late?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I’ll go fetch her.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I’ll go fetch her.”

“Excuse me? My Lord, what did you just say?”

Roden was one of the few people who wasn’t intimidated by Edward.

Everyone else either found Edward difficult or even feared him, but to Roden, Edward was simply the Lord he had cared for since childhood.

The only thing Roden feared was the destruction of order and lack of discipline.

“Are you going deaf in your old age? How many times do I have to say it?”

Just because Roden wasn’t afraid of Edward didn’t mean Edward was afraid of Roden.

Edward was a person who feared nothing in the world. At least, not yet.

“No, My Lord. It’s just that what you’re saying doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense? It’s the Teacher’s first day. I should see what kind of person she is.”

“Why should you do that, My Lord? Maybe if it were the Duke.”

“She’s the teacher I hired.”

“But she’s the teacher for the Duke’s son, the Young Master.”

Roden knew that Edward was the one who hired Teacher Diane Lina.

The problem was, the reading teacher wasn’t someone the Duke, Leon’s father, had asked for, and Edward normally didn’t care at all about his nephew Leon’s education.

Yet now, Edward had suddenly hired a teacher and was also trying to break the usual rules about how teachers were treated.

‘That Teacher Lina, there really must be something about her.’

It was already a suspiciously sudden hire. Roden was convinced this wasn’t just a simple teacher employment.

“Enough, the Teacher will eat with me on the second floor.”

“No, that’s…”

Something was definitely off.

A red warning light flashed in Roden’s mind.

“I’ll take the Teacher to the formal dining room, so be prepared!”

“Servants and masters never eat together!”

“I’m telling you, this time they will.”

Edward, unwilling to listen further, turned and headed for the stairs.

“The Duke and the Young Master are already eating in the formal dining room. This is completely against etiquette and rules…”

Roden began to recite the rules firmly and unshaken, even as Edward walked away.

Whether Edward considered the new teacher special or not, rules were rules.

Right now, Diane Lina was just an employee of the Duchy.

But Edward didn’t seem to hear and strode toward the stairs.

“Where’s the Teacher’s room?”

Roden’s face twitched.

“My Lord! Teacher Diane Lina is an employee. The master never visits an employee’s room.”

Roden had no intention of answering and responded stiffly.

Edward grew irritated at Roden’s attitude.

Since infancy, Edward had always been known for doing whatever he pleased, and by the time his mother passed away, he was so unruly that the nickname ‘the ill-mannered Young Master of Wale Duchy’ spread throughout Rettrang. Of course, he grew up just like that, both in body and mind.

No matter how firmly established Roden was as the mansion’s manager, even he couldn’t win against this difficult master.

“Really? Which floor do the female employees live on again? Fourth floor! I know it’s the fourth floor. I’ll just open each room one by one.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Edward was already striding up the stairs.

Roden hurried after him.

“The second-to-last room at the end of the East Wing on the fourth floor.”

He glared, breathing hard, but finally swallowed his frustration and told him the new teacher’s room.

Roden’s pride, built over years as the Wale family’s butler, would not allow the honor of the house’s masters to be tarnished.

No matter how much Edward threw away his honor, Roden could not stand by and let him disgrace himself by rummaging through the female employees’ rooms.

Besides, now he also had to order two more dinners prepared in the formal dining room.

A dignified and perfect formal dinner was the butler’s pride.

But he still added one last word.

“Under this mansion’s roof, at least, please don’t forget that I take responsibility for the honor of the Wale family from dawn until the darkest night, My Lord!”

“Yeah, I know.”

Edward barely listened to the butler’s words as he replied.

He began to climb the stairs at a brisk, almost running pace.

The butler’s grumbling didn’t matter to him; he was simply excited that he finally had the woman in his hands.

After glaring at Edward’s back for a moment, Roden sighed and hurried to the kitchen.

* * *

“Diane Lina!”

At Diane’s door on the fourth floor, Edward called out to her.

There was no answer.

He knocked.

Still no response.

“Diane Lina! Come out!”

He raised his voice, but still nothing.

“Is this not the room?”

If she didn’t answer or respond to knocking, maybe she wasn’t here or it was the wrong room.

He turned the doorknob.

The first thing he saw as the door opened was the twilight glow entering the room.

Then, he saw a woman asleep on the bed.

“What… Hey… You…”

Edward hadn’t expected her to be sleeping, so he was momentarily flustered at the sight of the sleeping woman.

It was the first time he’d seen her sleeping.

And the woman asleep before him was Diane Lina.

The strawberry he’d searched for over fifteen years.

Like someone bewitched, he stepped into the room.

The faint creak from the door sounded unusually loud.

For some reason, the sound of the door bothered him, so he carefully closed it and approached the bed.

She wasn’t even lying properly on the bed.

Only her knees were on the bed, and below her knees, her legs hung off the edge.

“Dia…”

Edward was about to wake her, but suddenly closed his mouth and quietly looked down at her sleeping face.

Her face, eyes closed on the bed, overlapped with the image of the girl from fifteen years ago, lying on the bed with her eyes closed after her parents’ performance.

“She hasn’t changed.”

She was still beautiful.

Her face wasn’t as flushed as back then, her height had grown, and her body had matured, but just like that day, she was still so lovely.

“Mm…”

Suddenly, she murmured in her sleep, and one of her legs dangling off the bed kicked into the air before flopping down.

Edward flinched, uncharacteristically.

“What, you startled me!”

Edward muttered in a voice so low it was almost inaudible, as if complaining to the sleeping woman.

But seeing Diane Lina, grown up and mumbling in her sleep, reminded him of the little ‘Strawberry’, and despite his words, his eyes curved into a smile.

‘Hmm? What’s that?’

His smiling eyes suddenly narrowed.

He’d noticed her foot, gently swinging from her kick.

More precisely, her shoes.

If those could even be called shoes.

He wondered if there were women who wore such things.

He was always surprised by women who wore shoes with heels so high it seemed impossible to balance, but these shoes were even more incomprehensible.

Where the heel should have been, only a rounded, worn-down nub remained, and the toe was frayed, exposing gray leather instead of the original black.

Looking closer, the soles were covered in grass and sand.

‘Where had she been walking in those? No wonder she was so exhausted she collapsed into sleep at dusk.’

His face, which had been smiling at the sleeping woman, now twisted in displeasure.

‘That Gale Tertz fellow, calling her his sister, must have made her wear such things. How poorly had she been fed that she was sleeping so deeply now? Come to think of it, she was so thin! That bastard. If he was raising her, he should have fed and clothed her properly!’

Edward had no way of knowing that Walt Tertz, even with his meager means, had cared enough to give Diane a middle-class education, so he cursed Gale, Walt’s son, as much as he could.

Knock, knock.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

“My Lord! Are you in this room?”

It was Roden’s voice.

Edward was unusually flustered.

He felt as if he’d been caught doing something, and worried Diane might wake up.

Just then,

Diane suddenly sat up.

She blinked at Edward, who was looking at her.

One second, two seconds….

A brief silence passed.

“Ahhhhh!”