When the first voice boomed out loudly, Sehera, who had been standing quietly listening to their conversation, perked up her ears.

“She wants a divorce!”

“What? Divorce?”

“Yes! Divorce. Wasn’t it an arranged marriage to begin with?”

“Not arranged, it was because of a promise between the previous Duke and the Count…”

“Eh, same difference.”

A thoroughly mocking voice stabbed through Sehera’s chest. Her heart stung.

“Anyway, what are you trying to say?”

“So she wants to separate. Instead of a wife he doesn’t even love, shouldn’t he get another chance?”

The chattering voice held a certain confidence in its hypothesis. The other man beside him snorted, seemingly ridiculing such certainty.

“Talk sense. Maybe he just doesn’t want to show her his injured, badly hurt appearance. It does seem a bit excessive, which is what bothers me…”

“See! You think it’s strange too, don’t you?”

Sehera stepped backward. The moment the word “divorce” left their mouths, all strength drained from her body.

Clang!

An iron water bottle that had been sitting nearby got caught on Sehera’s foot and toppled over.

“Who’s there!”

Whatever they were saying over there, Sehera turned around and began walking almost at a run. She rushed past the kitchen entrance, across the dining room, her blonde hair flying behind her.

As Sehera hurried out of the dining room, Leri was walking toward her from up ahead.

“M-my lady! What happened… Your hands are cold, my lady. My lady?”

Leri stared blankly for a moment at her retreating figure, walking away briskly while ignoring even her.

Her heart was so sick that one couldn’t easily approach her.

Leri knew exactly what had caused her to become this way. That night when Sehera heard Ethan’s sharp voice had not passed smoothly at all.

But it wasn’t immediately after that incident that she lost all vitality and became like this. She had still tried to do her work, and Leri had watched from the sidelines as she truly did her best.

However… over a year’s time was far too cruel to overcome all that, and during that time, the pitiful man’s attitude toward this pitiful woman hadn’t changed either.

“What? Did she cry?”

When Leri entered the dining room, she found two men looking bewildered, glancing around the room.

“Head Maid Leri, didn’t someone just leave the dining room?”

She had wondered why the lady went upstairs without eating, but it seemed she hadn’t known there were people here… or… had she…

“You two.”

A bad feeling came over Leri, and she called out to the two men before her in a cold voice. They still hadn’t grasped the atmosphere and merely shrugged their shoulders as they approached her.

“Where were you and what were you doing just now?”

“Just now?”

“Oh, Head Maid. Why are you being so serious again…”

“Answer!”

At her roar, both men shrank back, their shoulders hunching. After glancing at each other briefly, one of them spoke up.

“Inside… we were talking a bit.”

“Inside?”

“Yes. We came to the kitchen with this fellow, grabbed some food, and were about to leave.”

“Never mind that. What were you talking about?”

As Leri’s questioning dug deeper, the men who had been answering casually stiffened. 

The topic was light enough for them to share with each other, but it was quite embarrassing to tell the estate’s head maid about.

“Well…”

“Um… I…”

When neither could continue, just glancing at each other, Leri caught on from that alone.

“Hah… So.”

It wasn’t important to actually say it out loud. Leri wrapped things up there and opened her mouth again. By now they should have caught on. What Leri wanted to hear, and what the situation had been at that time.

“S-so… we were talking when suddenly we heard someone outside the kitchen, so we came out quickly… but there was no one there.”

“Was there really no one?”

Leri’s words came out in frustrated bursts. How could their mouths be so careless! 

Barely holding back her anger, Leri exhaled sharply and looked at both men equally.

“This place has its own order, but if you come into someone else’s kitchen, you should either find your food and leave or not say such useless things, got it?!”

Only then did the two men back away with a start. From Leri’s reaction, they could roughly guess who had made that noise just now.

“Get out, quickly! I can’t even stand to look at you, really.”

Leri had been worried about Sehera, who seemed to have lost even more vitality lately. Though she conversed well enough with Leri, there was hardly any time to talk in the first place.

How that woman would take rumors about herself—Leri couldn’t even dare imagine, so she didn’t have the courage to comfort her.

Shaking her head and sighing, Leri bit her lip as she looked toward the door. At this rate, she wouldn’t eat lunch at all. And she wouldn’t eat a hearty dinner later either.

Still, Leri couldn’t just stay idle. She rolled up her sleeves and entered the kitchen. She carefully placed bread and other foods one by one on a tray.

She thought things were certainly not smooth for her masters. She felt there was a very rough road ahead of them.

But it would be something they could overcome. It was something that required effort from either side, and her masters were each working hard at their own tasks in their own positions.

Leri quickly filled the tray, let out a deep sigh, then carried the generously filled food up to the second floor. She organized his reactions again.

Lifting the large tray that looked burdensome to carry, she walked all the way to Sehera’s door.

Beyond that firmly closed door would be Duchess Sehera Croft, the object of all the maids’ envy. 

When they saw her enter the estate in her beautiful, truly beautiful appearance, all the maids clasped their hands and were entranced. Some said there was no better-matched couple.

The maids all admired her and looked up to her, who matched so beautifully with their young master.

However, that dazzlingly beautiful duchess’s appearance… didn’t last very long.

* * *

Knock knock.

“My lady, I’ve brought lunch.”

Leri carefully composed her voice and spoke as gently as possible.

There was no answer from inside. But she didn’t think the lady wasn’t in there. At some point, she had stopped leaving the ducal estate. The only paths she traveled were between her room and the dining room.

Leri found this so pitiful. When His Grace wasn’t at the ducal estate, it was her responsibility to look after her, but between the butler and herself handling all the estate’s affairs, she was inevitably too busy.

And… honestly, she now regretted a bit that she wasn’t a particularly friendly person by nature.

That’s how pitiable the lady of Croft seemed.

Knock knock.

“If you don’t eat, I’ll have to throw this away, my lady. Please try at least one bite.”

Though she was a noble lady, she was also very sensitive about such things. 

Things were running fairly well, and though no one had told her, she sensed that the ducal estate’s finances weren’t particularly abundant.

And she was a young lady with a better grasp of economics than any other noble daughters she’d seen. She must have received proper education in that at Planer—that’s what Leri had thought when she first saw the fresh-faced young lady arrive at the estate.

“Come in.”

As expected. After a moment, a permissive voice came from inside. She even felt proud of her for responding to such words.

“I’m coming in.”

Without delay, Leri opened the door and entered.

Today’s menu wasn’t particularly good either. But even so, hoping she would eat it deliciously, Leri opened the door and entered.

Sehera sat leaning back in a chair at the round table. Her posture as she turned her head to look out the window was truly beautiful.

She’d heard that noble ladies began focusing on adorning themselves as soon as the war ended. They indulged in consumption they’d suppressed until then and devoted themselves to decorating their entire bodies.

During that time, many families had members drafted as knights, so many couldn’t properly enjoy themselves, and even those without family members involved naturally had a period of restraint since the empire had that atmosphere.

And that trend had reached its peak now, two years after the war.

When Leri went to the shopping district, the changes caught her eye too. Being a woman herself, such things naturally stood out to her.

And each time she felt it. No matter how lavishly they decorated themselves, they couldn’t compare to this beautiful lady living in their estate.

Duchess Sehera Croft. She was truly more beautiful than any other woman. Among all the noble ladies and daughters she’d seen in her life, she was by far the most beautiful.

But she couldn’t shine beautifully outside the estate.

First, after the war, Croft had fallen out of the Emperor’s favor and declined. 

But if they had rebuilt trust in the knighthood and Duke Croft had led well based on that trust, Sehera probably would have formally entered society riding on that momentum. Many had debuted that way after the war ended.

Though it was hard to imagine Sehera captivating everyone in society and building and growing influence, she would have done as much as necessary.

But he had taken that opportunity away. Or perhaps it was the Emperor who took that opportunity, not Duke Croft.

“Here, eat. It’s best when it’s hot.”

“Mm…”

A sound passed briefly—whether it was an affirmative answer or not was unclear. She placed the tray on the table in front of her, but Sehera didn’t spare it a single glance.

“I’ll stay here until you eat.”

Coaxing and cajoling her to eat was all for that reason. Because she couldn’t just leave this person alone.