“Pardon?”

This had never happened before. Instantly, her body stiffened with tension.

“What do you mean I cannot leave?”

She tried to ask as calmly as possible, pretending to be unaffected, but her voice trembled at the end.

Eloise immediately cleared her throat and coughed. Though it started as a forced cough, once it began, deep coughs that felt like they were squeezing her lungs erupted one after another.

Seeing Eloise like this, the butler unconsciously took several steps back.

Noticing the butler’s behavior, as if suspecting she might have tuberculosis, Eloise deliberately forced more coughs.

‘This might make him let me go.’

Judging by his expression, he looked like he wanted to throw out not only her but all her belongings immediately.

However, the butler waited with a troubled face for Eloise to catch her breath before speaking.

“It’s Lady Sinclair’s order. She said the mansion will observe a period of mourning until Colonel Ryan Wilgrave’s funeral, and except for minimal transactions like food deliveries, all entry and exit are prohibited.”

“But I need to send a letter…”

“What kind of letter?”

“A letter I need to send to my parents in the countryside.”

“Then give it to me. I’ll send it through our food supplier.”

“Ah, that’s…”

At that moment, the butler’s eyes narrowed. As if he had noticed something suspicious in Eloise’s hesitation.

“What’s wrong? If you’re worried about the letter, you can rest assured. We deal with a large, reputable company. They won’t make mistakes with such requests.”

Saying this, he now openly extended his hand in front of Eloise, as if urging her to hand it over.

Eventually, Eloise reluctantly took a letter from her bag and handed it to the butler.

“Then I’ll leave it to you.”

The butler, taking the letter Eloise handed over, spoke as if questioning her.

“You won’t be able to go out for the next few days… If you think it will be too inconvenient, I can help you find a place to leave. We’ll provide not only a messenger but also a carriage to the mansion you’re departing to.”

It was a way of saying he wouldn’t stop her from leaving altogether.

Eloise bit her lip. At her attitude, the corner of the butler’s mouth slightly turned up. As if he was happy that he could finally get rid of this troublesome guest.

But soon after, Eloise shook her head.

“Thank you for your kindness. I’ll be going now.”

With that, she immediately turned around and walked quickly toward her room.

Watching Eloise walk away, the butler clicked his tongue softly and headed toward the dining room.

Then he paused briefly and looked at the letter in his hand.

……

He glanced around for a moment and then opened the envelope.

This guest had been going out to send letters quite frequently. The post office wasn’t that far from the mansion, yet whenever she went out, she would return after being gone for quite some time.

Of course, she would say she was going for a walk or shopping, but it was hard to understand why it always took so long.

‘Besides, Lady Sinclair also told me to keep an eye on Miss Eloise.’

Eloise wasn’t the only person she had asked him to watch. New maids, employees of merchant companies they had to continue dealing with—all were people the butler needed to keep an eye on.

‘Lady Sinclair has been quite sensitive lately… She says information seems to be leaking out strangely!’

The butler was also one of the people who shared her cause. For that reason, he was taking special care of those who came and went from Lensk, making sure the mansion’s affairs didn’t leak outside.

But lately, the military’s movements had been unusual. Lensk comrades who had been moving secretly suddenly disappeared, and recently, those who infiltrated the capital were caught in traps.

‘How on earth did Albion’s military figure it out?’

Information about them should have only circulated within this mansion. He couldn’t understand how they had obtained that information properly.

The butler slowly unfolded the letter with a somewhat expectant heart.

With the expectation that this guest, who frequently exchanged letters from this mansion, might be a spy, the butler’s eyes quickly began to read down the letter.

‘So that’s what it was!’

Eloise, hiding her body by the window, watched the butler reading her letter.

The butler read the letter for a while and then promptly folded it back and put it in the envelope.

There was no particular expression on the butler’s face. He just looked a bit deflated, as if it wasn’t what he had expected.

Eloise returned to her room, closed the door, and smoothed her still-pounding heart.

Then she reached deep into her bag.

Hidden there was the letter she had intended to send to Richard.

“Hehe…”

Eloise wiped the cold sweat from her forehead.

‘Fortunately, I prepared a fake letter!’

If she hadn’t, when he asked for the letter, she would have hesitated longer. And if she had made excuses and refused to give it to him until the end, she would certainly have aroused suspicion.

‘Even if that hadn’t happened, if I had handed over the real letter…’

First of all, he would have found it strange that the address wasn’t Feltham. And when he opened it like just now, he would have discovered it was a letter to Richard, not her parents.

In Eloise’s mind, an image flashed of the mansion’s employees rushing in and dragging her away.

Shuddering, Eloise took out the real letter she had written to Richard and hid it deep in a drawer.

‘Seeing the butler check the letter like that, it seems they’ve started to be suspicious.’

It didn’t seem like he was only suspicious of that. If he had been, he would have entered her room from the beginning and searched everything.

But what if Eloise wasn’t a spy? Then the butler might get caught in his own trap.

Perhaps because of such thoughts, it seemed they couldn’t openly search for spies in the mansion.

After hiding the letter well, Eloise clasped her head with both hands, wearing a triumphant smile.

‘What Ryan taught me before saved me!’

When she was in Blissbury, he often talked with Eloise about military intelligence activities.

When she teased him, asking how someone who wasn’t even a spy knew such things, Ryan had proudly retorted, “How do you know whether I’ve done intelligence work or not?”

At the time, she thought he was just joking and boasting, but now she realized it was all true.

Ryan had said:

“One of the basic principles for spies is to create fake documents. People are surprisingly simple—once they think they’ve found a secret letter, they don’t look further.”

That’s why some spies deliberately hide fake letters in more conspicuous places, and when those are discovered, they pretend to resist even more.

Of course, it might not be useful if you’re completely captured and dragged away, but it’s quite effective in situations where you’re ambushed on the road and the other party needs to leave quickly.

‘I suddenly remembered what he talked about then and wrote the letter, but…’

She ended up sending a letter to her parents in a hurry. Moreover, to avoid suspicion if discovered, the letter contained quite a bit about Sinclair’s mansion.

‘They might come up here as soon as they receive it.’

That would be a problem in itself.

‘Should I leave this place after all?’

For a moment, she considered it, given the butler’s openly mocking attitude.

It’s not that she didn’t have money. So she could go to any of the many inns in the capital.

Of course, because of the funeral, even ordinary people who weren’t invited were coming up to the capital to watch, so there might not be many vacant rooms.

Still, if she looked, there would surely be something. If there really wasn’t anything, she could always go to the house she had inherited.

“But…”

Somehow, she felt she needed to stay in this mansion a little longer.

‘There must be a reason they’ve locked down the mansion!’

For someone who had mocked Ryan so much, Sinclair wouldn’t block entry and exit to the mansion for days just to get attention. She was the type who would have been meeting visitors even more enthusiastically.

The fact that she was doing this made Eloise think that something must be happening inside this mansion.

And a few days later, Eloise found out that her thoughts were correct.