9 — Let the Work Begin!

I wanted to breathe some life back into the manor after Dahlia showed me around. Maybe it was presumptuous of me, but since the head of the house himself told me to do as I pleased, I accepted his invitation and took the liberty of doing just that.

On top of that, given that the servants here are all experts, if I could get them to teach me their housekeeping tricks and tips, I’d have ‘marketable skills’ to really make a living when the time came to leave.

I wonder if they’d write reference letters for me...

“Are you really going to wear that, Madam?” chided Mimosa as we stood in my room.

“Er, yeah. I mean, it’s easy to move around in, and it doesn’t matter if I get it dirty.”

Mimosa had reluctantly provided me with a servants’ uniform, which I currently had draped over my shoulder. It had three-quarter-length sleeves that made it easy to move my arms, and the A-line skirt had a lovely knee-length drape to it that didn’t look half bad when I moved. The color was a neat deep blue.

That’ll hide the dirt real nicely. The dust will stand out, though.

I hummed a happy little tune as I put it on.

“Something cuter would suit you much better, Madam...” Mimosa had said, when she brought it to me. As much as Mimosa apparently wanted to play dress up with me, I was never interested in fashion, being the plain girl that I was. Although she was reluctant to bring me the dress, she did help me put it on.

“I’m not worried about being cute. This is more than fine.”

“It’s incredible, though. Even our humble uniform will look stylish if you’re wearing it, Madam. You’re tall, for one thing, and you have a delicate slim figure. You’d probably like something more prim and sweet than our simple outfits.”

The pout from earlier vanished, and Mimosa smiled when she saw me once I was done getting dressed.

I gave her too much credit, though.

The people who wear these outfits didn’t actually get to pick them! And the dress was designed to look like this no matter who’s wearing it, so even my lanky, scrawny body looks great in it.

Yes, finally something that looks good on my flat chest! No, it looks even more sleek because I don’t have a chest—that’s even better! That must be the hidden power of this uniform!

I was talking to myself yet again.

“Oh, thank you,” I smiled and thanked Mimosa for the compliment.

I know it’s just how she is, but ‘sweet’? Really?

The servants were required to tie their hair back to keep it out of the way, but Mimosa said that she’d give me a cuter style as she combed and braided my strawberry blonde hair that reached just below my shoulders.

“Your hair is very easy to comb, with its gentle waves.”

“Is it? I don’t do anything to take care of it, though. It’s a nightmare when it gets frizzy, too.”

“It gets easier to manage when you take good care of it. So just leave that part to me! Heheheheh...” As Mimosa said this, her smile in the mirror became a little bit creepy.

After that, I was hard at work at a wide variety of tasks.

First off, I helped out with the cleaning.

Since the Fisalis family was wealthy, they had vases and other decorations scattered all over the place. Seeing all these expensive ornaments stuck everywhere, like they were a dime a dozen, made me feel so lightheaded that I had to sit down. These luxurious decorations could only be left under the care of professionals, like the servants—anyone else would be in over their head!

Currently, I was in a room that was primarily made of stone. I was mopping the shiny marble floor.

I found out that the servants were responsible for cleaning the floor of the third story, where they themselves lived. Technically, only cleaning the second and first floors counted as ‘work.’ It was still a very big house, though, and I got quite the workout.

Now for the main feature of the manor... which was its abundant use of high quality glass.

Glass windows were common across the land, but their price was based on the size of the sheet. Windows made of rather large panes were in every room of the manor, and the window facing the garden in the dining room in particular was one enormous sheet of glass. It was plain as day that it was worth a fortune! It was perfectly transparent, too, which meant it was even more expensive.

It was all for nothing, however, if it was dirty.

Cleaning windows this size was no easy task, though. You had to climb a ladder to get to the part near the ceiling! The servants did everything they could to talk me out of doing just that, so I quietly let it go.

But even I could clean a little flower vase.

So there I was, wiping away at that little vase while the pros cleaned the window next to me. I found a camellia tree in the garden, so I extracted the oil from the skin of its fruits and used that as a polish. Its fruits were yellowish green, bigger than a fist, and tasted bittersweet. You could find them all over the place, but they were also cultivated specifically for their fruit.

As I was wiping away with a cloth, whistling as I went, the housemaids who were cleaning along with me asked, “Madam, may I inquire as to what you’re doing?” I guess they were curious about my polishing method.

“Oh, I’m using the sap from camellia fruit skins as a polish. It removes grime and gives a nice sheen—two birds, one stone!”

I showed them my bowl of polish.

“Oh, I see! It’s not just a polishing or shining powder!” one of them said, surprised. I told her that we didn’t have the extra money around for that sort of thing at my house, but we did have a camellia tree in the yard. There was no reason not to use it.

That, and it was free.

Just a little life hack, there.

“That’s right! Plus, when you use this stuff, it leaves behind a camellia scent, which is nice and refreshing! You can use it when I’m done.”

“I’m sure it will smell great!”

“It sure will! I highly recommend it. And since the skin of the fruit is something you’d usually throw away, this is very economical!”

My little lecture on economics earned me a warm smile.

“I’ll give this a try, too.”

“Please do.”

And so the housemaids and I began to polish together using the camellia sap.

Needless to say, cleaning with camellia sap really took off with the housemaids via word-of-mouth. The fruit skin they’d previously just thrown out was now suddenly showered with attention.

Three cheers for recycling!

The place that had felt so lonely before, filled with nothing but cold vases and statuettes, was now bedecked with flowers. I borrowed a few from among the dozens in the flower beds out in the garden.

That splendid garden was designed by one person and was looked after by several apprentice gardeners and the head gardener: a handsome, but also somehow wolfish man.

He was called Bellis and was tall and burly, with square shoulders and sharp eyes. The way his ash brown hair was tied back gave him such a tough appearance that the first time I saw him, I mistook him for a guard.

Bellis worked out of the greenhouse. It was on the edge of the courtyard, just a short walk from the manor, and grew flowers that were out of season and rare varieties from foreign kingdoms.

“I, er, is it alright if I take some flowers to decorate with?”

“...sure,” he replied, looking down at me.

“Th-thank you!”

Getting flowers from Bellis for decorating became a daily ritual, even though I was kind of afraid of him.

Next was the laundry.

From the very first day I arrived at the manor, I was super impressed with their laundry prowess! Mastering their techniques was something I thought about a lot when I contemplated my future here, so I stuck to the housemaids like glue.

The personal maids tossed the dirty sheets to us in the laundry room. The same went for the sheets from the cottage. The linens from the servants’ rooms were left in a laundry basket in a corner of the third floor corridor, which was collected later. They did the same thing with their clothes.

Everyone trampled and vigorously massaged the laundry to wash it. I rather enjoyed the soap bubbles!

The maids did not miss even the tiniest speck of dirt. They rubbed the soap thoroughly over dirty spots, carefully removing the stains. The secret to keeping your whites white is this attention to detail!

Once the stains were completely gone, the sheets were wrung out by two people at a time and then hung outside to dry.

The drying ground was an unused spot between the manor and the grounds, so we did our best not to block the view when we were drying the laundry. It was one of the rare totally private spaces in the now odorless manor. Although it was essentially dead space, it got excellent sunlight, perfect for laying out the wash.

We took the freshly washed sheets from the baskets and used six people to spread them open: one at each of the four corners, and one per long side.

“What do we have to do after this?” I asked Mimosa while I stood by watching five girls spread a sheet. They didn’t need six people for that one.

“We’ll take out the wrinkles.”

“Take them out? Don’t you normally press them once they’re dry?”

By ‘pressing,’ I mean you fill a metal container-like device—it kind of reminds me of a pot—with charcoal to heat it up, and then you slide it over fabric so that the heat and the weight flatten out the creases. You use it when you want to make your sheets completely wrinkle-free, but apparently that’s not how they did it there.

“Pressing sheets can make them stiff, but we want them to feel nice against the skin, so we do things somewhat differently. We do press our tablecloths and napkins, though,” Mimosa explained to me.

Oh, so that’s why.

I watched the housemaids as she explained.

They shouted, “One and! Two and!” as they, all together, began to flap the sheet up and down.

The sheet made a soft but then crisp noise as it was puffed up, then snapped taut to force out the air beneath it.

Woah, it looks like it would be fun to bounce on that! Rolling around and laughing... Even though it was just a fantasy, I could feel my eyes sparkling at the thought.

“That is not a toy, Madam.” Mimosa scolded me with a look of envy from where she stood adjacent to me, as if my thoughts had leaked out of my ears.

“Okaaay. But how does that get rid of the creases?”

“The vigorous up-and-down flapping removes the creases. Unlike using an iron, we don’t press the fabric flat; rather, moving it through the air gets the job done more gently.”

“Ohh, so that’s how it works!”

That way, it had a better feel and texture! This really is a technique worthy of a duke! It sure takes a lot of effort and manpower, though.

I wanted to try flapping... I mean, smoothing the sheet, too.

Synchronizing my breathing with the housemaids’ and flapping the sheet was quite a challenge, but I had a good time.

That night I slept soundly on sheets that I had de-creased myself. They felt all the better for it!

Doing the laundry was tough work, but it was worth it. I really worked up a good sweat!

Cooking was next.

The head chef was a middle-aged man named Cartham. He was a cooking master, but there was also something... sophisticated and sexy about him.

Just how old is he? He looked to be past his late thirties.

He was a complete one-eighty from Bellis: a lady’s man down to the bone, the physical embodiment of sex appeal.

He gently brushed his characteristic blond hair away from his face as he casually remarked, “Madame, you look breathtaking today!” It wasn’t mere flattery, though... he really meant what he said.

He’d say, “Vous êtes invités à venir dans ma cuisine à tout moment: You’re welcome in my kitchen whenever you’d like!” with a wink whenever I came or left (even though I was certain I’d only get in the way). He was, in general, a good-natured, easy-going man.

I didn’t feel right saying anything about the food, considering he was a master chef, so I just consulted him about menus and had him make desserts and pastries.

On the topic of the manor, and in regard to Mr. Fisalis, I ran into Rohtas while on my house tour earlier and heard that “the Master will be away on an urgent business trip for one week starting today.”

I know I mentioned earlier that Mr. Fisalis served as a knight. He was a division commander of a special division within the Chivalric Order; I was told that his special division was going on a reconnaissance mission. He was not some military grunt—his was a position that required significant resourcefulness.

I secretly thought that this group seemed somewhat sinister, but let’s push that aside for now. His job is essentially confidential, anyway. Only certain families can know about its existence. And even then, only the very basics, like “He’s going to ___ for work.” So there was no way a ‘show wife’ like me was going to get any details. He might’ve told Rohtas, but since Mr. Fisalis doesn’t care about me, I just answered Rohtas with an “Alright.”

Even though I hadn’t a clue what he did for work, Rohtas almost interrogated me about it anyway.

Still, with all that was going on, time flew by in the blink of an eye. And, naturally, not once did I think of Mr. Fisalis.

I’m a cold-hearted bride. Sorry.

The entire week went by in another blink of an eye, too.

I was relaxing in my room after wandering around the manor all day when Mimosa came in and said, “The Master has returned.”

“Oh, he’s come home? Where is he?”

What a stupid question.

But since Mr. Fisalis had never come home the whole time I’d been at the manor, I had never had to greet him, so I didn’t know what I should do.

“He’s at the entrance. He always stops by the entrance for a moment to speak with Rohtas before returning to the cottage,” Mimosa explained to me without delay.

Well-played, Mimosa, well-played.

“Would it be alright if I welcomed him home?”

“Oh, yes, please do. Let’s get you dressed,” Dahlia said, turning on her heels toward my dressing room.

“Oh, you’re right!”

I was still in my servants’ uniform. In the week that I hadn’t seen Mr. Fisalis, I had been putting on the servants’ uniform when I got up before getting to work. I usually ended up wearing it all day, so I fell into the habit of just putting it on first thing.

Of course there was absolutely no way I could greet him while wearing that.

I hurriedly changed into the simple dress Dahlia brought me. It was the kind you just pulled over your head, so getting dressed was easy as pie. I undid my tied-back hair and quickly put it in a simple up-do before hurrying toward the vestibule.

“Welcome home, Mr. Fisalis,” I said as I arrived. Mr. Fisalis was talking with Rohtas. He had clearly just come back from official work, as he was still wearing his uniform.

When I thought really hard about it... well gosh, I hadn’t seen him since our wedding day. I actually hadn’t seen him in ten days. Things had gotten so busy at the manor that any thought of him had slipped my mind.

Noticing me, he responded, “I’m home. I do hope you have been well. I’ve been kept away from the cottage for yet another week and would very much like to go back, so I must be going now.”

He gave me a smile and quickly turned around, waltzing right out of the vestibule.

What was that he said? Was he talking about his girlfriend? He was, wasn’t he? He didn’t have to say that!

Uh, whaaaaat?

Those really are the only words befitting the situation Rohtas and I found ourselves in.

“...that was fast,” I remarked.

“Er, well...” Rohtas said back as we watched the door close with a click.

The duke’s bluntness was actually rather refreshing! But that left just Rohtas and me, feeling a little bit abandoned.

A feeling I couldn’t explain swept over me.

“Were you and Mr. Fisalis talking?” I inquired to Rohtas, trying to dispel the awkwardness.

“I was reporting what had happened while he was absent. He stopped by here after he returned from his work. He did not even come inside. He comes to this entrance hall for daily updates before he goes back to the cottage,” he explained helpfully, expecting this pattern would continue.

He’s the head of the family, albeit a flawed one, so it makes sense that he’s concerned about the manor. I’m glad to know he doesn’t intend to let the place fall into disrepair.

But... as for Rohtas reporting to him about what was going on here...

“...You didn’t tell him that I was doing all that stuff with the servants, did you?” I asked Rohtas nervously, looking for verification.

“Absolutely not, Madam! I would never speak of what has been happening even under duress!” he vehemently denied.

You mean that you couldn’t stop your mistress from dressing up as a servant. Of course, it was my own selfish decision—Rohtas had done nothing wrong.

“Well, keep it a secret from now on, okay?”

“You have my word!”

It was not hard to imagine that Dahlia would make the same promise.