“Did you just click your tongue at me?! What kind of attitude is that to take with the prince of a country?!”
Sofia responded with silence. She’d be able to lead into her next move better this way.
“Are you listening to me, Rachel?! I’m mad! Get out here right now!”
As Sofia had expected, the enraged prince barked his order again, although she had to question his propriety for shaking the jail bars in a fit of anger. She’d heard about it from her young mistress, but he really did act like a monkey.
Sofia sat up in bed, holding the sheets close to her. From where they were standing, all they could tell was that she was covering herself with the bedding.
“Your Highness...”
“What?!” Elliott snapped.
“You truly don’t understand a woman’s feelings,” Sofia said with a deliberate sigh.
“Huh...?”
Elliott fell into an angry yet curious silence. Taking her young mistress’s example, Sofia laid on the sweet poison.
“I cannot possibly get out of bed with you there, Your Highness. I don’t wear anything when I go to sleep...”
Elliott—no, all of the men were shaken up. Based on all the hubbub out there, she could conclude that the prince had brought a bunch of his insignificant hangers-on with him.
“Y-Your Highness...?!” cried one of them.
“D-Don’t lose your head! Th-This could be Rachel’s scheme,” cautioned another.
You’re right that it’s a scheme, but, sadly, it isn’t one of the young mistress’s.
Things fell strangely silent. Elliott coughed politely, then said in a dignified tone, “Ha! Ha! Ha! You can’t fool me, Rachel. That can’t possibly be the case. Right?”
He was trying to pretend everything was normal, but Sofia could tell that he was shaken. She decided to follow up with more.
“Oh, were you not aware, Your Highness? This is a common custom among high-class ladies in our country, you know?”
At this point, Elliott and his merry band of idiots couldn’t hide their panic.
“Y-Y-Y-Your Highness?! Th-Th-That means that all the girls do it too?!” shrieked one of the hangers-on.
“W-Wait! D-D-D-D-D-Don’t lose your head, man!” Elliott replied.
“B-But, think about it! Now that we’ve learned this super secret information...I’ll never be able to look up in court again!”
“Calm down! We’ve done nothing wrong! Keep a level head! Stay calm. Calm. Are you with me? Now, the next time you look at a young lady, you are not to imagine her that way! Got it?!”
Their all too innocent reactions made Sofia think, These boys have been fooling around less than I thought.
Now that Elliott and his cronies had lost control, Sofia delivered the final blow.
“Oh, your Highness, do you doubt me?”
“Huh? No, not particularly?!”
“If you cannot trust me, then perhaps you should ask Lady Margaret whether it’s true?”
Even before Sofia finished, the wind of silence had already whirled violently through the room. The sexual imagery of her words blew them away, and they started hitting one another for imagining it. Elliott’s bozo brigade fell apart at those mere words, their imaginations leaving them in agony and rendering them unable to fight.
Once she was sure that they were all staring into space, laid low by their own thoughts, Sofia said, “Um, Your Highness? Before we speak, I’d like to put my clothes on...”
“Huh? Oh, yes, fine! We’ll be outside, so call us when you’re ready!”
Despite claiming to have done nothing wrong, the prince was feeling guilty just for imagining it. His head bobbed up and down like a bobblehead doll, and he drove his hangers-on out of the room, following behind them.
“No peeping from the window either, okay?” Sofia added.
“I know! I know, all right?!” Elliott yelped.
Once the sound of footsteps on the stairs vanished, Sofia breathed a sigh of relief.
“Whew, that was tense. Thank goodness he didn’t seem to notice.”
Sofia was, of course, wearing pajamas. She was a servant, after all.
And though I have helped my lady get dressed countless times, I cannot recollect a single one where she was naked.
That was because there was no such custom in this country.
Since Elliott and the boys had so kindly left so that Sofia could get changed, she went back to sleep. Obviously, she had no intention of calling them back in.
When Rachel returned the next day, her face was aglow.
“I’m so glad you booked an inn. We had so much to talk about that we chatted late into the night. If we were at the house, Martha would have chucked us both into bed.”
“I am happy to hear it,” Sofia said.
“We brought meat skewers that we bought at a food stall with us, and ordered ale from room service for a toast. I’ve never had a meal like that before. It was so much fun.”
“Is it really wise for noblewomen like yourselves to be doing that?”
There were no supplies to bring in today, so Rachel and Sofia were exchanging information over tea. They were going to wrap it up quickly, though, since they had to be wary of others.
“Still, Sofia, couldn’t you have ended it a little more peacefully?”
“Could I? I have never fought with the prince, and I thought I made him leave rather quietly.”
“Well, yes, but...now His Highness and the others think I sleep in the nude. If they were to tell anyone, it would be something of a scandal.”
“Oh, that,” Sofia replied, holding the teapot with an uncharacteristically pleasant smile. “Since the rumors would not be about me, I thought it was fine, really.”
“I don’t hate the way you’re cold to absolutely everyone, you know that?”
“Ah... Taking a stroll around town for the first time in a while was nice and all, but...”
Drinking the last sip of her now slightly lukewarm tea, Rachel leaned back in her reclining chair and stretched.
“You know, I’m just more comfortable here in my own, personal prison!”
“Seriously, young mistress.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Even when Rachel, the eldest daughter of the House of Ferguson, was away, her personal maid Sofia stayed busy. True, Sofia didn’t have her mistress to look after, but there were still countless other things for her to do—except cleaning the rooms, of course. Unless a great deal of secrecy was required, that was a task for lesser maids. Furthermore, the laundry was left to maids who specialized in the area. In other words, even though Sofia had little to do in her mistress’s absence, she still had plenty of other tasks to attend to.
The other maids in the household were mystified to see the young mistress’s personal maids running all over even though their mistress was absent.
“Well, it must be confusing for people with other assignments,” Lisa said. “Helena in laundry asked me, ‘How do you all have so much work?’”
Sofia nodded. “Yes. Normally, a maid in a noble household wouldn’t be balancing the books for a trading firm.”
Sofia and Lisa were reviewing the Black Cat Company’s expenditures from the past month. They didn’t really suspect any embezzlement, though. It was just a routine task, checking the books every month for mistakes.
Being at Rachel’s side meant learning her secrets. As members of the Black Cats of the Dark Night, Sofia and the other maids had an almost murderously heavy workload, even when Rachel wasn’t around.
While Sofia and Lisa were staring down the mountain of documents, Mimosa and Meia entered the room.
“We have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?” Mimosa asked.
Sofia and Lisa looked at each other.