Rachel was reading in her reclining chair when people started piling in through the prison door. Her fingers twitched as she flipped the page, and she glanced toward the stone steps with obvious caution, a feeling she rarely showed.
Her wariness came from not knowing to whom the footsteps belonged. Only a limited number of people had access to the dungeon, and she could identify them all by their footfalls and their general presence. However, the group coming now was completely unfamiliar to her.
Since her own watchers outside hadn’t signaled her, the unknown guests weren’t armed with anything that could hurt her. Elliott’s guards weren’t making a fuss either, so a person of status had gone through the appropriate channels to visit the prison. On the other hand, if it were the prime minister or some other politician coming to resolve the situation, her informants inside the government office would have told her. This wasn’t an official visit by one who ostensibly held power. It was someone who merited real caution.
When Rachel saw who appeared at the bottom of the stairs...she lost interest.
Oh, it’s just the losers of the battle for Prince Moron.
A young lady in a luxurious frilly dress opened hostilities by saying, “It’s been too long, Lady Ferguson. Well, I suppose, given your current situation, addressing you as ‘lady’ might seem snide?”
The young lady was Agnes Sussex, the daughter of a marquess. She was an old acquaintance of Rachel’s, and she and Rachel did not get along, of course.
Rachel ignored Agnes’s greeting, but behind her indifference, she added a note to her mental database that read, “Agnes doesn’t have the mental capacity to comprehend recent developments.” It seemed Agnes still believed that losing Prince Elliott’s affection was the same as falling out of polite society. Rachel could only laugh at their naive ineptitude for gathering information.
The other young ladies each took turns delivering superficially polite yet overtly rude greetings of their own. These were the same girls who, not so long ago, had been jealous of Rachel as Prince Elliott’s fiancée and talked about her behind her back.
Rachel recalled some of the lessons her mother and father had given her, like, “These kinds of people will show up when you’re engaged to the prince,” and, “They’re all talk. Malicious rumors are the price of fame,” and, “If they’re truly plotting to bring you down, strike first and crush them.”
“Hm? ‘Strike first and crush them’?” Rachel mused. “What were they expecting an ordinary young girl like me to do, I wonder?”
“Did you say something?!” one of them loudly asked, calling Rachel out for chuckling to herself.
“No,” Rachel replied and returned to her book.
“Perhaps you simply didn’t do enough to make His Highness like you, Miss Ferguson. Well, I always did think he’d tire of you quickly, but who would have thought he’d go so far as to have you imprisoned?”
“No, no, Lady Audrey. With Miss Rachel’s drab appearance, she was always going to struggle to capture His Highness’s heart.”
“My, how rude! But, yes, I was overlooking an obvious fact. I must be more considerate in future.”
They continued to boldly insult Rachel to her face. Even if Rachel called them out on it, they would insist that their polite tones meant they weren’t being rude. Then they would go telling everyone that she’d made baseless and hurtful allegations against them. Not that it’d have any effect on Rachel.