No Evil Lady in the World (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 6
It was an answer that could be taken as either humble or sarcastic. Meiana swallowed the thought and keenly felt the gradually slowing speed of the carriage.
“What kind of thoughts does a seven-year-old living in a place like this have?”
Suddenly, she felt nervous. Her heart began to beat erratically, and she had to steady her breathing. But the carriage didn’t wait for Meiana’s heart to settle.
Very slowly, ever so slowly, the wheels finally came to a stop. Meiana could see a dozen or so servants lined up outside the window. When the carriage door opened, she saw the face of an elderly male servant. His meticulously groomed beard was striking.
“Welcome, Master.”
The servant must have seen Meiana inside the carriage, yet he didn’t even glance at her. The Duke gave a slight nod and gestured with his eyes for Meiana to disembark first.
Clutching the hem of her skirt, Meiana carefully stepped down from the carriage. She could feel the gazes of the lined-up servants all fixed on her. Suspicion, curiosity, and a hint of hostility.
As the Duke stepped down after her, a middle-aged woman in a long, buttoned-up dress approached. Her hair, beginning to gray, was styled in a classic updo, and her face looked expressionless and sharp.
She’s like a Mrs. Danvers, Meiana thought.
Like the servant who opened the carriage door, the woman didn’t spare Meiana a glance. Bowing deeply to the Duke, she said,
“You have returned, Your Grace.”
Meiana flinched for a moment. “Your Grace”? Wasn’t that a title reserved for royalty?
But Duke Valterminster merely nodded casually, showing no other reaction. He glanced at Meiana, who was hesitating a few steps behind, and she quickly understood his intent and stepped forward.
“This is Meiana Dawson.”
The Duke said.
“From today, she is employed as Ariante’s personal maid. Dawson, this is Joslyn Stafford, the head housekeeper. If you have any questions, ask her.”
The head housekeeper?
Meiana was inwardly startled. She had thought the man who opened the carriage door was the head housekeeper…
Joslyn finally looked Meiana up and down slowly. She seemed more like the Duke’s mother than a head housekeeper. Her gaze was imposing and haughty.
The Duke asked,
“Where is Ariante, Joslyn?”
Joslyn replied,
“The young lady is taking a nap.”
The Duke’s brow furrowed slightly.
“A nap at this hour?”
“It’s usually lesson time. But she insisted on taking a nap, so we had no choice.”
For a moment, Meiana saw the Duke make a very subtle expression. It was hard to tell if he was angry or simply perplexed.
After a brief moment of thought, the Duke said,
“Then let her sleep, and for now, show Dawson to her room.”
“Will Your Grace be staying at the estate today?”
“I’ll stay until tomorrow. But I’ll have to return to the capital soon after. His Majesty has tasks still left for me.”
With that, the Duke entered the mansion with another servant. The other lined-up servants dispersed silently, leaving only Joslyn and Meiana in the vast garden.
“The young lady’s personal maid?”
Joslyn said. Meiana, who had been entranced by the garden’s scenery and the grand exterior of the ducal mansion, snapped back to attention.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I see… I wonder how this will turn out.”
Meiana looked puzzled.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Ask only work-related questions. And for trivial matters, ask Kosha. She’s the head maid.”
“Understood. But who is Kosha…”
“Follow me.”
Joslyn spun around abruptly. Then she began striding away at an astonishingly fast pace. Flustered, Meiana clutched the hem of her skirt as she had when stepping off the carriage and hurried after her.
The exterior alone was enough to hint at it, but the interior of the Valterminster ducal mansion was truly breathtaking.
The hall’s floor, with its intricate mosaic of differently colored marble, not to mention the elaborate staircases, countless corridors, and the lavish tapestries and paintings adorning their walls…
Meiana, barely suppressing dizziness, focused all her attention on not losing sight of Joslyn. A moment’s distraction could leave her lost in this vast mansion.
“Compared to this, the Viscount Pobeck’s estate was practically a single-story house…”
She thought.
Joslyn walked down a long corridor on the third floor and stopped in front of a door ornately embossed with waves and mermaids. When she opened the soft, pale dove-colored door, sunlight poured in, hitting Meiana directly.
“This is Lady Ariante’s room.”
Meiana, blinking, cautiously looked at Joslyn.
“…There’s no bed?”
Joslyn raised an eyebrow, as if questioning her sincerity.
“This is the sitting room. The bedroom is further inside. To the right, it connects to the study and the classroom. The small door to the north is the young lady’s dressing room. It leads to a toilette room as well, but she’s still too young to use it.”
“Understood.”
“Come this way.”
Meiana hurriedly followed Joslyn again. Crossing the spacious sitting room and turning right, she saw another small door next to the corridor leading to the bedroom. This one was plain, without decoration.
“This is your room. You know you must attend to the young lady all day, don’t you? Even when she’s asleep. If she needs something in the middle of the night, you’ll have to jump up and attend to her.”
With her chin raised haughtily, Joslyn looked far more authoritative and aloof than she had in the garden. It was the demeanor of someone born into nobility, and a rather arrogant one at that, but Meiana bowed her head obediently.
“I understand, Joslyn.”
Joslyn frowned sharply, as if offended.
“When addressing me, call me ‘Head Housekeeper.’ There’s a hierarchy among the servants here. Understand? You may be the young lady’s personal maid, but among the staff of this ducal estate, you’re no more than a fledgling. Always keep that in mind.”
Meiana, who had been blinking, slightly lowered her gaze.
“Understood, Head Housekeeper.”
“Unpack your things quickly. Once Lady Ariante wakes from her nap, she’ll need to do her assignments. Bring her tea and snacks during that time, and if she needs anything, attend to it immediately. If you make a mistake and the young lady can’t complete her tasks on time, things will get very difficult.”
Very difficult. That, of course, would apply only to Meiana, not Lady Ariante.
But Meiana wasn’t particularly afraid. Perhaps because she had been through so much in a single night, or maybe due to a restless sleep, the beautiful scenery of the Valterminster estate lifted her spirits.
The fact that she had escaped the leering, creepy Viscount Pobeck and his constantly shrieking wife, and that Duke Valterminster wasn’t just a smooth-talking fraud, filled her with vitality.
Yes, it felt like a new life…
“What are you standing there dazed for?”
Joslyn said sharply. Meiana, who had been captivated by the beautiful lambrequin decorations along the walls, flinched as if struck and quickly stepped to Joslyn’s side.
“Go in and unpack. And I’ll say it again: every mistake Lady Ariante makes will inevitably be your fault. Keep that firmly in mind.”
“Understood… Head Housekeeper.”
Joslyn let out a sharp “hmph” and turned away, disappearing swiftly.
Meiana stared blankly at Joslyn’s retreating figure, gliding like a ghost over the plush carpet, then cautiously opened the door to her new room.
She had assumed the small door meant a dreadful room—cobwebs in the corners, sheets that hadn’t been changed in a century—but she was mistaken. The walls, originally cream-colored, had yellowed slightly, but the bed was tidy, and there was a small desk.
“I wonder if I’ll ever have a chance to use the desk…”
There was a small wardrobe, a porcelain washbasin, and a slightly cloudy mirror. It was, at the very least, a livable space. Above all, she liked that she wouldn’t have to sleep tangled up with others.
At the Viscount Pobeck’s estate, no one except the head housekeeper was given a private room. Despite the abundance of rooms, the stingy viscount and his wife wouldn’t even give a two-person room to the head maid, let alone the other servants.
In the end, the servants’ quarters were little better than a refugee camp. Or perhaps a miserably austere convent… Meiana had woken up startled more than once by the creaking of a tiny bed where she couldn’t even stretch her legs, or the sound of rats scurrying beneath the mattress.
“Good. At least there don’t seem to be any rats here.”
Meiana muttered to herself. Joslyn had told her to unpack, but since she hadn’t brought much, it didn’t take long.
The bag, thrown at her mockingly by a servant at the Viscount Pobeck’s estate, didn’t even contain all her belongings. There was even a comb that belonged to the maid who slept next to her. I ended up stealing by mistake, Meiana sighed.
After shoving her miscellaneous items into a drawer, Meiana opened the wardrobe. Inside was a single dress, likely worn by the previous maid.
“The apron is cream-colored. Hmm, there’s embroidery on the hem…”
It was of much lower quality than what Joslyn wore, but far better made than the clothes worn by the maids at the Viscount Pobeck’s estate. She didn’t yet know what kind of person Duke Valterminster was, but he didn’t seem like someone who treated his servants harshly.
After changing into the dress, that impression grew stronger. The fabric felt soft and comfortable to move in. The previous maid must have been a bit shorter, as the hem was slightly high, but fixing that would be no trouble at all.
When yandere male lead believes she loves him — but she never did
“How dare you!”
“How dare you make me love you, only to cast me aside as nothing more than a friend?!?
“I will never accept that.”
“I will never let you return to him.”
“Even if I have to burn myself to ashes.”
“Even if I must shatter my purity, my dignity, my very soul.”
“I will never let you escape me!”
This was the first novel that introduced me to the matriarchal genre. I’ve read it three times already!
At first, the male lead despised the female lead. Later, he misunderstood that she liked him, so he condescendingly and reluctantly reciprocated her feelings.
Then, he suddenly discovered that she was kind to everyone in the same way, and there was already someone she cherished in her heart, and that person was not him.
The male lead couldn’t believe it, he became angry and crazy. He was determined to capture her body and heart by any means necessary.
Synopsis:
Want to see how a green tea bitch male lead falls in love with the female lead?
Want to see how he flirtatiously pursues the female lead?
Want to see how he gets slapped in the face repeatedly?
The male lead is a green tea bitch, a poisonous lotus, jealous, ruthless, unscrupulous, with a venomous heart, and he’s also a delusional maniac.
The female lead is righteous, positive energy-filled, kind, a holy mother.
Let’s see how two people with extreme personalities come together~
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It was her who made that old lady blind?? What an awful person……or maybe not, but still she is really disgusting.
BOY DONT PLAY WITH ME. OMG NO WONDER THE CHILD IS BEHAVING LIKE LOOSE GOOSE
Very matured. Just blaming anyone but yourself on your inadequacy.