The servant handed a letter to Ariadne. There was no particular mark on the envelope of the letter. Ariadne realized instantly. It was a letter from Alfonso. The thickness of the letter, the material of the paper used, everything came from the royal palace.
“I will check it later, we have a guest right now.”
In order not to let Lady Carla discover who the sender of the newly arrived letter was, Ariadne pushed the letter as inconspicuously as possible on the side table.
However, the postal servant was terribly inconsiderate.
“The royal palace person is waiting downstairs. Would you like to write a reply right away?”
At the talk of the ‘royal palace’, Lady Carla’s eyebrows rose at once. Ariadne sighed deeply inside, pretending to be surprised on the outside.
“What? I had no idea because nothing was written on the outside! Is this letter from the royal palace?”
She was absolutely no good at acting. Cold sweat flowed down Ariadne’s back.
But ruthlessly, the servant looked at Ariadne with an expression like ‘all anonymous letters arriving for Miss are from the royal palace, what are you talking about’.
‘Shut up, please shut up!’
Fortunately, it seemed that the voice in her mind was heard, and the servant no longer blabbered.
“Shall I say there is no reply?”
Ariadne answered, biting her lip tightly.
“Yes.”
But Lady Carla was not a gullible person.
“…Miss de Mare.”
“Yes?”
“Will you accept that letter?”
She said obstinately.
“Don’t forget the fact that you promised our queen.”
It was a signal to refuse the receipt of the letter and send a clear message to the prince.
Ariadne considered for a moment whether to argue ‘Her Majesty the Queen just told me not to contact for a while, but she didn’t tell me to break up with the young master!’, but soon gave up.
The assassination attempt on Queen Marguerite is scheduled for this Saturday. In three days, it will be a national guest treatment anyway. If she hold out here and the banquet invitation is cancelled by any chance, it will be a major accident.
Ariadne sighed lightly and answered.
“Madam is right.”
She handed the letter she had placed on the side table back to the servant.
“Send it back.”
“Yes.”
Ariadne added a word, sneakily looking at Lady Carla, who was still glaring at her.
“Tell him… I… don’t want to be in contact for a while.”
“I will do so.”
The servant took the letter and left the reception room.
‘Alfonso, please wait a little longer.’
Ariadne swallowed her regret only inside.
[This is the time separator]“…Miss de Mare… refused to receive the letter.”
At the words of the servant, Alfonso couldn’t believe his ears.
“What? Did you deliver it properly?”
“Yes. I delivered it directly to her, but she refused… The messenger begged her to deliver it directly to the young lady two or three times.”
“Did she know it was a letter I sent?”
“The messenger clearly stated that it was a letter sent from the royal palace.”
“Did she leave any other message?”
“She said she didn’t want to be in contact for a while….”
She doesn’t want to be in contact, it was a bolt from the blue. After the report was finished and the servant left, Alfonso sat down blankly on the bed.
“It can’t be…”
For the first time in his life, he bet everything. Duty, servants, future, he ignored everything and only looked at her. But what came back to him was a cold rejection.
‘Was it my fault for lacking?’
Unreliable? Unable to fully protect her from danger? Because the foundation of power was not solid?
Prince Alfonso could not make sense of it. Ariadne had never asked anything of him. If she ever did, it would only be for expressions of affection, or to keep distance from Duchess Lariessa. Authority, power, money, and even jewels, she had never asked for.
He wanted to rush to her right away, ask her what he had done wrong, promise to grant her any wish, and beg her to hold his hand and whisper love to him as before. He could do anything if he could feel her warmth, smell her scent, and touch his cheek to hers.
But Ariadne’s intentions were clear.
‘I don’t want to be in contact with you.’
If she had been even a bit vague, Alfonso would have stormed the De Mare mansion’s front gate and held a sitin. But Ariadne, his Ariadne, didn’t want it. Alfonso buried his head in his desk, closed his eyes, and fell into a despair as if the world had ended.
[This is the time separator]The day of the decisive battle had dawned. Ariadne woke up as early as dawn with a strange sense of excitement.
‘It feels similar to the day before the Apostles of Acereto.’
Back then, too, her hands had trembled because she couldn’t be sure of her success. But success comes to those who prepare. Time was pressing, but she had made all the preparations.
In her previous life, Queen Marguerite was assassinated by poisoning with arsenic at a luncheon attended by Lady Rubina, the Countess.
‘The food that contained the arsenic was… probably the water Her Majesty the Queen drank.’
At official banquets, everyone eats the same food. Serving different food to the host is considered rude to the guests.
If the food itself was tainted, not only Queen Marguerite but all the guests who attended the banquet would have been poisoned.
‘The water Her Majesty drinks is not shared with the guests, only Her Majesty drinks it.’
Queen Marguerite was very sensitive to the cold, so she always carried around lukewarm water with pieces of citron in it and drank it. It was partly a medicinal drink, objectively not tasty, so it wasn’t specifically served to guests.
While it was not impossible to apply arsenic only to the dishes the Queen used, arsenic was easier to poison when mixed well with liquids.
‘The first thing to check is the water Her Majesty drinks. The second thing to check is the stew that comes out mixed with meals.’
Ariadne tightly clutched the concentrated solution of sulfuric acid, which Sanzio and Giuseppe had found by searching all over the gypsy living area.
It was a method of detecting arsenic that was not widely known on the central continent, which she had learned about through several attempts to assassinate Cesare in her previous life. When a properly refined concentrated solution of sulfuric acid is mixed with a substance containing arsenic, a bright yellow precipitate is formed.
‘I can do it.’
Knock knock.
A careful knock echoed in the room, and Sanzio opened the door to Ariadne’s room.
“Miss, the carriage is ready.”
She carefully wrapped the white porcelain bottle in her arms, then stood up.
“Good. Let’s go.”
My Step-brother Is Obsessed With Me (Female-dominant)
A gentle female protagonist vs pitiful in the early stage, and a sick male protagonist in the later stage
Cheng Songer transmigrated into the body of a vicious cannon fodder female supporting character with the same name as her in a female-dominant novel.
In the original story, the cannon fodder female supporting character was inhumane, committing domestic violence, gambling excessively, being lustful, and even wanting to sell her stepbrother to a brothel for money.
As luck would have it, she just happened to transmigrate at this time.
Seeing Cheng Qingzhi biting his lip, enduring the tears in his eyes, looking pitiful, her heart softened.
She stuffed the money back into the Madam’s hand and reached out to him.
“Brother, come home with me.”
