“But I can only use it on Sundays during Mass. Even if I lie and say I’m practicing accompaniment, Wednesday and Saturday are the limit for about three hours each. The priests and nuns are constantly using it.”

“Why don’t you ask your mother or the Cardinal to buy you a pipe organ?”

Arabella scowled, this time she genuinely seemed upset. However, despite her furrowed brows, her lips were cautious.

“My mother… the pipe organ is expensive. It’s costly to invest just for a girl.”

Ariadne stared at Arabella, who was speaking as if she were not a child. It seemed certain that she was repeating something Lucrezia had said. She must have been refused once when she pestered for it.

“A girl should share nice things with her sisters… The pipe organ is something Isabella doesn’t use. So, they won’t buy it just for me.”

Arabella suddenly pouted as she spoke.

“This isn’t a request to you! It’s not about you being my sister! Even if you want it, my mother won’t buy it for you!”

Ariadne laughed softly at Arabella’s meaningless attack.

Really, what Arabella really wanted to say was ‘Mom loves only me. Don’t touch my pipe organ,’ and the target she wanted to say that to wasn’t it Isabella?

“I don’t know how to play the pipe organ, so even if they bought it, I wouldn’t be able to share it. Don’t worry. I won’t steal your things.”

Looking at Ariadne with a face half mixed with suspicion and relief, she gently advised her again.

“If you really want a pipe organ, ask Isabella to ask for one. If Isabella asks, won’t mother agree?”

Arabella hugged her lyre with a peculiar expression mixed with injury and greed.

Ariadne hugged Arabella from behind again, and Arabella, still young, didn’t push her away.

If she had just hit puberty, if she had known to be a little more wary of people, it would have been impossible.

‘Such a poor child starving for affection.’

But me in a worse situation than her. How dare I sympathize with the child between Cardinal de Mare and Lucrezia?

Arabella was a special child. The mother’s favoritism towards her elder sister was a fact that would not change, and nothing would change even if she denied it.

On the other hand, if she could just extend the servile attitude towards her biological sister, whom she had maintained all her life, she could have the pipe organ she dreamed of.

So Arabella decided to ask Isabella. It was a little scary to do it alone, so the three ‘sisters’ gathered together in the girls’ drawing room on the second floor, waiting for the home tutor to come and spend time.

Isabella was applying mascara on her eyelashes, with her amethyst hair braided to one side and dressed in a wellfitted lavender indoor dress.

The shining eyelashes soaked in mascara and the eyes shining like amethyst beneath were incomparably beautiful and also weary.

Ara Bella, dwarfed by her older sister’s fiery beauty, nervously spoke.

“There, sister.”

Isabella lifted her moistened eyelashes with perfume and looked down at Ara Bella. Her demeanor seemed bored, but her voice was as sweet as pearls rolling on a silver platter.

“What’s the matter, Ara Bella?

“Could you ask Mother to buy a pipe organ?”

Unbeknownst to them, Ariadne, who was eavesdropping on their conversation over her shoulder, shook her head absentmindedly.

Isabella has to want a pipe organ, it was clear that if Ara Bella directly asked, Isabella would try to scoop her out.

As expected, Isabella made a sour face and was about to get annoyed, but glanced at Ariadne and held it in. Isabella was still maintaining a minimum image around Ariadne.

‘There will be no one who knows me better than me, no matter how kind I pretend to be, it’s useless.’

Regardless of what Ariadne thought, Isabella replied with her usual sweet voice.

“Ara Bella, a pipe organ is not something you can recklessly buy because you want it. Luxury is a bad thing and doesn’t suit a wonderful lady.”

“It’s not a luxury! I’m really going to use it! I want to modify the newly composed hymn for the pipe organ, but the one in the Grand Hall is too old and doesn’t work well.”

Ara Bella, who had turned sullen, was about to attack Isabella, saying, ‘You also collect cosmetics and luxury items from the Moore Empire of the East, and you pay for them with gold coins, a pipe organ is much healthier than that’, but Ariadne gently pulled Ara Bella from behind and put her hand over her lips.

As Ariadne stroked Ara Bella’s heated cheeks, she intervened on behalf of her naive younger sister.

“Isabella, Ara Bella’s hymn is really beautiful. It’s not just child’s play.”

Ariadne gestured to Ara Bella to play the lute.

“Ara Bella. Play it once.”

Driing.

Without hesitation, Ara Bella plucked the strings of the lute as instructed. The melody was glamorous and layered, not fitting with the simple sound of the lute.

Listening to the performance, Isabella’s eyes widened quickly, and after about 30 seconds, she signaled with her hand to stop. Then she spoke to Ara Bella before the performance was even over.

“Wait, did you really compose this?”

“Yeah!”

“What is this song for?”

“It’s for the ‘Missa Brevis’. It’s still unfinished, there are parts that need to be touched up.”

Isabella’s lethargic amethyst eyes sparkled and narrowed. It was the expression she made when she was about to plot something bad.