Lady Cinderella - Chapter 6

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Lady Cinderella Chapter 6

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“Are you certain it was sent properly?”
“Yes, my lady, it was.”
It had been a full week since she’d filed it. Even at the slowest, the letter should have reached him three or four days ago. Yet there had been no word, no contact of any kind from the Wellington Grand Duke’s side. Ella tried to file the Registered Mail once more, but the clerk refused her request.
“Why is that?”
“You’ve already sent one, and the contents are the same. Allowing this would be unfair to others, so I cannot accept it.”
No matter how she pleaded, it was useless. Ella had no choice but to leave the Imperial Library with her regret. The Grand Duke had ignored her. As though her desperation had been trampled underfoot, tears spilled from her eyes before she could stop them.
‘Perhaps it really looked like nothing more than a delusion.’
A lady of a noble house who had never once set foot outside the capital, or rather, one who was now barely better than a maid. No matter how earnestly someone like her wrote, it seemed it meant nothing at all to the mighty Grand Duke of Wellington.
“I shouldn’t be crying.”
Considering the rough road that lay ahead, even a moment spent weeping felt like a waste. Her needlework skills were still intact. Ella intended to secretly find work and save money. Since she had shouted that she would become independent, Patricia, her stepmother, had eased off on her harassment a little. With that bit of time, the things she could do had multiplied quite a bit.
Ella carried the sample embroidery she had made while altering Kate’s, her sister-in-law’s, dress and made the rounds of embroidery shops. Such a thing would have been unthinkable before, but the memory of having lived several more years gave her a little more nerve.
“Did you stitch this yourself, miss?”
“There’s quite a demand among the noble families. The young lady who used to give me work married abroad, so I’ve found myself with idle hands. I’d like to take on some new commissions slowly, as a side job.”
She had grown rather skilled at lying without so much as blinking. Rose Gold, the dressmaking shop that would become famous in five years, was run by Mary, the one who had first given Ella a contract back when she was still herself. Mary was the widow of Viscount Rose Gold. After her husband died, she had chosen the path of self-reliance rather than remarriage.
“I like how confident you are. Then let’s see your skill.”
Mary readily gave her a handkerchief embroidery piece as a test, and Ella completed a dazzling butterfly design on the spot in barely an hour.
When she first met Mary, Ella had been dreadfully clumsy with people. Mary, who had helped her keep a roof over her head, was still exceedingly kind even now that she had returned to the past. Knowing her tastes, Ella tucked a climbing rose vine into one corner as a bonus, the sort of thing noble ladies were mad for.
“Well done.”
Mary marveled at the dense stitching and the meticulous workmanship. Sharp as ever, she did not neglect a talented person. She recognized Ella’s skill at a glance and concluded the contract on the spot.
“The handkerchief’s fee is a deposit. If you bring back the finished commission, I’ll pay for the handkerchief, and if you want to continue, I’ll pay in this same manner. There’s plenty of work to go around, so the faster you bring it back, the better for us both.”
She gave the Lloyd Count household’s name as the address, but Ella did not reveal her true status. Money kept at home might be stolen by the other servants. Having dealt with Mary for the past two years, Ella was certain of her trustworthiness, so she signed the contract without a single objection.
“I’ll come by as often as I can. The ball is coming soon, so there should be plenty of work.”
“Yes. I look forward to working with you.”
“The pleasure is mine.”
Unaware of what Ella truly meant, Mary laughed at her thanks without understanding. With the commission tucked into her bag, Ella set off back toward the mansion, her face downcast once more. It seemed her idea of relying on someone else’s strength had been foolish after all. Ella forced a bitter smile and began counting the days.
“For now, I’ll take these commissions, and a few months from now I can ask whether she’ll take me on exclusively.”
Back before Ella had returned, while she was fighting her way through her marriage to her husband, Mary had offered to provide her room and board at the shop, urging her to leave that garbage of a husband behind.
Her husband had been quick to raise a hand when drunk, yet Ella had been unable to abandon that house, clinging to the last shred of her pride. The result of failing to let go of that wretched bit of pride had been miserable.
In this life, she would never live like that again. Ella bit her lip lightly and gazed at the spire beyond the eastern side of the Imperial Palace. The seat of the Grand Duke Wellington’s wife had remained empty all along. How foolish she had been to harbor such a vain hope, that if she stood beside him, this tragedy might finally end.
“Such a miracle could never happen.”
How long had she stood there? The wind had turned chilly somehow, so with a lonely heart Ella hailed a hired carriage heading around toward the mansion. She did not know that a shadow had followed behind her. The carriage carried her across the boulevard.
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With the defenses of Oberon Gorge reinforced and the search of every region intensified, remnants really did begin to crawl out from all corners. From the battle reports arriving every day, it became clear the remnants’ numbers far exceeded what he had estimated.
He pressed the bridge of his nose and fell into thought. Calaile had grown into the habit of carefully reading through the letters Lady Elediss sent him every night before sleep. The fresh fragrance that had clung to the letters had nearly faded by now. Yet, if these were supposedly the work of a spy, they listed nothing but matters that favored him.
‘This can’t be something she pieced together in a day or two.’
Just as after a war, when clerks transcribed vast volumes of records, the events in her letters were arranged in orderly sequence by time. Even within the Intelligence Department, which had first concluded she was a noble lady who had fallen into a spy’s hands, murmurs of disagreement had begun to surface.
“You’re saying there’s nothing?”
Kevin, who took pride in his competence, was truly in a bind. No matter how far he dug into the lady’s background, nothing caught his eye. Of all those who had come and gone from the Lloyd Count household, the only one connected to the northern battlefields was a stable hand whose grandson had died in the war. The movements of Ella, as the Intelligence Department had traced them, were extremely monotonous.
“Ever since she sent her letter to Your Grace, she’s been stopping by some embroidery shop, nearly every day without fail, to take on commissions.”

“Embroidery?”
“It seems she’s concealing her identity. She doesn’t even collect her payment on the spot. She says she’ll take it all at once when the time comes.”
Calaile truly could not comprehend her course of action. If money were the issue, she would surely collect her fees right away, yet she did not. Her report describing an ordinary daily life, with no contact whatsoever with any suspicious person, made Calaile’s brow furrow.
“Bring me the files.”
Everything the Intelligence Department had gathered, including photographs, was laid out before Calaile. He read through five volumes of documents with great care. Because Wellington’s intelligence service was capable, every detail concerning Lady Elediss Lloyd, from the day she was born up to the present, was contained in those papers.
Where she was born, how she had been raised, the current state of the Lloyd Count household, and even the inheritance dispute within her maternal family, the Marquis Ruth household. After flipping briskly past the tangled and tiresome accounts, he finally came face to face with a photograph of Lady Elediss.
“This is…”
“This is the only portrait officially on record. The page that follows shows the lady as she is now.”
The Intelligence Department had painstakingly retrieved one of the keepsakes the Ruth Maternal Grandmother had clutched until the very moment of her death. It was a portrait Elediss had painted with her mother when she was seven. In the image, the frail former Countess Lloyd and the girl laughing brightly in her embrace overflowed with tenderness.
On the final page was a photograph of Elediss as she was now. The girl in the picture, taken swiftly by a photographer from the Intelligence Department, had changed from before. Over the ten years that had passed, she had lost her lovely smile and now gazed off into the distance with a mature face unbecoming of her age. Her face felt somehow familiar. Above all, her hollow eyes lingered in his mind. Calaile frowned and swept his gaze once over her eyes.
“Why does her expression look like this?”
“Well, that is…”
He hesitated for a moment, weighing whether he ought to say it at all, before Kevin finally confessed the matter he had yet to report.
“Apparently, the Lady tried to send a Registered Mail to Your Grace once more.”
“Once more?”
“It seems she was desperate after receiving no reply, but the clerks refused it. After that, while the Lady stood on the street for a moment, we managed to take a photograph of her with some difficulty.”
Judging by the position of the background in the photograph, the direction she was gazing was beyond the east side of the Imperial Palace. And if there was one thing visible from anywhere in the capital, it was, unsurprisingly, the spire of the Grand Duke’s Residence in Wellington. She clearly had something she wished to say, but when his subordinates failed to reach any firm conclusion, Calaile reached his verdict with crisp clarity.
“When did you say the Ball was?”
Even if she was a Lady treated as a maid, every noble was obligated to attend the Emperor’s birthday banquet. At least, that was what he understood. The very master who had been refusing to attend, claiming it might be a search for the Crown Prince’s bride and his own, had just spoken the word “Ball.” Kevin welcomed it with both hands raised, needless to say.
“It’s five days from now.”
“Tell His Majesty that I will attend.”
His reason for attending was purely to meet this Lady, nothing more and nothing less. Once he had taken her somewhere quiet and ascertained whether she had truly sent that letter, there would be no further business.
Nothing is more unsettling than someone whose thoughts cannot be read. After sending off Kevin, who was beaming with delight, Calaile leafed through Ella’s personnel file once more. He could well understand the heart of Ruth’s Maternal Grandmother, who had worried over her granddaughter’s welfare until her final breath. Gazing at her face, which somehow he found impossible to look away from, Calaile muttered to himself, for no particular reason.
“What exactly are you?”
Going to Baron Lloyd’s house in person would carry considerable risk in many ways. No, he did not particularly want to go that far. It would be better to feign coincidence and handle the matter in passing.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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