Chapter 104 – How the Two View Lady Glorissa
“We have experienced it once. We have seen the aftermath.”
This was the final sentence Brother James left behind before exiting the dining hall.
Jade did not know the details. Josh had tried asking around out of curiosity, and while the older clergy members apparently knew exactly what the monk was referring to, they simply shook their heads and remained absolutely silent.
Hence, Jade stopped Josh from prying any further.
If indeed a similar case ending in tragedy had happened before, then the victim’s reputation must have been utterly ruined; the only protection the domus could offer would be sanctuary within the Sister’s House, and absolute silence. That way, after years had passed, no one would even remember who the victim was, leaving only the vague impression that such a cautionary tale had once occurred.
Jade was not the rebellious sort who would ignore the hardwon advice of others, so she went to Father Rochester to ask for his opinions. Further negotiations were conducted by him with the estate on her behalf. Soon enough, a formal contract was brought to her by Mr. Drogo, the estate steward.
“After signing this document,” Mr. Drogo said, casting her a glance over his slightly lifted chin, “Miss Lysmere, you shall be the sole exception among the estate staff. None shall have the authority to order you to do anything aside from our masters. A rather unique position, and one I have never before seen in all my years of service.”
“...” Jade decided to ignore his conspiratorial tone and focus strictly on his words. “Mr. Drogo, I will certainly and undoubtedly work in alignment with the estate’s schedule when it comes to serving his Lordship. Worry not that my presence will disturb the serenity of the manor.”
Mr. Drogo gave her a long glance, before retrieving the signed contract and taking his leave.
“£3 per month may seem far less than what you could possibly earn if you owned a shop, Miss Jade,” Father Rochester remarked as he watched her carefully fold and tuck away her copy of the agreement. “But living within the estate will keep you out of many troubles, and I believe your wages will never remain at £3 per month forever.”
“I’m fine with the offer, Father,” Jade said with a smile. “I have nothing to spend a large amount of money on anyway. And if I do, for some reason, find myself needing a huge sum, I can always just sell another recipe.”
Father Rochester nodded, smoothing his moustache, clearly in a delightful mood. “Speaking of recipes, have you replied to Lady Glorissa?”
“Yes, I wrote to her yesterday after my discussion with you,” Jade said, wincing slightly at the memory. “I actually consulted Miss Arrowot to ensure I wrote a properly formal letter to turn down her offer. And I received her reply early this morning, delivered by hand by her own maid.”
“Hm.” The fingers Father Rochester was using to stroke his moustache paused mid-motion. “That is quite unusual. Do elaborate in detail on what occured.”
Jade had the same feeling. According to Miss Arrowot, after she wrote a polite letter to decline an offer, the Lady’s housekeeper or chaperone would typically reply with a simple, distant, and formal note, and that would be the end of the story. She had been utterly confused when the old nun watching the gate summoned her to the small reception room situated right beside the domus’s entrance.
“I met the maid by the lychgate,” Jade recalled the scene. “She didn’t seem particularly angry or irritated, but she did look displeased. She demanded that I read the letter on the spot so she could take my reply back to Lady Glorissa.”
That was another strange moment for Jade. Never once had a person demanded an immediate, face-to-face response ever since she started receiving letters here… so the Lady was probably very pissed off by me rejecting the offer, Jade had mused as she broke the seal and read the letter.
As usual, because people of status here tended to write with incredibly fancy, sweeping cursive handwriting – only commoners or those with low education wrote in simple, blocky fonts – Jade had to spend quite some time just squinting to decode what the words actually were. The maid had apparently grown impatient with her slow reading speed, for which Jade quickly apologised, explaining it was entirely her own problem while looking directly into the maid’s eyes.
“And how did the maid respond?” Father Rochester asked, seeming somewhat amused by Jade’s perspective of the encounter.
Jade tilted her head in confusion. “She looked… surprised? Startled? Slightly taken aback? Anyway, she accepted my apology and suddenly seemed to possess a lot more patience.”
Then, Jade processed the message in the letter, and she could not help but feel quite surprised. “Lady Glorissa thinks that I am still bent on opening my own shop. So in the letter she strongly opposes my decision, and… trying to persuade me to accept her offer and become her pastry cook?”
Jade added a question mark to the end of her sentence because, to her, the content of the letter did not sound like persuasion. It looked a lot more like beating around the bush or hinting at something through thick layers of high-society code – much like the letters from anonymous ladies expressing displeasure over her appearance in the paper, alongside Mr. Rich Sponsor, in the very same paragraph. But combining the text with the impression she had gotten when meeting the Lady last time, Jade guessed that the Lady was genuinely meant to look out for her, rather than force or demand anything.
“I think she’s just probably not very good at persuading people,” that was the conclusion Jade came up with. She continued, “So I told the maid that I’m very sorry for not being able to accept the offer, and I appreciate the offer very much. But I explained that I just received another offer so I’m going there instead, and that I am definitely not going to open a shop anymore.”
Father Rochester nodded, a slight curve to his lips. “Very blunt, but genuine. I assume the tone of your spoken words was very different from what you had written in the actual letter to Lady Glorissa?”
“Well, yeah,” Jade said. “That’s a letter to a Lady; I dare not write to her with awful grammar. I wrote it exactly according to what Miss Arrowot taught me, as cursive and fancy as I could manage, and with decorated sentences that appeared polite yet firmly rejected her offer.”
She blinked, and slowly a realisation dawned on her, “Wait… is something wrong with my letter?”
“I would not define it as wrong, but,” Father Rochester gave a small laugh, “there was a distinct little misunderstanding within your written conversation.”
Jade immediately leaned forward, asking the White Robe, “Father, I’m kinda dumb when it comes to these things. What was actually happening?”
Father Rochester playfully mimicked Jade’s usual style of breaking things down, extending his fingers one by one as he spoke. “First, Lady Glorissa truly appreciates your skill and sincerely wishes to hire you. Second, your letter might have been too polite; so, as you guessed, she understood it to mean you were stubbornly proceeding with the alarming plan of owning a shop. Hence, she wished to stop you from going further, which is why you received a follow-up letter delivered by her maid. Third, the maid herself might not have been pleased with Lady Glorissa’s decision to hire you in the first place.”
“The maid wasn’t happy?” Jade was surprised, but her drama-novel-filled brain quickly pieced it together. “She thinks the Lady might end up trusting me more than her? And she might lose her status as the Lady’s most useful, favoured servant?”
However, one detail still confused her. “Then why did she look so displeased when she found out I turned down the Lady’s offer?”
“Fourth,” Father Rochester continued seamlessly, “the maid was also displeased because you dared to turn down her mistress’s offer.”
“...huh?”
“This is a complex emotion, Miss Jade,” the White Robe explained, smoothening his moustache once more. “She must have been serving Lady Glorissa for a very long time, and the two of them likely share a very close bond. She disliked that her mistress’s attention would be distracted by a newcomer, but at the same time, she disliked that her mistress’s wishes were not being fulfilled.”
Jade blinked, and muttered softly, “A loyal servant.”
“Yes, a loyal servant,” Father Rochester nodded. “What was her response after you gave her your spoken reply?”
“She looked surprised, confused, and then slightly irritated.” Jade had not understood the conflicting expression at first. But now, realising that the maid was a fiercely loyal servant who likely placed her mistress’s desires above all else, Jade came up with an assumption. “Lady Glorissa had come to see me at the bazaar because she thought I had something to do with Milord. After she realised I was harmless, she offered me the job to protect me. The maid probably thinks I betrayed what I had told Lady Glorissa, because now I’m turning her down just to join the Ashborne estate.”
“And what did you say to her after witnessing that reaction?” Father Rochester asked, his tone curious.
“Well, I didn’t know she was that loyal,” Jade said, slightly rolling her eyes, already feeling annoyed by the tedious, noble household version of office politics before even officially joining one. “But I definitely don’t want to offend another noble. Plus, the Lady was quite nice to me during our chat. So I told the maid that if I ever manage to develop any new recipes, or if her Ladyship has any specific treat cravings, we could do letters. And maybe I can even serve her some treats whenever she comes to visit Milord.”
Father Rochester blinked, a look of mild surprise crossing his face. “It sounded as if Lady Glorissa is an intimate acquaintance of our Lord.”
“I know she’s not,” Jade waved a hand dismissively, “But I’m just sayin’, practically shifting the tension over to Milord… Well, he’s her target anyway, so… heh.”
Father Rochester mused on that for a quiet moment before speaking slowly. “A rather sly move, Miss Jade. Yet, I suppose, an acceptable one under the circumstances.”
Jade could only offer the White Robe a wry smile before dipping her head to show she had learned her lesson. “I’ll be incredibly careful with my words from now on. Honestly, many of the problems I’ve encountered were all because of my big mouth.”
“I would agree that you should exercise caution with your speech,” Father Rochester said, shaking his head gently, “but I very much disagree with your conclusion that all your troubles were caused by your words, Miss Jade. Within a single year, you have earned the genuine respect of not just one, but several individuals of immense social status. That is no simple achievement that just anyone could have pulled off.”
Jade blinked. “Is that… a compliment?”
“And also a reminder,” Father Rochester said as he gave her a reassuring, light pat on the shoulder. “I trust that you know exactly what must be done from here on out, Miss Jade.”
No I don’t, Father! Jade screamed in her head. But the chief clergy had already dismissed their meeting, sending her off with a highly encouraging smile.
“...” Jade stood outside of the study doors, pondering the conversation for a brief moment, then decided to ignore whatever drama might come from Lady Glorissa’s side – mostly because she trusted that Mr. Rich Sponsor’s cultivated noble nature could handle it perfectly well – and headed back to her room to tackle the students’ homework waiting for her..
On the other hand–
“Lord Montagu is interested in joining a session with us?” Ashborne raised a brow, finally shifting his gaze away from The Quinark Gazette to look at Lord Davies Halesworth, his friend who had come to visit him at his estate.
Halesworth had recently returned from an overseas expedition and was still in incredibly high spirits, eager to share his exotic experiences on any occasion he could find. Though the Mamas were deeply interested in his wealthy background and flawless ballroom manners, their eligible daughters usually retreated in a panic the moment he launched into non-stop, graphic speeches about cobras, tropical rainforest insects, and the disgusting hygiene standards he had observed aboard pirate ships.
Consequently, the adventurous young nobleman – the youngest son of a Marquess – found himself slowly blackballed by the young ladies. He soon found a brilliant outlet, however, in the popular parlour game, seamlessly incorporating his real-life survival adventures into the collaborative storytelling. This made him a highly sought-after guest in many newly formed clubs where families gathered for the storytelling game. He even began to ponder if he could meet his future wife – one with whom he could proudly share his delicate insects and foreign cultures – on these very occasions.
However, his absolute preference was to join Lord Ashborne’s private sessions. Hence, many high-society figures who wished to flatter him constantly tried to wrangle an invitation to the Silver Acorn, simply to witness firsthand if it was true that Lord Ashborne’s campaign provided the best narrative experience, and how they could mimic and incorporate it into their own strategy to approach both valuable bachelors.
Of course, breaking into Lord Ashborne’s tight-knit inner circle was no easy feat after the perfumery trade incident. Some, who considered themselves clever strategists, tried approaching Lord Davies’s acquaintances as a backdoor entrance instead.
Halesworth would occasionally share these written requests with Ashborne, though most of the time he just tactically deflected the social climbers. He had fully intended to do the same today when he brought up another formal letter from Lord Montagu, only to receive a response from Ashborne that intrigued him.
He rubbed his chin, observing his friend with a sharp eye. “You actually have an impression of him? If I remember correctly, he is completely outside your circle of acquaintances.”
“Indeed, I possess only a vague memory of him from our university years,” Ashborne said, putting down his newspaper to take a slow sip from his coffee cup. “However, I have heard of the Conburys quite recently.”
Halesworth smirked, instantly catching the subtle shift in his friend’s tone. “You do not sound particularly fond of him, or the Conburys as a whole.”
“His sister recently attempted to lure away my highly valuable consultant,” Ashborne’s tone sounded rather soft and light – almost dangerously so. “Fortunately, my jewel preferred to remain at my estate over hers.”
“Is that so?” Halesworth suppressed the urge to twitch his brow, deciding to be frank with his friend, who was notoriously dense in certain quarters. “Then why, pray tell, do I have a distinct impression that his sister was quite interested in becoming the permanent key holder of your estate?”
Ashborne paused mid-motion, blinking blankly. “...pardon?”
Alright, he is completely and utterly clueless, Halesworth rolled his eyes. And here I thought he was just pretending to subtly turn the Conburys’ Lady away!