Chapter 16
This man keeps getting under my skin.
He pokes and pulls—coaxing out words I never intended to say.
“It’s not exactly a secret that Count Linton is a petty man, is it?”
It may not be a secret, but there are still plenty of people who don’t know what Edgar is really like.
He has a wide social circle, and his days are packed with engagements.
It seems like he always spends his nights with Elodie, but during the day, he’s constantly attending gatherings, showing his face here and there.
Ever since he started seeing Elodie, her value has gone up too. Everyone’s curious—what kind of charm does this woman have to make the respected Count Linton bend to her?
The nanny, who passed along this information, didn’t hold back when talking about Elodie. She called her a shameless fox, accused her of pretending to be pure while scheming behind everyone’s back.
But not once did she say anything against Edgar.
That says everything about how good his public image is.
He was a good man—to everyone except Cecilia.
“Shh.”
I pressed a finger to my lips.
“Now Lord Ricardo is an accomplice too.”
Ricardo blinked in surprise, then laughed, eyes curving with amusement.
“Sharing secrets with the Countess of Linton—what an honor.”
“What secret are we talking about?”
A cold voice cut in.
It was Edgar.
“Lord Ricardo. It seems you’re enjoying a private chat with my wife. Mind if I join in?”
He smiled, but his eyes were icy.
“Count Linton, you may want to review the definition of the word ‘secret,’” Ricardo replied coolly.
I didn’t want to get caught in a battle of egos between the two, so I looked around for the nanny.
“Nanny. Don’t I have something to do? Let’s head inside.”
But before I could take a step—
“Stop.”
Edgar’s voice was firm.
“Tell me, Cecilia. What secret?”
“Count Linton.”
Ricardo’s tone dropped, a quiet warning, as Edgar pressed me again.
“Lord Ricardo, you seem to forget—Cecilia is my wife. A wife keeping secrets from her husband? That’s something I’ve never heard of. If it was just a joke, I’d be happy to laugh along. But I’m guessing it wasn’t.”
Wife, he says.
I lowered my head, trying to hide the bitter smile that crept to my lips.
“It was a joke. Lord Ricardo was just teasing.”
I calmed myself and gave Edgar the answer he’d want to hear.
A man who claimed to love Elodie, yet acted like this around Ricardo—it had to be male pride. Nothing more.
Ricardo wasn’t someone he respected. Deep down, Edgar probably saw him as inferior.
“Cecilia…”
Edgar looked surprised as he gazed at me.
“Lord Ricardo asked me to keep his little visit to the mansion a secret, so I said I would.”
I continued quickly, making sure Edgar wouldn’t turn his anger on Ricardo.
“And I asked him, in return, to pretend you weren’t home.”
A faint flush crept up Edgar’s cheekbones.
“And one more thing.”
There was no real need to say this in front of Ricardo. But I wanted to.
I didn’t know why. Maybe because impulses rarely need reasons.
“I’m the Countess of Linton, Edgar.”
As I expected, Edgar immediately picked up on the hidden meaning behind my words.
His face twisted with humiliation.
“I need to change. Excuse me.”
The new dress I had worn was wrinkled from playing hide-and-seek with Ricardo.
If I wanted to get it back into shape before the dinner, there wasn’t much time left.
I gave the nanny a nod.
As I stepped away, I heard footsteps behind me.
By the time we neared the mansion, Ricardo’s loud, unbothered laughter rang through the air.
I shook my head and went inside.
“My lady!”
“What was that?!”
Both Penelope and Sarah shrieked at the same time, their faces pale.
“Sorry.”
Sarah let out a long sigh.
“My lady, sometimes I really don’t understand you.”
She recovered quickly, thanks to previous odd behavior—like wanting to take walks or showing interest in street vendors.
“I’m not sure we’ll have time… but we’ll try.”
Penelope took longer to recover from the shock.
“You said you were going to the garden! What on earth did you do?!”
“Hide-and-seek.”
Penelope looked at me like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“It was Ricky’s fault. Blame him.”
I didn’t want to admit to Sarah that I’d been dragged around by Ricardo, so I gave a vague explanation.
“Curse that Ricky!”
Penelope tried to storm out in a rage, but I stopped her.
“Too late. Lord Ricardo is already gone.”
Still, she grumbled for quite a while.
Sarah was focused on ironing out the wrinkles in the dress. Soon, Penelope joined in too.
“Do we need more help?”
The maids were already busy with dinner preparations and barely keeping up.
But caring for the hostess’s dress was also one of their duties.
“This fabric is delicate. If it’s handled carelessly, it could be ruined. It’s better if I do it myself.”
Penelope said confidently.
And I felt reassured.
A familiar sense of self-reflection crept in.
It hadn’t even been that long since I became Cecilia, and already I’d gotten used to having others clean up my messes.
“I’m really sorry.”
“The person who suffers the most from this ruined dress is you, my lady.”
Penelope replied sharply.
“Well, there are people who mess things up themselves and then get angry when others can’t fix it—but you’re not one of them, right?”
I nodded.
“No, I’m not.”
“Then you have nothing to apologize for. This is my job, and unexpected problems happen all the time. I’m a professional. I’m not going to fall apart over something like this.”
Coming from someone who just had a meltdown moments ago, that was rich.
“The one responsible here is that damn Ricky.”
Penelope ground her teeth.
“The next time I see him, I’m charging him triple for emotional damage.”
“Do that. Want me to write you an official letter of complaint?”
I really wanted to help her in any way I could.
“A letter?”
Penelope thought it over for a moment, then nodded.
“If it’s addressed to Ricky, then yes.”
“Ricky?”
That caught me off guard.
The one who ruined the dress was none other than Ricardo Bastian.
“I mean, I could never ask Lord Bastian for compensation.”
Fair enough.
“But Ricky is a friend. I can ask him.”
There was a hint of sorrow in her smile as she said it.
She looked sad—like someone who had once played freely with a childhood friend but knew they could never go back to how things were.
“The truth is… Ricky and I reconnected recently. He came to find me again. He said he wanted to recommend me to you. I know that’s not usually his style, so I doubt I’d ever have seen him again if it weren’t for you.”
Ricardo had spoken as if he’d known Penelope for a long time.
He’d said she had great talent but was forced to stay hidden in the shadows.
“Sure, I act all tough in front of you, calling him this and that—but when I actually face him, I can barely look up anymore.”
Her voice trailed off into a whisper.
“Pepe…”
I called her name, but I had no talent for comfort. So I fell silent for a long time.
“I’ll send a letter to Ricky.”
That was all I could manage.
All the effort I’d made to stay emotionally detached—wasted.
“Really?”
Penelope’s head shot up, and her eyes were a little wet. I couldn’t take it back now, even if I wanted to.
“Yes. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much, my lady!”
She missed her friend, but she was also afraid to face him. And I understood that all too well.
So I made a promise I didn’t know how to keep.
“I’ll try, at least.”
“Yes!”
While Penelope was tending to the hem of my dress, Sarah muttered under her breath.
“I have no idea what you two are even talking about.”
I pretended not to hear her and lay back on the daybed.
The hair I’d had done earlier was now flat and ruined.
“My lady!”
Sarah shrieked.
She rushed over and yanked me up, propping me against the backrest.
“You mustn’t lie down!”
She placed a footstool beneath my legs and a cushion behind my head.
“Sleep like this, please.”
It was torture.
So, this is what it meant to be a noblewoman in this world—so much to gain, but so much to give up.
Apparently, dresses and hairstyles ranked higher than a human being.
I dozed off, half-awake, in that uncomfortable position.
Once the dinner party started, Elodie would be here, and I’d be met with the usual stares—pity and superiority mixed together.
I hated both.
“My lady sure has a kind heart. Of all days to invite that fox to the dinner party…”
“The fox?”
“Our Count’s mistress. The one with the angelic voice.”
I was barely on the edge of sleep, but I still caught the whispered gossip between Sarah and Penelope.
“It’d be a miracle if she just sings and leaves quietly. She’ll probably stir up all kinds of trouble for our lady.”
“I don’t think she minds that much.”
That was Penelope—an accurate read.
“Oh please, as if that’s true. She pretends not to care. It’s just that nothing else has worked, so now she’s acting like she’s above it.”
Sarah went on with her noblewoman logic.
According to her, I was a tragic heroine—heartbroken to the core, crying myself to sleep every night, and hiding it all behind a composed façade in front of Edgar.
“If the Count is so smitten with that singer, he ought to divorce and start fresh.”
Penelope’s suggestion made Sarah scoff.
“Noblemen never get divorced.”
If I were truly hoping to live out my life peacefully as Countess of Linton, Sarah’s certainty should have been comforting.
Instead, a strange tightness filled my chest.
While I was lost in thought, time passed.
It took nearly three hours to fully restore the dress.
My time on the daybed—sitting still in that miserable pose—had gone to waste; my hair needed to be redone anyway.
Penelope had gone out to do a final check on the banquet hall.
Sarah worked on my hair, following a design Penelope had drawn out.
The result was elegant and clean.
The dress clung so tightly to my body, I felt like if I ate even a bite of food, it might all come back up.
Thankfully, I had refused to wear a corset. That gave me some room to breathe.
A corset… No matter how hard I tried to adapt to this world, that was one thing I couldn’t accept.
I had been blessed—oddly—with a healthy body. After all, I’d survived six doses of poison.
I wasn’t about to pass out from lack of oxygen now.
“How are the guests?”
“Almost all here.”
“Miss Elodie?”
“The fox…”
Before I could scold her, Sarah smacked her own lips shut.
“She arrived about two hours ago and has been waiting in her room.”
“Go down and check if the stage is all set.”
Sarah hesitated.
“My lady, you really don’t have to worry that much.”
I answered her with a sigh.
Sarah was defending a version of me that didn’t exist.
I didn’t fear or hate Elodie—yet for some reason, Sarah was more defensive than I was.
“I’ll check. Just check.”
At my sigh, Sarah reluctantly headed out.
Left alone, I glanced at the jewelry atop the vanity.
The necklace—once worn by Edgar’s mother—was resting in an elegant box.
