Chapter 116
Jane slowly blinked her hazy blue eyes as she gnawed the inside of her mouth until it was ragged.
Those words were right. The impostor’s statement was neither arrogant nor haughty, but simply matter-of-fact reality.
The Bolshevik name would not crumble over a mere tea party, nor would it even become a topic of conversation.
But no, that’s wrong.
Jane rolled the word “Bolshevik”—which she couldn’t say aloud—over her tongue, tasting blood.
How dare that impostor speak the name Bolshevik so casually?
It should have been her in that position, saying those words.
After emptying her second cup, Riina announced the end of their tea time.
“So there won’t be a tea party this season. Let’s have one last cup.”
Now that she understood Jane’s surface reason for requesting these refreshments, it was time to give her an opportunity to do whatever else she might have planned.
Riina took a short breath and naturally cast her gaze toward the garden.
“The weather will soon grow warmer, and the days when we won’t need to cool hot tea before drinking will arrive soon.”
“Yes. The season for iced tea will be here before we know it.”
Jane followed Riina’s gaze toward the garden, but thanks to her cup being not yet empty, she could naturally draw her attention back to the table.
The inability to host a tea party was disappointing, but that had merely been a pretext for this tea time.
More importantly, before the tea time ended…
With the impostor’s attention elsewhere, now would be the perfect moment.
There was no need to prepare a suspicious vial and conspicuously tilt it into the teacup to administer the poison.
She only needed to lightly touch the mechanical device hidden in her sleeve.
Just as Becky finished filling Riina’s cup and moved to fill Jane’s, Jane raised her hand and knocked over the teaspoon.
“Oh my.”
Though it made no sound, Becky followed Jane’s gaze and momentarily took her eyes off the table to prepare a new teaspoon.
Simultaneously, Jane lightly waved her hand over the table, as if dispersing the hot steam rising from the teacup.
When Riina picked up her cup, the edge of her eyebrow rose slightly.
A faint but distinct different scent mingled with the aroma that touched her nose.
Her hesitation lasted only a moment.
It wouldn’t be a poison that caused immediate death or physical abnormalities.
Jane wouldn’t do anything so foolish.
If that was the case, she needed to empty the cup without showing any reaction, making Jane believe her plan had succeeded.
There were countless ways to empty a cup without drinking from it.
Though the sunshine was warm and a gentle breeze blew, the final cup of this thoroughly unpleasant tea time tilted toward Riina’s lips.
“She didn’t do anything?”
“No. There were no unusual or unnatural movements at all.”
At Becky’s answer, Riina tilted her head.
There had definitely been an herbal scent…
The scent from that unidentified herb that no one else could smell but her.
Riina didn’t dismiss this fact as mere imagination or an oversensitive reaction.
And for good reason…
“It’s familiar.”
Yes. That scent was too familiar.
She didn’t remember everything from before the regression with perfect clarity.
Memories fade with time, and unless deliberately examined—or even despite trying to recall them—many things would have disappeared.
But one memory revived by that distinctive scent that shot through her nostrils the moment she took a sip of tea was certain.
She didn’t need to know the exact identity of the herb Jane cherished.
That scent.
The distinctive herbal scent that no one else could smell but her—she now realized she had consumed it before the regression as well.
“What about the teacup?”
“I tested it with a silver spoon, but there was no discoloration. As you ordered, I’ve had all the items used at the table tested for poison.”
“What else could she do at a tea time besides using poison?”
“You mean in a harmful way? Publicly humiliating you, or splashing tea on you. Hmm, other than that…”
“Exactly. In a tea time with just the two of us, there’s nothing else she could do except spill the tea, right?”
There might have been more creative possibilities, but there was nothing Jane could openly do against Riina right now—that is, nothing a shadow could do against the person she served.
“Was she really only aiming to host a tea party?”
A faint crease appeared between Riina’s brows.
Somehow, dealings with Jane always left this unsettling residue.
This time, she had even given her an opportunity, intending to catch her in the act.
But even if it wasn’t visible, Jane must have put something in her teacup.
The same thing she had fed her before the regression.
In truth, before the regression, Riina had never even considered that Jane might be feeding her something.
A shadow was merely a shadow, and Riina had despised Jane intensely.
She hadn’t even shared a meal with Jane, let alone tea, so how could she have…
Suddenly noticing Becky staring at her with wide eyes, Riina exhaled in dejection.
Ah, that’s right.
Before the regression, Becky had been by Jane’s side.
Becky, who had left such natural warnings about the shadow among the servants that Jane could never get close to them.
With her resourcefulness, even without Jane doing anything directly, she could have easily slipped a drop or two of something into a teacup within the mansion.
As that thought occurred to her, Riina unconsciously voiced a brief reflection:
“Surprisingly… perhaps her actual abilities weren’t that great?”
At these words, spoken in a not-so-small voice, Becky drew in her neck like a turtle.
“I apologize for not noticing anything suspicious.”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t talking about you, Becky.”
At Riina’s casual wave of dismissal, Becky’s tense neck relaxed, and she blinked.
“Um, then whose abilities were you referring to?”
But Riina didn’t answer, merely shaking her head slightly.
Before the regression, Jane had seemed like an insurmountable wall of lamentation to Riina.
Of course, it hadn’t always been that way.
She had been much more skilled than the current Jane, but back then, she was still merely Riina’s hands and feet, constantly failing due to misfortune.
But as time passed, Jane accomplished more and more, and unlike Riina, she “succeeded.”
‘You were lucky.’
The first few times, Riina had dismissed Jane’s successes as luck.
She herself had been terribly unlucky, while Jane had not.
But who was it that said success is also a habit?
Having perfectly achieved her goals in everything she did, Jane had learned when, where, and how much effort, time, people, and other requirements were needed for “success,” and that knowledge brought even more success.
What Riina had hoped to accomplish just once, just a single time, Jane easily grasped with her own hands, right beside her, as if to show her how it was done.
‘Impossible. Why? Why a mere shadow!’
For the pre-regression Riina, who had worked herself to the bone for Bolshevik until she bled from her nose, only to be met with failure, Jane—methodically succeeding in her carefully prepared endeavors right beside her—had shone painfully bright.
So she had become unhinged, claiming that Jane threatened her position.
Even though, rationally speaking, she knew that a mere shadow could never become a Bolshevik without her willingly stepping aside.
Back then, Riina had felt so utterly worthless, so completely useless in this world, that the brighter Jane shone, the deeper she sank into that absurd thinking.
“As if I were a racehorse with blinders on.”
Throwing this scathing assessment at her past self from the now-vanished future, Riina rubbed her tired eyes.
It was fortunate that now, unlike then—when she had desperately desired success but never achieved it—she could reflect on that period quite objectively.
In any case, it was certain that whatever Jane had put in her teacup wasn’t an ordinary poison.
It definitely wasn’t something beneficial either…
If it was a type of poison, it would be one that didn’t immediately stop her breath but caused gradual addiction.
Riina tilted her head all the way back and stared at the wavy pattern on the ceiling.
Hadn’t someone said that?
If you begin with doubt, you end with certainty; if you begin with certainty, you end with doubt.
The tea time that had begun with suspicion of Jane ended with the certainty that she had fed her something before the regression as well.
Now it was time to make the decision she had postponed because of the tea time.
She would need to confirm the results of her work for the family.
“Nothing ever goes my way, truly.”
Riina sensed it intuitively.
She probably wouldn’t be able to give up everything as planned and become free.
She couldn’t leave like that anymore.
No, she no longer wanted to leave it all behind.
She was still unlucky, and failure was still far more familiar to her than success.
Yet now, Becky was by her side.
Lione hadn’t died, and she wouldn’t have to attend the youngest prince’s state funeral.
And now she would stay instead of leaving…
As she counted each instance, her resolution to do nothing—convinced that everything she touched would fail—seemed rather hollow.
However, all those matters had ultimately succeeded because she had stepped forward of her own volition and persevered.
Without looking in a mirror, Riina couldn’t see that her eyes had softened and a gentle smile had spread across her face.
And though the context was unclear, suddenly, Einar came to mind.
