The Grand Duchess Takes Command
The sight of her stumbling and nearly collapsing onto the stairs was truly spectacular.
"Your Highness!" Julia rushed forward in a panic to support her.
A few muffled snickers broke out among the servants before quickly dying down. It was a deliberate setup; the butler had instructed his fellow royal spies among the staff to mock the new lady the moment she slipped up. Philippe Deltang stroked his mustache with immense satisfaction and puffed out his chest. Taking a few steps up the stairs of the Great Hall, he bowed with exaggerated deference.
"Welcome, Your Highness. I am Philippe Deltang, the head butler of this residence."
Only then did the woman, her dark navy-blue hair swept up in a severe style, turn her gaze toward him. Philippe bowed deeply once more.
"The Berk mansion will finally have some life in it. I am overjoyed."
"Are you implying it lacked life before?"
It was Curtis, who had been slowly following behind and watching, who shot back with cold sarcasm. Between an ordinary master and butler, this might have passed as a mere jest, but here, it was closer to an open exchange of hostility. Philippe chuckled softly and waved it off.
"Of course not, Your Grace. How should I put it? A beautiful lady has arrived at a mansion where a gentleman resided all alone. Furthermore, since the occasion is a marriage, I merely meant that we anticipate a more... colorful joy."
Though her appearance makes it utterly hard to believe she captured the Grand Duke's heart, Philippe thought. He merely assumed the Grand Duke's tastes were exceptionally peculiar, giving him yet another thing to nitpick.
By then, the Grand Duchess had finally regained her balance. Stepping down the stairs, she extended her hand sideways toward Philippe.
"Well, yes. Nice to meet you, Deltang."
Philippe, who had been preparing to kiss the back of her hand, hesitated before awkwardly grasping it. The woman, standing three steps above him, was offering a handshake.
A handshake? He had never heard of a noble lady offering a handshake—a gesture reserved for men. Besides, what was with that stiff, military tone? Did she not even know how to properly speak down to servants?
"Chloe Amboise... no. Chloe Le David Berk. There is much I do not know, so I would appreciate your guidance in various matters."
"It is my absolute duty, Your Highness."
But instead of adding anything further, Philippe bowed even deeper.
"I, too, am delighted to serve a lady whose hand I may kiss."
Bringing up the hand-kissing was a subtle way of humiliating the new Grand Duchess for her ignorance of etiquette. However, it was impossible to call out, as on the surface, it sounded like a standard courtly phrase.
They said she came from a dirt-poor family, so she probably never even had a maid, Philippe sneered inwardly. If the Grand Duke stepped in to correct the butler here, it would only expose the Grand Duchess's lack of breeding, so he would surely hold his tongue.
But there was one thing Philippe had not anticipated.
"Darling."
At the Grand Duchess's sudden words, Philippe's eyes grew as wide as saucers.
What did I just hear?
It was a shockingly informal term of endearment, one that even commoner couples rarely used in public. Did the Grand Duchess really just utter that word in front of the servants? Philippe reflexively looked at Curtis.
The Grand Duke was famous for being merciless. Let alone titles and etiquette, if even the cleaning was slightly off, the entire mansion would be turned upside down. Yet the Grand Duchess dared to speak so shamelessly...
"...What is it?"
But surprisingly, Curtis was biting his lip to hold back his laughter. It was a smile filled with obvious affection. The Grand Duchess linked her arm through Curtis's and tilted her head.
"Would it be overstepping my bounds if Chloe said something right now?"
Her tone and actions were full of mock sweetness, completely different from the stiff way she had spoken to Philippe earlier. In other words, it was incredibly insolent. Yet the Grand Duke looked at her with pure adoration and replied,
"Chloe. There is nothing my Grand Duchess cannot say in this mansion."
"Then I will. Head Butler Philippe Deltang. I heard you were once His Majesty the King's personal attendant. Is that correct?"
"Y-yes?"
Philippe flinched and raised his head. The Grand Duchess, arm-in-arm with the Grand Duke, looked at him with a beaming smile. Philippe unconsciously puffed up with pride. It seemed this uneducated woman had heard a rumor or two and wanted to flatter him.
"Indeed, Your Highness. This Deltang is the fifth son of the Deltang family..."
"In that case, are you currently holding both the position of His Majesty's attendant and the butler of this residence?"
But the Grand Duchess cut him off mid-sentence. Philippe was displeased, but answered immediately.
"Of course not. I have been blessed with His Majesty's glorious command to serve Grand Duke Berk."
"So you are only working as a butler now?"
"Thankfully, yes."
No matter how ignorant she is, how could anyone hold both positions at once? It's not as if I have two bodies. Philippe tried his best not to look at her with pity. However, his tone inevitably grew cold. The servants seemed to share his amusement, as a few whispered and giggled.
What the Grand Duchess did next was like throwing a bucket of ice water.
"Then why are you acting like the master here?"
The giggles instantly died. Philippe flinched and stared at the Grand Duchess. She was looking straight down at him, her pink eyes sharp and unblinking.
"Despite being told that His Grace and I were exhausted after just finishing our wedding, were you the one who insisted on greeting us?"
"Pardon? No, of course not!"
The sudden drop of polite honorifics and the raw hostility directed at him caught him off guard. He had expected some friction, but not this. Philippe quickly bowed and offered his prepared excuse.
"I apologize, but I was not informed that Your Highnesses were tired."
Deny first.
"Of course, it is my failing for not considering your fatigue, but I felt guilty for not serving the Grand Duchess closely despite her having set foot in this mansion before the wedding, and I simply wished to greet you as soon as possible."
He had pointedly jabbed at her frivolously setting foot in a man's house before marriage. Of course, this was a calculated rhetorical trap, laced with the typical passive-aggressive sarcasm of high society. If the Grand Duchess was stupid, she wouldn't understand it. If she was educated enough to understand it, she wouldn't dare call it out. Why? That was how noble speech worked. Even if someone insulted you indirectly, the moment you brought it out into the open and acknowledged the slight, you essentially admitted your own deficiency and lost.
But there was one crucial detail Philippe Deltang had overlooked: if the new Grand Duchess were the type of person who cared about saving face, she wouldn't have agreed to this contract marriage in the first place.
"Ah, so you were that curious to see the face of a woman who shamelessly set foot in a man's house before marriage?"
Philippe's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "W-what do you mean by that, Your Highness?"
But the Grand Duchess was relentless. "If that's not what you meant, then what else could it possibly mean?"
"I simply..."
She didn't have the slightest intention of listening to his excuses. Ignoring his stammering, she scoffed.
"And you call yourself the head butler, yet do we have another master besides us?"
"Pardon? No, of course not!" Philippe shrieked, denying it before he could even think.
He tried to scramble for another excuse, but the Grand Duchess cut him off.
"The only bosses you have are me and the Grand Duke, yet you claim you weren't even informed that we were tired. I was starting to wonder if you were too busy serving some other master I don't know about."
What on earth am I hearing right now? Bosses?
While Philippe doubted his ears at the crude, unrefined language he never expected to hear in the middle of the Grand Ducal residence, the Grand Duchess smiled brightly.
"Or do you just have a hobby of bragging about your own incompetence?"
This time, Philippe practically jumped out of his skin. Incompetent! He was a man who had once competed with that bastard Depuis for the position of the King's Chief Attendant!
"Of course not! It is simply that the mansion was short-handed because we were preparing for your wedding..."
"Aha, so now it's all my fault?"
How did it turn into that?! Philippe wanted to cry. But the Grand Duchess didn't stop.
"You babbled about the mansion having life, and how my beauty would bring colorful joy. Since you felt so comfortable evaluating your superiors to their faces, I was absolutely certain you must be serving someone higher than the Grand Duke—like His Majesty the King. That's why I treated you with such respect. But if that's not the case, what am I supposed to think?"
"Y-you misunderstand, Your Highness!" Startled, Philippe waved his hands frantically. "Calling you beautiful was simply an expression of pure joy from a butler who has served this mansion for a long time."
"Ah. So if I weren't pretty, you wouldn't have been happy?"