Eavesdropping on a Maid's Grievances
“Yeah, girl! Stop stalling already.”
The sound of footsteps drew steadily closer, close enough now to make out the brooches pinned to their uniforms.
That emblem…
They were the laundry maids who worked in the imperial palace. Specifically, the ones attached to the knight order he visited for training every single day.
Oh, damn it.
Edwin instinctively shrank deeper into the shadow of the tree and immediately regretted it.
Why did I do that?
He had been so fixated on not revealing his identity that he had hidden without thinking. By the time he considered stepping out again, the three maids had already entered the garden.
The moment they stepped inside, the brown-haired woman scanned the area as if they had come for some secret conversation, then let out a sigh of relief.
“There really isn’t anyone here.”
“See? I’ve worked in the palace for six years and I’ve never once seen a single person in this spot.”
The short-haired maid sounded proud that there was no better place for quiet talk.
Edwin, who had inadvertently become a non-person, had completely missed his chance to slip away.
They’ll leave soon.
He let out a quiet sigh and stilled his presence. Rather than cause a scene by stepping out now, he would simply endure it. It would be disastrous if Lina appeared while they were busy making a fuss about having seen the Emperor.
Edwin twisted one corner of his mouth upward and leaned back against the massive tree that concealed him. While the three maids chatted, he planned to turn his thoughts to the postponed matter of restoring the fortress walls in the southern direct territory.
Near the garden entrance, the dirty-blonde maid was being prodded by the other two to speak. She furrowed her brows, looking troubled.
“There’s nothing to explain.”
The short-haired maid and the brown-haired maid exchanged meaningful glances. As if they had rehearsed it, they each seized one of the dirty-blonde maid’s arms and linked theirs through them.
“Bianca, are you really not going to tell us?”
“If you keep stirring up our curiosity and then say nothing…”
They deliberately let the threat hang unfinished, tightening their grip in a way that did not look playful at all.
Is this about to turn violent?
Edwin, who had been politely trying to ignore their conversation, found his attention captured by how serious the two maids had become.
Fortunately, no violence erupted.
“Agh, seriously! Della, Gemma—let go, both of you! You’re going to stretch my uniform!”
The dirty-blonde maid, Bianca, grumbled and shook her shoulders as if wringing out wet laundry. Della and Gemma were flung off like heavy, waterlogged blankets. They tumbled onto the dirt path but immediately burst into giggles.
At least the palace discipline hasn’t deteriorated to the point of brawling in the gardens.
Having judged that they were simply roughhousing, Edwin was about to tune them out again when a familiar name reached his ears.
“It’s not like that with Sir Morgan, I keep telling you.”
There was only one Morgan currently serving in the imperial knight order—Tyrone Morgan, the man who had stood beside Edwin through eight long years of shared hardship. The only one. Someone he had known since childhood.
Even on noisy streets, hearing a familiar name instinctively drew one’s attention. And this place was exceptionally quiet.
Before he realized it, Edwin found himself listening to the three maids.
“If it’s not like that, then why did you give him your handkerchief?”
Della’s crisp, piercing pronunciation struck like a slap.
“That’s…”
Bianca fumbled for an answer, lips moving without sound. Edwin, who had once handed a handkerchief to Miss Diaz under similar non-romantic circumstances, flinched in sympathy.
“He was sweating buckets, so it looked like he needed one. That’s all.”
Bianca’s reply came a beat too late.
Miss Diaz had been crying that day too. I couldn’t send a lady away with tears on her face.
While Edwin recalled the night of the festival, Gemma snorted.
“Is that really the only reason?”
“There wasn’t any other intention at all~?”
“Our Bianca has never been the type to hand out handkerchiefs to every sweating knight~.”
They teased her in chorus, deliberately dragging out their words. It grated on Edwin’s nerves—perhaps because the handkerchief he had given had carried intentions even he hadn’t fully recognized at the time.
Finally, Bianca’s composure snapped.
“It was a handkerchief soaked in selfish motives, okay? There! Satisfied?”
Bianca crossed her arms and jerked her head to the side, making her displeasure obvious. Gemma and Della immediately moved to soothe her. She couldn’t have been that truly angry, because her crossed arms loosened again soon after. Her tone, however, remained sharp.
“You two should learn to read the room. Ugh! The reason I’m not saying much is because it didn’t work out. We only lent a handkerchief and met outside a few times. Don’t overinterpret it.”
Did she have to cut it off so decisively?
Edwin, who had been faintly empathizing with Bianca, raised one eyebrow in mild disapproval.
Once her mouth opened, the real complaints poured out.
“I thought maybe I was the one who unnecessarily chased after someone who said it was fine and gave him the handkerchief. To a man who swings his sword from dawn to dusk without a single day off, I was the one who suggested we meet first.”
The more she spoke, the more her anger rose. Bianca clenched her fist, and the well-trained muscles in her forearm bulged.
If someone handed her a laundry paddle right now, even Morgan—with his towering height of over two meters, fierce face, and the nickname Grizzly Bear—might be brought to his knees.
Yet to her friends, that powerful forearm didn’t seem particularly threatening.
Della and Gemma, who had been listening quietly to Bianca’s outburst, asked with genuine confusion.
“But didn’t Sir Morgan agree to the date?”
“After you suggested it, he asked to meet again, didn’t he?”
“We thought things were going well.”
At her clueless friends’ words, Bianca’s face crumpled. She opened her fist and let out a heavy sigh.
“Going well? As if. The man has zero initiative, like it’s his first time dating anyone.”
Edwin flinched hard, feeling the words hit far too close to home.
“No matter what we do, he just says ‘Please do whatever Miss Bianca wants.’”
I wanted to do whatever Miss Diaz wanted.
A panorama of his past self flashed through Edwin’s mind—how every time Lina asked what she wanted to do, he had always answered, “Anything you desire is fine with me.”
Whether Edwin despaired or not, Bianca’s grievances continued.
“Even when we hold hands he flinches and tries to pull away. If I don’t ask him something first, he never speaks!”
It seemed the person Edwin should actually be empathizing with was not the dirty-blonde maid, but Morgan.
Edwin found himself reflecting on his own past behavior.
Bianca cried out in a voice heavy with accumulated resentment.
“At this point I don’t even know if he’s interested in me or not!”
Edwin, now practically fused with the tree, made excuses for Morgan instead.
It’s because his interest is so overwhelming that he can’t express it properly.
At least, that had been the case for him.
Though it was an excuse that would never reach Lina.
Nor did it reach Bianca.
Still, after shouting, some of her anger seemed to dissipate. Her voice grew calmer.
“He was kind of cute, so I thought I’d give it a try.”
Her face turned dreamy as she thought of Morgan. Surprisingly, Bianca genuinely seemed to find the massive, two-meter-tall giant cute.
Though that was now in the past tense.
“I can handle a fox, but I can’t handle a bear.”
The sudden chill in her affection struck Edwin like lightning to the crown of his head. For a moment, he saw Lina’s silhouette overlapping with the woman before him.
How can someone’s heart change so easily?
Even though the woman in front of him wasn’t Lina, his own heart ached sharply.
“Well, a man who’s too frustrating isn’t attractive.”
“Exactly. Stringing someone along is even worse.”
Convinced that Bianca had made up her mind, Gemma and Della joined in criticizing Morgan’s passive attitude. It was true friendship.
Edwin silently reflected as he witnessed the raw criticism session unfolding before his eyes. Morgan’s blunt personality overlapped with his own in many ways.
And Edwin had always been an exceptionally quick learner.
By the time the maids—having vented their frustrations during their break—finally left, Edwin had become a considerably different man from the one who had first hidden behind the tree.