The ride home, escorted by Raphael, was extremely awkward.
Ariadne tried to explain to Raphael that 'it wasn't really Cesare who forced me', but Raphael cut her off.
It was an attitude of knowing everything.
“Rest, Ari. There’s no need to talk right now.”
No matter what she said, he didn't seem to listen.
Strangely enough, Ariadne didn't feel like holding onto Raphael and explaining in detail how she and Cesare were closer than it seemed.
She easily assumed that it was because she was afraid that it would reach Alfonso's ears, so she didn't bother to look deeply into his mind.
There were too many pressing issues to tackle.
The first place Ariadne went when she returned home was her study.
Knock knock!
In the desk drawer, which was opened roughly, various documents and writing instruments were neatly organized.
But what Ariadne was looking for wasn't what was in the drawer.
She picked up a whole bundle of parchment stacked high on a pull-out desk shelf just above the drawer.
These were letters she had written to Alfonso but had never been able to send.
Slurp.
Ariadne quickly scanned the stack of letters. And then she realized something.
'So this is what Sister Isabella was talking about!'
The first half of her bundle of letters to Alfonso was mostly intact, but the latter half, which was more recent, had completely disappeared.
“Sancha!”
Ariadne raised her voice.
“Yes, Miss!”
“Bring Anna and Vicente, and a couple more trustworthy maids!”
Sancha hurriedly pulled the rope into the room and called Anna and Vicente, who were immediately available.
Sancha told them the names of two more maids and told them to call their friends.
Ariadne spoke to Sancha with an angry face.
“Let’s go to Sister Isabella’s room.”
Boom!
Ariadne, accompanied by her maid Sancha and her own maids, opened Isabella's room.
“Oh my god!”
Isabella's personal maid, Sienna, who was sitting alone in Isabella's room, enjoying her masterless rest, looked at Ariadne with startlement.
“Ah, Miss Ariadne... No, Countess! What brings you here...”
“Get out of the way!”
It was Sancha who roughly pushed Sienna away. Sancha gave orders to the remaining maids.
“Search everything!”
"Yes!"
Sienna let out a few short screams but did nothing to actively restrain Sancha and her maids.
Although she had only recently entered the de Mare family, she seemed to have enough insight to figure out who the real power was.
Sancha and her maids searched for their target, making Isabella's room a mess.
They pulled out the drawers and threw them on the floor, then opened the wardrobe and emptied all the clothes out, throwing them onto the hardwood floor.
The only thing that filled the room was Sienna's cries of 'Oh my, oh my!', worried about her own work rather than loyalty.
In the meantime, the voice of the ecstatic maid Vicente rang out.
“I think I found it, Miss!”
Vicente grabbed a bundle of parchment that had been lying on the floor of the cabinet where Isabella's silks were stored and waved it in the air.
“Is this correct?”
Most of the maids, except for Sancha, were blind, so they could not tell whether the bundle of parchments was what they were looking for.
Ariadne accepted the bundle of parchments Vicente handed her and quickly looked through them.
"To my beloved Alfonso,
As the weather gets colder, I worry about you even more. Although Yesak has a milder climate than San Carlo, it’s not like a military camp would be comfortable to live in...(continued)"
When the suspicion became true, Ariadne became so angry that her face turned bright red.
“Isabella!”
This is crossing the line. Ariadne's hands turning the parchment became faster.
Most of the letters she had written to Alfonso since around December of last year seemed to be here, but a few pages were missing here and there.
'Is it gone...? Or is it hidden somewhere else?'
Ariadne, standing in the middle of Isabella's room, unable to breathe, turned the parchment, and a shriek rang in her ears.
“What the hell is going on now!”
The owner of the room came home late from the ball.
Leaving her older brother Ippolito, her ball partner, standing at the door, Isabella strode in and shouted at Ariadne.
“What are you doing in my room right now!”
Sienna, who had made no active efforts to prevent it, belatedly appealed to her master.
“I tried to stop her, but Miss Ariadne’s spirit was so fierce...”
But no one was interested in Sienna.
Even Isabella thought of dealing with such petty rewards and punishments later.
Isabella shouted, looking straight at Ariadne.
“You’re invading someone else’s privacy without permission. No matter how much you’re in charge of managing the household, this is crossing the line!”
Bam!
A loud noise echoed through Isabella's room. Ariadne had slapped Isabella across the face with the bundle of parchment she was holding.
Isabella grabbed her cheek and glared at Ariadne with an angry expression. The room became quiet for a moment.
“Are you okay, Isabella?!”
On the subject of his younger sister, Ippolito, who had been standing in the doorway, ran into the room.
He supported Isabella and shouted at Ariadne.
“Hey! Are you out of your mind? Where are you putting your hand all of a sudden?”
But Ariadne was just as uninterested in Ippolito as Isabella was in Siena.
Ariadne glared at Isabella without even looking at Ippolito and scolded him.
“Crossing the line? Invasion of privacy? That’s what I’m talking about!”
Ariadne even threw away the customary courtesy she had given to Isabella.
She couldn't stand the shame of looking at other people's letters.
“You still say that after seeing this now?”
Isabella quickly realized what the wad of parchment was in Ariadne's hand.
“Ah...”
“Even the enemy’s back is in the balance!”
But Isabella was always Isabella because she always had something to say.
“...Ariadne, you are so poisonous too.”
"What?"
“Between real sisters, why are you so angry just because I saw a letter?”
Isabella looked around her room.
“You didn’t even get a reply, you just scribbled on it like a diary. Why are you turning my room upside down like this just because I read your diary?”
She looked at Ariadne, her lips pouting from her pretty face.
“I just wanted to get to know you better because you never said anything to me, so I just took a look. Is that something to get this angry about?”
Ariadne touched her forehead.
Yes, Isabella was that kind of girl. The one who could play the victim anytime, anywhere was her older sister, Isabella de Mare.
Ariadne didn't even respond to Isabella's sophistry.
“The letter, where is the rest of this?”
"What?"
“This isn’t everything. Where are the missing pieces?”
“Hey, why are you asking me that?”
Isabella asked with a natural, innocent look on her face.
“Did you put it wrong? I really mean everything here.”
Ariadne looked back at Sancha as if there was no need to say anything further.
“Sancha, finish it!”
“Yes, Miss!”
Then, Ariadne's maids began to search Isabella's room, breathing in sync as if they were one person.
“Hey, hey...!”
Isabella was taken aback, not knowing that Ariadne would act so strongly.
Isabella, in her haste, rushed to the second closest maid and grabbed her elbow.
Because the person closest to her was Sancha, it seemed unlikely that she would listen to her.
“Hey, you! Get your hands off me!”
But the maid glanced at Sancha, waved her arm, and pushed Isabella away.
“I’m sorry, Miss.”
Isabella, whose only exercise was walking in a corset and petticoat containing whalebone, trembled helplessly at the simple arm movements of a maid.
She called for reinforcements with tears in her pretty amethyst eyes.
“Brother!”
However, Ippolito, who had been with them, disappeared from sight.
“Where did you go!”
Isabella's face turned red again with embarrassment.
She began to suspect that Ippolito had abandoned her and ran away.
Fortunately, Ippolito was not so unfaithful. He soon returned, bringing a savior with him.
"...What’s going on today?”
The reinforcement brought by Ippolito was Cardinal de Mare, who looked very tired.
Cardinal de Mare had a rough idea of the situation as he looked at Isabella's room in disarray.
“Isabella. Did you steal your sister’s jewels?”
Isabella jumped.
“Dad, what do you think I am!”
Cardinal de Mare bit his tongue, wanting to reply, "I'm asking because I see you as you."
Raising children is really hard. You have to feed them, clothe them, put them to bed, and even please them.
“No, it’s not a jewel or anything. I actually secretly looked at Ariadne’s diary, and she got really angry over it and turned the room upside down!”
Ariadne spat out in tears.
“If you’re going to talk...!”
'Do it right' was the complete sentence she was trying to finish.
Ariadne planned to appeal to her father that what Isabella had done was not just a petty girlish squabble, but an act of sowing discord in her fiancé's name by trying to break off their engagement.
But suddenly, two thoughts caught her attention.
Do I really want to maintain my engagement to Cesare? And how much can I trust my father?
Cardinal de Mare also knew that she had been intimate with Prince Alfonso.
However, he did not know that much, and he was even more unaware that later on, the funds from the Rambouillet Relief Center were being disguised as Holy See funds and sent to Yesak.
'Will Father... cooperate readily in sending the money to Yesak?'
He could have pretended not to know and pressured her to incorporate the slush funds of the Rambouillet Center into the de Marais family's fortune.
All those who knew the exact details of the slush fund and its creators are dead.
A person who only knows the outline of the story is someone who can be easily killed.
The money came from dirty money, and no one can ask for it back.
He had all the qualities necessary to embezzle, and Cardinal de Mare was the man to do it.
Ariadne had no idea what Cardinal de Mare was thinking.
Although she had returned to her past life, it was frightening and difficult to fathom the people who had scarred her as a child, especially Lucrezia and Cardinal de Mare.
“...”
Even while Ariadne remained silent, her maids searched Isabella's room diligently.
Because they were Ariadne's people, not Cardinal de Mare's people.
"Stop!"
Cardinal de Mare raised his voice at the maids, including Sancha, perhaps because he was offended by Ariadne's maids who did not even notice him coming in.
“That’s enough. That’s it.”
And with those words, Ariadne also made up her mind.
Let's just let things flow as they will with Cesare.
Instead of trying to eliminate all the variables, appealing to him for love, or venting her anger, she decided to just follow the flow of the river and see how it goes.
That must be fate.
“... Yes, Father.”
Ariadne answered obediently.
“Sancha, let’s go back now.”
“Yes? But I haven’t found it yet...”
“I hope you found this much.”
As soon as those words were spoken, the maids gathered around the mountain cart and stood there.
Of course, none of them cleaned up the mess they had created.
Ariadne glared at Isabella.
“Don’t touch my stuff again.”
Isabella replied angrily.
“It’s petty. Even between sisters.”
“I clearly warned you.”
Ariadne glared at Isabella with something bordering on disgust.
But Isabella paid no attention to her sister's contempt and disgust.
Isabella was the kind of person who thrived on malice.
Isabella smiled brightly, and Ariadne left her room, leaving Isabella behind.
Boom!
“You, you, you just got a title! How dare you do this in front of my father...!”
Ariadne could hear Ippolito's cries from afar, but she didn't care. She was tired.
Ariadne tried to explain to Raphael that 'it wasn't really Cesare who forced me', but Raphael cut her off.
It was an attitude of knowing everything.
“Rest, Ari. There’s no need to talk right now.”
No matter what she said, he didn't seem to listen.
Strangely enough, Ariadne didn't feel like holding onto Raphael and explaining in detail how she and Cesare were closer than it seemed.
She easily assumed that it was because she was afraid that it would reach Alfonso's ears, so she didn't bother to look deeply into his mind.
There were too many pressing issues to tackle.
The first place Ariadne went when she returned home was her study.
Knock knock!
In the desk drawer, which was opened roughly, various documents and writing instruments were neatly organized.
But what Ariadne was looking for wasn't what was in the drawer.
She picked up a whole bundle of parchment stacked high on a pull-out desk shelf just above the drawer.
These were letters she had written to Alfonso but had never been able to send.
Slurp.
Ariadne quickly scanned the stack of letters. And then she realized something.
'So this is what Sister Isabella was talking about!'
The first half of her bundle of letters to Alfonso was mostly intact, but the latter half, which was more recent, had completely disappeared.
“Sancha!”
Ariadne raised her voice.
“Yes, Miss!”
“Bring Anna and Vicente, and a couple more trustworthy maids!”
Sancha hurriedly pulled the rope into the room and called Anna and Vicente, who were immediately available.
Sancha told them the names of two more maids and told them to call their friends.
Ariadne spoke to Sancha with an angry face.
“Let’s go to Sister Isabella’s room.”
Boom!
Ariadne, accompanied by her maid Sancha and her own maids, opened Isabella's room.
“Oh my god!”
Isabella's personal maid, Sienna, who was sitting alone in Isabella's room, enjoying her masterless rest, looked at Ariadne with startlement.
“Ah, Miss Ariadne... No, Countess! What brings you here...”
“Get out of the way!”
It was Sancha who roughly pushed Sienna away. Sancha gave orders to the remaining maids.
“Search everything!”
"Yes!"
Sienna let out a few short screams but did nothing to actively restrain Sancha and her maids.
Although she had only recently entered the de Mare family, she seemed to have enough insight to figure out who the real power was.
Sancha and her maids searched for their target, making Isabella's room a mess.
They pulled out the drawers and threw them on the floor, then opened the wardrobe and emptied all the clothes out, throwing them onto the hardwood floor.
The only thing that filled the room was Sienna's cries of 'Oh my, oh my!', worried about her own work rather than loyalty.
In the meantime, the voice of the ecstatic maid Vicente rang out.
“I think I found it, Miss!”
Vicente grabbed a bundle of parchment that had been lying on the floor of the cabinet where Isabella's silks were stored and waved it in the air.
“Is this correct?”
Most of the maids, except for Sancha, were blind, so they could not tell whether the bundle of parchments was what they were looking for.
Ariadne accepted the bundle of parchments Vicente handed her and quickly looked through them.
"To my beloved Alfonso,
As the weather gets colder, I worry about you even more. Although Yesak has a milder climate than San Carlo, it’s not like a military camp would be comfortable to live in...(continued)"
When the suspicion became true, Ariadne became so angry that her face turned bright red.
“Isabella!”
This is crossing the line. Ariadne's hands turning the parchment became faster.
Most of the letters she had written to Alfonso since around December of last year seemed to be here, but a few pages were missing here and there.
'Is it gone...? Or is it hidden somewhere else?'
Ariadne, standing in the middle of Isabella's room, unable to breathe, turned the parchment, and a shriek rang in her ears.
“What the hell is going on now!”
The owner of the room came home late from the ball.
Leaving her older brother Ippolito, her ball partner, standing at the door, Isabella strode in and shouted at Ariadne.
“What are you doing in my room right now!”
Sienna, who had made no active efforts to prevent it, belatedly appealed to her master.
“I tried to stop her, but Miss Ariadne’s spirit was so fierce...”
But no one was interested in Sienna.
Even Isabella thought of dealing with such petty rewards and punishments later.
Isabella shouted, looking straight at Ariadne.
“You’re invading someone else’s privacy without permission. No matter how much you’re in charge of managing the household, this is crossing the line!”
Bam!
A loud noise echoed through Isabella's room. Ariadne had slapped Isabella across the face with the bundle of parchment she was holding.
Isabella grabbed her cheek and glared at Ariadne with an angry expression. The room became quiet for a moment.
“Are you okay, Isabella?!”
On the subject of his younger sister, Ippolito, who had been standing in the doorway, ran into the room.
He supported Isabella and shouted at Ariadne.
“Hey! Are you out of your mind? Where are you putting your hand all of a sudden?”
But Ariadne was just as uninterested in Ippolito as Isabella was in Siena.
Ariadne glared at Isabella without even looking at Ippolito and scolded him.
“Crossing the line? Invasion of privacy? That’s what I’m talking about!”
Ariadne even threw away the customary courtesy she had given to Isabella.
She couldn't stand the shame of looking at other people's letters.
“You still say that after seeing this now?”
Isabella quickly realized what the wad of parchment was in Ariadne's hand.
“Ah...”
“Even the enemy’s back is in the balance!”
But Isabella was always Isabella because she always had something to say.
“...Ariadne, you are so poisonous too.”
"What?"
“Between real sisters, why are you so angry just because I saw a letter?”
Isabella looked around her room.
“You didn’t even get a reply, you just scribbled on it like a diary. Why are you turning my room upside down like this just because I read your diary?”
She looked at Ariadne, her lips pouting from her pretty face.
“I just wanted to get to know you better because you never said anything to me, so I just took a look. Is that something to get this angry about?”
Ariadne touched her forehead.
Yes, Isabella was that kind of girl. The one who could play the victim anytime, anywhere was her older sister, Isabella de Mare.
Ariadne didn't even respond to Isabella's sophistry.
“The letter, where is the rest of this?”
"What?"
“This isn’t everything. Where are the missing pieces?”
“Hey, why are you asking me that?”
Isabella asked with a natural, innocent look on her face.
“Did you put it wrong? I really mean everything here.”
Ariadne looked back at Sancha as if there was no need to say anything further.
“Sancha, finish it!”
“Yes, Miss!”
Then, Ariadne's maids began to search Isabella's room, breathing in sync as if they were one person.
“Hey, hey...!”
Isabella was taken aback, not knowing that Ariadne would act so strongly.
Isabella, in her haste, rushed to the second closest maid and grabbed her elbow.
Because the person closest to her was Sancha, it seemed unlikely that she would listen to her.
“Hey, you! Get your hands off me!”
But the maid glanced at Sancha, waved her arm, and pushed Isabella away.
“I’m sorry, Miss.”
Isabella, whose only exercise was walking in a corset and petticoat containing whalebone, trembled helplessly at the simple arm movements of a maid.
She called for reinforcements with tears in her pretty amethyst eyes.
“Brother!”
However, Ippolito, who had been with them, disappeared from sight.
“Where did you go!”
Isabella's face turned red again with embarrassment.
She began to suspect that Ippolito had abandoned her and ran away.
Fortunately, Ippolito was not so unfaithful. He soon returned, bringing a savior with him.
"...What’s going on today?”
The reinforcement brought by Ippolito was Cardinal de Mare, who looked very tired.
Cardinal de Mare had a rough idea of the situation as he looked at Isabella's room in disarray.
“Isabella. Did you steal your sister’s jewels?”
Isabella jumped.
“Dad, what do you think I am!”
Cardinal de Mare bit his tongue, wanting to reply, "I'm asking because I see you as you."
Raising children is really hard. You have to feed them, clothe them, put them to bed, and even please them.
“No, it’s not a jewel or anything. I actually secretly looked at Ariadne’s diary, and she got really angry over it and turned the room upside down!”
Ariadne spat out in tears.
“If you’re going to talk...!”
'Do it right' was the complete sentence she was trying to finish.
Ariadne planned to appeal to her father that what Isabella had done was not just a petty girlish squabble, but an act of sowing discord in her fiancé's name by trying to break off their engagement.
But suddenly, two thoughts caught her attention.
Do I really want to maintain my engagement to Cesare? And how much can I trust my father?
Cardinal de Mare also knew that she had been intimate with Prince Alfonso.
However, he did not know that much, and he was even more unaware that later on, the funds from the Rambouillet Relief Center were being disguised as Holy See funds and sent to Yesak.
'Will Father... cooperate readily in sending the money to Yesak?'
He could have pretended not to know and pressured her to incorporate the slush funds of the Rambouillet Center into the de Marais family's fortune.
All those who knew the exact details of the slush fund and its creators are dead.
A person who only knows the outline of the story is someone who can be easily killed.
The money came from dirty money, and no one can ask for it back.
He had all the qualities necessary to embezzle, and Cardinal de Mare was the man to do it.
Ariadne had no idea what Cardinal de Mare was thinking.
Although she had returned to her past life, it was frightening and difficult to fathom the people who had scarred her as a child, especially Lucrezia and Cardinal de Mare.
“...”
Even while Ariadne remained silent, her maids searched Isabella's room diligently.
Because they were Ariadne's people, not Cardinal de Mare's people.
"Stop!"
Cardinal de Mare raised his voice at the maids, including Sancha, perhaps because he was offended by Ariadne's maids who did not even notice him coming in.
“That’s enough. That’s it.”
And with those words, Ariadne also made up her mind.
Let's just let things flow as they will with Cesare.
Instead of trying to eliminate all the variables, appealing to him for love, or venting her anger, she decided to just follow the flow of the river and see how it goes.
That must be fate.
“... Yes, Father.”
Ariadne answered obediently.
“Sancha, let’s go back now.”
“Yes? But I haven’t found it yet...”
“I hope you found this much.”
As soon as those words were spoken, the maids gathered around the mountain cart and stood there.
Of course, none of them cleaned up the mess they had created.
Ariadne glared at Isabella.
“Don’t touch my stuff again.”
Isabella replied angrily.
“It’s petty. Even between sisters.”
“I clearly warned you.”
Ariadne glared at Isabella with something bordering on disgust.
But Isabella paid no attention to her sister's contempt and disgust.
Isabella was the kind of person who thrived on malice.
Isabella smiled brightly, and Ariadne left her room, leaving Isabella behind.
Boom!
“You, you, you just got a title! How dare you do this in front of my father...!”
Ariadne could hear Ippolito's cries from afar, but she didn't care. She was tired.
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