The Lucendi estate

It has been half a month since Rita ran away.

Clare, Rita’s personal maid, is holding a piece of paper as she is walking to Lord Lucius’s office.

News of her lady’s disappearance reached the Lucendi estate a couple of days ago.

Through the grapevines from recently employed and inexperienced servants replacing most of the more senior servants who saw the sinking ship of the Lucendi family, Clare learns about her lady’s disappearance, which has been kept secret.

After her lady was sent to be hidden away in a remote manor in a forest, she requested a transfer to be with her mistress’s side, but each time she did, she would be denied.

Clare is fiercely loyal to Rita because she owes her lady her life.

Clare's early life was filled with struggle; she did not have too many memories of her family, and she could hardly remember their faces because, at a very young age, she was abandoned on the streets.

The memories that she could remember were those of her family being very poor. When her family was in dire straights, it led them to abandon her because it was one less mouth to feed.

After that, much of her life during that time was a blur because she had to learn to do whatever it took to survive. Stealing, begging, going through trash—whatever it took for a small child to survive.

On one fateful day, a carriage was passing by the slums Clare was in, and she locked eyes with a small child several years younger than her.

From looking at how ornate the carriage was, she figured it was a noble passing by the slum and wondered why a noble of all people would come to a place like this, but she didn’t give it much thought because of the life she was living, where her only thought was to not die.

However, to her surprise, the carriage stopped, and a butler and the young girl came out. The butler insisted that the young girl stay inside the carriage, but the young girl refused and walked up to Clare to ask if she would like to come with her.

Hearing her offer, she did not know what it was and was distrustful of her, from her experience living in the slum, but she thought to herself that at least it would be better than the situation she was in right now.

Inside the carriage, the young child introduced herself as Rita Lucendi of the Lucendi household and that she would become her servant.

Later, when Clare was taken to a manor that was beyond her wildest imagination, she was cleaned and clothed.

A servant explained who exactly the master she was going to be serving and the responsibility that would entail. She also gave the reason why she was chosen, which was because of the family’s traditions of picking up people from the slums to become their personal servants.

From her time in the slums, she was a smart child, and because of that, she grew an inherent distrust for everyone and figured the real reason was to make sure they were completely loyal to the person they were serving.

Clare was trained to be Rita’s personal maid, a place to sleep, food to eat, and safety from dangerous people. After a couple of months, she had the bare minimum knowledge to become a personal maid for Rita. She met Rita for the first time.

At this point in time, Clare did not see Rita as her lady but as a means to keep a roof over her head and food on her plate.

Her first impression of the lady she was supposed to serve was the same as the others; she was a creepy child who never showed any expression. But unlike the other servants trying to avoid her, Clare didn’t care too much about it and served her because, compared to what she did to survive in the slums, it was as different as day and night.

This changed when Rita almost lost her life in an assassination attempt when she was a candidate to become the 3rd prince's fiance.

Clare’s superior and mentor at the time, the maid previously serving Rita, Maranda, often left Rita unsupervised because she too found her creepy and would rather serve Rita’s older brother, Eric, instead of serving Rita with her.

Rita didn’t really complain since she was reincarnated into this world and wasn’t used to having servants serve her every need, so she preferred it this way.

This resulted in Clare being the actual one who was taking care of her.

When Rita and her family went on a hunting trip, Maranda was bribed by an unknown person to assassinate Rita with a really potent poison. She chose the hunting trip as a good opportunity to kill her because it was in a remote location and there wouldn’t be any strong healers present that could cure poison.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

She poisons Rita’s dinner, causing her to collapse, and then puts the empty vile of poison in her bag. Then she accused Clare since Clare was one of the only two people who served Rita, so she made the perfect scapegoat, leading her to be arrested on the spot and imprisoned.

After being arrested, Clare was sent to a cell, awaiting a trial that would definitely find her guilty. She pleaded that she was innocent, but after investigators told her that they had found the empty vial of poison in her bag, she realized there was no hope in proving her innocence, and she sank into hopelessness.

However, a week before the hunting trip, which was around the time when Maranda was bribed, Rita noticed Maranda was acting strange and felt like she was planning something malicious. Rita requested that Clare buy some things in secret since Rita didn’t know what exactly Maranda was planning and it wasn’t anything good.

The preparation proved helpful because of the numerous high-grade anti-poison potions she had Clare to get bought enough time to save her life. However, it did leave Rita unconscious for several days till a high-ranking priest was sent in to treat the rest of the poison inside her body because the poison proved particularly strong, so the high-grade antidote potion couldn’t cure all of it.

Rita, who was bedridden, took the time to visit Clare in her cell, directly after she had awoken, to tell her not to worry and to wait for a little longer, giving her hope because Rita told her who actually poisoned her and had already prearranged things to prove her innocence.

Rita figured whatever Maranda was planning would result in Clare getting the blame. She stopped Clare from being charged with the murder of an aristocrat by telling people how odd Maranda was acting before the hunting trip and proving Clare’s innocence by showing the pre-arranged receipts of the things Rita asked Clare to buy in secret, including some witnesses to corroborate the story.

After that, Clare's attitude changes, and she realizes Rita is somebody who is worth serving because she was kind enough to take the time to visit her after being advised to rest and was smart enough to plan things out to this extent.

When Clare was at the door of Lord Lucius’s office, she heard loud shouting inside. It was Mistress Elza yelling at someone.

“How the hell did you not find her already? Why did we take you off the streets for you to be this useless!”

Hearing the shouting, Clare thought it best to wait for a bit so things would calm down because Mistress Elza's temper has been really short lately.

Continuing to hear shouting, a bit of cursing, and finally, a teacup breaking led Lord Lucius to raise his voice to tell her to calm down.

The room became quiet, and Clare thought it was time to go in.

Knocking on the door with a combination of anger, annoyance, and resignation in Lord Lucius's voice, he told Clare to come in.

She stepped inside and saw that the person who was being yelled at was Captain Boras, the head knight of the Lecundi family, inside the office. Looking at him, she felt kind of bad for him because he was facing the brunt of Mistress Elza's anger. He had thrown a teacup at him, which had tea splashed all over his uniform, but fortunately, the teacup missed and hit the wall behind him.

“I apologize for disturbing you.”

Bowing her head.

“I would like to turn in my resignation paper.”

Clare is giving her resignation paper to the head of the household instead of one of her superiors because most of the more experienced servants are already quitting, including the head maid and butler. The reason for them quitting is due to the announcement that Rita doesn’t have any magical powers. Seeing that this family was a sinking boat, they went to find work in other noble families.

“I see. Place it on my desk and leave.”

Clare did what he told her and left the office.

As Clare closed the door, Lucious took a deep sigh, thinking about the situation. It wasn’t just some of the servants that had left after news of Rita’s not having magical powers.

Lucious expected most of their connections to be cut off after announcing that the daughter of the Lucendi family was magicless, but he didn’t expect it to be way worse than he would have imagined.

The number of families that wanted to make the Lucendi completely fall was way higher than he expected. It is due to Lucious underestimating the number of people he backstabbed in the past being able to strike back when they are this vulnerable.

Elza bit her nail, trying to calm her anger from flaring up again. However, it wasn't working, and she was about to go on another tirade against Boras. Seeing Elza about to burst, Lucious told her to calm down again.

“How can I? Thanks to that worthless child, I can’t show my face anymore.”

“I know.”

Putting his hand on his forehand and gritting his teeth.

“That child had cost us greatly. Boras!”

Lucious turned to face Boras, who was quietly standing and ordered.

“Continue searching for Rita; use all the knights we have; drag her back if you have to.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Receiving the order, Baras placed his right hand in a fist on his chest and bowed, then left the office.

As Clare was walking to her quarters after turning in her resignation letter to Lord Lucious, she had already packed all of her things into a suitcase.

Clare plans to find her master, Rita, and serve her once again.

Since Clare was Rita’s personal maid for a long time, she is the only one in this world who can tell what Rita is thinking and feeling. It took a lot of work to figure out, but she was able to figure out Rita’s expressions, like through the intervals of her blinking or the slightest purse of her lips.

Clare remembers the times when Rita talked about magic; she would also talk about wanting to become an adventurer after she enrolled in the royal academy with much enthusiasm.

Remembering those times also reminded her of the time when Clare saw Rita smile for the first time. She thought she imagined it or that Rita was an imposter because it was so out of character for her that she never thought Rita would actually do it.

The knights and everyone else thought that Rita had run away to the neighboring Lunslur territory, so they searched there secretly.

However, Clare thinks differently and decides to search for Rita where she thinks Rita might be, somewhere different than the knights are searching for, starting with the adventurer town of Farsborow.