Chapter 44
Christina Modina was able to rest properly for the first time in a while.
"This is the first time I've slept so comfortably since my father was murdered. Until now, I only slept lightly, not knowing who might come to catch me."
Although she said that, dark circles were still clearly visible under her eyes.
She had nightmares about her parents and beloved siblings being miserably executed on the scaffold roughly every three hours.
The image of her father, who must have been the most wronged, telling her not to dream of impossible revenge and to use the emergency funds he had secretly hidden to defect to a place like the Kingdom of Lyon.
Her older brother and younger brother kept apologizing, saying they were sorry they couldn't protect her from the evil hands of the Pereira family.
Her mother, who forced herself to smile and comforted her baby sister who didn't understand the concept of death, to make her less afraid.
Her siblings who, despite obviously having endured all sorts of torture, refused to reveal her whereabouts until the end, saying Christina alone must survive.
Just remembering made her grit her teeth.
"Father, Mother. Chris will definitely avenge you. Even if I have to sell everything I have."
She heard someone knocking on the door of the room where she was staying.
Is it Young Master Medici? Or someone else?
She roughly tidied up her rag-like clothes.
No matter how pretty a person is, rags are rags, so there wasn't much difference.
"You may come in."
"Excuse me."
Chloe opened the door and entered.
In her hands were a white gown that could be worn while bathing and a cloth to cover the chest.
"The young master instructed me to take good care of Lady Modina. I'm the young master's personal maid, so other maids will mostly attend to you while you're here."
"Thank you."
These weren't just empty words.
She was being treated very politely as if she were a noble lady, even though she no longer had any social value.
She felt that despite knowing her circumstances, rather than rashly sympathizing, she was being treated as a comrade with the same goal.
'It might be good to stay with the Medici family if I have nowhere else to go.'
With the money her father left, she could probably live as a small landowner in some quiet countryside, but she might meet bandits or bad people on the way to exile.
In the worst case, people in the village might falsely accuse her of living alone to seize her property.
Christina, feeling a bit better, joked.
"Does giving me this bathrobe mean you want me to serve the young master at night?"
A playful remark she couldn't make when she was a lady of a merchant family.
But now that she's a fallen lady, lower in status than even a serf, such mischievous words are possible.
Chloe shook her head.
"S-such embarrassing words..."
Chloe, continuing her words, blushed like a very ripe apple.
Then she lowered her head and stammered.
"We don't know your clothes size, so he said to wear this temporarily until we bring new clothes after measuring. Unlike other noble young masters, our young master absolutely, absolutely would never use his money and power to violate women!"
Christina's rhetoric honed as a merchant family's lady in social circles, and her worldly wisdom learned to become an independent merchant, came to this conclusion hearing those words:
'She truly loves her master.'
Otherwise, she wouldn't get so excited, stammer, and get angry like that.
She raised her evaluation of Fabio quite a bit.
First, as a woman, she didn't like the idea of threatening other women for relationships, and he was a person of integrity who didn't do that at all.
Second, he had a personality that could make even a mere maid fall completely in love with him, which almost never happens, you could say absolutely never.
"I'm sorry."
When a woman much higher than her, and whom Fabio had ordered to treat as an honored guest, apologized, Chloe shook her head back and forth.
"No, the head butler said that's normal in other families. But our young master would absolutely never do such a thing."
Saying that, Chloe smiled a bit bitterly.
It was good to be respected, but now she wanted to be loved more by her master.
"And please speak casually to me. I'm just a maid, and Lady Modina is the young master's guest."
"Then I'll do that."
"Yes, my lady. Now I'll measure your clothes size."
Chloe took out paper, a pen, and a tape measure from her apron pocket.
Then she started measuring with very clumsy movements.
"Bust 87, waist 58, hips 89. Height 168..."
Although Christina had been on edge due to thoughts of revenge, seeing her clumsily but earnestly taking measurements made her smile naturally.
Her handwriting was a bit crooked even by servant standards, let alone noble standards...
Cute appearance, round atmosphere, gestures and movements that showed she was really trying hard.
"The Medici young master is lucky to have a maid like you."
"Is that so? The young master always dotes on me too."
Seeing such a pure smile, Christina lowered her guard a lot in her heart.
'Even if I don't know about that Fabio de Medici young master, I probably don't need to be wary of this child.'
So she naturally asked Chloe:
"What kind of person is the young master?"
Hearing those words, Chloe answered honestly.
"The head butler and others say he's a really scary but kind person."
"Not that, what you think of the young master."
Other maids or servants wouldn't answer that question.
Because even that alone could allow one to infer some of the family's secrets.
However, Fabio had instructed Chloe like this:
'We need to lower Lady Modina's guard, so answer everything she asks.'
Anyway, Christina would have to share life and death with Fabio for a while, and even though she's a personal maid, the level of 'secrets' Chloe knows isn't a threat to Fabio.
"The young master is a kind person. Even though he's busy, he spends time with me every day, and he eats cake even though he doesn't like it very much."
"Why does the young master eat it if he doesn't like it?"
"He said if I ate expensive snacks alone every day, other maids or butlers might not look kindly on it."
"I guess if he ordered such expensive snacks to be made and offered just for you alone, everyone might get jealous."
Strictly speaking, all the maids and lower-level butlers were jealous of Chloe.
The size of that jealousy varies from person to person.
Still, since she's a maid who's with the master and eats it every day, they can't scold her separately for not knowing her place...
Chloe has never been bullied even once.
No, there was a maid who tried to bully her, but that woman met with a very unpleasant fate.
She didn't die, but her father, who was a master craftsman in a guild, was suddenly fired and chased to the countryside.
"Maybe that's why everyone doesn't seem to be jealous of me. Rather, I have friends among the head butler Sebastian, other people, and some of the maids. Sometimes the young master even gives me pocket money and a carriage to go play in the suburbs, saying I might get bored if I'm always by his side."
"He really cherishes you a lot."
"And all the other servants like the young master too. He takes care of everyone's family events, and gives good wages."
Nobles, or more precisely, nobles of Fabio's level, hardly care about servants' family events.
At most, they give money for the events of the head maid, who is the right hand of the legal wife, or the head butler and senior butlers who are the right hand of the family head.
Wages also have severe differences depending on the job.
For lower-level butlers or maids, half a silver coin with room and board provided.
The rest either use the 'family's power' to fill in living expenses, or just be satisfied with room and board and endure until they can get a job elsewhere or get married based on this experience.
"So even after getting married, other maids want to stay with the family."
Hearing this, Christina was impressed.
Taking care of mere servants might not seem very useful in normal times, but when a crisis hits the family...
'They would all become one body to protect the family.'
"How did you become the Medici young master's maid?"
To become a maid, you need some connections.
Because from Fabio's perspective, they are also proper 'middle class' people, so they come in through introductions from connections.
But a girl so clumsy at work wouldn't have connections.
If she had connections, she would likely have received at least minimal education to become a maid from a young age.
"When the young master first received his territory, he said I was his and kept me by his side."
Fabio had never said such things, but it wasn't wrong at all.
"Before that, there was a big famine in the village, I lost all my family, and I was almost sold as a sex slave. I hated how the villagers who had been kind until then did that."
"You're similar to me. Then do you want revenge?"
Chloe shook her head at those words.
"If you ask if I want to, I do want to. But it also became the opportunity for me to be able to stay by the young master's side, and anyway, those villagers are also the young master's subjects. If I say I want revenge, it would trouble the young master, so I decided to give up."
"Do you like the young master that much?"
Chloe smiled with a smile only a girl in love could make and said:
"24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I'm happy just seeing the young master's face. I'm happy when he pats my head, and I hope I can keep living like this in the future. No, it would be lonely if it's always like this, so he could express himself a bit more passionately."
Christina felt as if she was truly full just from seeing that expression, even though she hadn't eaten for days.
"So I learned how to write and studied math to be of help to the young master. Someday I want to help with the young master's work too. The head butler said I'd need to study for a few more years to do that much though."
Most personal maids, especially those who are this favored, don't try to make any effort other than maintaining their figure and keeping the favor.
Studying is annoying, and trying hard at something is tiring.
Because it's comfortable now.
'Moreover, for a girl who's never studied before in her life...'
"Then to the young master..."
Hearing up to this point, Christina made an evaluation of Fabio personally.
She wasn't sure how capable he was, but in terms of personality, he was top-notch.
She asked Chloe, who seemed to have found a new family:
"Is revenge really okay no matter what happens?"
"I'm so happy just being by the young master's side that I don't have time to think about such things. I'd rather make other efforts in the time I'd spend worrying about that."
Typically, this includes doing spot exercises to maintain her figure when the young master isn't looking, or massaging her breasts for Fabio who likes large breasts, and so on.
However, Chloe didn't mention that much.
And Christina recalled Fabio's last words again.
That life remains after revenge, and it's only complete when you live happily after finishing your revenge.
She muttered in a voice so small that even Chloe couldn't hear, as if whispering:
"Since it will take time to take revenge, I wonder if I can stay here during that time, no, even after that."