The Villainess Wants to Make Her Husband Slim Down

CHAPTER 106

5 – 12

"The colour of the flowers?"

Gerda repeated Alois' words back at him. The only reaction she had was to raise a single eyebrow, there wasn't even a flicker of panic or surprise on her face.

"I do not understand what you are trying to say. As I said, I attended to you after you fell, I must have had a glance at them then."

But, although Gerda answered clearly, the senior maid and one of the manservants accompanying her had gone pale. It was the man who had testified about seasoning the dish.

Both of them glanced to the side as if trying to avoid Alois' gaze.

The only one who faced Alois straight on, her will not faltering at all, was Gerda. The flowers were red. There was no doubt about that.

"After I fell...?"

Alois sighed gently, remembering the flowers that had garnished the meal.

"At that time, I covered up the flowers. I didn't think it was poison, but... I wanted to avoid any misunderstandings."

Alois saw Camilla in those flowers. With the visit to the flowering town of Blume fresh in his mind, it was easy to couple Camilla with them. He didn't remember if he was consciously thinking it at the time, but looking back, he must have done it to try and cover for Camilla.

When Alois had grabbed them with his hands, those flowers had been crushed in his palm. The process to candy those flowers had made them brittle and delicate, and after being grasped like that, they could hardly be distinguished as flowers anymore, especially if they were only paid a passing glance, as Gerda suggested.

What's more, Gerda also said that she had ordered everything to be cleaned up immediately after Alois was seen to.

"Are you really sure that you saw those flowers here?"

"...Perhaps you didn't cover them up as well as you thought, Lord Alois. I am absolutely certain that I saw those flowers with my own two eyes. Those poisonous flowers that hurt you."

"So, you're saying that you are absolutely certain?"

Saying that to confirm Gerda's testimony, his gaze shifted away from her.

Instead, they came to settle on the younger maids, the ones who had been brought along by the senior maid.

"Can you repeat what you said a moment ago?"

The two maids looked at each other. At the same time, without saying a word, the senior maid glowered thunderously at the two girls. The maids shuddered in fright at the glare, but it seemed like they had already made up their mind all the same. They nodded to each other clearly, then the taller one began to speak.

"When we brought the meal to Lord Alois, there definitely weren't any red flowers. There were only white flowers on the food. I'm definitely sure of that!"

"I see, so that's how it is. The most likely possibility was that the poisonous flowers lost their colour as they were being delivered along with the food. Indeed, by the time I saw them, they had already become white."

That's why it had reminded him of Camilla in Blume. The field of white flowers. The garland she wore like a crown. Ever since then, Alois always tied her and those flowers together in his mind.

"Gerda, let me ask you one more time... did you truly see those flowers?"

Gerda didn't answer straight away.

She simply stood straight, looking at Alois. But that expression of hers... had become ever so slightly stiffer.

"If you hadn't seen it, then why did you say you had? And even if you had, why did you testify that you'd seen their original colour when you couldn't possibly have?"