My Wonderful Second Life

Chapter 59- A plan underneath gossip

"Maybe we could find another solution..." rambled the duke, stepping away from me, deciding that wandering around his office would be the best way to find a solution.

"I don't see another." I told him after a minute of him roaming around as if confused. "Why are you acting like this, father?"

He stopped to look at me. "I don't follow."

I raised myself from the chair I was sitting, walking slowly towards him. "You do not want me to present my ideas to the Emperor."

He said nothing. He kept himself quiet and unmovable, as if afraid that any sort of action would cause an unwanted chain of events.

"But you don't think my idea is bad." At that, he gulped. "If you did, father, you would have told me already. So why are you acting like this?" He moved his eyes away, setting them on the far end of the room. But I was not one to let it go. Not when I have gone this far. "One way or another, this would have to happen. I cannot work on things that do not leave the ground. That is not fair or why I am here."

"I could do it instead." he offered.

"No."

There was no way, after all the teas I had to endure with that hellish princess. All the work hours we put into organizing those papers, that office, our own ideas that I would let someone else take it. Good or bad, overwhelming or not, it was mine and the girl's job to do it. Not the duke or dukes. Or their sons.

It was ours.

Gobbie knew that.

The space between us grew while his voice lowered. "Our Great Emperor... he can be a hard man."

And that was all he said before Jenni and Fanny appeared, slamming the office doors open, worried about me after having heard of the ruckus with Emperor Salazar. They dragged me away to continue our work and leave Gobbie with his. Yet his final words did not leave me for the rest of the day.

Even when the stakes had gotten higher and all the girls took it up a notch, knowing now they were close to presenting our findings and ideas to the Emperor.

We left late that day, although without Gobbie, who stayed back to finish his duties. After our conversation, I was not sure if that was the reality or if he was trying to avoid me. On our way back, while my body trembled with the speed of the carriage, my questions overpowered me.

"Fanny." I called the girl in front of me. She was busying herself by going back and forth on a range of cloth samples. I suspected they were all to be used on princess Lola's new dress design. She stopped mid-way on a blue midnight silk sample. "Maids gossip, right?" I asked.

The sample fell off her hands, while her eyes grew two times their normal size. "How could you say such things, my lady... I would never gossip!" her voice was shaky and her eyes misty.

I raised my hand. "I am not saying you do. But people naturally gossip and I suppose maids could do it too."

My explanation, while did not set her fully at ease, made her a little calmer, as her flushed skin returned to a more even tone.

"Where do you want to go with this, Lulu?" asked Jenni, sitting by my side, now more interested in me and Fanny than in the window and its view of the bustling capital.

"Nothing much. Only if Fanny had heard from the palace maids anything about Emperor Alexander." As I said those words, an idea began to form at the back of my head, though it was not yet time for it to come to light.

My question got the attention of even princess Lola, who until now had been only interested in the samples and Fanny's lap (happy after appearing without a smidge of shame some time later in the afternoon in our office).