Chapter 202: Someone Who Tells Me That I’m Born To Be Useful

LOUISE’S POV

Back then, the air in the Dubois manor was already sour, but we had not completely drowned in it yet. We were still living under the same roof, breathing the same terse air, moving around each other like two stray cats forced to share a small yard.

There were rules in that house, although no one had bothered to write most of them down.

Adrien was expected to lower his voice when speaking to the other members of the family. I was expected to correct him when he forgot.

He was expected to be grateful for the roof over his head. I was expected to remind him that the roof belonged to people who had never wanted him beneath it.

We were expected to smile in public.

We were expected to remember who had been born legitimate, who had been brought into the family, who had a claim to the estate, and who needed to earn the privilege of being tolerated.

There were rules for the dining room, rules for the drawing room, rules for the garden, and rules for the way we looked at each other when the adults were watching.

The glass house was one of the few places where the rules seemed to loosen. Not disappear. Nothing in that house ever disappeared so easily.

But loosen.

It was late afternoon, just like it is now.

The sun was dropping low over the estate gardens, casting long, orange slants of light across the tiled floor of the glass house at the back of the main building. It was a humid day, the kind of summer day where the air feels like a damp blanket wrapped around your throat.

I had gone into the glass house to get away from Alice.

She had spent two hours lecturing me on how to sit during dinner with other ’elites’, explaining how a girl with my background needed to hold her neck just so, to make people forget where I came from. My head was throbbing with a dull, steady ache.

I could still hear her voice in my head.

"Your shoulders, Louise."

I had straightened them.

"Not like that. You look as though you’re preparing to fight someone."

"Perhaps I am. Do you think they’d appreciate a fight, Mother?"

She had ignored the remark.

"Your chin should be slightly higher. Not enough to suggest arrogance, but enough to imply confidence."

"And if I have no interest in impressing them?"

"Then you will develop one."

That had been the end of the discussion, because Alice had a peculiar talent for making the end of a discussion sound like the beginning of a punishment.

She had stood behind my chair in the dressing room, adjusting the line of my collar with two cool fingers.

"You will be seated beside Councilman Moreau’s wife. She is fond of asking personal questions. Do not volunteer information. Do not become defensive. And whatever you do, do not allow anyone to see that you are uncomfortable."

"What if I am uncomfortable?"

"Then you will learn to conceal it."

I had watched her reflection in the mirror.

"Is there anything else I should know? Perhaps how to breathe without offending someone?"

Her hands had gone still against my shoulders. For one brief moment, I thought she might slap me.

Instead, she had smiled.

"You are clever enough to know when to stop talking."

That smile had followed me all the way down the corridor.

By the time I reached the glass house, I wanted to tear the expensive dress off my body and throw it into the fountain. I wanted to go somewhere no one could correct the way I sat, the way I spoke, or the way I existed.

I didn’t expect anyone to be there.

When I pulled open the heavy glass door, I saw Adrien sitting on an overturned wooden crate in the far corner, right beside a row of half-dead potted ferns. He was wearing a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

His hair was messy, sticking to his forehead from the heat. He had a small wooden stick in his hand, and he was using it to carefully dig tiny weeds out of the dry dirt around the fern roots.

I froze in the doorway, my hand resting on the brass handle.

For a moment, I considered leaving.

There were other places on the estate where I could hide. The west staircase was rarely used in the afternoon, and the old library had a window overlooking the gardens.

I could have gone there and spent the next half hour imagining all the ways I might make Alice regret her little lecture.

Instead, I remained at the door, watching Adrien pull a weed from the soil.

He held it between two fingers, examined its roots, and placed it on the stone beside his shoe.

Then he reached for another. He was doing it with the seriousness of a surgeon. I found the sight irritating.

There were gardeners on the estate who were paid to tend to the plants. There were people whose entire working day revolved around keeping the grounds attractive enough for guests. Adrien could have called one of them over.

But he didn’t.

He sat on a wooden crate in the heat, picking weeds from a dying fern as if it were the only thing he had to do that afternoon.

Usually, when we bumped into each other in the halls back then, we put on our armor immediately. I would curl my lip, make a sharp remark about his mother or his clumsy posture, and watch him shrink back into the shadows.

He would lower his head, step out of my path, and quiet down until I walked past.

That was the rule.

That was the game Alice taught me to play.

She never instructed me to shout at him in front of the family. She understood that open cruelty could make a person look common.

Instead, she taught me to deliver small insults with a smile, to make him feel unwelcome without giving anyone a reason to accuse me of being unkind.

A remark about his clothes. A question about whether he had been invited to a particular gathering. A reminder that some rooms were reserved for family.

The words were always small enough to deny and sharp enough to leave a mark.

I had become very good at it.

But that afternoon, Adrien didn’t shrink back. He was too tired, or maybe the heat had made him slow.

He just looked up from his dirt, blinked his large, clear eyes against the bright orange sunlight, and wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his arm.

"The latch on the door is loose," he said quietly, his voice dry and raspy. "If you don’t shut it properly, the humidity gets out."

I stared at him for a long second.

I had expected him to apologize for occupying the room. Perhaps he would stand, brush the dirt from his trousers, and move aside to let me pass. Perhaps he would offer a greeting so stiff that I could find something to mock in it.

Instead, he was concerned about the door.