Chapter 146: Blade Behind the Smile [3]
The day dragged on far longer than Amelia had anticipated.
From the bustling kitchens, where Julies exchanged light banter with the cooks, to the stables, where he inspected the horses with a discerning eye, he remained composed — maddeningly so.
Not once did he stumble over his words, lose his temper, or even appear flustered. Every interaction was smooth, precise, and courteous, like a well-polished blade that revealed nothing of the steel beneath.
Amelia trailed at his side, her fan hiding both her faint scowl and the restless tapping of her fingers. She had expected arrogance — perhaps the kind of overconfidence that made lesser men slip. But no. Julies was... disciplined.
Too disciplined.
They stopped briefly by the armory. Julies tested the balance of a practice sword before setting it back into the rack with care. His motions were fluid, efficient — but lacking the self-satisfaction she could have exploited.
"Are you always this... proper?" Amelia asked, her voice a shade too light to be entirely sincere.
He glanced at her with mild curiosity. "Proper?"
"Yes," she said, letting her fan close with a sharp click. "Never a misstep, never a stray word. Almost as though you’ve trained yourself to be unreadable."
Julies’s smile was faint, unreadable in itself. "If I have, it’s because people often look for weaknesses to exploit, my lady."
Her lips curved upward, though her eyes sharpened. "What an interesting philosophy for someone of your position."
"I’ve found it keeps things simple," he replied, turning toward the courtyard again.
She followed without a word, but inwardly her frustration simmered. The man was like a fortress — no open gates, no loose stones to pry free.
Yet she refused to believe there was no way in. Everyone had something — a flaw, a temptation, a vulnerability. And if she couldn’t find it in one day, then she would keep looking.
But even after hours of observation she didn’t find anything.
Julies wasn’t aggressively pushy.
Nor was he dismissed for being an outsider.
Though a noble, he carried the ambiguous stain of being a foreigner — a detail Amelia had assumed would make the household bristle under his management. She’d expected gossip, resistance, maybe even a few incidents to undermine him.
But the reality was... irritatingly different.
’No servant is only a servant,’ she thought, her eyes narrowing as she trailed him from morning until evening. ’They all have some flaw. Some arrogance. Something fatal that will surface if I just watch long enough.’
And so she watched.
From the precise way he checked the household ledgers to the neatness of his reports... from the way he personally inspected the safe to the way he fed Alice’s pets without a single hint of distaste... there was nothing. No slip of the tongue. No unguarded pettiness.
Julies was infuriatingly steady.
The only imperfection she managed to uncover came in the form of a porcelain teacup.
"Same as always with your skills," she remarked, eyeing the cup as though it had personally wronged her.
"I’ll take that as a compliment," he replied without missing a beat.
"Still slick at brushing off sarcasm," she muttered. "Any connoisseur of black tea would have spat this out."
It was, frankly, dreadful tea — the color too pale, the aroma half-bloomed, the taste hovering somewhere between bland and bitter. And yet, it wasn’t enough.
If only his incompetence in brewing tea extended to something that mattered.
Her nails drifted to her lips — a habit unbecoming of her station — and she bit down lightly, unable to suppress the restless gnawing in her chest.
This wouldn’t do.
Even after playing what she thought was her strongest card — the suggestion of an engagement — Julies remained firmly by Alice’s side. Worse, she still hadn’t found a real weakness to exploit.
And every moment he stayed, every shared glance or quiet word between him and Alice, only deepened the anxious knot in her stomach.
Something had to change. And soon.
---
That night, long after the household had gone quiet, Amelia sat at her vanity, comb in hand, dragging it through her hair with mechanical precision.
The candlelight caught the gold trim of her mirror, but her gaze was fixed not on her own reflection — rather, on the image in her mind.
Alice’s smile.
A rare, unguarded one.
And beside her... Julies.
Always Julies.
Amelia’s fingers stilled on the comb. She could almost hear their laughter from the day before, soft but familiar — far too familiar. It wasn’t the smile Alice gave out of politeness at a ball, nor the faint smirk during a duel. No, this was something warmer. More private.
Her stomach twisted.
Julies wasn’t her equal. He wasn’t even supposed to be close. A servant — no, a glorified errand boy with noble blood so thin it barely mattered — had no right to be the one Alice turned to first.
That place was hers.
It had always been hers.
She set the comb down, her lips pressing into a thin line.
It wasn’t enough to simply watch him anymore. Waiting for him to trip up was like waiting for snow to melt in the dead of Northern winter. No, she’d have to change the game entirely.
She reached for her writing desk, drawing out a crisp sheet of stationery. The quill in her hand hovered just above the page.
There were plenty of noble families who would have paid handsomely to have Julies’s competence under their roof. And plenty more who would take him in for political leverage alone.
An engagement offer to her name had already been a blow to him — but if she could make that offer seem like the most favorable option for him... and the most necessary one for Alice’s family... then perhaps she could force the separation herself.
Her eyes softened, almost dreamily, at the thought of Alice turning to her once more without that infuriating shadow at her side.
A calculated smile curved her lips.
Julies Evans might be unreadable, but every fortress had a gate.
She would simply be the one to build it... and then close it behind him.