Try Begging Novel - Chapter 17

She looked around and searched every corner of the maid’s room, but he wasn’t there.

Sally stepped inside, firmly locked the door, and stared at the luxurious shopping bag as if it were a ticking time bomb. After much deliberation, she finally opened it and frowned.

‘What’s this new whim?’

The first thing she pulled out was a small box containing ointment. It was for the wound on her face.

Since when did Winston care so much about a maid’s injuries? There were plenty of maids in the mansion kitchen with cut hands; he should send it there instead.

He wasn’t a sane man, so it couldn’t be an apology. What was his game?

She placed the ointment box in the drawer and continued rummaging through the shopping bag. Inside were twelve flat, rectangular boxes. Sally opened one of the boxes, adorned with a flamboyant pattern, and a frustrated sigh escaped her lips.

Silk stockings.

They were three times more expensive than the ones Sally had picked up and put down earlier that afternoon. And there were three pairs of each color: black, white, brown, and peach.

As Sally stared at the twelve bomb-like boxes strewn across the bed, the absurd directive Jimmy had given her replayed in her mind.

“…Please don’t do this.”

A hum of a tune involuntarily escaped Sally’s lips as she tidied Winston’s annex dressing room. The Governor’s rescue operation had turned out to be an unexpected stroke of luck.

Winston had left for Governor’s Peak the day after the operation and hadn’t returned even three days later.

‘Never come back.’

A streak of orange sunset light seeped through the gap in the long window curtains. Given that Lieutenant Campbell hadn’t called by sundown, instructing her to prepare something to suit Winston’s mood, it seemed he wouldn’t be returning today either.

For the past few months, Winston had been sleeping more often in the annex bedroom than in the main building. Because of this, Sally had become incredibly busy, even managing his personal belongings.

As Sally picked up an officer’s uniform from the laundry cart and neatly hung it in the wardrobe, she recalled the vulgar banter from the laundry room moments ago and frowned.

“The button thread was all frayed, you know.”

The maids in charge of the laundry giggled, saying they had to re-sew Winston’s trouser button with strong thread. They were clearly talking about the trousers he wore the day he tried to assault Sally.

“What made him so excited that his button tore off?”

“Didn’t you hear he had a date with the Grand Duchess that day?”

The madman. To spend the entire evening with his fiancée and then immediately try to assault a maid upon returning.

“His height and hands are large, so… ahem… that must be large too, right?”

One maid whispered, and another shook her arm, clenching her fist.

“It’s obvious just by looking at the stretched thread. Wouldn’t it be about this big? Doesn’t it seem like that would also be exceptionally well-formed?”

At that moment, Sally involuntarily pictured a large ‘cigar’ and grimaced as if she had bitten into a bug.

Why on earth were they curious about that bastard’s filthy parts? Sally didn’t want to know, but now that she couldn’t not know, it was simply unfair.

The cart was almost empty. All that remained were trifles like socks and handkerchiefs. Sally unconsciously picked up a crisply ironed and neatly folded white silk handkerchief from the basket and frowned again.

‘It’s that damn handkerchief!’

She had barely resisted the urge to throw it into the stove and burn it the moment she found it. Considering his eccentricities, if she burned an item he had deliberately left for her to see, he would undoubtedly interrogate her as if he had caught her red-handed.

Sally, as if to show him, stuck the now pristine handkerchief among the tightly packed ones in the drawer.

‘Should I just get myself fired?’

She was taking the laundry cart back to the first floor and heading up to the attic with her portion of dinner when a good idea suddenly popped into her head.

A scandal involving a humble maid, while the engagement to the Grand Ducal family was still pending… Mrs. Winston would undoubtedly kick Sally out immediately.

Then it wouldn’t be that she didn’t undertake the new mission, but that she couldn’t, right?

But a terribly strong sense of responsibility held Sally back. She had painstakingly, and successfully, infiltrated the Winston household. If she were to abandon it without planting anyone, it would be like building a sturdy bridge only to set it on fire on the way back.

There was Fred, but honestly, he wasn’t reliable. He didn’t have Winston’s trust, so there was no telling when Winston might capriciously send him to another unit or branch.

‘Never come back. Or fall head over heels for another woman in Governor’s Peak… Oh, why am I doing this again?’

After finishing her meal, Sally went to the small bathroom attached to the maid’s room and let out a long sigh. She turned the shower valve, but no matter how long she waited, only icy cold water poured out. Sometimes, the old boiler in the annex basement couldn’t send hot water all the way up to the attic.

The reward for hard labor was an ice-cold shower. It was unbearable.

The bathroom below the attic was already freezing anyway. Shivering in her underwear, Sally glared at the pouring icy water, then turned it off. She put her clothes back on, gathered a change of clothes, and headed downstairs.

After all, Winston wouldn’t be coming back.