Please Don’t Remember Me - Chapter 4 Part 1. The Three Mistresses

A month has passed since she arrived in Bajona.

Now that she knew that the Duke wouldn’t come, Clara lived as she pleased, wearing whatever clothes she liked. However, the house arrest has not been lifted yet. This was why she has not yet met the mistresses.

She thought it was likely that the mistresses she had been told she would get along with would be different. She had asked the butler to meet with the mistresses, but he had not responded and had put her on hold.

She has been waiting for a month, so why not a bit longer?

Clara, who was tired of living like this, decided to make her own move. She was told that the mistresses liked holding a tea party in the garden. From her room on the first floor of the house, she could look out onto the veranda and see a little of the back garden of the main house. There was a set of tables where they could hold a tea party. On a sunny day that was not too hot, she went upstairs and downstairs several times, waiting for the tea party to take place.

And today, at last! She was able to see the three women around the table. There was no time for a leisurely change of clothes. She did my hair properly and went out into the garden with her bag, which she had prepared beforehand.

Clara’s garden was partly connected to the back garden of the main house. She cut through the dividing hedge with a pair of large garden shears and entered the back garden. Incidentally, I took these garden shears out of the shed where they had been left unattended. She made her way through the grass and through the trees to the path in the backyard, where she found herself in front of the tea party table.

Three women stared at Clara in amazement with a blank expression on their faces.

Clara quickly gave a bow.

“My name is Clara.”

The eyes of the three women widened.

“My goodness! Clara!”

“You’re here after all.”

“It’s quite different from what we’ve been told….”

Clara was slightly taken aback by the third person’s words, but she was able to greet her without breaking her smile.

“My name is Laura. Please have a seat.”

“I’m Sofia. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m Aria. I’m afraid this is a very ordinary tea, but I hope you don’t mind.”

At their suggestion, Clara took a seat and was offered a cup of tea. The tea seemed much more expensive than the tea in her house.

“You all know who I am, ……?” Clara asked.

“Yes, of course. We were told that the Princess was to be married off from the great kingdom of Corafran.” Laura, who looked older than the others, replied.

“She is a kind and beautiful princess who will be a good friend to us all. But we didn’t get to see her for a long time, so we thought she didn’t actually come.” Sofia continued crisply.

“The rumors said that she was modest, sickly and fragile, but I didn’t expect her to appear with a leaf on her head and scissors in her hand.” Aria concluded demurely.

“I had been looking forward to meeting you all, but unforeseen circumstances have prevented me from doing so. I apologize for the delay in greeting you.” Clara bowed her head.

Aria shook her hand and said.

“I should have come to greet you. ……and the unexpected, I suppose, is….”

“Are you aware of it?”

Clara looked around at the three faces.

“Of course.”

The three of them had been told that Clara was going to come, but suddenly the princess of Bajona interrupted the tea party, and announced.

“I’ve come to marry the Duke, so he doesn’t need a mistress any more.”

“We were afraid that we were going to be thrown out too, after all the time we’ve spent together.”

“Well, I knew it might happen one day.”

“The Duke said we should stay here, though.”

Laura and Aria were baronesses and Sofia was the daughter of a merchant. They were well off, but when their family’s business failed, they were on the verge of ruin. The Duke, whom they had met before at a night party, kindly helped them. All of them were grateful to him, but they didn’t want to marry because their status was out of proportion to each other, and they lived together peacefully.

It was not because of the Duke’s personality, Clara thought, but because the three of them happened to be of excellent characters.

It was the first time in a long time that Clara had been able to talk to intelligent women, and she felt pleasantly tired. She was able to get to know all three mistresses, and it was agreed that she would inform them through her butler the next time she wanted to hold a tea party.

***

Clara trimmed the hedge in her garden without permission, but they didn’t notice. It was open from the start, though.　Maybe it was a good thing that she came back home after trimming it to make it look like that.

Thinking that no one would find out, Clara decided to go out for a while next time. She had been under house arrest for two months now. There was a knight on guard at the entrance. And the house was surrounded by high walls, which could not be crossed. After thinking about what to do, she decided to go out confidently.

“I’m a human being, I’ll have to go out at some point.”

She put on a ragged dress and walked out the door. The knight in charge of security looked at Clara with a shocked face. She smiled as if there was nothing wrong.

“Good day to you. Thank you for all your hard work.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take a walk there for a change.”

“Yes.”

She had already investigated that the knight was on duty on a daily basis. She walked slowly out of the entrance building with the atmosphere that she was always taking a walk. She wandered around the road in front of the house, within sight of the knight. She pretended to take a deep breath in front of a big tree. After a 10-minute walk, she slowly walked back into the house. After a few days of doing this, she finally realized that she could walk out of the knight’s sight and she would not be chased.

Okay, let’s move on to the next step.

When Clara was in the Kingdom of Corafran, she was a sickly little girl who seldom went out, but she actually wandered around the city with her mother occasionally. People didn’t know her face very well, so they never found out. Her mother’s maidservant was also a former colleague of hers, so she and her maidservant happily shopped together as friends in town. She usually acted like a queen, but she thought that was her true self. She never thought that the day would come when she would use the “common people’s street clothes” that he had brought with her to this country just in case.

Carrying only the bare essentials in a small cloth bag, Clara called out to the knight on guard at the door.

“Hey, I want to go into town to get rid of some old things, do you know any good antique dealers?”

“Good second-hand shops? Ah.. the shop on the third avenue is a safe bet.”

“Thank you. I’ll be back soon.”

She gave a big wave to the knight and went out the door as she was. The knight put his hand on his chest and bowed lightly. As she walked out of the gate, she turned and waved again, and he bowed again. When he was out of sight, Clara quickly walked towards the city.

The streets of the royal capital were bustling with cheerful laughter and lively calls.

This was the first time in her life that she has walked alone outside. She always had her mother or a maid or a bodyguard, so she was nervous about walking around aimlessly like this. She asked a friendly butcher how to get to 3rd Avenue, and she took a leisurely detour.

When she came to a big street with a sign saying “3rd Avenue”, she saw the shopping street she had seen in the carriage when she first arrived in this country. She was a little relieved to see a familiar sign.

Clara went into the pawn shop she had been told about and asked to have the necklace her mother had given her valued. It was a piece of jewellery that was given to her by noblemen with a lot of evil intentions, who wanted to take advantage of her as the King’s concubine. Her mother told her to sell it to survive in case of emergency. She picked out the cheapest piece she could find and brought it here. When she went to exchange it for cash, she found that the price was much higher than she had expected.

She had to have money that no one would know about, because if she asked the butler for pocket money, he would ask her all kinds of questions. She thought  she would have to exchange the money every time she went out, but with this much she would not need it for a while.

****