ILIOTS 10

Chapter 10

2. Lily Belmore

I don’t want to go on at length about my childhood. I don’t want to remember it in detail, and besides, no one likes listening to drawn-out stories of misfortune. I simply had the bad luck of being born to the wrong parents. That was all.

Some might object: What nonsense! Not being born into poverty is luck enough, and to have been born the daughter of a noble is an enormous blessing.

Well, that’s half right and half wrong. I know how hard it is to claim a noble title. But that only applies if one is treated as family—treated as a true noble.

Nobles are a people filled with nothing but pride. They consider dishonor more terrifying than death, and they live in constant fear of being gossiped about by other nobles.

The maid should never have gotten pregnant. That night should have ended as a passing moment of impulse.

But misfortune never bothers to knock before walking through the door. In that one night, I was conceived—and that was the beginning of all my misfortunes.

If there is one existence that can most gravely stain a noble’s honor, it is a bastard. Do I really need to explain how they treated an unwanted child like me?

I lived my life locked away in a room. The room was a disused space in the farthest corner of the manor, where even sunlight barely reached.

In that thick neglect, I grew like a stubborn weed. For fear that word might spread that the Bismarck family had produced a filthy bastard, my father dared not cast my mother and me out of the manor. Instead, he meant to trap us there for life.

There isn’t much else to say about my childhood. I was pale and scrawny from lack of sunlight, and my mother would sneak in discarded newspapers beneath her apron to teach me how to read. Sometimes that apron also hid a stolen loaf of bread.

My mother, who struggled to keep me alive, disappeared around the time I turned fifteen. I never learned what exactly they did to her. I can only guess, based on the noises I heard outside the attic before she vanished.

I was fifteen then. My body was still frail from malnourishment, but day by day it was growing closer to that of a woman rather than a child.

Mother often warned me: Never leave the attic! She drilled it into me so thoroughly that I never even thought of defying her. It became the absolute law of my life. For fifteen years, I stayed obediently within that attic.

But every fifteen-year-old girl goes through adolescence. Like any adolescent, rebellion began to stir in my chest.

That was when I started asking questions: Why can’t I go outside? As I grew, the attic became an unbearably small cage. Until then, I had believed confinement to be nothing more than my mother’s decision.

Defying her turned out to be easier than I thought. One day, I quietly opened the door and stepped out. What I found beyond was a world far wider and more beautiful than my tiny room.

Knowing nothing, I wandered in awe at the manor’s splendor. The funny thing was that everyone I passed failed to recognize me.

No one had cared enough in fifteen years to look upon the bastard’s face, and many of the servants had been replaced over time.

In fact, because I resembled my father, the servants bowed to me uncertainly. Alarmed by my shabby shift, some maids whisked me into a chamber full of gowns and dressed me up.

Before I knew it, I had transformed into the young lady of House Bismarck. It did not take long for my father to discover me.

He, too, had completely forgotten about the bastard child from fifteen years prior. Count Bismarck looked quite shocked at the sudden appearance of a girl he’d never seen before.

Having never learned or cared for noble etiquette, I simply stared at him. That seemed to confuse him even more.

“Who are you, to be in my manor without word?”

I thought he was asking for my name.

“Eloise,” I said.

Then I pointed upward.

“I live in the attic at the very top.”

It was as though lightning had struck him. The bastard he had sired fifteen years ago was not only alive, but had grown into a girl who resembled him. The realization seemed to stun him deeply.

But instead of sending me back to the attic, Count Bismarck steadied himself and began inspecting me closely, as though appraising an item to see if it held value.

After studying my face, he seemed to come to a decision, and forced a smile.

“Ah, yes. Eloise. You should have come down sooner to visit us. You must be hungry—why not join us for a meal?”

It never occurred to me that he might harbor vile intentions. At fifteen, I was an ignorant, foolish child. Thrilled at the promise of food, I even asked eagerly:

“Will you give me white bread?”

A crack flickered across his face, but only briefly.

“Of course. You are my daughter, after all.”

It was only then that I realized this imposing man was my father. And I liked him. Because unlike Mother, he offered me not stolen bread but a meal. And he smiled at me warmly.

So I believed he was a good man.

With my sudden appearance, great upheaval shook the Bismarck estate. For the first time in my life, I was given a real room—so vast it was hard to tell if it was a bedroom or a parlor.

Servants brought in countless gowns and indoor garments from who knows where. Attendants hovered to fix my hair and soak my feet in warm water.

It was as if they had been ordered to transform me into a noble young lady. I was thin, and I had no upbringing as a count’s daughter. Tutors from far and wide, renowned even in Beldam, were summoned to instruct me.

My father’s obsession with my education bordered on madness. He often summoned me to check my progress. If unsatisfied, I was not permitted to sleep until I mastered every lesson of the day.

To erase the lower-class speech I had unconsciously inherited from Mother, a tutor once forced seven large glass beads into my mouth.

“Now, my lady, read this book aloud. Clearly, slowly! Follow my example.”

The tutor read, and of course I could not utter a sound. It was maddening. Whoever came up with the absurd notion that stuffing beads in one’s mouth would cultivate noble speech—I wanted to find them.

But I had no choice. The count, desperate to shape me into nobility, and the countess, who detested me, watched with suffocating intensity. I believed it was all my fault.

It’s because I’m not ladylike enough. I must study harder. Then everything will return to normal.

It took months before I could satisfy their expectations. Even then, I was far from perfect, but compared to the beginning, I had become someone entirely different.

Disappointed in myself for being slow to learn, anxious about the next day’s trials, I barely had time to think of my vanished mother. I could hardly care for myself as it was.

I must be a good daughter.

If I become worthy of this household, the countess will love me too.

Crushed beneath overwhelming schedules and pressure, I was on the brink of collapse. While other noble daughters had years of training from early childhood, I had to cram it all into a few short months. It was only natural I was faint with exhaustion.

But I didn’t know how other girls lived. I thought everything was my own inadequacy.

By autumn, I had completed most of my education. I no longer slipped into commoner’s speech, nor forgot etiquette at unexpected moments. At last, I could breathe a little.

When I finally had some time for myself, I enjoyed playing the piano in the small music hall. The piano was the one thing that never tormented me. Playing was not painful—it was joyful. To draw the hidden beauty out of the notes, to bring to life the composer’s art—that was pure delight.

That day too, I was playing in my spare time. The music slowed the passage of time and enriched my parched heart. I was losing myself in admiration for the composer’s brilliance when he appeared.

“A beautiful performance.”

Startled, I turned to see a stranger standing at the door, watching me. At that moment, I had no idea that he was the reason I had been allowed to join the Bismarck family.

Duke Johann Meyer, my half-sister’s fiancé, gazed at me as though seeing straight through me.