“How is he?” Mary asked on the way back to the White´s mansion. She wore a rather complicated expression and my first guess was that the gossip about the prince already reached her ears. She knew … from the very beginning.

“Oh, I think we will have lots of fun together.” I showed her my teeth which made her roll her eyes.

“What have you done?” She asked, already fearing the worst.

“Nothing? I just found the perfect brat to bully me.” The carriage came to a halt in front of the mansion and I jumped out, completely disregarding the butler who wanted to give me a hand.

“Do I want to know?” I twirled around, walked backwards and smiled brightly. She didn’t need to know what I was doing with the prince, and neither did she want to.

“Probably not … it´s nothing bad though.” Mary stepped out of the carriage as well, gladly accepting the help that was given her. Not too long after that, we entered the mansion under the moonlight. Tens of servants were greeting us in the foyer, all properly dressed in either a suit or typical black and white maid clothing.

Friendly as we were, we greeted everyone back personally. I even made sure to remember each and every name from the thirty-odd servants. They were quite surprised by my friendliness, but as they knew Mary, they probably all assumed I inherited that from her.

In any case, we were soon led to our sleeping rooms on the second floor, right next to each other. Although I wouldn’t use this room that much, I immediately threw myself on my bed and kept staring at the ceiling while a few maids scurried around me for whatever reason.

“Milady, shall we help you change clothing?” Slowly but surely, I let my gaze wander to the maid on my right. Although I didn’t show that, I was a bit creeped out. Imagine someone you barely knew asks to undress in front of three others. There was simply no way this was going to happen.

“Uhm, I´m fine. I would appreciate it if you could lose the knots on my back though.” Opening these or making them was always a hassle, no matter how you looked at it. I was completely unable to fixate the strings on my back alone, although opening them was barely doable with a bit of gymnastics. And so, I turned around to lay on my belly and waited for the maids to untie the knots.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t help you a bit more?” One of the maids asked once again. Did they see me as this incapable or was it just customary to have a few maids who did everything for a noble?

“Yes, there is no need to worry about me. I lived nearly my whole life on a farm and … this much help feels a bit … it´s not as if I am not grateful for your help, but I don’t feel like I actually deserve it.” Even I was surprised by this masterpiece of friendliness, so it was no wonder the maids who were all commoners opened their mouths slightly.

“You don’t have to worry about whether you deserve it or not. As the heiress of the White´s duchy, it is your task to lead us in the future and if we can assist in any way, we will gladly do so.” I bit my lower lip out of frustration. These women were a bunch of smooth talkers, I had to give them that. It was hard to argue against their reasoning, although my chances of actually inheriting the duchy were null in the first place.

There was a system for everything, including inheriting. First was the oldest boy, then the other boys and somewhere right at the end came the girls. If you go beyond even that, you would find an illegitimate heir like me, one out of wedlock. Going by that alone, I simply didn´t qualify to inherit anything at all and if I did, it would cause quite an uproar. Nobody would accept me as the new duchess. As such, the distant relatives of Mary were higher up in the succession than I was.

“I … I will try to rely on you then. But I am fine for now although …” I couldn’t let them go out like this. They wanted to do something for me, but I simply didn’t want them to watch how I changed, or what I changed into.

“Yes?” The maid who spoke earlier asked.

“Can I have scrambled egg tomorrow morning?” I asked with a bright smile.

“I will relay your wish to the cook.” Great … there was less to fuck up in this simple dish, I just had to hope that the cock wouldn’t burn it in the pan. The maids quickly excused themselves afterwards and left me on my comfortable bed. I rolled around for a few minutes, feeling the softness on my skin until I simply had enough. I rolled off the bed, slumped down to the ground and checked the spacing beneath the bed. As promised, my luggage was either sorted into the shelves, drawers or a chest at the bottom of my bed. The other parts of my luggage I purposefully locked was pushed underneath the bed where they laid in an orderly fashion.

After checking each and every lock, I was still unable to find any traces of someone breaking into these suitcases. Happily, I stood up and walked towards the door where I promptly listened to every sound. After listening for a few minutes, I didn’t hear anyone, retrieved the key from the door and stepped outside. I walked towards the very next door to my right and knocked before opening it. Mary sat on a desk, going through a few letters she received to this address.

She halted momentarily as she noticed me beside her, her hand dangerously close to the dagger that laid on top of the desk cabinet. I raised an eyebrow at her behaviour because screaming would have been the better solution if an assassin was here. After all, I was supposed to be next door.

“Is there something for me?” I walked towards her, leaned forward and inspected the letters one by one, at least until Mary opened a drawer and fished a red letter out of it.

“The servants only kept it because I told them something like this would arrive.” She held her nose close to the letter and smelled the heavily scented paper. It certainly didn’t smell good, but rather like cheap perfume … which was probably the reason for the scent in the first place.

I swiftly retrieved the letter from Mary and inspected it closely. Except for the red envelope, it was an entirely ordinary letter with the address written properly on it, although the senders name was missing. I swiftly opened the seal with a short knife laying on the desk and retrieved the contents, a completely white piece of paper with ‘Happy tenth birthday!’ written on it.

“Is he for real?” Obviously, Tom wouldn’t send a useless letter and so I swiftly turned towards the chimney in her room and retrieved a bit of charcoal that was laying at the edge of the hot fireplace. Shortly afterwards, I stood in front of the desk again and gently rubbed the charcoal over the paper. Nothing.

“Not too shabby, Tom.” I said and repeated the same process on the envelope. The letters became visible quite quickly on the front side of the envelope.

“He hid the message on the envelope? Isn´t that a bit unsafe?” Mary asked in wonder.

“You can open a letter easily with the right tools without anyone noticing. I doubt Tom isn´t aware of this.” I said. Tom forged a lot of documents in the past, a few letters were definitely among these.

“Still, it a bit harder to look at the contents rather than the envelope?” Mary claimed.

“And who looks at the envelope? If someone wanted to read this letter, they would look at the contents and either see it as a normal letter or try to find any hidden words as I did in the beginning. Nobody suspects the envelope.” I stated and turned the letter around to look at the words on it. “What is ‘The Red Baron’ ?”

“I don’t know?” I would be surprised if she knew.

“Okay … I need to get to the commoner's district as fast as possible.” I was already running short on time as I didn’t know where exactly I had to go. We were on the eastern side of the royal palace, directly at the wall. I just hoped my target was somewhere east of the palace as well.

“I can give you a passage permit if you want … and a map and I think I have a compass somewhere around here as well.” She said and started to rummage in a nearby chest.

“A compass? Ah, these things that always point north?” She nodded and handed me a compass, a simple map of the capital city and quickly wrote a permit and stamped it with her seal.

“Okay, I know you are bad with maps and stuff, so … this here is the royal palace and we are on this plot of land …” She quickly told me how I could find my way back which wasn’t too hard. I just had to go towards the huge building from the east and I would eventually find myself in this by iron fences surrounded forest.

“Kay … I got it mum, I got it.” I said as she began to repeat herself a second time. “Have a good night!”

“Come back before sunrise!” She said just as I opened her door. I nodded visibly and closed the door behind me to go back into my own room. After I locked the door behind me, I quickly drew out one of the suitcases under the bed and opened it with a key I had stored in a little pocket inside my dress. In the suitcase, there was the mask I quickly put to the side and my completely black attire. It was a black airy dress that reached just a bit short of my knees. The shoulder part of the dress was quite short, but I was able to cover most of my skin with long satin gloves and knee-high socks. After I swung a long, pitch-black coat around my shoulders, I quickly used a few utensils to make a bun out of my hair and hooded myself appropriately. One look in the mirror confirmed my mostly hidden blonde hair.

During the next few minutes, I rummaged through my chest and soon found the make-up case I was looking for. After I put a bit of red lip gloss on my lips, used eyeliner and makeup to hide my pale skin, I nodded happily and went out of the door again after listening to any sounds. As soon as the hallway was clear, I slipped out of my room silently and locked the door behind me.