Eton Hall sits in the center of a large undulating park surrounded by formal landscaped gardens mixed with multiple water terraces. A river runs throughout the park, damming into a lake where lotus flowers bloom.

Into the woodlands, where small animals like rabbits run free, is a small waterfall-like cascade, flowing out of the great lake, overlooked by the shade of willows hundreds of years old. On hot summer days, I seek cooling refuge there and read. It is also where I taught Kalel how I eat a peach.

The farmland is filled with a mix of endemic and imported food, some in greenhouses. My favorite is a palatial greenhouse for ornamental plants that require a special temperament like orchids, bonsai, and anthuriums. Kalel picks me flowers daily. Today, it’s a red carnation.

Eton Hall covers a breathtaking seven acres, a mile south from Lundam, the capital of Atlantia. And yet seven acres is not big enough for me and Kalel. It has been over a week since we last spoke. I have been avoiding him. I don't want to have to be confronted about why I was reading literature fantasizing his job. And yet we always run into each other.

Now I'm in the long hall. It is much like a museum space, decorated with carvings and sculptures of the duke’s predecessors, lit by the sunlight streaming from a domed glass ceiling about 67 feet above. 

I see his sleek figure in between marble sculptures. The glint of his glasses in the sun. It’s too late to pretend I didn’t see him, and our eyes meet. His ruby eyes widen momentarily in surprise, but he quickly composes himself and gives me a polite bow.

"It is a beautiful day, my lady," he begins the small talk, his eyes taking on that adorable crescent shape when he smiles.

I miss him.

"Indeed," I reply in my casual, unaffected best and turn away just before he notices that my blushing cheeks betray my cold eyes. 

I'm here to jog my memory. Despite how the duke looks like, I learn from Sylvia that three generations ago, there had been an Asian woman, a woman from the East as they call it, who married into Westburgh. 

It was a passing comment but I couldn't let it go.

It says here under her full-body sculpture that the duchess was nicknamed the Tigress of Westburgh. Ambition and an independent way of thinking are qualities in women that are not really celebrated in this world, or maybe this era in this world, so it wasn't really a compliment. Despite the fierce connotations of the name, there's no denying that she oversaw the renovations of Eton Hall and the prosperity of the duchy when she brought in irrigation to all of Westburgh's farmlands.

The tapestries and china throughout the house are hers. The water terraces, the river, the streams, and the great lake—she had those commissioned. It even says here that she followed the principles of Feng Shui. It was also under her that Eton Hall became the first house in Atlantia to have electricity, plumbing, and central heating, so I am grateful to her for these creature comforts. 

Zhen Huan Wei Westburgh. The same last name as my mother in the real world.

I turn around and Kalel is gone. Looks like he was only passing through the long hall. As grand as it is, it is merely an anteroom for the saloon. The saloon, like in a modern-day dining room, is where our most important artwork is displayed. The walls are painted with murals of the history of the Westburgh family, all under a domed frescoed stucco ceiling where the fully-armored 1st Duke of Westburgh is being blessed by angels and flanked by friendly woodland animals as he plants the first white rose of this world.

The saloon is connected to the library, and I see Kalel there. He’s placing tomes that my father brought back from his travels into soaring wooden bookshelves. He stops what he's doing to give me a deep, polite bow, and I acknowledge it with a nod.

I seek biographies, a journal, anything relating to my Eastern ancestor. I steal glances at Kalel, and I feel like he’s doing the same, but never really catch him in the act. 

Found one. An entry about Zhen Huan Wei Westburgh. It seems our similarities don’t only end with the maiden surname, as she was also the only daughter in the household of a wealthy feudal lord. 

It says here that she was 16 when she was kidnapped from the lord’s castle by the 2nd Duke of Westburgh during a territorial battle with the Kingdom of Silla, Atlantia's Eastern imperialist superpower counterpart. Her husband decapitated her entire household and even looted her mansion. Yet she married him as soon as they returned to Eton Hall. I thought it was a case of Stockholm syndrome at first, but it turns out, her husband impregnated her during the kidnapping—probably rape—and she gave birth to an heir 7 months after their wedding. 

The 2nd duke was dispatched to fight in another battle soon after their son was born. There, he died. As a widow, she became a hot target for the duke’s brothers and the vassals, whether by assassination or seduction, but she lived through it all and never remarried until she died in her sleep at age 30. 

She was the first and only female head of Westburgh. Aside from succession laws that name only sons as eligible heirs, there have been no daughters in the Westburgh family—until me, who was picked up by the childless present ducal couple in the grand maze. 

I walk briskly to the long library, where portraits of every Westburgh duke and duchess hang, and gaze at her portrait where she holds a lotus flower on one hand, and a white rose on the other. 

Why have I never paid attention before? Long, almond-shaped obsidian eyes, straight brows, a high nose, a tiny red mouth with a mole under it on a pale egg-shaped face—I couldn’t help but cover my agape mouth with both hands. She looks just like my real-life mom!

Having read enough isekai, I easily suspended my disbelief once I was reborn into the world of I Will Make You Love Me. I've gotten by believing that me being here was all random. I just happened to be reading this web novel and while reading it, I died. These are the perfect conditions in the genre, however it was a private jet and not truck-kun that brought me here. 

But the existence of Zhen Huan Wei Westburgh makes me second-guess it. I have goosebumps all over my body. Something about her uncanny similarity to my mom, her circumstances, how she existed in the same universe... It bothers me and I can't put my finger on why exactly.

A voice interrupts my thoughts. It’s Sylvia, telling me it’s time for another fitting with Madame Antoinette, but this time it’s at her atelier in the capital.

“My lady,” another interrupts. It’s Kalel. “Right now, the capital is dangerous. I shall escort you.”