< — The founding party — > (2)
When they arrived at the break room, Anita looked at the knights with a smile in her eyes. They tried to make a solemn expression, but the corner of their lips twitched up and down in an attempt not to smile.
The knights did not deter Anita from going in nor did they stop the Duchess whom the princess had instructed to be allowed access at any time.
Anita went inside the break room and as if acting to close the door, she naturally moved to the rear of the group. After passing through the short hallway, the maidservant opened the middle door. As soon as the Duchess passed through the door, Anita quickly grabbed the maid's hand and pricked it with a poisoned needle.
The maidservant turned around to look at Anita quizzically, but she quickly fell unconscious and collapsed to the floor. Anita deliberately let out a short scream.
"Oh my god!"
Lucia hurriedly approached to help the fallen maid. Anita acted like she was helping the maid but secretly relaxed her hand. She took a step back and pulled out a perfume bottle from her bosom.
"Duchess."
Anita sprayed perfume in the direction of Lucia, who had lifted her head in response. The contents of the perfume bottle was an anesthetic that quickly made one fall unconscious. Lucia didn't even have time to grasp the situation or let out a scream. Still holding onto her maid, she sank to her knees and fell unconscious.
Everything took place in a very short moment. Anita's face was flushed red. She was so excited that she was short of breath.
"W-W-What…in the world. Why did you…"
David emerged, looking extremely flustered.
"What is this?"
David had taken this task lightly. He thought he just had to wait in the break room, meet the Duchess and that was it. He didn't know he would bring substantial harm to the Duchess in this manner.
"Furthermore, what's with the fainted woman in the bathroom?"
For David, the time he had to wait for Anita felt too long. He couldn't stay still at all, so he looked around the break room and found a woman lying on the floor of the bathroom in her underwear.
"I momentarily put her to sleep so I could borrow her clothes. The Duchess is also only unconscious for a while. Please help me. Before the Duchess wakes up, she needs to be moved to the sofa and the maid has to be cleared away.
A conflict arose in David's mind.
'Isn't this getting too big?'
He had no intention of taking any damage to himself due to this incident. Rumor with the Duchess. He didn't think of anything more than that.
Anita read the cowardice from David's hesitant expression. Because she already knew that David's delivery was only to this extent, she wasn't disappointed.
Plus, it wasn't just David. Males, the lot of them were like that. They only cared for their profit and if they were slightly disadvantaged, they would pulled out their feet, but on the outside, they bragged as if they were magnanimous.
'That man wasn't like that.'
Sadness momentarily flitted across Anita's eyes. The Duke of Taran. She had not met a man like him whose inside and outside were the same.
He did not whisper affectionate lies to get a woman's body. He directly said he only needed her body. She didn't even expect that man's affection. She was even satisfied with only his body but.
Anita's eyes fell on the Duchess and her gaze turned chilly. It was because of this woman.
'You can't withdraw like this.'
It was possible that she couldn't completely escape from this incident. She didn't expect David to loyally keep the secret till the end.
But if David were to withdraw here, she wouldn't even be able to finish what she had started and would be the only one that got swindled. David had to be involved, even if it was only a little bit, for there to be a chance to get away.
"It's just the beginning, are you going to stop here? I will follow Your Excellency's will. It's only too bad that such an opportunity will not come again."
Knowing David's personality, pushing him would backfire instead. Anita stepped back as if she was giving David all the right to make the decision.
'You want to retreat alone? I'm sorry but you can't do that.'
Anita fiddled with the ring in her palm. It wasn't a completely bad idea to just kill everyone. Kill David and kill the Duchess too. Then finish it off by ending her life herself.
From the moment she stabbed the handmaid with the poisoned needle, she threw away all the taboos in the world that were obstructing her. It gave her an enormous sense of freedom. The darkness that had been piling up in her heart as she lived, burst out all at once and swallowed her whole.
"Well. We've come all the way here, I won't cowardly run away."
David made a resolute expression as if he had made a grave decision. He did not see the weird smile that Anita gave. Perhaps if he had seen it, he would have felt terrified enough to want to run away from the break room immediately.
"Are they really only temporarily unconscious?"
"Yes."
"It won't harm the Duchess, right?"
That harm to the Duchess may come back to bite him in the future, that sort of worry was David's sincerity.
"Of course. There is absolutely no harm to the Duchess."
The lingering bloodthirst in Anita's eyes disappeared without a trace. She did not lie. The thing she sprayed on the Duchess was really just an anesthetic that cause one to temporarily lose consciousness. The Duchess' maid and the handmaid lying in the bathroom would probably die, but she didn't go out of her way to say that.