“Sigh.”

Exhaling warm steam from her mouth, Lina, who had been diligently polishing the armor, looked around.

“I must be the first to clean this place alone.”

Lina had been punished with the task of cleaning the gallery hall alone, a penalty for breaking a piece of the Duke’s china.

“I thought it would end with the butler’s scolding.”

The gallery hall, filled with heirloom artworks, antiques, and portraits passed down through generations, was so grand it was difficult to call it just a room.

To glimpse the wealth and glory of a household, one would look at the gallery hall.

The Fermanness household, as a founding noble family, boasted a gallery hall as grand and resplendent as that of the royal palace itself.

Usually, it would take a day with several servants working together to clean this place that could be called the heart of the house.

But for Lina to clean it alone, it was only natural that it would take more than a day.

She looked down at the armor she had been fiddling with.

“It takes days to clean the floor alone, and now I have to polish the armor too…”

Lina looked at the suits of armor that were lined up on the wall with despairing eyes. Then she shifted her gaze to the pictures hanging sporadically on the wall.

“Come to think of it, there aren’t as many pictures as I thought?”

Typically, the gallery hall would have portraits of successive Dukes and members of the household.

But she realized there were only a few pictures displayed, considering the history of the Fermanness family.

Lina tilted her head in wonder, but then shook it, thinking of the suits of armor she had not yet cleaned.

“Now’s not the time to be curious about that! I have a long way to go to clean this place!”

It was as Lina picked up her bucket and moved to where another suit of armor was.

“Huh?”

A door she had never seen before caught her eye.

“Was there another room here?”

She had not noticed it before because many people were moving around when she had come here in the past.

“Do I have to clean that room too…?”

As she hesitated to enter the room, Cullen’s words flashed through Lina’s mind.

[You must clean every nook and cranny, even the mouse holes.]

“Phew. If I don’t clean this room, I might hear something later.”

Not wanting to hear Cullen’s scolding again, Lina took her broom and entered the room.

It was midday, but the room was dark as all the windows were covered with thick curtains.

Lina approached the windows, guided by the light seeping through the door.

Swish.

The warm sunlight began to shine as she drew the heavy curtain aside.

“Now I can see something.”

But the room seemed untouched, covered in a thick layer of dust.

“Is this the right place to clean…?”

Lina began to look around, brushing the dust off her face.

Paintings and antiques were stacked in corners, covered with cloths.

“Why aren’t these paintings displayed in the hall if there are so many?”

Out of curiosity, Lina uncovered one. An oldlooking portrait came into view.

“A portrait?”

It was a man with silver hair as white as snow.

“Huh? This person…”

Even though the color had faded, the man in the painting reminded her of someone.

“The Duke? No, the hair color is different.”

Examining the picture with interest, Lina found the name written below.

[Valige Mersedon de Fermanness]

“The same name as the Duke? An old Duke of Fermanness?”

It wasn’t uncommon to inherit an ancestor’s name, so the similarity in names wasn’t surprising. But then,

“Why is his hair silver?”

Lina thought of the Duke’s black hair. The pitchblack color of now and the silver of the painting seemed so different that it was hard to think they were from the same family.

Hair or eye color often symbolized a family, but this was not the case here.

The reason why the hair color of the Fermenance family’s ancestor and the current Duke were different was not a common occurrence.

“Though the pumpkincolored eyes are the same…”

The gleaming golden eyes and identical faces seemed to reveal the same bloodline.

Lina looked at the other paintings around. However, apart from those who looked like duchesses, all had silver hair with golden eyes.

Suddenly, the curse of the Duke’s family that the past maids had talked about flashed through her mind.

[The reason why the Fermenance Duke’s family, the founding meritorious subject of the empire, didn’t even have a common illegitimate child was because they were cursed by a god…!] [From one day, the Fermenance family had only one son to carry on the lineage, and that son never lived past the age of thirty. There’s a rumor that the ancestors of the Duke and his wife died because of that curse!]

“Ah.”

Lina unwittingly let out a sigh.

“Is it a curse…?”

The symbol of the Fermenance family was a silver wolf. She had thought that this symbol did not match the current Duke at all.

“The black hair… Is it like a sign of the curse?”

It was evident just by looking at the portraits hanging outside earlier. They all had black hair with golden eyes.