“Help!”

Lucia burst unceremoniously into the main kitchen, hair wild and sweat trickling down her face, and half stumbled, half tripped towards an unsuspecting Mirian. “Hey, hey guys! Lady Joanna’s gone mad!”

“Go find some’un who cares, lad.” grumbled Mr Rowell, the gardener, who was groping around the old jars in the kitchen for legume seeds. “Ain’t got much to do for a Lady that’s already been mad to begin with.”

The other maids in the kitchen all nodded in agreement. It might have been quite unthinkable for the servants of a noble household to openly talk crap about their masters behind their backs, but this was Lady Joanna Winsten of the Winsten manor. Every commoner in Triciella who knew of the lady’s temperament had nothing but disdain towards her. The servants of her own household were no exception. So no one really had any fears of being ratted out. If there was one truth that prevailed above everything else, it was the fact that every one of them hated her unanimously.

Lucia skidded to a halt near the sink, and held her head in frustration. The others were not even taking her seriously, hey!

“Did I not tell you to ignore her farce?” Perry asked stoically, as she furiously scrubbed the dishes near the sink, foam and lather flying everywhere. “Just do your job and let her be.”

“But, hey --- !” Lucia whined petulantly, stomping her foot in impatience, “You don’t understand! Hey, hey, you know, she asked me if she could have breakfast! She asked me! She said: ‘Hey! CAN I have breakfast?’ ”

“WHAT?!”

Perry almost dropped one of the plates on the floor, but caught herself in time. She squinted at Lucia suspiciously. The mousey little maid was honest to a fault, as far as she knew. But it was harder to swallow that a noble lady would say something like that; she knew that Lady Joanna of all people wouldn’t.

“Pretty sure she didn’t add the ‘Hey’.” Perry mumbled instead, wiping the plate distractedly.

“Hey hey hey! Alright, maybe she didn’t.” Lucia conceded, “But I’m not lying here, hey!”

She recounted the whole breakfast ordeal to them, nervously and hesitatingly. The other maids kept to their duties silently, but she could tell that they were hanging on to each of her words. When she’d finished, Perry sighed and stared at her with a look full of pity.

“Look, Lucia.” The stoic woman said, with a hint of exasperation. “It all just seems like a nasty ploy to me. No way is that lady going to wake up one fine morning and suddenly decide to act civilly with everyone out of the blue.”

Lucia stood listening with a doubtful expression on her face, but Perry continued anyway.

“I think that she is merely trying to get our guard down. The moment you think that the lady has got too nice, and try taking a bold step too far, say one thing out of line, she will have a perfect excuse to fire you right away. She is, I reckon, just waiting for us to get comfortable and make one misstep in her presence. Trust her too much, and you will just get dragged down.”

The other maids in the kitchen all gave Perry their respective looks of understanding. As expected of her. Even Miriam found herself agreeing. Only Lucia still had that doubtful expression; she looked like she could not decide based on Perry’s convictions alone, anymore. But she nodded anyway.

“Hey hey, then what do you think we should do?”

“I’d told you before, did I not?” Perry turned around with an air of finality. “Don’t get too comfortable around lady Joanna. Don’t let your guards down. Keep your head down and keep on working like you always have.”

--------------------------------------

It had been a grand total of seven days that former office worker Joanna Stuart had landed into the body of Lady Joanna Winsten, and she was not enjoying it at all.

Contrary to what she’d believed, being a noble lady really wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine, and the gaudy dresses and etiquette lessons were two massive pains in her arse to deal with. Joanna ‘Joe’ Stuart had secretly hoped for a luxurious lifestyle, but all she got were boring lessons, strict tutors, intrusive maids who tried to dress her up at every opportunity they got, and some more boring lessons. There were four separate tutors for dance lessons, piano lessons, etiquette, and study sessions. The first three of the bunch always annoyed her to no end, and the last one bored her to tears. On the top of that, she wasn’t even allowed outside the manor without escorts (read: babysitters). The first time she actually tried to go outside with proper escorts, the escorts subtly kept reminding her to return to the manor every five minutes. Joanna had stopped trying after that.

The study sessions were tolerable, but mind numbingly easy. It was all basic algebra, fractions and super basic science. She had studied harder stuff in her middle school days, so here she could simply breeze through the worksheets even in her sleep.

The teacher was predictably surprised, and it was evident from his expression that the original Lady Joanna wasn’t the brightest student around. It is not like studying mathematics and science would be of much help to a noble lady, a voice in her head told her, Noble ladies are to be married off to some other rich noble in a political marriage, produce male heirs and live comfortably looking like a pretty little doll for the rest of their lives. Joe paid the voice no heed, and finished off her worksheet in record speed. This world was more conservative than she’d imagined, but then she never had quite a vast imagination in the first place. Joe wasn’t much in her previous life either, but she used to be a bright student who took her studies seriously.

In her defence, Joe had actually tried to take an interest in the political studies and history of Triciella. It was inevitable that she’d have to put up with this world till she found an escape route. The political history had seemed interesting enough at first. But after some high ranking noble lord had an affair with some other married noble lady for the eighth time straight, she stopped paying attention.

Needless to say, the only redeeming feature of this lifestyle was the food. There was more variety in recipes and dishes than there was in her daily routine, but she swallowed up all the ill-feelings along with the delicious food. She could eat as much as she wanted, whenever she wanted, and most importantly, it was free. Joe had some initial reservations about getting free food without working for it, but then she was reminded that this whole situation was ridiculous, and that it was hardly her fault.

So she shoved all her guilt right back to where they belonged, and stopped thinking about it.

“Young lady Joanna, your movements are getting sloppy again.” The whiny voice of Mrs Prattwell, the dance tutor, wrenched her thoughts back to the present. Joe blinked and stopped her movements, and heard Mrs Prattwell sigh in exasperation.

“Young lady Joanna, what is the matter with you?” The tutor, who looked like she was in her early forties, massaged her temples for the nineteenth time in the day. Joe had been counting stealthily, because it was important to know the breaking point of her patience, and the point where the woman would just give up and leave. Last day’s record had been fifteen temple massages, after which Mrs Prattwell had thrown up her hands in the air with a dignified huff and left. Curiously enough, today she was holding out much longer.

Today marked the second day for Joe’s ballroom dance lessons, and it was getting nowhere. The tutor, Mrs Prattwell kept adding unhelpful hints about ‘visualizing it more beautifully, more elegantly’, and the student danced with as much elegance as a fish learning how to fly. It wasn’t like Joe had been a skillful dancer in her previous ‘normal’ life; in fact, she wasn’t very skillful at anything important at all. But that was a very valid excuse which was pretty much unusable in this case, so the ‘young lady’ wisely clamped her mouth shut and tried to copy Mrs Prattwell’s movements as closely as possible. Nevertheless, the results were disastrous.

“Why, you were coming along just fine last week!” Her tutor rubbed her temple again, for the twentieth time. “And today your movements are all wrong and unladylike! Young lady Joanna, you have you social debut in three months!” She cried dramatically. “Oh! Whatever shall I do?”

‘Just leave me be’, Joe thought miserably; her arms were aching. ‘Pretty sure that I’m meant for the more inelegant and unladylike things in life.’

Out loud, she said, “Mrs Prattwell, I, uhh… I’m having difficulty in visualizing it properly.” The words sounded lame as soon as they left her mouth, but she had no choice. She had already played the ‘I am feeling unwell’ card last time, and today the stubborn woman had actually verified from the maids that lady Joanna Winsten was all hale and healthy. Joe had briefly entertained the thought of feigning illness, but eventually decided that it was too much trouble.

“Well, then. It cannot be helped.” The older woman said with a huff. Joe nodded distractedly; there was a particularly irritating itch near her butt, and she suspected that the shiny silk dresses were at fault. She had been wanting to scratch at it for ages since the lessons began, but suspected that her dance tutor might have an aneurysm if she saw young lady Joanna scratching her butt in public.

Mrs Prattwell now threw her hands up in the air, a sign that she had already worn out her patience for the day. Twenty temple massages was the new record, Joe noted gleefully. “Clearly I need to work on your form some more. We shall have to continue it tomorrow.”

The woman gathered up her skirts haughtily and made her way out of the practice hall. Joe heard her mumble something under her breathe, that sounded suspiciously like “I might need to talk to Lady Winsten about this.” But Joe was too busy scratching away at the itch to care. She should have cared, in the hindsight, because nothing good ever came out of Lady Patricia Winsten getting involved.

Of course, like the absolute dumbass she was, Joe learnt that way too late. Two days later, one afternoon when she was doing a mini celebration of victory in her bedroom after learning that the etiquette lessons had been cancelled for the day, there was a loud knock at the door. Joe stopped her jig abruptly, straightened her dress and opened the door.

Lucia was standing outside with a constipated expression on her face.

“Lady Joanna.” She said with a nervous smile. For a horrifying second Joe thought that the etiquette lessons were not cancelled after all, and that the tutor, a Mr Forkes was waiting for her in the central room. She badly wanted to ditch it, and her brain scrambled to come up with a believable excuse at the speed of light (if it were possible). But there was no need. Lucia gave an even more gruesome news, one she couldn’t hope to escape no matter what.

“The master of the manor has returned, my lady. Your parents, Lord Johan Winsten and Lady Patricia Winsten wish to have dinner with you tonight.”