“Miss Leticia, it is time to wake up!” A young voice belonging to none other than my personal maid Margaux called out.

I thought the urge to moan that I did not want to, and that I would rather stay in bed for an extra few minutes, or better yet, half an hour. But I knew this would go against the noble persona I had to present.

“I am almost awake.” I answered instead and waved my hand above my head to turn off whatever was keeping the room dark.

“What would you like me to do?” Margaux asked, as eager as ever. “We haven’t had the time to discuss your morning and evening routines yesterday miss.”

I rose up and leaned against the wall behind the bed. Even without the mid-night interruption, I was sure this was way too early to be wakened up. But then I look outside and noticed that the sun was up, and I could hear distant noise coming from outside my estate. The air also smelled of freshly baked bread mixed with another food aroma I couldn’t quite place, and I suddenly became aware of how hungry I was.

“Could you run me a quick bath, please? Then I’ll head down for breakfast. Is there – Are there any meetings planned for today?”

“No miss, you did not schedule any appointments. But Sygen did want to meet with you to discuss some issues. It’s probably about the accountant position.” Margaux explained as she hustled around the bathroom area.

“Which products would you like to use for your hair? For now, I only have the soap you have brought with you, but if you could compile a list, I will fetch them for you myself.”

“I am sure we aren’t understaffed to that extent.” Was the only thing I could think of replying.

Surprisingly enough, the thought of getting more bath products had already briefly crossed my mind yesterday. I also wanted to get some basic makeup and perfume. However, I wasn’t aware of how far personal care and beauty products technology had come in this world. I vaguely remembered reading about poisonous substances being commonly used in historical makeup.

“I think I have everything I need for now though,” I added, “I might consider acquiring more distinguished and exotic products in the future, but it is by no means a priority.”

“Alright my lady, and which dress would you like to wear today?”

I got up from my bed, rolled down the nightgown which had bundled up around my waist, and headed towards the wardrobe. After a few minutes of looking through my options, I picked a light and puffy off-the-shoulder shirt, and a semi-fitted ankle-length skirt. The skirt had gathered pleas, as well as several hidden slits, making it easy to move in.

I took out the outfit and hung it outside of the wardrobe. I was about to do my bed when I remembered I had a maid to do it for me now. With a happy smile, I headed to my desk, to browse through some more letters while Margaux was finishing preparing the bath.

To my surprise, I found a large box filled with envelopes at the foot of my desk.

“Those are the other letters you requested miss. I took the liberty of bringing them in.” Margaux said when she noticed what I was doing.

“Alright, thank you Margaux.” I said half-heartedly, distracted by a pile of documents that had definitely not been on my desk the night before. It was topped by a hand-drawn map of a continent or country I did not recognise.

Upon further inspection, I realised that this must have been a map of the world I was in. Several of the names on it sounded familiar, although I did struggle at first to read the cursive handwriting. But just to be extra sure, I decided to ask my maid.

“Margaux, have you ever seen maps like this before?”

“Of course, miss, I always carried one of these around in school, although mine was passed down from my mum, so it wasn’t considered accurate by my teacher.”

“I see. Are you an expert on political geography then?”

The girl awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck.

“Not really miss. But I know a lot about linguistics, one of my best friends was from the Isles, you see. He moved back though.”

I nodded.

“Am I right in assuming you know all sorts of in-proper words in foreign languages then?” I smirked.

“How could you say that miss ?!” Margaux said with what could be mistaken for outrage if not for the faint redness in her cheeks, indicating that my guess had been on spot.

I gave her a dismissive nod and returned my attention to the documents. The sheet of paper below the map was titled “the seven days of the week”. The one next sheet was a list of the months of the year, and the one after that contained several columns filled with numbers and their correct pronunciation. I skimmed over all of them, but something stroke me as odd.

The map was clearly annotated with roman numbers, which were invented in the Roman Empire (probably, otherwise they would have been called something else). But none of the continents even vaguely resembled Europe, and none of the country names sounded Latin.

“Margaux-” I was about to ask her about Cesar and Alexander the Great, but suddenly decided against it. I was not going to blow my cover today.

I was just about to properly read the names of the days of the week, which were not ‘Monday’, ‘Tuesday’, etc, strangely enough, but looked instead like a mish-mash of far too many syllables, but Margaux called out, having finished preparing the bath.

A short argument about how I was perfectly able to bathe by myself later, I was on my way to breakfast.

Despite having brought the “general knowledge for dummies” package with me to breakfast, I did not get an opportunity to read it. As soon as I sat down and picked up a slice of bread, the head butler popped out of nowhere and started lecturing me on all the possible accountant candidates. Naturally, all of them had a lot of flaws, or were indisposed in one way or another, reinforcing the notion that there was only one true candidate.

Needless to say, I lost my appetite really fast.

To give credit where credit was due, Sygen also made a written list which he organised really well. He made summaries of the key features of each candidate and ranked them by likeliness of joining the duchy. Most of them were nobles under my command, although a few were currently living abroad. Unsurprisingly enough, none of the names were familiar to me.

Eventually, I excused myself after finishing my meal.

The next thing on my to-do list was meeting up with the head maid to discuss if it would be appropriate to temporarily store those statues of the previous duke. I wanted to start forging a business relationship with the various guilds, and the Guild of Fine Carvers seemed as good of a place to start as any. Of course, I wasn’t fully sure what a guild was, or how it worked. I assumed it was similar to a Union or a Syndicate, but it was just one of those many things that I had yet to fully figure out.

After asking a servant for directions, and handing him all documents I had accumulated during the morning, I found Emmy in a closed-off part of the backyard where she was supervising a group of maids who were hanging up laundry. I explained the situation with the statues to her and added that I found it respectful to place them on the estate. The older woman did end up giving in, although she did not seem overjoyed about the idea. She explained it as not wanting to present the estate as a stagnant figure to any potential visitors. Apparently, it was tradition around these parts to at least fully renovate the main residence at the arrival of a new duke or duchess.

The subject then changed to budgeting, and I had to come up with an excuse to leave because I still hadn’t deciphered whatever tax return forms I had been given.

Late morning turned into early lunchtime, as I strolled around the garden. The place was very well maintained, with neatly cut bushes and flowers planted along the paths. It was a perfect mixture of natural and artificial, making the garden feel organic when it was anything but.

I had never been a flower expert, so I wasn’t able to tell if the flowers differed significantly from what grew back on earth. The bushes had small thin leaves, similar to pine trees, indicating that they could survive in dry and/or cold climates. I plucked a few leaves and fiddled with them as I continued my walk.

The walls surrounding the estate were cleverly covered in vines and greenery, so as to not to stand out against the rest of the garden. There were no trees along the outer walls, and I assumed it was done for fire-safety reasons.

The estate was surrounded by similar large plots of land, so the neighbouring houses were barely visible. I was sure that I would be able to see them from my veranda, but I couldn’t even make their outline from the garden. I wondered what kind of landuse the plots around my house had. If land value worked in a similar way here than back on Earth, they were either used by some rich bourgeoisie or laid vacant in order not to impair the view from my mansion. If that were the case, I could use these plots of land for a good profit, I reasoned as I walked back.

Thankfully Margaux stumbled upon me just as I was entering the house. She asked me why I was using the back door, and I replied that I could use any door I pleased in my home. She then tried to bombard me with questions about bath products, clearly having not forgotten our discussion this morning. At first, I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn more about that topic, but I soon realised Margaux was way too excited at the idea of finding the perfect scent combination of shampoo and bath salts (which yes, existed in this world), to form any cohesive narrative. I picked some scent at random and asked her to get it right away.

I came to regret that decision when I was halfway to my room, as I realised that I was hungry. Thankfully my knowledge of the mansion layout was getting better, and getting to the kitchens wasn’t too much of a chore.

I hadn’t been allowed in though. A very embarrassed maid held the door shut as she explained that it was no place for the lady of the house to be. Since I didn’t want to be disturbed for at least a few hours, I asked that maid to bring something through the dumbwaiter to my personal kitchen. I also specified that I would like something that could be eaten cold, and wasn’t too messy. The maid seemed relieved that I had come to order food, and not for some kind of surprise inspection, and promptly transmitted my request to the cooks.

I had to ask another servant for directions again, but I did end up in my room without too much trouble.