Chapter Text
The air is thick and charged with suspense and magic in the Cantisante mansion. Most of the servants are clustered near the doorway of the servant’s quarters, inventing tasks to keep busy.
One of the butlers fiddles with the buttons on his uniform, making sure that all the cuff-links are aligned and in the same angle as his monocle to catch the light in perfect unison. The other butler has disassembled his camera and is in the midst of polishing the lense for the seventh time that afternoon while pacing. Two maids sit around a round table and are playing a game of chess. The maid with the thick braid of hair repeatedly smacks the other one’s hands away from her pocket.
“Sit, Adriana, ” she rebukes her companion. “Gain control over your smoking habits before they turn you even beastlier.” She turns back to the board, hums in contemplation, and moves her white rook to corner the black king. “Checkmate.”
Adriana snarls. “You win. Again. Now will you give back my damned lighter?” She attempts another swipe for it but falls back with a cry of pain as a cane strikes her hand. “Blasted bitch,” she mutters, trying to shake out the pain.
Another thwap! sounds and Adriana lets out a round of cursing.
“Mind your language, and use proper names. Don’t be a mongrel.” The maid murmurs.
“Fuck you, Adela.”
“That’s better.”
The butler fiddling with his camera re-assembles it in a series of smooth, practiced motions. He inspects it all over, making sure that dust didn’t somehow creep back into its lense space and that everything is back to order. When Adriana howls in pain from Adela’s cane again, he whips around, and his ponytail follows to whip his face.
“ Ow- if we could please get along?” He asks. His eyes are half-crazed, and his fingers keep playing with his coat buttons for the lack of something to do. “I know we’re all anticipating her arrival, we don’t have to rile each other up beforehand and give a bad impression.”
Adriana sneers. “You’re riling yourself up just fine. Crawl back to cleaning, you dumbfuck.” Adela pauses in resetting the chessboard and her hand edges towards her cane.
“Go back to your cleaning, Nathapon.”
He frowns, and turns to Adela with beseeching eyes - she’s not going to get smacked for that? At all? - only to notice that she’s busy demanding another game from Adrianna. He turns to the other butler, who rolls his eyes and turns away.
“There’s dust motes all over your back, Alex,” Nathapon mutters, and he grins when the other butler immediately takes off his black coat to inspect it, only to see it perfectly clean.
“Brat.”
Nathapon chuckles and turns back to his camera. Spic-and-span, top to bottom. Maybe he should do maintenance on his entire collection again? Then again, he’s already done it yesterday…
The door bursts open and hits the wall with a tremendous bang! , and a giddy, blue-haired maid steps through.
“Child-proofing the mansion’s all done! And she’s here!” She cheers, and ushers them to stand. “Up, up, the wards are telling me the stagecoach just passed the estate boundaries!”
A small clamour rises as the room’s occupants all tidy up haphazardly. Adela all but tosses her chess pieces in their individual slots in her velvet case, and Nathapon barely catches the lens that he fumbled and almost dropped in his excitement.
Adriana knocks over the chess board (“Of all the savagery-!”) and pushes Nathapon to the side (“Hey!”) to get to the doorway, only to come up against the blue-haired maid. “Out of the way, Emma!” she commands.
Emma blocks the door frame. “No, no, no! You can go, but you can’t be first! You scare kids!” She shifts side to side to perfectly block Adriana as she tries to find any openings to slip through.
Adriana growls, low in her throat. Emma’s eyes dart around the room before-
“Alex!” she cries.
Alex stops re-aligning his waistcoat buttons and sighs before striding over. Adriana tries to dodge, but he grabs her arms anyway and puts her in a restraining hold, causing a flurry of cursing and stomping. Adela and Nathapon just stand on the sidelines and watch the spectacle.
“Go, Emma. You can greet her,” he says.
Emma smiles and bounds through the doorway. Adela follows swiftly, still grumbling about the rough treatment of her chessboard, and swings the door shut, leaving the other two to calm Adriana down.
“Now, now, it’s not so bad,” Nathapon tries to console. “They always say ‘leave the best for last’, after all.” Adriana manages to wrestle an arm free but Alex restrains her again before she swings at him.
“Motherfuckers! Dog’s blood! Shit-crocks!” She stomps on Alex’s toes with one foot and kicks Nathapon on the shin with the other. Nathapon staggers back with an oof.
Alex somehow remains an oasis of serenity throughout it all, as if he’s not barely holding back about 60 kilograms of fury and hissing. “This is exactly why you can’t be first, everytime.” Adriana shrieks in response and tries to claw his eyes out.
Emma is almost prancing on his way to the mansion gates, barely taking note of the reminders Adela shouts behind her. Be polite, friendly, and engaging - so basically, be herself - and carry all the ward’s things for her. And for heaven’s sakes, fold her collar down, unless she wants to look like an overeager puppy.
The stagecoach is making its way down the path to the gates, about five hundred metres away. Emma steps into view wearing a polite, professional smile and immediately thinks she’s made a mistake. She’s in view of the driver now, what does she do? Does she smile and wave? Does she open the gates and just wait? Does she wait until it’s two hundred metres away? One hundred? Does she make it stop and inspect it and the driver somehow before opening the gates? Oh, this isn’t nice. Alex and Adela would know exactly what to do.
She stands in view, smile plastered onto her face all the while the stagecoach trundles closer and closer. Should she open the gates now? Or………. now? Maybe wait a while longer? She can afford to wait until she can see the driver’s face at least, right?
Oh dear, did she childproof the mansion enough? She did triple-check the child-repelling charms on the dungeons and the library’s magic and supernatural sections, but she can’t remember for the life of her if she enforced the fall-proof barrier shields on the moving stairs. Adela made sure that the gargoyle guards would stay still or out of sight, at least. Magic’s not required for that step, and the gargoyles love Adela.
Emma clenches and unclenches her fists, and smooths out any wrinkles on her uniform. She can do this, she can do this. Ooh, she really hopes the girl - Chiara? - loves the mansion and decides to stay. It would be the answer to a lot of their problems if she did.
Adela dusts off a fresh speck of dust off the bedframe of the master bedroom. Through the window, she spot the stagecoach coming, and Emma standing at attention. Adela also sees the tension in her frame and her nervous twitching, and sighs.
She opens the window - the room needed a fresh breath of air anyway - and shouts. “Open the gates only after you make sure they have our guest! Verify the driver’s company! It’s the Peugeot!“ Emma turns around with a grin and a thumbs up. How American.
She closes and locks the windows before any debris comes in, and makes her way down the stairs to the front entranceway. Alex, Nathapon, and a mildly seething Adriana are there. Good.
“Chin up, be presentable,” she says. “It’ll be all wasted effort if she decides she doesn’t like it here.” Then she strides out the hall and into the courtyard. Emma is in the middle of helping the driver unload the baggage, and is now proceeding to carry what few, battered, and bulky bags there are. Adela heads over to the stagecoach’s carriage to help its passenger out, when the door opens and out steps out the passenger herself.
Adela stills for a moment. This… was very, very unexpected. Everybody thought that the new mistress would be at least a preteen. A tiny slip of a girl stands before Adela, not even reaching her shoulders. The girl’s lavender hair is mussed up from the long ride, and the Bible she holds is as big as her head. Her battered and secondhand suitcases that Emma’s hauling are more than half her height, and her clothes are frumpled and plain - nothing like the passable image that the letters had implied.
Adela’s lip almost curls before she reigns it in. The matron had thoroughly misled, no - lied to her, and she’ll pay for whatever wave of arrogance she rode to do so. Adela will leave a couple hints for the police to start sniffing around the orphanage. She’s never liked the matron or the company she keeps, and their value has greatly diminished after they signed the potential new mistress - this child - over. “Fit to be the head of the mansion,” goodness gracious , the girl isn’t even fit to be head of her peer group!
Adela shoves this thought deep, deep down and forces on a polite smile.
“Welcome, Miss Chiara, to the Cantisante estate. We hope your journey here was well?"
What little they’ve prepared for the new mistress is getting thrown out the window. They’re going to have to start from scratch, and learn… proper childcare lessons.
The thought is positively nauseating. Perhaps Emma and Nathapon can care for the child while Adela and Alex just keep Adriana muzzled and away.