Chapter 470

Extra 1: Julie Kim

She sat under the window, drowsy.

The sunlight poured through the curtains and spilled onto the floor.

A small beetle quickly crawled along the window sill, then spread its four wings and flew to the garden outside the window.

There was little light in the room, and a few pieces of old furniture sat in the dimly lit interior.

It was all bought from a second-hand furniture store.

From time to time little children from the villagers’ houses would pass by outside the window, and they would poke their heads towards this house, and sometimes they would hide under the window and talk, as if they thought that the people in the house must not be able to hear them.

“Who lives here? Is it an old man?”

“No, a woman without a husband.”

“Poor thing, did her husband die in battle like Shan’s.”

In the afternoon, the church bells rang.

This was to tell the peasants who had gone down to the fields that they could go home, that the day’s work was done.

But there were very few farmers in the village who farmed now, because most of the men had enlisted in the army, or else they had run away to the city, where there was more work and more money to be made.

The land was gradually falling into disuse.

She got up from the recliner and got dizzy for a moment. She remembered because she hadn’t eaten anything yet today, except for the cup of tea she’d had in the morning.

She stood still and waited until her eyes weren’t blurry before she walked over to the stove and prepared to boil a pot of water.

The water was almost boiling when she remembered that Ms. Dai had come to tell her that the couple would be going to the city in the next few days.

They wouldn’t be coming today, so she didn’t have to boil water and make tea to prepare for the guests.

She made a pot of tea anyway, added a piece of sugar to it, and sat down to drink it slowly, thinking that this would be her dinner.

This, of course, was not to be. Toward the end of the evening she baked a potato and ate it anyway.

She had little interest in food now, in eating, in making friends.

She had thought that she would die a slow death like this, but until now, she was alive and well, except for the fact that she had lost a bit of weight.

People sometimes really have a hard life.

From the time Jin Julie remembered as a child, she felt that people lived a hard life.

The Duchess Megan who raised her was a very gentle and lovely woman, she couldn’t cry in front of the maids or talk about her husband’s affair to her children, so the Duchess could only hug her and quietly shed tears in front of her.

When in front of outsiders, the Duchess had been flawless. She was young and beautiful, her husband was highly regarded in parliament, her home had a large castle with many servants, she had two children, countless jewels, dresses, and female friends who clustered around her, her life was incomparably perfect, and she was the envied duchess ah.

But only Ginger Julie knew that the Duchess hugged her and cried almost once a day.

She also knew that Mr. Duke would shove the Duchess when no one else was around.

He was a terrible man.

The Duchess had been trembling with fear that she would be abandoned, that the Duke would never come back and give her any more money, that she would become destitute.

And it all comes to a head with the death of Mr. Duke.

The Duchess had to move out of the castle and she had to go back to her mother’s house to seek refuge.

The maids in the castle come and go to pack for the Duchess.

So when the Duchess had to send her back, she wasn’t angry with her because she knew that it was hard enough for the poor woman to even survive on her own, and she was no longer capable of carrying the weight of another human being.

She didn’t want to remember anything at all after she returned to Kim’s house.

She would rather dig that memory out of her memory.

All she could remember was when she stepped onto the ship once more and returned to England.

The boat trip was a little sadder than she would have liked. There wasn’t enough food, the waiters were always trying to knock people off, and fellow travelers asked questions and gossiped around.

The boat trip ended and she returned to England.

She found Missy by going to the newspapers, and succeeded in delivering the important letter.

After that, she would have liked to find a place, anywhere, and stay until death came.

But Missy’s couple was too enthusiastic and determined, and they decided almost without a second thought that they would keep a room in their house for her, and they discussed making her the Third Miss of the Zhu Family to cover up her identity problem.

However, there was actually no problem with her identity.

She came to this village at their invitation.

She went to see the parish priest and asked him to help her write a letter to contact the church where she was baptized because she had been “away from home for many years and separated from her closest relatives”.

The priest of the church where she was baptized wrote back, and he remembered her, for until she returned to the King’s house, she had visited the church every year to see Father York, who had baptized her, and who had been like another father to her, though a little cold and a little too high and mighty. But he was also willing to shelter her when she needed it, if only to provide her with an identification and help her settle in this village.

The priest of this parish accepted her and was willing to vouch for her life here.

Missy was relieved, and the couple was genuinely happy for her.

But they soon realized that she rarely ate, hardly turned on the lights, did not socialize with anyone in the village except them, and at most said “Peace be with you” to the priest at every service.

Missy began to insist on visiting her every afternoon, bringing her books and food, and making sure she ate three loaves of bread every week.

With Missy’s help, she got back to reading, and although the words danced before her eyes and all the reading was as dull as sand, whenever Missy told her the truths in the books, she found her voice as pleasant as a spring of fresh water.

She thought that in a little while she would be able to think of reading by herself.

When she told Missy, she would be happy for her too.