Silence

Chapter 9

Two days later once Adalina had recovered for the most part, Sebastian began training her in the ballroom to use her new whip. They first worked on tossing it towards objects and latching onto them. Then they worked on disarming an attacker who was holding a gun or a knife. They ended their multiple training sessions by working on grabbing an object from an attacker and catching it in her free hand.

She picked up quite a few more injuries as she practiced. The knives she attempted to grab flung towards her and would've impaled her had Sebastian not used his speed to grab it in time. She had accidently grabbed a knife on the wrong end once and received a nice gash on her hand. There were also a couple bruises and cuts on various parts of her body when the whip came back to smack her or when she missed grabbing a weapon.

However, she certainly picked up the basics fast. It usually took Adalina hours upon hours to learn a new skill, especially when it was something as difficult as combat. But when it came to using a whip, she had almost mastered the skill in only a few training sessions. A part of that was due to the fact that she had witnessed a whip in use so many times. While the circumstances were unfortunate, at least she was able to use her observations to her benefit.

What Adalina was not prepared for was the atrociousness of etiquette lessons.

Sebastian spent the majority of his time over the course of the next few days teaching her how to be a proper young woman, and it was terrible. The lessons were extremely boring, and she was getting more and more frustrated with each passing moment she had to listen to him drone on and on about how she should do this and shouldn't do that.

For walking lessons, Sebastian made her walk around with two books on her head to make sure her back stayed straight. When he took the book away, he continually smacked her legs, back, and shoulders with his teaching stick to keep up her posture. For a while, she wondered if she had more bruises from the stick than from her combat training.

At one point, she started dozing off because she was exhausted after Sebastian had woken her up in the middle of the night multiple times in order to continue training her to use her whip. Every single one of her muscles hurt, and she wanted to stay in bed for a week. Sebastian slammed the stick on the table in front of her, and she bolted up in surprise.

"If you want to successfully convince Lord Daniel that you are of the upper class, you need to pay attention!" he ordered.

Adalina sighed heavily in annoyance.

"Don't give me that look. You agreed that you would do this which means preparation is needed."

She glared at him, envisioning herself grabbing his teaching stick and snapping it in half before beating him with the pieces, and did her best to stay awake. It wasn't her fault he wasn't letting her get any sleep.

Ciel came in to watch some of the lessons, and he clearly enjoyed himself. She could see him smirking from the side of the room, and if he wasn't her master, she would've used her new skills on him.

Things did not improve on the day of the party. Nina Hopkins, Ciel's tailor, came to the manor in order to help. She had been informed of the whole situation, and being the independent woman she was, she loved the plan.

That was when Adalina knew that it was going to be a very, very long day.

"Adalina!" Nina cried as she came inside the manor. "When Ciel told me that you needed a dress, you have no idea how excited I was! I've been wanting to dress you up for ages! Now come on, come on, come on, there's no time to waste!"

As Nina practically dragged the maid into a room upstairs, Adalina tossed Sebastian another glare. The butler couldn't help but chuckle a little at her discomfort.