The Romantic Trials Of A Transmigrated Empress-Chapter 280: The Fairfax bastards come home.

That same day, as Sigrid was having a late lunch, her biggest enemy Emmah was licking her lips, hunger was gnawing at her but she had been been denied a bite of food or a drop of water.

The punishment meted out by the old count were very harsh, beatings and starvation were just some of them. All of the grace that Emmah had earned had died the moment she was arrested for shoving Deanne into a window.

It didn’t help that the excitement the old count had when he thought Emmah would be one of Princess Thalassa’s bridesmaids had died an unfulfilled dream. He had bragged about it to his friends and when it did not happen, he was embarrassed.

What embarrassed him even more was their family being denied entry to the royal castle at the gates on the day of Thalassa’s wedding. White knights that worked for the crown prince and princess had turned away all the guests from the Fairfax family.

Sir Brolin had told the count to his face that he had Emmah to thank for the humiliation he had suffered and blame her he did.

Emmah blamed someone else for the pains she was suffering and it was none other than Sigrid. If Sigrid had not arrested her, she would have attended the royal wedding, taken all the credit for designing the princess’s wedding gown and showed off.

As she knelt on the floor, sulking and biting her cheek, she thought about all the ways in which she could make Sigrid suffer. Emmah was determined to have revenge, no matter how small.

The door was opened and guests entered. They walked right past her as she had been made to kneel in the hallway, near the entrance where everyone that came in or left the house would witness her humiliation.

"Have you heard? These boys and girls are all bastard children of Lord Derrick. We thought this one was brought back because she was special but apparently not." A maid whispered to another as they walked past Emmah.

"I cannot believe that they brought all of them back. Nine bastards!! the ladies must be furious right now. Lord Derrick’s philandering is really outmatched." The other whispered back.

"I guess the competition to please the count will be steep now. Clever snacks will not do it anymore." The first maid snickered.

She was talking about Emmah who had been plying the count with sweet healthy snacks for older people. She had made him rice pudding, oatmeal cookies, dark chocolate squares, baked apples with honey and yogurt with honey and berries.

Even the first pizza that she had baked, he had been the first to eat it before the rest of the family. As much as they did not like her, they appreciated her genius when it came to food creativity.

It was why she had been allowed by the count to reopen her shop. Even though he did not think women should engage in business, he thought the food business was okay since the crown princess had the most famous restaurants in the nation.

The count had assumed that Emmah could be Sigrid’s competitor. He had even thought for a moment that Emmah could outdo Sigrid. What happened at the opening however had almost given him a stroke and the events that followed left him in a rage.

Emmah gritted her teeth and shot deathly glares at the maids that fearlessly laughed without a care.

"Hurry up and clean nine guest bedrooms. Don’t you know that there is much work to do?" The head maid hissed at the gossiping maids.

The two maids run off. Looking around furtively, the head maid approached Emmah and dropped a bun on the floor. "Don’t worry Miss Emmah, I am on your side. Whatever you need, just tell me."

Emmah smiled and the maid hurried off.

She picked up the bun and clenched it within her hand. It angered her that she had fallen from grace to a point of eating buns that had fallen on the ground. Emmah did not appreciate the efforts of the maid to help her, in fact loathed her even more than the others.

"Damn maid, does she think that I am a dog." When she rose again, she would fire the head maid first.

But, just like those maids, she could not believe that the count had allowed all of her father’s bastards to come home. The problem was the nosy reporter Davira who had taken it upon herself to track down all of those bastards and interview them.

Some of the girls had cried on live television, wondering why Emmah had been brought home and they had not. Immediately after watching the interview, Lord Derrick and the count had disappeared into his office. Twenty minutes later, Lord Derrick had stepped out with a limp and now that bastard children had been brought home.

Emmah was not worried about them outdoing her in any way. She was a transmigrator, they were children raised in a backward world. How could they win against her?

Leading them astray would be simple. She could even turn them into her minions and they, the bastard children would step over the heads of the legitimate ones.

A smile blossomed on her face as she reconsidered the presence of those children. Maybe it was not such a bad thing after all.

She was just about to bite into the bun she disdained when it was slapped out of her hands by the two Lady Fairfax’s who descended on her with so much anger. As one slapped her, the other kicked.

Emmah curled up in a ball and screamed for help which brought down the servants that heard her and yet none attempted to help her.

"How dare you think of eating after the mess you have caused?"

"If it was not for you, none of these bastards would have been brought back."

Lady Jane was more furious than her co-wife and she grabbed Emmah by the neck, strangling her as hard as she could. "I should have killed you before you set foot in my house. I was warned about you but I assumed that you would never step foot in my house. I will kill you the unlucky daughter of a whore and surrender to be arrested."

She was partially drunk, everyone knew this and the servants were sure that what she was saying was a result of intoxication.

"Enough!!" Lord Derrick bellowed from the doorway.

The maids stepped in finally and they pulled Lady Jane off Emmah whose nose was bleeding. Lady Jane was screaming bloody murder and still kicking as she was pulled away. The bastard children that had been told to wait in the living room watched the madness, trembled and prayed for themselves. They had no idea what kind of home that had been invited into.

If such beatings were part of their daily life, they did not want to stay. The ladies of the house were already making it clear that they did not want them there.