The Army Minister and the cook shared a cabin. The cook looked the flower gardener up and down, a puzzled expression on his face.
"I've never seen you before. When did you arrive?"
By "arrive," he meant when the man had started working at the Army Minister's estate.
Cooks, flower gardeners, and stewards were the three special professions of noble estates. All three were the nobles' true confidants.
There was no need to say much about stewards. They originally possessed noble bloodline, no matter how thin. That alone made them worthy of trust.
If they were not trusted, they could never take the position. To a certain extent, a noble's chief steward ranked third, fourth, or fifth in the family's hierarchy of power.
For some chief stewards with special status, their power might be second only to that of the Family Head.
The same applied to cooks. Everything the nobles ate and drank each day passed through the cook's hands.
If cooks could be easily bribed, that family would have vanished into the river of history long ago.
The cooks of many noble families were also "hereditary," ensuring their loyalty.
Flower gardeners were actually only slightly less important than cooks, because on the surface, their job was merely to handle gardening, flowers, and similar tasks.
But the profession was by no means that simple. They often entered every room in the estate that contained plants.
Aside from a very small number of rooms—such as the Family Head's study and vaults used to store valuables—which they could enter only under supervision, or not enter at all,
they could enter every other room. After all, most rooms contained flowers.
If they were not trusted, how could anyone allow them to enter every room in the estate once every few days? Because of