Going back to Phantomhive hadn't been as disastrous as Eleanora had anticipated. The butler generally ignored her, the servants were all nice, the young Master was busy annoying the butler; everything would have been perfect except for the fact that everytime Madam Red would come over, she would bring her butler, Grell, and Grell was always monumentally unfriendly to Eleanora. Not enough to make her seriously worried, but enough to make her dread his coming. Or was it a her? Eleanora could never tell what gender Grell was…Maybe that should be a gender all of its own: a "Grell."
But it didn't matter. Life was good. She was getting paid with a good honest job, she had a roof over her head and three meals a day. What more could she want?
Well, she could have been a single woman, but one couldn't have everything, right? At least she rarely had to talk to the butler.
Sebastian hadn't thought much of Eleanora since that day that she had smiled at him. All of his thoughts that surrounded her mostly went like, "I must tell Eleanora to start thawing the chicken," or "I have to remind Eleanora that today is her turn to wash the bathrooms." Simple, work-related things like that. Every now and then he thought about the smile-day—it didn't bother him much. It had been something that had happened, and now it was over, and it would never happen again, so why think about it? The only lasting impression that it made on his mind was that it proved that Eleanora wasn't a complete rude, sarcastic, irritating woman; she still had feelings and all that. He stopped thinking about it all shortly afterwards.
One day, Eleanora, Bard, and Mey-Rin were sitting around the kitchen, working. Eleanora was supposed to be doing the dishes, but what she was mostly doing was looking out the window. It was getting rather overcast outside.
"That's a bad omen," she thought. Then she shrugged and continued with the dishes. She wasn't a superstitious woman; a little rain meant rain and nothing else. The soap was making her hands slippery; she almost lost her dratted wedding ring to the drain.
"And maybe that wouldn't be so bad," she thought, putting it back on her finger. "This ring has been nothing but trouble for me from the start."
The butler had given it to her shortly after she had started working again and it was just as beautiful to her as the day that she realized she was married.
Suddenly the door flew open and two men walked in.
"I'm coming in!" the first one said needlessly. "Is Earl Phantomhive in?"
"Who are you?" Bard asked, standing up.
The man just grinned.
"That's none of your concern," he said. "Where's the Earl Phantomhive?"
"But it is our concern," Bard said, standing in front of him. "Who are you?"
"Oh, so you'll play with me?"
The man suddenly unsheathed his sword and attacked Bardroy. The cook ducked just in time and then Mey-Rin began shooting guns. Then the man ran forward and slashed them, ruining them and leaving her defenseless, and then Eleanora chose that moment to break a metal platter over his head.
The man didn't faint; he seemed to have a hard head; he turned around, grinning like a maniac and was just about to stab her when something interfered between them, something which splattered cream all over her cheek.
It was the butler; he had shoved a dessert platter between them and the psycho had impaled a cream puff.
The servants just stood there as the butler smooth-talked his way out of the situation, causing the first man to sheath his sword and then all three of them—the butler and the two men—left the room to find the Earl of Phantomhive.
"What was that all about?" Bard asked.
"I don't know," Eleanora said, licking cream off of her cheek, "but I hope I never have to see that man again."
So saying, they cleaned up the kitchen and then got back to work.