Chapter 50: The Duchess’s Yellow Stone.

“Nice to meet you. So you are that Palmer.”

Quite a lot of meaning was hidden in the elegant lady’s welcome greeting.

She was asking if I was indeed the person who became the new owner of Palmer Jewelry, the jeweler who created the accessories starting to become quite trendy these days, and the one who dared to decline the call of a royal, albeit a collateral one, several times.

“I apologize for this inexperienced one finally visiting you now.”

My reply also contained many meanings.

Saying I am the successor of Palmer Jewelry, a greenhorn who has only just gained a little undeserved fame, and thus, unable to bear the grace bestowed by a royal, I declined but eventually came to this place due to persistent requests.

“Indeed, you do look inexperienced.”

The lady showed an eye-smile.

It meant don’t make any more mistakes, and I understood it sufficiently.

“I will do my best with the talents I have.”

I opened the sketchbook I brought.

As I looked for a blank page, flipping through pages already drawn, the lady’s laughter was heard.

“Indeed, as heard, you are impertinent. And you certainly seem to have skills. I look forward to it.”

I am still hearing comments that I am impertinent.

It’s a bit unfair because I could be impertinent only as the servant of the Duke who accepted that impertinence.

Although the Duke is still my backer, I am now half self-employed.

I knew best that customers wouldn’t accept impertinence like the Duke, so I always try not to cross the line with customers.

If she calls the current me impertinent, it must mean my employer, Philius, is a truly magnanimous gentleman.

…Probably true, maybe.

“What item would you like to commission?”

It is true that I deliberately flipped through the fully colored design drawings at a slow speed.

The lady who appreciated my portfolio, Duchess Mare and Philius’s cousin, answered with her eyes curving.

“There is a citrine my husband gave me as a gift. A gem he bought impulsively one day saying it reminded him of my hair color.”

“Actually, my husband thought that yellow gem was topaz. To be more precise, he was deceived, by the jeweler. The jeweler who dared to deceive a Duke received appropriate punishment, but my husband still feels sorry to me when he sees that citrine.”

“I want to let my husband know that citrine is as beautiful, or even more beautiful than topaz.”

She was a customer making a request with quite terrifying content with a gentle smile.

Citrine and topaz had a significant difference starting from the price.

The maid standing next to the Duchess put a jewelry box down on the table.

“May I open it?”

“I allow it.”

What came out of the box was certainly citrine, not topaz.

First of all, the jeweler who sold citrine to the Duke claiming it was topaz was a scammer without needing further examination.

There aren’t many minerals in nature that develop such a vivid yellow color.

Perhaps the Duke struggled quite a bit to find a gem of the same color as the Duchess’s lemon-colored hair.

But that topaz was citrine, and citrine is generally made by heat-treating smoky quartz or amethyst.

The jeweler couldn’t have failed to distinguish between citrine and topaz.

The two minerals show a distinct difference starting from hardness.

Quartz is soft, and topaz is harder.

It’s obvious that the person who heat-treated smoky quartz or amethyst to transform it into citrine in the first place was that jeweler himself.

Actually, the act of changing the color of smoky quartz or amethyst and selling it as topaz existed on Earth as well.

Since one cannot change the color of quartz just by heat-treating it randomly, it means very experienced jewelers committed fraud openly.

Topaz cheaper than topaz. That is exactly citrine.

Duchess Mare was warning me not to scam her.

In addition, she was demanding that I make an accessory more beautiful than topaz with citrine, which is softer and cheaper than topaz.

“Is it possible?”

Seeing her eye-smile, I also smiled.

Her gently curving eyes resembled my employer’s eyes quite a bit.

“The answer depends on how much time you give me. If you tell me to complete it by tomorrow, I have no choice but to answer that it’s impossible.”

Though the expression pretending to be surprised, as if she really intended to tell me to complete it by tomorrow, didn’t resemble him at all.

The King’s Brother, Philius’s cousin, was a quite sly person.

“Manager, you’re back.”

The clerk, Nathan, greeted me with a decent posture.

Now, one could hardly find any traces of his past as a pickpocket.

Although I took 1 Heni from him in a bet on a gambler’s contaminated yellow diamond, he became quite polite after knowing I added 1 Heni as an information fee to that 1 Heni and delivered a total of 2 Heni to Sammy, the leader of Pisto Street.

Funny guy.

He must have thought I would really put his hard-earned money into my pocket.

The 1 Heni I paid was money I had to pay as an information fee anyway, and Nathan’s 1 Heni lost in the bet was also money regularly given to Sammy for the children’s living expenses.

Both the guy and I just gave the money we had to give to the person who should receive it.

Anyway, it’s a good thing.

Rather than 1 Heni of unearned income, it was much more profitable for me that a clerk who didn’t forget what was taught but was good at slacking off was reborn as an excellent clerk who finds work to do.

“I received a commission from Duchess Mare. Refuse all custom-made orders for the next month.”

“Must be a difficult order.”

“Correct.”

Duchess Mare’s request is certainly not easy.

Her intention was to test me.

Me, who just started to make a name as a jeweler a little.

In the process of taking over this jewelry shop from Mr. Palmer, the first thing I did was to produce and sell a limited number of top-tier line watches.

It was a time when demand was almost non-existent except for a very few people who must buy if there is something they like, as gem prices skyrocketed.

I targeted those few consumers with small quantity and variety.

No one came to see a watch and really bought just one.

Moreover, they were items that could only be bought at Palmer Jewelry.

Each item was quite expensive, but considering my labor cost, it wasn’t a price that could be called profiteering.

High quality, diverse and beautiful designs, and reasonably priced items sold out.

Considering the brand power existing watches had, it was a natural result.

Subsequently, I launched an accessory line matching the sold-out watches.

Designing watches was fun too, but honestly, not as much as when making accessories.

Although I couldn’t cut all items myself directly so I handed over work to existing jewelers, designing itself was quite a fun task.

Launching the accessory line, I also acquired a small publishing house.

Because there had to be a place to print catalogs.

The work to do increased exponentially.

While drawing designs of constant quality, I recruited painters and employed models.

I also had to do catalog design.

I desperately needed someone to share the work, but for the first edition of the catalog, I had no choice but to do everything myself.

What I wanted wasn’t an advertisement full of text with all sorts of rhetoric attached, common in this era.

It was a classic fashion pictorial book by 21st-century standards.

Classic by 21st-century standards meant unconventional in this era.

Since I didn’t have the eloquence to make them understand unfamiliar concepts, I had no choice but to show them directly.

There were many trials and errors.

But when the result came out, the talents of this era who confirmed it with their eyes sometimes developed it in directions I hadn’t even thought of.

It was just difficult to understand concepts ahead of the times.

Since I had already seen things, I could do it.

Recently, my role as a catalog publisher is about presenting a clear concept and braking ideas that run too far ahead.

What I paid most attention to while making the catalog wasn’t finding the model who would ideally match the created accessories.

It wasn’t finding the pose that suits the model best, nor finding the painter who would transfer that appearance perfectly into a painting.

It wasn’t arranging pages in the most appropriate order, nor arranging price information design-wise.

Of course, all were important tasks.

But the most important thing was informing that ‘order-made is possible’ without being blatant.

Palmer Jewelry had a solid foundation just like my father’s jewelry shop did.

In both good and bad senses.

Sticking to a business method unlikely to fail big meant it was also hard to succeed big.

Stable clients, products with designs and functions that are not unique but always have constant demand.

When I inherited my father’s jewelry shop, I was a greenhorn, so even keeping the existing things was burdensome and I had to struggle desperately.

But now I knew how to keep them, and so I wanted to go a step further.

I revived the dream I had in my immature days.

No, it had to be different from then.

Like the regret I once had, I had to create real luxury goods with my own hands.

Palmer Jewelry had to become a place selling the single item nobles are frantic to possess.

I tried to change many parts of Palmer Jewelry, but there was exactly one thing I received great help from.

That was the magic circle schematics stored in Palmer Jewelry.

Like many things in Palmer Jewelry, the magic circles weren’t particularly surprising or groundbreaking either.

However, I was in a state where knowledge about magic circles, an ability a jeweler in this world must possess, was very lacking.

Since the schematics Palmer Jewelry possessed were the most universal forms, they were rather of great help to me.

Once I mastered the basic patterns, I could learn how to simplify them further to increase efficiency, and conversely, how to overlap several patterns to exert various effects.

It wasn’t understanding the principles of the schematics.

I just memorized the schematics as a design pattern, just like when I had magic circle lessons with the King’s Brother, Philius.

However, I knew how to use those patterns.

Just like I could draw the blueprint of a necklace where a cognitive interference magic circle was hidden.