Chapter 76
“Lady Agnes. Are you truly…… alright with going out today?”
Simon set down the overcoat he was holding for a moment and examined Agnes with a worried gaze.
A thin, dry cough broke out repeatedly from Agnes’s chest.
This morning, she even had a slight fever for a while, and it had only just subsided.
Her skin was still faintly flushed as if the resonance of the heat remained, and her breath was somewhat labored.
“I’m fine.”
Agnes raised her head calmly, her expression appearing as if half the light had drained from it.
“It’s the Eve festival, after all.”
Time had passed exceptionally fast, and the day of the Eve festival had suddenly arrived before her.
The dance drama for the festival, which the Bardo trading company was supposed to handle, had finished preparations without any issues, completely excluding Agnes.
Simon watched Agnes’s back as she stepped toward the mansion’s entrance with eyes filled with deep anxiety.
Since Agnes had struck Nora’s cheek, the cold treatment surrounding her had actually become more subtle.
Simon had set out to investigate belatedly, but the servants were unable to move easily because they had been mindful of Nora for a long time.
Even so, there were a few who found the courage.
He had tried to convey the facts learned through them to Lionel Edmund Valheim several times, but the reports were repeatedly pushed to the end of the queue under the pretext of him being busy.
Even when Simon, unable to wait any longer, visited the Knights himself, he could not see Lionel Edmund Valheim’s face.
Even if he occasionally encountered Lionel Edmund Valheim on the street as he hurried somewhere, the only response was the single phrase, “Later.”
Simon gritted his teeth firmly.
“……I only hope that ‘later’ is not too late.”
***
At that very hour when Agnes was leaving the Duke’s residence and heading toward the Knights.
Jerome, with a nonchalant face, kicked off his boots as if he were in his own room and filled his glass with liquor again.
Beneath his relaxed movements, the uncooled heat of the hunt remained.
Jerome had just returned from a sudden raid on the Rebelt base that Chloe had informed him about.
Regrettably, he had finished by killing a few small fry, but it wasn’t without harvest.
The face of Rael, who looked so much like Agnes as he saw him there, kept coming to mind, causing snickers to escape.
Jerome raised his glass to cover his mouth.
He was merely tracing the tracks of the Young Marquis Guten, who had vanished long ago.
It was because he felt he had seen a similar face when he raided the negotiation site of the Castia trading company and Bardo trading company last time.
However, he had been getting irritated lately because someone was meticulously erasing Rael’s traces.
‘To think I’d hook such a big fish.’
Jerome slowly tilted his glass like a predator scouting its prey.
“Oh, right. I’ll give you a piece of good news. His Majesty the Emperor told me to return the investigative authority over Rebelt to you.”
Lionel Edmund Valheim’s pupils shook very minutely.
Jerome did not miss that reaction.
He brought the glass close to his mouth and scrutinized Lionel Edmund Valheim’s expression thoroughly.
“Is that all your business is?”
“Hardly. I heard an interesting story about your wife, you see. I came to deliver it.”
Lionel Edmund Valheim’s gaze sank coldly.
As if waiting for this, Jerome filled his empty glass again.
“The word that the Duchess’s biological father isn’t Adrian Bardo—have you perhaps heard of it?”
Lionel Edmund Valheim’s fingertips twitched.
Confirming that, Jerome continued with an even deeper smile.
“I heard her biological father is one of the members of Rebelt. It’s nonsense, right?”
Jerome snickered as if making a trivial joke on purpose.
Then, he suddenly leaned his upper body, which had been lounging freely, forward.
“However, if that were true, wouldn’t it be a serious matter?”
“…….”
“You’d end up married to the daughter of a terrorist; in the worst case, couldn’t you be driven into a corner as a traitor together?”
“You are worrying quite seriously over such an absurd story.”
“It’s because I’m concerned. According to the rumors heard lately, they say the Duke of Valheim has fallen deeply for the Duchess. I’m worried you might do something foolish, like trying to cover up the Duchess’s crimes.”
Lionel Edmund Valheim crossed his legs languidly and tilted his head.
The momentary agitation had long since been erased.
Jerome, staring at that impenetrable figure, slowly swirled his glass.
“Then again. You aren’t so stupid as to lose your heart to a woman with no roots and blow away the status you worked so hard to regain, right?”
A denial did not immediately burst from Lionel Edmund Valheim’s mouth.
That brief silence planted a certainty in Jerome.
The certainty that Agnes was no ordinary existence to Lionel Edmund Valheim.
“My, my.”
Jerome snickered, exhaling a breath steeped in the smell of liquor.
“Could it be you’ve actually fallen in love—,”
“Not a chance.”
Just then, Lionel Edmund Valheim finally opened his mouth.
“I merely paid the price because she is quite useful in many ways, but it seems rumors have spread in that manner.”
Lionel Edmund Valheim propped his temple with his hand.
In his languidly spreading tone, not a single emotion was contained.
“Did you truly believe I had fallen in love? With the daughter of a lowly merchant or some such?”
Lionel Edmund Valheim crooked the corner of his mouth as if sneering.
Lionel Edmund Valheim’s Adam’s apple fluctuated minutely.
He thought he had thoroughly erased the traces, yet Jerome had found out. Information regarding Agnes’s biological father.
Nevertheless, the intention behind laying it out in front of him like this was obvious.
Since Jerome’s goal was Lionel Edmund Valheim himself anyway.
He was likely gauging how far he could use Agnes as bait.
The moment the fact that Lionel Edmund Valheim’s feelings for Agnes were extraordinary was revealed, Jerome would surely push Agnes into an unprecedented abyss.
That was why Lionel Edmund Valheim treated Agnes like she was nothing.
So that Jerome’s interest would move from Agnes to himself.
Jerome narrowed his eyes as if half-doubting.
“……Truly?”
But even that suspicion did not last long.
Jerome rolled his tongue again and thrust a blade disguised as advice.
“If so, then it’s a relief. Be careful if you don’t want to be entangled with the daughter of a lowly merchant and dragged down to the bottom together. This is advice from an old friend.”
A friend.
It was not even a funny story.
Nevertheless, Jerome continued his words shamelessly.
“Or, before the gossip spreads further, it might be better to just discard your wife.”
“I shall do so if necessary.”
This time, there wasn’t even a hesitation.
Lionel Edmund Valheim pulled the liquor bottle toward him and filled the glass in front of him.
“She has served her use anyway.”
At that callous reaction, a darkly sunken luster spread in Jerome’s golden eyes.
And, the gaze of another person who heard Lionel Edmund Valheim’s words was also quietly sinking.
Behind the tightly closed gap of the door, a single strand of a finely trembling breath was leaking out.
***
“Did you truly believe I had fallen in love? With the daughter of a lowly merchant or some such?”
The low, steady baritone that seeped through the gap in the door struck Agnes’s ears like thunder.
She felt as if the blood in her whole body was slowly draining out.
Beside her, Kalt moved his lips with a troubled expression.
At the fact that Agnes must have heard those words in their entirety just now, his face also froze with tension.
Agnes forced strength into her trembling voice and looked up at Kalt like someone who had heard nothing.
“I have to attend the Eve festival with the Duke…… and I came because I received a message that he would wait here.”
“Ah…… it seems there has been a mistake.”
Only then did Kalt search his memory.
A few days ago, Lionel Edmund Valheim had instructed Agnes to come to the Knights on the day of the Eve festival, saying it was difficult to make time because he was busy.
However, this morning, Lionel Edmund Valheim had reversed the previous instruction and sent a new message saying he would go to the Duke’s residence personally.
It seemed that as those two instructions overlapped, confusion had arisen during the delivery process.
Kalt stood in front of the door as naturally as possible and blocked Agnes’s line of sight.
“There is a guest inside. If it’s alright, I will escort you to another room.”
“……No, I’ll just wait in front of the main gate of the Knights.”
Agnes pulled up her trembling lips and forced a smile.
She felt like she should not stay in this space any longer.
However, cruelly, another conversation pierced through the ears of Agnes, who was grabbing the wheels in a hurry as if fleeing.
“Or, before the gossip spreads further, it might be better to just discard your wife.”
“I shall do so if necessary. She has served her use anyway.”
*Slipping—.*
The wheel slipped from Agnes’s hand.
Lionel Edmund Valheim’s voice pierced her skin like a sharp piece of metal.
And those words sank from her head to her heart, along her spine to her lower abdomen, freezing her entire body stone-cold.
And finally, they cruelly shattered the thin ice Agnes had been pitifully treading upon.
The thin ice that bore the name of unstable affection.
Cracks spread somewhere in Agnes’s field of vision.
Those cracks spread from the floor to her chest, and to the deep place below her neck.
Through those gaps, the small expectation she held for Lionel Edmund Valheim, the faintly remaining warmth and hope, and such things flowed down rapidly.
At an irreversible speed, like a broken hourglass.
Was it Nora who said it? To grasp her situation well.
Only now did Agnes grasp her situation with perfect clarity.
To Lionel Edmund Valheim, she was a shackle.
She was a burden.
She was a sin that might eventually ruin him.
And…….
She was nothing more than an insignificant spare card that could be discarded whenever he grew tired of her.
Agnes’s vision blurred.
‘Ah…….’
Breath could not be inhaled properly.
Agnes bent her waist and covered her mouth.
It hurt as if someone were wringing her heart with their hands.
The only support left in her life, living with broken legs, was collapsing.
Below the broken ice, into that deep quagmire.
To a place where she could never be retrieved.
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
