Chapter 89
“What…… on earth…….”
His long fingers could not bring themselves to touch Agnes’s wounds and hovered in the air. Just like the light flickering on the wall.
The depths of his lungs tightened hard.
Lionel recalled the day they spent the night together after he rescued Agnes at the negotiation site with Castia.
Back then, Agnes had desperately tried somehow not to show her legs.
At that time, Agnes had said. She did not want to show them because the scars from an accident looked unsightly.
Lionel believed those words without any suspicion. No, it was closer to say he had wanted to believe them.
However, now, it was clearly being revealed how complacent that belief had been.
It felt as though his mind was being stepped on repeatedly with rage and heat.
Lionel withdrew his hand and brushed his face roughly.
“Since when…….”
Unable to continue his sentence at once, Lionel swallowed his breath once more.
“Since when, did such things appear on Agnes’s legs.”
His voice went awry contrary to his intention.
However, there was no one inside this room who could answer his question.
The servants who had watched Agnes from the closest proximity had already all been dismissed.
The one remaining was, at most, a single low-ranking servant who used to prepare bath supplies.
Lionel grabbed and stood that person up.
“You must know.”
The servant shook their head, face turning stark white.
“I, I really do not know. Lady Agnes did not receive bathing assistance. Because she said it was uncomfortable……”
At those words, Lionel’s lips shut tightly.
They did not know. They thought it was so because she said it was fine.
It was always that kind of talk.
In this vast mansion, there was no one who truly looked into and worried about Agnes.
Truly not a single person.
Even Lionel himself.
Barely suppressing the emotion welling up within him, he carefully pulled down Agnes’s skirt.
And he covered her firmly with the blanket over it.
Clearly, the blanket was light.
Yet strangely, because it felt as though even that light weight would be burdensome to Agnes, Lionel could not easily let the blanket go from his hand.
Lionel, barely letting go of the blanket, exhaled a long breath.
And without a word, he turned his body and headed straight toward the office.
The moment the servants and Kalt, who failed to catch up with Lionel’s movement, were left behind, a loud noise burst out from the direction of the office.
*Crash—!*
At the clinking noise, they rushed over and faced the inside of the office, which was literally a shambles.
“Duke!”
“Colonel!”
The chest of drawers was pulled out and flung onto the floor, and the reports that had been inside were spilled and scattered without order.
The documents on the desk were also ruthlessly rummaged through.
Ink bottles and ornaments had fallen to the floor and were shattered into pieces.
Kalt and Simon lost their words for a moment.
However, Lionel, inside there, was overturning the piles of reports like a man possessed by something.
Whether he scratched it somewhere, blood was flowing down from a long torn wound from below his pinky finger to his wrist, spreading over the papers.
“Colonel, your hand—!”
“Leave me!”
Lionel, who fiercely shook off Kalt’s hand, pushed away all the documents on the desk and approached the chest of drawers that had fallen on the floor.
And finally, inside it, he managed to find what he wanted.
The treatment report of Agnes that Kalt had presented when he conducted the northern inspection in the past.
Unlike the other documents, the fresh paper, which had not even been soiled by hands once, was shining conspicuously in particular.
Lionel’s gaze fixed upon it.
It was a report that Lionel himself had not even felt the necessity to look into, saying it was not efficient.
Efficiency.
What on earth was such a thing anyway.
In any case, if it had not been for Agnes, he would have been a life that died on the battlefield long ago without even leaving a name behind.
Because she was there, he returned alive, and because she was there, he was standing in this place right now.
Yet with what right did he.
With what qualification.
Did he discuss Agnes’s weakness, and try to judge her by bringing his own standards.
What was he so outstanding and great for.
That even while keeping Agnes by his side like this, he had ultimately remained an onlooker. Without even discerning what was the brightest thing among what he possessed.
Without even knowing who his true salvation was.
Lionel, while standing in the middle of the chaotic office, read down the treatment report with bloodshot eyes.
Blood flowed down from his hand gripping the paper, spreading rapidly between the letters.
The sentences became blurred as ink and blood intermingled, but the content alone pierced clearly into his eyes.
Inside the report, clinical papers already reported to academia were cited.
Thanks to that, he could imagine the process of the treatment Andrew would have performed in excessive detail.
— To the body whose neurological response has become dull, instances of recovering sensation by applying physical stimuli of corresponding intensity are attached.
— The factor acting as trauma in psychological treatment dulls the fear response by repeatedly exposing it at high intensity. In that process, the pain complained of by the patient is an inevitable phenomenon, so there is no need to concern.
“……Strong stimulus.”
Lionel repeated those words very slowly.
And the next moment.
Lionel, while burying his face in the paper after crumpling it tightly, let out a dry laugh.
“Ha…… Haha.”
A sound that did not even seem like laughter leaked out along with his cracked breath.
Immediately after, a crushed curse followed.
“……Son of a bitch.”
Those words were directed toward Andrew, and at the same time, they were also directed toward himself.
To endure it if it was not painful enough to die?
To not throw a tantrum?
His own face that blurted out those words carelessly came to mind vividly.
His past self, his mouth that gabbled without thought. If possible, he wanted to shut it up right this moment.
However, the words already blurted out could not be undone.
The traces left on Agnes’s body and mind were also the same.
Lionel, while gripping the report, turned his body just like that.
Where his bloodshot eyes headed was the prison located deep in the basement of the Duke’s mansion.
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The underground prison where damp air lingered.
Andrew, who was asleep leaning against the iron bars, opened his eyes in startle at the sensation of his body suddenly being dragged forward heavily.
“Du, Duke—!”
Lionel’s hand, which had reached through the iron bars, was gripping him by the collar.
Andrew’s face, dragged along without even being able to resist the strong force, slammed straight into the iron bars.
*Crunch.* His nose, forcefully struck against the bars, warped and made a dull sound.
Andrew trembled in fright and did not dare to even look at Lionel.
‘Why did he suddenly come? I was being as quiet as a dead mouse?’
He thought that if he spent a few months moderately without presence, Lionel’s anger would soften.
Because he was a highly promising talent in the medical field, and Lionel absolutely needed his ability.
Therefore, he had believed without a doubt that eventually he would have no choice but to let him out from this place again.
However, Andrew had to realize from moment to moment that it was a truly stupid thought.
Because a paper reeking of blood was crushed over his face, which could not even open its eyes properly.
“You pulled off quite grand things under the guise of treatment.”
Andrew shouted with a trembling voice.
“Was it not the Duke who permitted me to treat her at my discretion……!”
“Yes.”
Lionel did not deny it even a bit.
Yet how terrifying that affirmation was. Andrew had to shudder at the regret that he had spoken unnecessary words.
“I was an idiot of a bastard for entrusting Agnes to a guy like you. So I am trying to correct it even now. My mistake.”
“Sh, She is clearly improving, Lady Agnes is! She will still need my treatment in the future too!”
“Treatment?”
Ha.
Lionel laughed, his throat letting out a low ring.
“Did you think that if you covered it up with that kind of pleasant-sounding wrapping paper, I would overlook and pass over you who inflicted wounds on my wife?”
“If, if it is not me, Lady Agnes might never be able to walk again!”
“No.”
His light blue pupils glinted sharply.
“As for a doctor, finding another is enough. Conveniently enough, appropriate names are listed in the papers, so it saved me the trouble of putting in effort.”
Even if there were no doctor to replace Andrew, it did not matter.
If Agnes wanted, he would pour in countless support from now on to cultivate a doctor who would manage to treat her.
If she wanted to no longer receive treatment, it did not matter even if Agnes remained just as she was now.
If it was uncomfortable because she could not walk, smoothing out every path she walked was enough.
If her trauma would not heal until the very end, eliminating walkie-talkies and gunpowder from every place her eyes and ears reached was enough.
Whether intact or not intact. The existence of Agnes alone was sufficient.
Efficiency and logic were no longer the criteria that moved Lionel’s world.
“Therefore, the doctor named Andrew has become no longer needed. In my mansion.”
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