Chapter 93
“I promise you. There will never be anyone in this mansion who treats you carelessly ever again.”
“You do not have to do that.”
Agnes’s voice was calm.
To the extent that the point that no emotion whatsoever was loaded into those words was felt even more clearly instead.
Since she was a person who would stay for a while then disappear anyway, she did not want to act troublesome unnecessarily.
Now, moving her heart itself felt like a useless waste to Agnes.
To desire something once again, what remained to her was too little.
Even so, it was also funny to blame Lionel.
The one who had interpreted his goodwill by expanding it at will was herself, so how could she argue over him not loving her.
Where was a person’s heart a thing that goes according to one’s will.
It was just that it was a matter that should have been done this way from the very beginning.
Leaning on a pitiful connection of the past, she should not have mistaken that she would become a special existence to Lionel.
Because if she had done so, the matter of her heart being cut at a single word of his, or becoming sorrowful alone for nothing, would not have existed from the outset.
‘It is a relief to have realized it even now…….’
Agnes, thinking in that manner, exhaled her breath evenly.
Her mind slowly became composed.
Nevertheless, Lionel did not know how to move, as if he had become a stone statue.
“……?”
Agnes stared at Lionel for a moment, then raised the new spoon the servant handed over and began to scoop up the remaining soup to eat again.
Thinking that perhaps Lionel would stand up if she emptied the bowl cleanly.
“I went looking for the room you used to stay in at the trading company.”
“It would not have been a place worth seeing, so I am worried whether it caused the Duke displeasure for nothing.”
“…….”
Whether it was because he could not say that it was a quite decent room even as an empty word, Lionel’s expression turned a layer more ferocious.
She understood.
Anyone who saw her room inside the trading company would show that kind of reaction.
“There, I saw the list of supplies organized by date. Agnes, the ones you sent to the North.”
That…… I had left it right there.
Agnes nodded her head a couple of times without a word.
And dropping her gaze to the soup again, she stirred it a few times then brought it to her mouth. Then, she slowly chewed the solid ingredients mixed in the soup.
It was very finely minced meat.
Agnes’s eyebrows rose minutely.
As she tried to swallow, she felt a sensation of it getting caught, thud, in her throat.
As expected, meat did not agree well within her stomach.
“I confirmed that the photograph of you boarding the train bound for the South and the ticket were both fabricated. On that day…… I also obtained the testimony of the train crew member who said that the only ones who boarded the first class were an old man and a young child.”
Agnes did not make any particular reply this time either.
Rather than because there was a big reason, it was because she had still been unable to pass the soup down.
*Gulp.*
As she forced herself to swallow the lump of meat, her stomach immediately churned.
“Blinded by a desire for revenge, I believed the fabricated truth to be real. And I judged hastily.”
From the mouth of the liberated Agnes, a single short word leaked out inadvertently.
“It was…… this easy.”
Upon her pale pink lips, a bitter smile hung.
“No matter how hard I tried, it did not work for me, yet it turns out that a thing like the truth could be revealed so easily.”
“……It is clearly my fault. Without any room for excuse.”
Lionel’s blue irises looked straight at Agnes.
“So whether you curse me, or strike me. You may do whatever you wish to do until the humiliation you received in the meantime is relieved. Since I will certainly make compensation for my mistake.”
The movement of Agnes, who was munching on the soup she had pushed into her mouth once again, slowed down.
‘Look at that. As expected, it is compensation.’
Strangely, there was no feeling of disappointment.
Rather, a feeling that one corner of her heart settled down lightly passed by.
Along with the thought that as expected, a sense of relief that she did not foolishly harbor hope this time flashed through.
Since she had been prepared for it, it was not surprising, and since she did not expect, it did not hurt.
It was merely that her stomach churned a little more.
Upon Lionel’s face, a kind of tension she had not seen previously was looming.
The light blue irises left Agnes’s face and slowly went downward. Heading toward her right leg hidden beneath the blanket.
“So if there is still a truth remaining that I have not yet known, I wish you would tell me. Even if it is a matter regarding your injured leg, for instance……”
“…….”
“If it is not because of the train accident, how did you happen to injure your leg?”
As Lionel stopped his words for a moment, his Adam’s apple moved up and down.
Lionel’s voice that came out in the next moment had become a layer lower.
“By any chance, is it related to sending weapons to the North? Was there a time…… you came to the North personally?”
Agnes, who emptied the bowl completely just at that time, looked back face-to-face at Lionel.
Her expression reflected in Lionel’s eyes looked even more unbothered than expected, so it felt strange.
Lionel was being curious about her.
If he had asked a little faster, perhaps she, without a mind again, might have placed meaning upon each and every one of his actions and been overwhelmed.
But because it was no longer so now, Agnes chose the side of erecting a wall of apathy.
“What kind of meaning would that have at this late hour.”
It was a calm voice.
“It is all a past matter anyway.”
“A past matter……”
Lionel muttered as if repeating those words.
“I will make sure not to let harm come to the Duke because of this leg, so you do not have to concern yourself.”
“Agnes.”
Lionel called her name, but Agnes did not continue her words any further.
She was not hiding it from the same heart as before.
Agnes merely judged.
If Lionel realized that this leg had become unusable because of him, lest the time she would be abandoned would be delayed further by the amount of that deepened guilt.
Because she disliked that, Agnes spared her words.
“It is enough merely that the Duke has personally made an apology to someone like me, who is not even a nobleman.”
She was sincere.
Agnes did not wish to hear an apology from Lionel any longer.
She merely wished that his attention would quickly fade away.
Right now at this moment, she was only filled with the thought that it would be good if he vacated his spot.
Because her stomach kept twisting due to the strain of eating the food.
However, even at such a wish of Agnes, Lionel did not know how to stand up.
Lionel was likewise swallowing down a sense of nausea of a different meaning.
That was not a physiological reaction, but was close to a sensation where self-reproach toward himself refluxed upward to the inside of his throat.
At Agnes’s words bringing up social status, blue veins stood out prominently upon his neck.
Lionel bit his molars tightly.
At the fact that the cause that made such words come out of Agnes’s mouth was none other than himself, he felt as if he had been trapped in a maze without a path.
“Ah.”
It was then.
A short groan leaked out from Agnes’s mouth.
Her face turning pale in an instant, she covered her mouth.
Lionel hastily leaned his body and tried to support such an Agnes.
However, Agnes looked at the servant standing nearby, not Lionel.
“I am sorry, but the wheelchair, could you bring it closer?”
And then, she finally managed to get onto the wheelchair, and urgently rolling the wheels with her own hands, she headed toward the bathroom.
The wheelchair, which advanced forward scraping the floor, crossed the threshold, and soon the bathroom door closed.
Lionel stood frozen in that spot for a while.
The back figure that passed by him as if shaking him off was repeated like a rewind continuously inside his head.
‘……That it is a past matter.’
The words Agnes had said earlier rang terribly in his ears.
It was not.
It was not a matter that could be dismissed like that.
It was something that must not become a past matter.
Rather, if she had slapped his cheek and screamed why he foolishly believed only the rumors and denounced her, why he had been so cruel.
Or if she had even glared at him with resentment-filled eyes, it would have been far more bearable.
However, Agnes did not do so.
With such a composed voice, with empty eyes.
Merely that she understood. That it was a past matter.
To speak indifferently as if nothing had happened was all.
It was then.
“Ugh.”
Beyond the closed door,
the sound of an unsuppressed retching echoed clearly.
In an instant, he felt as though all blood drained from Lionel’s fingertips.
“……! Agnes!”
Lionel, flailing his long legs, headed toward the bathroom.
It was a desperate movement.
With every step, dread blossomed.
Agnes’s reaction was abnormal.
And that fact was permeating into the depths of Lionel’s chest like a terror.
It was a silence, and a forgiveness, more frightening than any anger.
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