Chapter 43
A productive report.
Lionel’s aide, Kalt, happened to have something exactly like that in his hand.
“The Duchess has sent a telegram. Would you like to check it?”
Lionel stroked his lower face. The texture of his cold leather gloves didn’t feel bad.
‘If there are new clues, let me know by telegram.’ He had instructed her so, but he hadn’t expected her to actually send one.
“It was worth teaching her, I suppose.”
Lionel recalled the moment just before he left for the North, when he taught Agnes how to use the telegraph.
Did it take a little less than a week?
How to tap the keys of the transmitter, the sequence of connecting the wires, and even the sense of distinguishing the length of codes and dots.
Even though it must have been her first time learning, Agnes had mastered the usage quite well.
And she had eventually learned all the basic operations in less than half the time it took others.
‘She learned uselessly fast.’
Then again, it was not surprising.
She had been like that since she was a child.
Whether it was a complex calculation formula or a mechanical design that anyone could see was difficult, he had seen her several times by her side, drawing them perfectly after seeing them just once.
“She grew up exactly as she was.”
His cynical mouth curved minutely into an arc.
But soon, Lionel’s expression became terrifyingly rigid.
It was unpleasant that he had smiled while thinking of a person from the Bardo family.
Lionel soon lowered his gaze to the telegram. It was a short message of three lines.
[I heard that autumn rain has been falling for days in the North. Are you alright?]
The first sentence of the telegram was merely a short greeting.
A private line unrelated to work reports. It was the kind of inefficient behavior Lionel hated so much.
Yet, for some reason, the thought briefly crossed his mind that starting a telegram like this might not be bad.
Perhaps it was because the words asking about his trivial daily life were similar to the contents of the letters he had stored in the annex.
Of course, Agnes was not the sender of those letters.
The rounded yet neat handwriting of Agnes he had seen in passing before was completely different from the rough, scrawled handwriting in those letters.
Lionel moved his gaze to the next sentence.
The main point was short.
It was news that there was a suspicious new trading company.
Lionel’s eyes stopped at the last sentence.
[P.S. When will you return? The chrysanthemums are starting to fade.]
Lionel stared at the sentence for a long time before indifferently folding the telegram.
Beside him, chrysanthemums blooming in the field by the riverbank swayed in the wind.
His business in the North had just finished.
There wasn’t a huge harvest, but he had found out that the creation of the Rebelt was the work of those survivors from the 5th Brigade.
“Are you returning to the capital now?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will contact Simon.”
“No. There’s no need for that. I won’t be going to the mansion.”
It was an extremely firm response.
He wasn’t in the state of mind to leisurely drop by the mansion.
As soon as he returned to the capital, Lionel intended to visit the House of Count Guten.
The Count’s family, which was revealed to have committed both draft evasion and military supply corruption, had lost a vast fortune after being sentenced to a fine.
As part of that, the trading companies owned by the Count’s family were also confiscated in the name of the Imperial Army and were under entrusted management. And some of them were in a state of being delegated to Lionel’s unit.
Lionel intended to personally check if that management system was operating properly.
A moment later, a report came in that the soldiers had completed their preparations.
Before mounting his horse, Lionel looked up at the northern sky one last time.
Sunlight was seeping through the faint clouds.
At that moment, Agnes’s face suddenly came to mind.
The image of her smiling brightly with a bouquet in front of the dining hall bloomed in the air.
Lionel, staring into the empty space, lit a cigar.
The scent of the burning cigar leaves quickly spread, covering the afterimage of Agnes.
As if she had never existed from the start.
“Let’s move out.”
Once the order was given, the procession began to move.
The sound of horseshoes continued for a long time over the muddy slush, and the rain-soaked wind brushed the edge of his cloak.
Lionel fixed his gaze forward and did not look back.
In his mind, neither the mansion, nor the chrysanthemums, nor Agnes’s smile remained.
Only the next target and the numbers on the reports remained.
It wasn’t that he had forgotten the promise to walk in the garden with Agnes.
But he thought there was no need to hurry.
The chrysanthemums would bloom again next year, and the year after that.
Once this year passed, they would bloom again as if nothing had happened.
And since other flowers would bloom when the chrysanthemums faded, he felt there was no need to rush for such natural things.
Lionel judged it so.
“It’s already been two weeks.”
Lionel’s business trip, which she thought would only take a few days, had somehow stretched into several weeks.
During that time, Agnes was thoroughly alone.
She spent most of her day on rehabilitation treatment and reviewing reports.
But no matter how busily she filled her time, an inescapable loneliness rushed in when evening came.
It wasn’t even that they had spent much time together, yet she missed Lionel.
She had occasionally included a question about when he would return at the end of her telegrams, but there was no reply.
Like those days when she had never received a single answer to the letters she sent to the military base.
“……I miss you.”
Agnes muttered so softly it was barely audible.
As she unconsciously touched her right calf, she felt the rough texture of the gauze.
It was covering the burn wound left in the area where she received treatment.
Since Andrew began residing at the mansion, several more treatments had followed.
And servants were always standing in front of the door.
However, not once had they ever reacted to the sound of the bell.
As if they were people who had gone deaf, as if the sound did not reach them.
At first, she thought it was a coincidence.
But even after one, two, and three days passed, that did not change.
‘……Surely, they must have heard it.’
Finally, unable to endure it any longer, Agnes tried to protest to Simon about the servants’ behavior, but even that was not feasible.
Because Mrs. Nora stood in her way.
Just like right now.
Agnes furrowed her fine brow and looked up at Nora in front of her.
“The management of the servants has now been entrusted to me. Therefore, if you have any discomforts, you can speak to me, not the head butler.”
She said Simon was incredibly busy acting as Lionel’s deputy.
Whether those words were not a lie, it had been quite a long time since Agnes had seen Simon as well.
Because of that, Mrs. Nora’s touch reached every corner of the mansion.
From the maids’ duty roster to the meal menus, and even Agnes’s schedule.
Everything began to run under Nora’s management.
“Then today, I will teach you how to use the tableware.”
Mrs. Nora, who was laying out knives and forks on the table one by one, discovered something and her shoulders trembled. As if she had seen something horrific.
Where her gaze rested were two pairs of pointe shoes.
They were things received from Lionel, and to Agnes, they were more precious and valuable than anything.
“Are those…… dance shoes?”
Nora’s voice rose a notch.
Before Agnes could answer, she quickly approached and picked up the pointe shoes.
“Yes, I received them from the Duke—”
“Miss Agnes.”
Nora gently cut her off.
“It is not very becoming for a dignified noblewoman to keep such items in her room.”
“……What do you mean?”
“These are shoes worn by commoner dancers. If someone saw this, what kind of talk would circulate in social circles? Especially since Miss Agnes’s origin is—,”
Ah.
Nora covered her mouth with a start as if she had made a mistake and bowed her head.
“Please forget what I just said. I will keep these safely for you. So that they do not catch anyone else’s eye.”
Agnes quickly grabbed the pointe shoes.
“Give them back. Those are my things.”
“Of course, I know. It is not as if my heart is at ease acting this way.”
Nora smiled gently.
“But since all of this is for your sake and the Duke’s honor, please understand this Nora’s heart.”
She lightly patted the back of Agnes’s hand, which was gripping the pointe shoes, as if soothing a child.
“I am not saying I will throw them away. I will put them in a place where you can take them out and see them whenever you need, Miss Agnes.”
In the end, the pointe shoes were passed into Nora’s arms.
the ends of the ribbons flowed over Nora’s arm and brushed the floor.
Agnes stared blankly at that movement, then gripped the sensation remaining on her fingertips like an illusion.
The reality that even a mere two pairs of pointe shoes were not permitted to her—it didn’t feel real.
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