Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Even though she clearly knew why he had no appetite, she deliberately changed the subject and pretended to be pitiful.

Ash felt disgust rising within him whenever his mother acted like that. To the point that he wondered how he could have craved this person’s affection so desperately when he was young.

“You’ve been sitting here long enough that the reporters will write their own articles. So tell me what you want already.”

“You’re so cold to your mother.”

“Are you trying to determine who the truly cold-hearted one is here?”

Unlike when he was young, Dolores slightly furrowed her brow at her son’s attitude, which held not the slightest trace of endearment, then took out a cigarette from her bag and put it between her lips.

“You know Mother is going on stage starting the week after next, right?”

“……”

Ash gave no answer, but she paid no attention and pushed several invitations toward him.

“They’re VIP seats. Pass them on to people of standing.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to send them by letter? Who would refuse when they’re sent by you, Mother?”

“You know what level of people I can reach. Give them to people of a somewhat higher standing than that.”

Ash couldn’t understand what Dolores meant by ‘level.’ What was so important about having a noble higher than a count come to watch a play?

Even though his expression clearly showed how absurd he found it, Dolores paid no mind and continued.

“If you say, ‘I went to great lengths to obtain these from my mother and give them to you,’ it saves my face, and they’ll feel good too. It’s a happy ending for everyone.”

“What about how I feel? Well, I suppose that has never been something Mother considers.”

At his cold voice, which he could no longer hold back, she became annoyed instead.

“You’ll gain their favor too, so what’s there to feel bad about?”

“Why should I gain their favor?”

“Oh my, how noble of you. Don’t you know that the fact you can live like this is all thanks to your mother? I went to all that trouble to raise you and make you a noble, yet you don’t even know gratitude!”

Dolores wrapped up her own actions of having an affair with Count McCallen and giving birth to an illegitimate child with the word ‘favor.’

The child had been raised in the hands of nannies who changed every year, learning loneliness before anything else.

He learned his mother’s face by looking at theater posters in the always-quiet house. When he opened his eyes in the morning, instead of his mother, there was always a book beside him that he had to read every day, and his mother’s attitude toward him changed according to the evaluations of his tutors.

The lessons he had to take to become a noble were neither fun nor easy, but hoping to receive even one more word of praise from his mother, the child forced himself to study and eventually earned the word ‘perfect’ from every one of his tutors.

Never knowing that being recognized as a ‘well-educated child’ would become the reason she abandoned him.

“Mother! I’ll be a better child! I’ll study even harder! So please, let me live with you! Please!”

During the winter of the year he turned eight, how coldly had this beautiful woman pushed away the child who clung to her, sobbing uncontrollably?

Ash’s eyes filled with deep resentment.

“Favor? I said until the very end that I didn’t want to enter the mansion. You were the one who forced me to go in.”

“You’re still young. Wait until you’re older. Then you’ll shed tears of gratitude toward me.”

As always, conversations on this subject ended with mutual incomprehension.

He had tried several times to convey his feelings until now, but Dolores could not hear his cries, as though she were behind a wall.

After that continued for years, Ash eventually gave up. On loving his mother, on understanding his mother, and on considering his mother his mother.

“Judging by the looks of things, it seems we won’t be leaving on good terms, so I’ll get up first. There’s no sight more pitiful than an old woman being left alone behind.”

Dolores gathered her belongings, lightly stood up, and left the restaurant. The two men escorting her stood and followed her out, but neither of them paid the bill.

Ash let out a breath that was somewhere between a scoff and a sigh, then gathered the invitations and bill from the table.

Then he stood up and was about to leave as he was, but he changed direction and walked toward where Rosalyn was sitting.

When the woman who looked like a maid poked Rosalyn, she turned her head while chewing on something with her mouth full. The way her eyes grew wider in stages was amusing.

“Do you like plays?”

“Mm? J-just a moment…….”

Rosalyn covered her mouth with her hand, diligently moved her jaw to chew the food, and then swallowed it with a loud gulp.

It was a ‘bite’ that could never be seen from the elegant young ladies of high society.

Just seeing her like that seemed to make him forget the unpleasantness he had felt after meeting Dolores. More precisely, perhaps all those things simply seemed ridiculous now.

“I-I do like them, but…… why are you asking? Is that something you need to investigate too? Or are you doing this just because I happened to look at Miss Hamilton for a moment?”

Even though the tips of her ears were red with embarrassment, she asked back as if she absolutely refused to lose.

Women this confrontational were rare. Women whose confrontational attitude he didn’t dislike were even rarer.

Ash held out the invitations to her.

“I heard the <Glacier> troupe is premiering a new production next week. If you’re interested, I thought you might want to go.”

“Uh……? Are these invitations to a play?”

“They said they’re VIP seats. I hope you’ll like them.”

Perhaps she had never expected to receive a gift, because only then did Rosalyn stand up from her seat and accept the invitations from him.

“Th-thank you! And I, I really liked Dolores Hamilton.”

“……I did too, once. Then, enjoy the rest of your time.”

After saying that, Ash turned around and left without hesitation.

Only Rosalyn remained behind, wearing a complicated expression.

***

After returning to the mansion after finishing shopping and eating, Maya whispered while helping me change clothes.

“I’ll never forget today for the rest of my life.”

“We haven’t even known each other for that long, yet I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard the word ‘forever’ from you.”

At that, Maya giggled.

Was she always such a cheerful child?

I hadn’t known her for very long, but after watching her for several days, I realized that in addition to being skillful with her hands, she was a smart and perceptive maid.

I knew because I had been a maid myself. Truly capable workers like this were not common.

“Did you really not make any mistakes in front of Heather Dartmouth? I genuinely can’t understand why she fired you.”

“I’m curious about that myself. I don’t think I even stood out. ……Ah!”

As though she had suddenly remembered something, Maya raised her head.

“Come to think of it, she did say something strange while scolding me.”

“Something strange?”

“Yes. She told me, ‘This is what you get for eyeing gentlemen like that.’ But I never glanced at them…….”

At that moment, a certain intuition flashed through my mind.

“Did you perhaps run into a nobleman or something right before that girl hit you?”

“I did answer when a gentleman spoke to me while I was putting the refreshments on the tea table. But it really wasn’t anything.”

“What did you talk about?”

“He said the scones with orange peel were delicious and that he must have eaten more than half of the ones on that plate, so I only told him not to worry because there were plenty prepared.”

There was no way Heather could have heard the conversation from beside them, so the content of the conversation itself probably wasn’t important. Then that meant the man himself was the problem.

“What did that man look like?”

“He was young…… and had curly blond hair, and navy? No, was it black? Anyway, he was wearing dark-colored clothes.”

The only information that could identify the man was that he was young and had ‘curly blond hair,’ but I thought I knew who that man was.

‘He’s the man who came to the party when Rosalyn spilled wine on that girl’s dress. I’m sure of it.’

I remembered because I had kept checking on Heather at the time, worried that Rosalyn might cause some sort of accident.

So perhaps…… he was the man Heather had feelings for?

‘Even so, just because they exchanged a few words as a joke, she slapped a maid and fired her?’

No, even before that, she had tried to make her pay an enormous amount in compensation and ruin her life. Wasn’t that going way too far?

Heather surely wasn’t unaware of that.

Then there was only one answer.

‘It means she has an unrequited love for that man. She wants to have him all to herself, but since she can’t, she’s hostile toward the women around him.’

And among them, how easy a target was a maid to take her frustration out on?

What a horrible girl. She must have known perfectly well that Maya had done nothing wrong, yet she had tried to ruin someone’s life because she couldn’t control such petty jealousy.

‘Well, I suppose this is all a matter of luck and fate. Thanks to her, I ended up gaining a good maid.’

I had no idea what kind of commotion that girl would cause if she saw me taking Maya around with me, but I decided to think about that when the time came.