Chapter 12

Could some wild animal have gotten caught in a gap in the fence?

She wished desperately that it was.

Please, don’t let it be a person.

If it were a person who paid no mind to the sound of bells, there was no telling what harm they might do. She knew all too well, down to her bones, that the most frightening thing in the world was a person.

Jingle, jingle, jingle…!

All the while, the bells kept ringing.

If only Tanya were here beside her now, she’d be a little less frightened.

Could the sound not reach as far as Mia’s house?

What should she do? Should she go out and check?

It didn’t seem to be a wild animal. The ringing wasn’t coming from just one spot.

It seemed like several people had gathered around the house. They were obviously shaking the fence on purpose, trying to frighten her.

Who in the world…?

That was the moment.

Just as the ringing seemed to stop,

Crash!

“Eek!”

At the sound of shattering glass, Adele screamed.

Reckless footsteps drew steadily closer. It seemed the people who had been shaking the fence were now rushing into the garden.

Clang!

Adele quickly bolted the cellar door from the inside and crouched down on the stairs. She put out the lamp so no light would leak through.

Please! Let nothing happen!

In the pitch darkness, unable to see even an inch ahead, Adele covered her ears and curled herself into a ball.

The mold smell stinging her nose made her feel sick.

And then a memory she didn’t want to remember surfaced.

“His Lordship the Marquis Oswald is a man of deeply ingrained frugality. So you, my lady, will follow his guidance as well.”

From the very first day she entered the marquis’s household, the head housekeeper had spoken as if trying to establish discipline. It was the attitude one would take with a newly hired maid, not a marchioness.

“From now on, my lady, you’ll use this cellar. Being underground, no drafts get in, so you won’t need separate heating. If you’re cold, dress warmly to sleep. You’ll be given one candle a week, so use it sparingly. As for meals, you may eat whatever His Lordship leaves.”

In the two years she spent in House Oswald, Adele had been Marchioness in name only.

Even the maids openly mocked and mistreated her, calling her “the cellar mistress.”

The only times Adele was treated as the Marchioness were when guests came, or when she attended banquets. They needed a marchioness only for appearances’ sake.

A powerless puppet of a marchioness, with nowhere to turn and no one to tell.

---

“…Are you even listening, Commander?”

Zimmer spoke up beside him, but Christine gave no answer. He simply sat with his arms crossed, staring out the carriage window.

It was pitch dark outside, so there was no scenery to admire; judging by his expression, he was in a thoroughly foul mood.

Could he have quarreled with the Marchioness?

Then Zimmer started, struck by a realization.

That Christine could be in such a foul mood because of someone — especially a woman…

Wasn’t this the man who didn’t even spare the Princess a second glance?

Seeing this, Adele was clearly someone special to him. More than just an older sister figure.

“If it’s gotten to the point of kissing her cheek, how far along would you say things are?”

An out-of-nowhere question.

Zimmer tilted his head, then broke into a wide grin.

“Don’t tell me you kissed the Marchioness’s cheek? Well, that’s a clear heart signal if I ever—!”

But at the murderous edge in Christine’s look, he quickly changed his tune.

“Well… who kissed whose cheek hardly matters. Either way, it’s a clear heart signal. If skin touched skin between a man and a woman, that already says it all… gr-great…”

Christine looked ready to kill Zimmer with his eyes alone.

“Should I get rid of him?”

“Sir?”

Startled by the murderous aura, Zimmer flinched and drew in on himself. But Christine’s eyes weren’t actually fixed on him.

Then who was he talking about?

Christine shook his head as if shaking off the thought.

“Never mind. What’s the report on Viscount Eaton?”

He’d ordered an investigation into Viscount Eaton after Madame Hans’s party ended.

“As it happens, the report just came in.”

Zimmer quickly flipped through the report and added,

“He’s reportedly been frequenting the taverns of Hell Valley lately. Seems he’s plotting something with back-alley thugs…”

In that instant, Christine pressed a finger to his lips as if to call for silence.

When Zimmer stopped speaking, Christine closed his eyes and sharpened every sense. The very air inside the carriage seemed to coil around him all at once.

A moment later, his blue-gray eyes flashed, and he murmured low.

“Seems he’s already set his scheme in motion.”

---

Bang bang bang!

With a violent noise, the cellar door shuddered in its frame.

“My lady! Stop hiding in there like a rat and come on out!”

At the voice from beyond the door, Adele started.

Viscount Eaton!

The voice was slurred with drink, but it was unmistakably him.

“If you don’t open up by the time I count to three, these ill-tempered friends of mine will break the door down. No telling what they’ll do once they’re in! Ha ha ha ha!”

The snickering laughter of men followed. There seemed to be at least three or four of them.

“One!”

Adele clutched her apron tight with trembling hands and shouted.

“Wasn’t being humiliated at Madame Hans’s party enough for you, Viscount Eaton?”

“Shut up!”

Bang!

The door shook violently, as if he’d kicked it.

“Break it down!”

Crash! Crash!

Each eardrum-splitting blow made Adele flinch. The old wooden door seemed ready to splinter apart at any moment.

Even so, she drew strength from her gut and shouted with everything she had.

“I’m warning you — if even one of you lays a hand on me, do you think Count Weiss will sit still for it?”

Sorry as she was to do it, right now there was nothing for it but to borrow Christine’s fearsome reputation.

Sure enough, she felt the men hesitate. In Kalaim, his was a name that could make even a crying child fall silent.

“Hey, nobody said anything about Count Weiss.”

“What’s she to him, anyway?”

Low whispers. A small stir seemed to pass among the men.

Sensing her chance, Adele summoned a little more courage.

“He’ll be here any moment. So if you want to live, get out now!”

“Shut up!”

Crack!

In the end, the door gave way, and through the pale haze of dust she saw the men’s shapes. In the middle of them, Eaton stood baring his white teeth in a grin.

“Heh heh heh… who’s going to fall for your lies? You humiliated me in front of the Princess herself. Today you’ll pay dearly for it!”

Eaton shot a look at the men around him.

At that, one of the men began splashing liquid from a wooden cask in every direction. A sharp smell of oil filled the air.

Surely they didn’t mean to set the house on fire?

“No!”

As Adele moved to stop them, the rest of the men lunged at her.

In that instant, Adele hitched up her skirt, baring her pale thigh.

“No! Watch out for the knife—!”

Eaton shouted, but the men’s eyes were already fixed on her thigh, and

Shing!

Adele drew the dagger hidden in her garter ring and slashed it out.

“Argh, the bitch!”

The man whose arm she’d cut snarled and shouted,

“Back off if you don’t want to die!”

Adele held the dagger up fiercely before her.

There was no way she could actually hold them off with this. But they couldn’t bring themselves to rush her recklessly either.

Please, if I could just stab even one of them and get away…

Just as she gripped the dagger desperately with sweat-slicked hands —

“What a letdown. And here I came all this way to help.”

A languid voice spoke up, utterly out of place in the tense scene.

Everyone turned to look, and there was a man sitting on a red sofa, chin propped on one hand, watching as though taking in a show.

---

No one knew how long the man had been sitting there.

His ghostly, unnoticed appearance was startling enough, but what startled them more was how unreally beautiful the man looked.

Features as flawless as if carved from marble, dazzling silver-blond hair. Lips as red as if stained with blood, the kind that seemed capable of bewitching anyone who looked at them.

“C-Count Weiss?”

At Eaton’s cry, the men around him were thrown into a panic.

“Shit, he actually came?”

“This is insane!”

Christine rose slowly from the sofa and came closer.

“I believe I asked a favor of you that day, Viscount Eaton.”

“Th-that day…?”

Puzzled, Eaton suddenly recalled that voice.

Madame Hans’s party!

That night, he’d dragged a drugged Adele into a room. Then, limp and seemingly unconscious, she had suddenly drawn a dagger and slashed out, just as she had now.

While he’d been flustered by her unexpected resistance, someone had come up behind him. Then, in a sweet, soft voice, they’d whispered.

“I’d advise against anything dangerous.”

The instant those words ended, he’d felt a pain at the back of his neck and blacked out.

When he woke, he’d been gagged, stripped bare, and tied to a chair.

That man back then had been Count Weiss?

“It seems my warning that day was far too polite.”

“I… I only meant to scare her a little…”

Answering in terror, Eaton still felt a flicker of doubt. For all the terrifying rumors, the Count Weiss before him was slender, almost girlishly pretty — nothing like what he’d imagined.

The rumors had to be exaggerated.

With the numbers he had here, maybe there was a way to deal with him after all…

Shing!

In that instant, a flash crossed his vision, and Christine had drawn his rapier.

The long, sleek blade looked just like him.

The mere sight of it made Eaton’s breath catch and his hair stand on end. It seemed to come from the uncanny killing intent radiating off the blade.

Without meaning to, he began backing away step by flinching step —

Splat!

and slipped in the oil pooled on the floor, falling flat.

At the same instant, Christine’s rapier came stabbing in beneath his chin.

“Aaaargh!”

Certain his jaw was about to be run through, Eaton screamed.

All the while, Christine’s rapier traced an indifferent path downward — from beneath his chin, along his throat, over his chest, his stomach, and down to right between his legs.

The mere shadow of the blade on his skin filled him with such terror — of his belly split open, his insides torn out — that he couldn’t breathe.

“Gack! Guh— p-please… please spare me… I beg you… hngh!”

He even wet himself on the floor, his body trembling violently. His face was a wet mess of tears, snot, and spit all mixed together.

Christine gave the rapier a quick spin and sheathed it again.

“I’ve seen quite enough blood on the battlefield already.”

Then, as if nothing had happened at all, his eyes creased into a faint smile. With just that, his face turned playful, almost boyish.

Seizing the moment, the rest of the thugs bolted in a mad scramble. Eaton too tried to scoot away on his backside, but the instant his eyes met Christine’s, he sank back down.

“Th-then, I’ll take that to mean you’re sparing me… and… g-go now…”

Christine nodded.

“Only after you’ve received the Marchioness’s permission.”

As he said this, he rested a hand on the hilt of his rapier, ready to draw it again at any moment.

Eaton immediately pressed his forehead to the floor again and again, bowing to Adele.

“I’ve committed an unforgivable crime, my lady! Please, forgive me! I was drunk, and I acted out of spite! Please! Show mercy to this worthless wretch! Please!”

He looked ready to lick the very soles of her feet.

Adele felt a hollow sort of disbelief, that she’d ever been afraid of a man like this.

“Never let me set eyes on you again!”

“Y-yes! Of course, my lady!”

He fled, urine still dripping down his legs.

“Isn’t that letting him off a little too easily? Not much fun in that.”

Christine clicked his tongue, looking thoroughly unsatisfied —

Clatter!

— just as Adele dropped the dagger from her hand and sank down onto the floor.

Only a moment ago she’d been brandishing the blade with such fierce resolve; now she trembled like a pitiful young animal.

“Are you all right?”

“Mm, thank you… Chris…”

Still trembling as she was, she forced a smile and managed the courtesy.

“Looks like this place will need cleaning up. I think you’d better sleep somewhere else tonight.”

he said, looking around the house.

The floor was soaked with oil, and splintered remains of the cellar door lay scattered everywhere.

“It’s fine. This much is nothing…”

“I suppose you’d be used to it, since it happens so often.”

The sarcastic words slipped out of Christine before he could stop them. Even knowing full well that none of this was her fault. And still, the way she kept pretending to be fine made him angry.

Serves her right.

She’d left, determined to make a fine life for herself all on her own, and now here she was — not only the target of people’s scorn, but subjected to something like this too.

“Well, it seems you don’t need my help after all, then. I’ll be going.”

Christine turned to leave with firm resolve, then stopped short.

Looking down, he saw Adele, still slumped on the floor, gripping tightly onto the hem of his coat.

“Could you… stay with me, just a little while? I know this is a pathetic sight, but even so, just for a moment, together… please?”

Eyes turned up at him, pleading.

Her eyes were so wretchedly sorrowful that Christine had to look away.

“Just a little while, then.”