Episode 134
The breath that had grown ragged, as though with excitement, gradually subsided as it calmed. Sasha gazed at him with a face more composed than before.
After their foreheads, the tips of their noses touched and rubbed softly together. Sasha let out a long sigh, then carefully wrapped her arms around Isaac’s waist and embraced him. After gently letting him go, she walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge.
“Even if that is true for me, how does it also become a reason to protect you?”
Brushing up the hair that had fallen over her forehead, she asked quietly.
Instead of answering right away, Isaac walked over to the small table set in the opposite direction from the bed. On it were a water pitcher and two clean cups that a servant brought in every morning. Isaac moistened his throat for a moment with lukewarm water.
“What I’m about to say may sound utterly absurd.”
And at last, he opened his mouth.
As Isaac had expected, Sasha wore a face that looked not merely dazed but almost bewildered the entire time she listened to his story. As he relayed the story of Agent Wilson, Isaac tried as much as possible to strip away the intention Wilson had subtly planted in it—the assumption that Isaac would, quite naturally, follow their words out of gratitude.
After the story ended, Isaac picked up the pitcher, already half empty, poured water into Sasha’s cup, and handed it to her. Sasha accepted it without refusal and drank.
Her face still looked somewhat dazed. Isaac fully understood her reaction. Even he, who had spent half his life hearing nothing but duty and loyalty until his ears were sick of it, had felt the same; for Sasha, who had lived her entire life as a civilian, it would be all the more bewildering.
But Sasha soon seemed to put her thoughts in order, returning to a calm expression as she asked Isaac,
“Isaac, how merciful is Her Majesty?”
At the somewhat sudden question, Isaac only furrowed his brows. Before he could ask what on earth she meant by that out of nowhere, Sasha continued.
“I understand that having Her Majesty the Queen as a potential ally is the way to survive. But the problem is, unfortunately, I don’t have any information or evidence to offer her. In that case, for you and me to survive, we would first have to act as though I know what she wants……”
“No.”
Before Sasha could even finish speaking, Isaac cut her off as if horrified.
Having had no idea her thoughts would leap in such a direction, Isaac pressed his temple, unable to hide his shock in more ways than one.
“No, Sasha. It is not the same as deceiving me. Her Majesty is never merciful in matters of that sort. Rather, it would only add another blade pointed at us.”
“……Even if I only ‘pretended’ at first, then actually found the evidence she wants for her, would she still see it only as mockery?”
Seeing Isaac stare at her with a hardened face and no answer, Sasha nodded as if she understood well enough.
“I know. That, too, is really no different from mockery. I’m already being branded a fraud; I can’t add insulting the royal family on top of that. It’s just……”
Sasha murmured and buried her face in her palms.
At least after what had happened with Isaac, Sasha had resolved to live honestly from now on. She had not sworn it to Isaac, but at least she had admonished herself to do so. What a shallow resolve, to shatter the moment she was faced with danger. Sasha mocked her own thinness. But when one was about to die at once, how many people would truly uphold those damned convictions?
‘Ah, unfortunately, it seems there is one right in front of me.’
Sasha shook off her thoughts and mulled over what she had experienced just earlier that day at Hayden House on Punch Street. The magistrate’s officers would have gone not only to Hayden House but to everyone connected to Sasha, rummaging about as they recited the charges against her.
It was no different from what Caroline had said as a warning. Above all else, to isolate her thoroughly from those who could help her. That was their primary goal. It was rather laughable to speak of courtesy when she was currently being accused as a fraud, but even setting that courtesy aside, it was clearly a course of action lacking fairness in many ways.
“There is a preliminary hearing in three days.”
“Three days?”
When Sasha broke the silence, Isaac asked back as though he had heard something absurd. Even to him, it was an utterly preposterous deadline.
Without a word, Sasha showed him the summons the court clerk had taken out and handed to her. Isaac’s face stiffened as he read the brief, overbearing words on the paper.
“To appoint a lawyer and prepare everything in three days……”
“But I have to. I immediately sent someone with a letter to the lawyer Grandmother introduced me to. Just in case, rather than sending it by regular post.”
Isaac nodded. Since Isaac was the one more accustomed to such matters in many respects, Sasha, seeing his assent, finally relaxed her shoulders and adjusted herself into a slightly more comfortable seat.
“Are you not confused? From your standpoint, this is nothing but a calamity.”
“It’s a calamity I’ve earned in my own way. If I had been someone who only wished for safety in the first place, I would have thrown away the conditional inheritance and everything else and fled far away to live.”
“……”
“A need for compensation is what drove me this far. At the word ‘remuneration,’ I lost my head, thinking, yes, I have to obtain it somehow, and so I deceived you and even married you. And……”
Sasha looked at the side of Isaac’s face as he came to sit beside her.
“You, too, have met with a calamity in your own way. As if demotion weren’t enough, they intended to get rid of you.”
“……”
“……Could it be because of me? Because I, of all people, became your marriage partner.”
Isaac shook his head. And when Sasha quietly buried her face against the nape of his neck, he tenderly tucked her fallen hair behind her ear.
“In any case, I understand. If we want to survive right now, I know which side we must attach ourselves to. And for now……”
Sasha murmured with a face grown cold.
“The priority is to remove the blade being thrust in front of me at once.”
Isaac sighed and nodded.
“Sasha, please tell me about that original lawyer whose whereabouts have become unknown. His name, the address of the office that burned down, and if not his home address, then at least the address of the area where it is presumed to be.”
＊＊＊
When the next morning came, just as Allison had expected, two more servants packed their bags and left. The mansion now carried an atmosphere that was gloomy and empty in a different sense.
Mr. Benson, the lawyer Caroline had introduced, arrived at Dilton Manor around noon. He was an old man of a similar age to Caroline, and he said it had only been half a year since he had set down his work. Sasha seemed terribly apologetic to be receiving help from an old man who had only just begun enjoying a sweet vacation, but Mr. Benson shook his head and, with a good-natured face, merely joked, “If it’s Carol’s request, how could I not do anything?”
“Ah, come to think of it, it has been a long time since I saw Jack’s face as well.”
“He went out early this morning.”
While Sasha briefly wondered whether she ought to tell him exactly why Isaac had gone out early, Mr. Benson was already walking familiarly toward the drawing room. He looked as though he had been here several times before.
“This isn’t your first time here, is it?”
“It is not. I handled a few minor matters for the mistress of this place.”
Caroline aside, Lady Rosalyn was a woman who was fastidious in many ways, even when it came to employing people. Feeling her trust in this unfamiliar lawyer grow anew, Sasha opened the door herself and let him into the drawing room.
After they had sat and waited a short while, a maid with a familiar face, Maud, soon came in and set down a cup of well-brewed black tea before Sasha and Mr. Benson.
“……What did you say the magistrate’s name was?”
“They say it is Sir Henry Bradshaw.”
Sasha answered with a trace of hopeful expectation. But Mr. Benson merely raised his eyebrows once. It seemed he had not even an acquaintance with the man, let alone any personal connection.
“You say he released his officers just yesterday and had them make the rounds of your relatives’ homes.”
“Yes. ……That is hardly common courtesy, is it? Of course, it does sound a little ridiculous to quibble over courtesy when I’m under suspicion of fraud……”
“That certainly crossed the line. And the time remaining until the preliminary hearing is far too short. This is……”
Anyone could see it looked as though the result had already been decided.
Though Mr. Benson did not finish speaking, Sasha could understand well enough what he had left unsaid.
“This Sir Bradshaw, and the House of Duke Grayson that accused you……”
“Well. They probably have connections, or if not, he must have received something equivalent to that. I expected as much as well.”
Mr. Benson looked at Sasha with a sigh.
In that brief instant, Sasha immediately realized that the old man pitied her.
“……For now, we urgently need someone who can testify about you and Lady Rosalyn.”
The moment she heard those words, the person who came to mind was Mrs. Maugham, the governess.
However, she had already died of illness and was no longer of this world.
If so, excluding Mrs. Maugham, who knew better than anyone about the relationship between herself and Lady Rosalyn, and whose testimony would carry exceptional weight?
After the office of Mr. Turner, the lawyer, that had burned black,
Sasha recalled the face of Theodore, younger than he was now, staring fixedly at her from beyond the orphanage wall.
“……There is one person.”