Episode 74
Theodore Van was the servant who had worked in this mansion the longest. He had served Lady Rosalyn since before her marriage, so in truth, it was more accurate to call him her man rather than the ducal family’s. Even after the former butler, who was of his generation, handed his position over to his son and retired, Theodore had continued working in this mansion. Even after his mistress, Rosalyn, died.
He was one of the few people in this mansion who knew the lie Lady Rosalyn had hidden from everyone—the truth of Sasha’s identity. To Sasha, he was a little more special. He was the very person who had brought her, as a child, to this mansion.
Sasha still could not forget that moment. When she had left Mr. Robin’s dress shop and returned to the orphanage, when she had been living in gloom as though she had lost all hope—she could not forget the moment Theodore came to find her.
One day, he suddenly appeared at the orphanage where she was staying. It was a day when the rain was pouring down like mad. For several days, Sasha had been unsettled by an unknown gaze staring fixedly at her from beyond the orphanage fence, and not long after, he came in person to see her.
He was taciturn. Without a word, he simply stared at her. It was a gaze that seemed to be measuring her. Her eyes, nose, mouth—after examining her features, he abruptly told the young girl to raise her arms, then told her to walk. And then he told her to speak.
When the young girl opened her mouth and asked, “Why are you doing this?” he finally spoke.
“We will have to correct the way you use your voice.”
Leaving behind those incomprehensible words, he departed the orphanage. And the next day, he came to find her again. He arrived with an elegant-looking lady, Mrs. Maugham, who would one day become her governess, and took her to Dilton Manor.
Ever since Lady Rosalyn gave the young girl the name “Sasha Grayson,” he had treated her with utmost courtesy, as though she were truly someone precious. Sasha found that attitude of Theo’s terribly uncomfortable. It suffocated her.
Theodore entered the room looking little changed from the last time she had seen him.
Sasha met him in the second drawing room on the first floor, where she had always met Theo. It was always like this with Theo. Because no one in the mansion could be allowed to hear the conversations they shared.
“The mansion is in an uproar,” Theo said.
Instead of sitting across from Sasha, the old man set something that looked like an envelope down on the table.
As always, he stood with perfect composure. Even after seeing one side of Sasha’s cheek swollen red, he asked nothing. Even though anyone could tell the mansion was not as it usually was, he merely murmured that something seemed noisy and did not question her.
“What is this?”
“I found the person who wrote anonymously to the young duke some time ago.”
With an expressionless face, Sasha tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper. In an unfamiliar man’s handwriting were the words, “I will not tell anyone.” Beneath that was written the name Thomas Maugham.
Maugham. At the familiar surname, Sasha furrowed her brow.
“Mrs. Maugham’s husband?”
“Yes. After Mrs. Maugham passed away, it seems he squandered his entire fortune on gambling and has been struggling with poverty ever since. It appears he meant to threaten you, Miss Sasha, as though grasping at a final straw.”
“……”
Sasha was silent for a moment. Because she remembered the letter this man, Thomas Maugham, had sent to Jeffrey. That woman is a fraud. The source of that unkind anonymous letter, written so plainly.
“If blackmail was really his purpose, he should have written to me first. Why to Jeffrey first……”
Had he intended from the start to drive her into a corner and seize the upper hand? Sasha, who had been muttering with a harsh expression without realizing it, fell silent for a moment when she saw the two letters Theodore silently held out.
They were letters Thomas Maugham had sent directly to Sasha. Returned mail.
Letters that had been sent back to him long afterward due to an absurd mistake in the address.
“……”
Her governess, Mrs. Maugham, had never been one to speak about herself in the first place. She had always resided in the mansion. When Sasha turned eighteen, she suddenly said her health had declined and left the mansion, and after that, she never returned.
With an expressionless face, Sasha opened the returned letters and read what Thomas had tried to send her. The first letter was very long-winded. Sasha let out a hollow laugh once at the part where he introduced himself as the husband of Mrs. Maugham, who had taught Sasha like a mother, and let out another hollow laugh in the next paragraph, where he asked her to extend him a small helping hand for Mrs. Maugham’s sake.
Thomas Maugham had likely spent his days in agitation after sending that first letter. But when no reply came from Sasha, he immediately wrote and sent a second.
The handwriting was far more unstable than before, and the tone was far more disordered as well. He said, almost as if threatening her, that if Sasha thought of Mrs. Maugham, she should not treat him this way. It contained a lie that he, like Mrs. Maugham, was dying of illness, and in the end, a demand for money. If she did so, he wrote, he would not reveal the lie she must never let anyone discover.
“…It seems this man realized his mistake belatedly after seeing the returned letters. My man caught him loitering near Erishall.”
“So what did you do?”
“I gave him a certain sum of money to keep his mouth shut, as he wanted. And I also gave him a firm warning.”
Mr. Theo spoke calmly, and Sasha felt she could fully understand what sort of warning he had given even if he did not bother to explain kindly.
Mr. Theo’s business was solely this. Sasha’s safety or George Butler—such things would never have been in his consideration to begin with. After all, he had always carried out only the commands Lady Rosalyn had input into him like a machine.
Because his final duty was solely to ensure that his former mistress’s lie was not discovered.
“It would be best for you to watch your conduct for the time being.”
Mr. Theo took the letters back and spoke in a courteous tone. Sasha looked up at him, touching her stinging cheek.
“What exactly are you telling me to watch?”
“I mean you should not draw people’s attention.”
“The one who planned that birthday party in the first place was your mistress, Theodore.”
Theodore looked down at her in silence for a moment. He treated her with unfailing courtesy, but his gaze was imperious in a way that did not match it. Whenever Sasha brought up Lady Rosalyn, he sometimes looked at her like this. As if warning her: How dare you speak of her that way.
As if she cared. Sasha was in a state where resentment was surging in all sorts of ways. The cheek George Butler had struck was stinging, and not even two hours had passed since she had suffered that sudden ordeal in the mansion. The man who had come to the mansion calling himself an officer had only asked questions that, even without saying it outright, treated it as a lovers’ quarrel.
And.
Sasha pressed down hard on the sting that threatened to rise again at the tip of her nose. She recalled what Isaac had said to her just moments ago as he cupped her cheek.
Breathe.
Thinking of his words, Sasha exhaled from deep in her chest, releasing the breath that had been tightly blocked there.
Yes. Theodore had always been like this. What reason was there to feel hurt now?
“What I mean,” Theodore said after staring at her for a long while,
“is that you must not leave room for people to become curious about your private life.”
The heavy warning drove into her. Sasha looked up at him with a composed face.
Did he truly know nothing about George Butler? Sasha knew that, in one way or another, Theodore was deeply involved in the affairs of this mansion. Everything that entered and left this mansion passed before his eyes. Was it not obvious from the fact that he had intercepted the letter Mr. Maugham had sent to Jeffrey in the first place?
“Does it displease you so much that I am preparing for marriage, Mr. Theodore?”
On the surface, unlike Mr. Turner, Theodore did not know the conditional clauses attached to the inheritance Lady Rosalyn had left Sasha. But was that truly so? Sasha began to suspect even that.
Turner and Theodore were both Lady Rosalyn’s people, but the lawyer Turner was, in the end, merely a business relationship. That Theodore, however, was different. Sasha knew very well the extent of the loyalty Theodore held for Lady Rosalyn. Yes. It was loyalty.
“…Miss Sasha.”
Theodore looked at her silently, then said,
“Do not take your anger out on me for no reason.”
As if responding to her attitude, which seemed to be asking why he had not warned her when he had clearly known, Mr. Theodore answered with some irritation, as though he understood everything.
Sasha gazed into the distance for a moment. Breathe. She chewed over the words Isaac’s blue eyes had engraved into her as they looked straight at her, trying to push away the resentment clouding her mind.
A short while later, after regaining a little rationality, Sasha opened her mouth and spoke.
“Mr. Theodore.”
“Please speak.”
“You seem to be away from the mansion often these days.”
Sasha spoke calmly, her face steadier than before.
“I know you are still searching for the real Sasha Grayson.”
Then she asked,
“Is it perhaps because of me? Because I’m hurrying to marry?”
Because you’re afraid I’ll run far away, so that the real one—if she is alive—will never be able to reclaim that name,
is that why you are in such a hurry?