Episode 9
Everyone has at least one circumstance they cannot tell others about.
A circumstance. Or, further still, a secret.
……For Sasha Grayson, hers was this.
Sasha hated Dilton Manor, the place where she had grown up, with a passion.
She found that antique mansion, steeped not only in the former duke’s material legacy but in his very sense of aesthetics, unbearably suffocating.
It had begun when Sasha was eight years old, when the young girl had run up to Lady Rosalyn, who was looking at her with stern eyes, and dared to place her hands on the woman’s knees, smiling brightly as if seeking affection.
And then Lady Rosalyn, her face filled with the utmost contempt, had shoved that young Sasha away from her lap.
From that moment on, that great mansion could never be “home” to Sasha.
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Marie, the maid whom her cousin Jeffrey Grayson had assigned to her, peppered Sasha with questions the entire carriage ride back to Dilton Manor.
At a glance, it might have looked like nothing more than a curious, worried maid asking this and that, but every single question was meant to sound out Sasha’s true thoughts.
“I’m tired, Marie. I need to close my eyes for a while. Wake me when we arrive.”
And so Sasha did not even pretend to give perfunctory answers to Marie’s questions, instead swiftly falling asleep.
It took a full several hours before they arrived at Erishall in the capital city of Goldington, where Dilton Manor stood. When she opened her eyes, the sun had already set.
The butler, Jason, came out at once to greet her. The familiar faces of the servants filled the entrance as well. All of them looked as though they had been counting the days until her return.
It was not difficult for Sasha to guess why.
“It seems the young duke is still in the annex.”
“……He has brought two friends with him as well.”
“Is that so? Only men?”
“Two days ago, he brought three ladies as well.”
“……Very well. So the young duke has brought as many as five of his own guests and taken over the annex.”
Sasha summarized his words in an unexpectedly cheerful tone.
She had miscalculated, thinking he would grow tired on his own and leave if she was absent for at least a few days.
Instead, like a fish put back in water, not only had he arbitrarily brought even more guests into the manor’s annex, but—
“Why is that child crying?”
It was obvious he had been ordering the servants around mercilessly. Her cousin Jeffrey Grayson’s hands were as ill-behaved as his personality.
Sasha glanced toward the maid whose eyes had filled with tears the moment she saw her, like a child who had found her parents.
Butler Jason could not bring himself to tell her directly and only trailed off vaguely, “Well, that is……”
“My lady, why don’t we go inside first? The evening air is cold, and I worry you may catch a chill.”
Marie swiftly cut in.
Sasha turned to look at her with an expressionless face, then soon nodded.
“Yes. I’d like to bathe. Is it ready?”
“Of course.”
There was a mountain of things to do as soon as she returned.
After finishing her bath, the first thing Sasha did was look after the manor.
Sasha first sent Marie back to the annex where she had been working. Then she called in the maid who had been crying earlier, comforted her appropriately, and at the same time grasped the exact sequence of events.
Fortunately, it was not the kind of incident she had feared. However, the young maid’s heart had been torn all the same by Jeffrey’s humiliating treatment, so Sasha soothed her by talking with her until she fell asleep.
Then she called Jason and ordered that the maid be given leave. At least so that she would not have to run into Jeffrey while he remained here.
The servants, including Butler Jason, seemed unable to hide their emotion at such a deeply considerate act from their mistress. Even though the person in question herself was treating everyone with the most businesslike face imaginable.
“Are the guests in the medical wing still the same?”
“Well…… yes. Ah, one of them has returned to his residence.”
“Which one? The short one? The tall one?”
“……The short one.”
Cedric Osmond and Robert Bloom, who had been lingering in Dilton Manor under the pretext of treatment. Of the two men, Bloom had thankfully left the manor while she was away.
If one were to judge by the severity of their injuries, Robert was the worse off. And yet he had been the first to leave the manor, which made his intentions obvious to anyone.
Even without Isaac Pinscher’s warning, she was already plenty wary of them. First under the pretext of their injuries, and then under the pretext of insisting they receive an apology from Isaac, they had been holding out in the manor.
To be honest, it had not been bad at first. Though it was bothersome, they were useful as an excuse to avoid the troublesome Jeffrey, so she had used them as a pretext a few times to send Jeffrey away.
And when it seemed they were openly revealing their true intentions, she had used Jeffrey against them in turn.
“Shall I summon him? He has no trouble walking.”
Jason asked, referring to Osmond in a tone that very clearly carried emotion, and Sasha shook her head.
“It’s late. I’m tired as well. Let’s discuss it tomorrow for now.”
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As soon as she rose early the next morning, Sasha swiftly dealt with all the work that had piled up.
She paid meticulous attention to everything, even personally calling in the servants who had attended the guests to ask whether anything had happened in the manor during the five days she had been away.
After seeing to the servants’ convenience, she inspected the manor’s facilities again. She had Butler Jason examine each of the facilities, from the kitchen, greenhouse, and garden to the stables.
Only after she had gone through every last place thoroughly did Sasha return to her room, water the potted plant by the window, finish reading the book she had left half-read, memorize a vocabulary book full of foreign words, and go back to the greenhouse to tend the plants.
Only after finishing all manner of other tasks as well did she collapse onto her bed and fall asleep.
Surprisingly, when she woke after sleeping for around two hours, it was only two in the afternoon. She had woken early and handled that enormous number of tasks, even those that others might have wondered why she was doing right now, by slicing time into the smallest possible pieces.
Cedric Osmond came to see her just as she had barely woken from her nap and was about to begin her afternoon schedule.
“Miss Grayson.”
Sasha, who had been compulsively recalling the list of things she had to do next, turned around with a puzzled expression. Soon, after recognizing him, she made a face that said, Ah, you were here too.
“Forgive me for stopping you so suddenly. You seem very busy……”
“Not at all, Mr. Osmond. I was planning to come to you first anyway. You must be curious about what happened after I met that gentleman.”
“……Were you all right? I was worried the entire time…… It kept weighing on me that you ended up visiting the place where that man was because of us.”
Cedric Osmond.
Although his name had never been included on her original “list of suitable husband candidates,” she had simply danced with him in a fit of anger because of that beautiful face.
She did not regret having danced with him. He was beautiful enough that she wondered if she would ever see such beauty again in her life, and he had also been courteous.
That was the problem. It would have been better if he had openly made a nuisance of himself, but he was far too polite. Unlike his friend.
“I’m all right, Mr. Osmond. If anything, it was nice to get some fresh air after so long.”
She meant it. Spending a few days where none of you were around truly made me feel alive.
“Lance Field was an even more wonderful place than I expected. The scenery was lovely, and the people there were so very kind.”
Sasha spoke softly in a voice pleasing to the ear. Osmond’s expression turned somewhat subtle.
“Even so, you must have had to face that man the entire time you were there. Did he perhaps behave rudely toward you as well, Miss Grayson……?”
“Not at all, Mr. Osmond. He was, rather, a very careful and considerate person. He was so shy that he could hardly meet my eyes the entire time.”
Half of it was true. And so Sasha could ease the prick of her conscience.
“It made me wonder what on earth could have happened that day for such a person to change so drastically. Come to think of it, that gentleman, you, Mr. Osmond, and Mr. Bloom. All three of you were quite drunk, after all.”
“I was not particularly drunk……”
“Alcohol truly is a problem. My grandmother always told me to be wary of drink.”
Sasha deliberately cut him off, smiling as she looked into his beautiful face, which had twisted with embarrassment.
Cedric Osmond belatedly seemed to come to his senses and quickly smoothed out his crumpled expression.
“Did you receive an apology?”
“I was about to tell you about that. There is a greenhouse nearby.”
With a calm face, Sasha indicated the greenhouse to him.
“How about a cup of tea there?”