Episode 64
But Akenaus had no guardian like Lady Serva—someone who, despite being beneath him, sometimes played the role of a mother, and who possessed the authority to wield control over an entire estate.
He did have a nursemaid who had raised him, but unlike Lady Serva, who had remained with the Valdemaera family, worked diligently, and steadily risen to become an administrator, his nursemaid had been driven out long ago. The chief butler had discovered evidence that Akenaus, then in his early to mid-teens, had slept with her.
The chief butler was a man who kept his mouth tightly shut, so he quietly reported the incident only to Akenaus’s father, and the nursemaid was secretly expelled to a distant place.
To be honest, had he felt sexually tempted by his nursemaid? No. Given who she was, the chief butler at the time had suspected that Akenaus might possess some bizarre sexual proclivity, but as far as Akenaus was concerned, he had simply been curious.
As he entered adolescence, the increasingly robust body of a young man required a woman to satisfy his sexual curiosity. However, he thought he would invite trouble if he touched a girl his own age from a respectable family. So he first sought out a woman who would be convenient to try with, who was also in a position where she absolutely had to keep the secret, and who could not refuse his demands. That woman was his nursemaid.
“If I’d known things would turn out like this, I wouldn’t have touched her.”
Akenaus regretted it belatedly. He had never imagined that a day would come when he would rue not having a reliable supporter like Lady Serva.
Just how would the bastard appear? Would he sneak in and level a rifle at him, or would he use those oh-so-great subordinates of his to hunt him down like a rabbit?
After enduring several more days in a tension so severe it left his mouth dry, Akenaus finally packed his belongings, boarded a carriage, and headed to his mistress’s house. Since his father was not on his side and he could not trust a single person attached to the estate, it seemed wiser to entrust his safety to his mistress for the time being. After checking behind him to make sure no one had followed, he got down from the carriage. His mistress greeted him with a startled expression, clearly surprised by his unannounced visit.
“What brings you here all of a sudden?”
“Do we only see each other when something’s happened?”
Akenaus answered brazenly.
“That was usually the case…… You only summoned me when you were bored with your body.”
His mistress glanced sidelong at the people surrounding the house and whispered,
“But who are all those people?”
“I hired them for protection. They’ll only guard the house from outside and won’t come in, so don’t worry.”
“What do you mean, they’ll surround the house like that? It makes this place look suspicious. Why are you doing this?”
“I think that bastard will be back soon.”
His mistress had been the first person to tell Akenaus about the sighting of Ezekaile. She immediately realized whom Akenaus was wary of.
“Good heavens……”
Just like that, his mistress found herself shut inside the house with Akenaus. He had ordered his people to strictly control all comings and goings.
Though the space was much smaller and more enclosed than the main Valdemaera estate, Akenaus still could not bring himself to let go of his rifle. Even when he fell asleep after sleeping with his mistress, the cold chill of the loaded barrel lay beside his head.
“If you thrash around in your sleep and accidentally set it off, won’t you get shot and die on the spot?”
His mistress, for her part, complained of extreme anxiety.
“Maybe. Be careful not to touch it carelessly.”
“There’s a deadly weapon over my head, so I can’t sleep because I keep having nightmares. No, forget sleep…… How can you still feel like doing it every day in the middle of all this?”
“That’s that, and this is this. If I wasn’t going to sleep with you, why would I be here?”
“I can’t concentrate because I keep thinking a bullet might come flying while we’re in the middle of it.”
“No wonder it’s been so stiff when I put it in lately. It hasn’t felt as good.”
“……I’ll do it with my mouth instead.”
Akenaus stayed at that house for exactly one week. Unless he could conceal his whereabouts perfectly, it was not wise to remain in one house for too long when he was conspicuously dragging an entire guard detail around to protect him.
Fortunately, Akenaus had several mistresses scattered throughout Kleris. Even excluding women who had husbands or officially recognized lovers, he had more than enough people with whom he could stay for a while.
However, after spending a few days in one house and a few days in another, he reached the limits of moving from mistress to mistress much sooner than expected. Having lived in a place equipped with every convenience, like the Valdemaera estate, it was extraordinarily irritating to stay in palm-sized houses and receive inadequate service.
The fact that information did not circulate quickly also aggravated him. Akenaus tried to gather news of Ezekaile through his mistresses, but the man had once again vanished without a trace, as though by magic. Moreover, since his mistresses were also confined indoors with Akenaus and unable to go out, they gradually became cut off from the rumors of the world.
He had left the main estate because he feared a surprise attack at any moment, yet staying away from it for too long was a burden in itself. His pride was wounded by the fear that he might look like a defeated man who had tucked his tail and fled to escape the bastard.
Yes, regardless, was it not only right that he should defend his own place himself?
Akenaus steeled himself and returned to the main estate.
It was another sudden return, just like the day he had left.
However, he could not bring the guards inside the estate. A master who needed protection while moving between his bedroom and dining room because he feared an ambush by his own brother would become a laughingstock both inside and outside the house. In particular, the Valdemaera estate had so many eyes and ears that gossip spread quickly.
A master who treated his servants harshly was acceptable. A reputation for being strict and fierce helped establish the hierarchy. But once he began to look ridiculous to the people under his command, that became a serious problem.
Akenaus ordered the guards to disband temporarily and took only the rifle he always carried with him. The coachman would move the luggage loaded in the carriage into the estate on his own.
“But why isn’t anyone coming out?”
The door was open, as though someone had just entered, but there was no sign of the servants who should have greeted him and secured the door. Akenaus lightly furrowed his brow.
“Did my timing overlap with Father’s?”
It happened occasionally. Even among the Valdemaeras, the center of the family was his father. Whenever his father returned home, the servants were often swept into the estate like a rising tide. That was why Akenaus sometimes deliberately arranged his schedule to differ from his father’s.
Ezekaile, on the other hand, was the sort who found seeing people off and welcoming them home bothersome, and would simply wander out alone.
“I should have called ahead.”
Akenaus stepped into the garden alone.
Dusk was just beginning to fall. The trees in the garden cast deep shadows. Seen this way, there seemed to be plenty of places to hide, if one merely wished to conceal oneself. Perhaps because he had spent all the time traveling between his mistresses’ houses with Ezekaile constantly on his mind, his thoughts kept drifting in that direction.
“Is this how he hides?”
After staring down for a moment at the band of light and shadow crossing his feet, he chose a patch of shade and stepped into it. Looking back, he had spent all this time preoccupied with guarding against the outside from within. He had never once tried to look in from the outside.
For the first time, he felt as though he were sharing that bastard’s field of vision.
Akenaus quietly concealed himself in the shadows. The garden was kept exceptionally neat, but by making good use of the landscaping scattered throughout it, he could approach the estate without revealing himself.
“You really wouldn’t notice someone from inside.”
Feeling newly alert, Akenaus cut diagonally across the garden.
And then, the moment he looked toward the brightly lit Valdemaera estate—
Beyond the windows standing wide open toward the garden, an unusually large shadow moved back and forth.
At first, he naturally assumed it was his father. There was no one currently in the Valdemaera estate as tall or as powerfully built as his father. But that thought quickly turned into doubt.
Was his father really that enormous?
The difference in build stood out even more starkly because the servants had surrounded the man so completely that not even a drop of water could have passed through. Amid the servants, all similar in stature, the man alone stood out like a giant. Even his silhouette seemed to radiate an oppressive presence.
A chill suddenly ran down Akenaus’s spine.
Without realizing it, he took a step backward.
If it was not his father…… wasn’t there one person in this family whose build surpassed even his father’s?
He narrowed his eyes to sharpen his vision. Just then, the man turned, and the reflected light from the chandelier, which had dyed his hair white, disappeared.
A distinct black came into view.
It was Ezekaile.