Episode 69
“Gah!”
He remembered. It was him. The unidentified intruder who had sneaked into the garden, only to be struck by a stone thrown by the sharp-eared Ejekail and cry out.
“Rose, tell me if you see anyone nearby.”
“I-I think he’s gone. I don’t see anything around us.”
He had thought it suspicious that the man had vanished so quickly, even though there had been no sound of movement afterward. But it had been night, and Rose was not a professionally trained soldier. Besides, the unmaintained garden must have been in such a disordered state that anyone with ordinary eyesight would have had trouble making out the surroundings. So he had said nothing more.
Now he understood why Rose had denied it so stubbornly.
Because it had been someone whose face she knew.
Even after witnessing the errand man who had come to threaten her, Rose had worried about Valdemaera’s dignity and helped that man escape unharmed.
Ejekail lowered his long eyes and jerked his chin.
“So we’ve met before.”
The errand man flinched, his shoulders trembling.
“Do you know that Rose is the reason you’re still alive?”
The errand man, who had been summoned without knowing why only to suddenly find himself facing Ejekail, hesitated before obediently admitting it.
“……Yes, I know.”
“Rose wasted her pity. She should never have helped you.”
“…….”
“She’s a woman so good that it makes one worry how she’ll survive in this world, taking nothing but losses. She repays even malice with goodwill. Sometimes I think she goes too far. Seeing as she never said a single word about it to me, even to the very end.”
The errand man’s gaze moved toward the rifle leaning at an angle nearby. The man, clearly tense and wary of when Ejekail—famous as a crack shot—might raise the barrel at him, opened his mouth with great caution.
“You may think that I brought up the Valdemaera name and behaved rudely toward the young lady…… Of course, it would be entirely understandable for you to misunderstand it that way, but nothing of the sort happened. It was that young lady who readily said that her role ended there and that she would step aside. I was the one who was surprised and asked her again, twice and even three times. It’s true. The written pledge that she would leave was also something I received only because the young lady said she would write it first.”
Even with just a few words of explanation, the errand man seemed overwhelmed, cold sweat dripping from him. But amid it all, a new word caught Ejekail’s ear.
“A pledge? Rose even wrote a pledge?”
“Ah, yes…… It should be somewhere, somewhere around here……”
Only after calling a servant who organized the study and having the bookshelves thoroughly searched did Ejekail receive the pledge Rose had supposedly written and signed with her own hand. In fact, it had been considered so trivial that they barely managed to find it, carelessly abandoned among a pile of documents.
The moment he confirmed Rose’s name written clearly on the pledge, Ejekail crumpled the corner in his hand.
He was dumbfounded, and rage made him tremble. A family that called itself the foremost prestigious house in Astrie had resorted to tricks so petty and contemptible against a young, powerless woman.
While Rose had struggled desperately against the storm that swept over him, Valdemaera had done no more than watch quietly from a distance. Then, when Rose finally saved him, they had crept up and taken this worthless pledge from her. Ungrateful, shameless—how dare they.
The more he mulled over the absurd treatment she had suffered, the more his blood alternately boiled and chilled.
Rose, you should have been greedy instead.
You should have gotten angry, demanded answers, felt wronged—asked why Valdemaera refused to acknowledge all you had done when you had sacrificed so much for me.
If you had, I would not have lost you so emptily.
I would have proven with my own hands what you had the right to demand of me.
“……Father. Do you know how Rose saved me?”
The instant his anger crossed its limit, his heart instead grew calm.
“Even now, I don’t know exactly what those phenomena I experienced were. Even I, who ruined my own body by recklessly pouring opium and alcohol into it, was confused because I didn’t know what was happening to me. How much more helpless must Rose have felt, watching that process unfold? And yet Rose did not run away from me or give up. She locked the door, came inside, and did not leave my side for even a moment.”
It was a choice not easily made even by family bound by blood. In truth, under the pretext of saving him, his father had tried not to sacrifice anything, but to expel him from the family. The one who had stopped that and persuaded him was Rose. Even thinking back on it now, he could not fully fathom how much courage Rose must have mustered, or what she must have felt.
“When the pain that twisted my muscles was so terrible that I smashed myself against the wall to harm myself, Rose—she blocked me with her own body. I don’t know for certain, but her whole body must have been covered in bruises. She was an extremely slender woman, and I was a robust soldier. Even so, Rose never once showed fear or pain.”
And had that been all?
The entire time his varied symptoms gnawed away at him, Rose found ways for him to overcome them by any means she could.
“Some days I was unbearably cold, and on other days my fever raged so fiercely that I thought my body was burning. All manner of hallucinations came crashing in, and I couldn’t distinguish reality. Every time, Rose was there beside me.”
Whenever he was cold or hot, he had embraced Rose’s naked body and forced his chill and heat onto her. Thinking of it now, he had truly done something shameful. He had sustained each day of his life with Rose’s lifeblood. To Rose, he had been an unbearably selfish man.
“In my life, I have never received such devotion from anyone. I likely never will again. Because now, I no longer need Rose’s sacrifice.”
Ejekail glared straight at his father and declared,
“You will have to accept Rose. I have absolutely no intention of marrying or planning an heir with any woman other than Rose.”
The ring he had failed to give Rose was still in Ejekail’s pocket. Because if he ever met Rose, he would have to put it on her finger then and there, he never let the ring leave his person for even a moment.
“Ejekail!”
Leaving behind his father’s shout calling him, Ejekail strode across the mansion. Though his return had been only half complete, it was too soon to be disappointed. This was only the beginning.
Valdemaera had to pay the price for losing all sense of morality. He would find Rose without fail and make Valdemaera kneel before her.
❖ ❖ ❖
Where, indeed, should he begin searching for traces of Rose?
Ejekail looked over Astrie’s military map.
It was an utterly vague attempt. But like a dragnet scraping every inch of a riverbed to catch fish, if he combed through Astrie meticulously, someday he would snag some trace of Rose.
Ejekail sent the errand men employed by House Valdemaera down to the north. He ordered them to visit every girls’ school and inquire after any student named Rose with red hair and green eyes, and to bring her back; if they were not certain, they were to have Madam Serva of Derosa confirm it.
Madam Serva had refused Ejekail’s offer to return to Claris with him and remained in Derosa.
“This body is too old for a long journey. I don’t have the confidence to match the speed at which you ride, Master, and even if you slowed down for this old woman’s convenience, traveling by carriage itself would be a great burden. And I like this mansion. It is a quiet, secluded place where I can spend my old age.”
Of course, there was also the possibility that Rose had left the north long ago. Unless she was a fool, she would surely have guessed that Ejekail would search the north first. Given Rose’s overly earnest tendencies, there was a high chance she would do her utmost to keep the pledge she had written with her own hand. Even if House Valdemaera treated that pledge like a mere scrap of paper. So perhaps she had done the unexpected and hidden herself somewhere he would never anticipate.
Therefore, after military training ended, Ejekail once again described Rose’s appearance to his subordinates, who had scattered far and wide in search of “that woman.” He ordered them to bring to him, by any means necessary, any women they found who looked even remotely similar, even if they were not exactly the same.
He did not know her face, but if he heard her voice—no, even if he heard only the soft patter of her approaching footsteps—he was confident he would recognize Rose.
Rose, wait for me.
If you do not appear, then I will come find you.
Winter always shook out its white hem from the north first. And so, after Derosa had greeted the early cold, even Claris, which had lingered a little longer in late autumn, finally entered the depths of winter one day.
On a bluish morning before the dawn light had fully lifted, Mongkam came rushing in, hurriedly bursting through the doors of the Valdemaera mansion.
“Major, we found her!”