Episode 73
After stopping by the detention camp to meet that woman and finish up the matter, he left work later than usual. On his way back on horseback, Ezekiel looked up at the night sky, where clusters of stars were scattered in brilliant profusion.
Night was the time that made him think of Rose most keenly. In truth, for him, whether day or night, the world had always been uniformly dark, so there had been little difference. Rose, however, was very particular about the hour. She said the daytime made her feel embarrassed, as though someone were watching. But when night came, she would stroll through the garden wrapped in his arms, and she would take him deep inside her.
“Rose.”
Ezekiel needlessly called the name that had lost its owner.
“The weather’s getting colder. You should come back already.”
They had promised to hang Christmas decorations together on the great spruce tree, yet she still showed no sign of appearing. It was truly outrageous, the way she failed to keep a promise she had made with her own mouth. Outrageous, and yet…
Still, he missed her.
He wanted to see her, hear her, touch her.
There was nowhere to pour out this stifling feeling. Ezekiel suppressed the turmoil inside him with a deep sigh.
Does she not even wonder how I’m doing?
Or, since news of House Valdemaira spreads quickly in society, does she intend to secretly hear only about my side while hiding herself to the very end?
It seemed she was determined to make a man waste away and die.
If he could not see Rose all the same, whether he lost his sight or regained it, then what in the world was the difference?
“I finally found that woman.”
With Rose gone, he had begun talking to himself more often. Like in the days when he had been blind, Ezekiel spoke into the darkness.
I caught the woman I’d been sharpening my blade for all this time. Shouldn’t you show yourself by now, if only out of curiosity?
Just the fact that Merlo had been prowling around Rose had been enough to make heat surge through him and his head throb, and yet Rose had no jealousy at all. After all, the fact that she had simply answered yes and withdrawn when the main family informed her they could not accept a maid as the mistress of Valdemaira meant she had known and accepted the possibility that he might marry another woman.
Rose, once I find you, I won’t let you get away with this.
Ezekiel made the vow he had already made countless times once again. As soon as he put the ring on her and brought her back, he would take about a month’s leave and shut himself in the bedroom without coming out. Rose was no longer an employee of the mansion, so there was no need to force himself to let her go off to work every morning.
Day and night for a month—surely it would be reasonable to hope for good news. Since Rose’s body would not be empty for even a moment, the odds would be high. Certainly.
He had declared war on his father, saying he would not marry any woman other than Rose, but it was obvious that his father would not acknowledge Rose’s existence unless he proved his will in a tangible way.
“So come back, Rose. You don’t want me to spend Christmas interrogating that woman, do you?”
If Rose did not appear, the resentment for which he could find no comfort anywhere would likely turn toward the woman who had fallen into his hands.
Ezekiel laughed coldly.
She had hidden so well without leaving behind so much as a single eyewitness account that he had wondered how far she had fled, but as it turned out, the woman had been hiding in a city on the outskirts of the central region, not even that far from Claris. If well-trained soldiers rode at full speed without resting for even a moment, it was a day’s distance there and a day’s distance back.
It was exactly like the saying that it was darkest beneath the lamp.
So the woman must have carelessly let her guard down.
In the end, it was his victory. The woman whose traces had remained obscure all this time had recently shown herself a few times out of carelessness, allowing him to finally catch her by the tail.
Ezekiel recalled the woman awkwardly writing down her own name.
Was it his imagination? The smell of that woman’s blood still seemed to linger.
As soon as she had come face-to-face with him, without a word of excuse one way or another, the woman had attempted to commit suicide by poison on the spot. Ezekiel had immediately struck her in the pit of the stomach and made her vomit up the poison, but perhaps her insides had already been eaten away, for even after she lost consciousness, the woman coughed up blood several more times. Then she did not open her eyes the entire time she was being transported.
Fearing that the sight of several soldiers dragging away one blood-soaked woman would stir unnecessary tension among passersby, Ezekiel had wrapped her up in a discarded blanket and loaded her on roughly.
“She won’t die on the way, will she?”
Moncam glanced uneasily at the drops of blood dripping from the tip of the woman’s chin.
Ezekiel jerked his chin.
“This woman would rather die.”
“True, she swallowed the poison right away without even blinking. She’s got a vicious streak… But honestly, judging by her first impression, I was surprised because she felt quite different from what I’d imagined. She’s younger than I thought, too. She looks like she’d spend every day off volunteering at a children’s home, so it’s hard to believe she tried to murder you, Major. Ah, I don’t mean I really don’t believe it!”
He was right. If he had sensed murderous intent from the woman’s face, he would not have been taken so helplessly. Far from harming anyone, she had given the impression that she was the one likely to be harmed; with her delicate, clear features, he had lowered his guard. By the time he regretted it after being ambushed, there had already been no way to undo it.
Ezekiel handed the woman over to the detention camp in Claris. Since she was connected to Akenaus, he had felt that he ought to keep her imprisoned somewhere nearby and look in on her from time to time.
And once the woman came to her senses, she had become so haggard that the word “wretched” suited her. Her first appearance, when she had shown up neatly dressed as a maid, and her current state, curled up and groaning on the stone floor of the detention camp with the front of her chest soaked entirely in bloodstains, were so utterly opposed that they remained in his mind as a strange afterimage.
“Have you returned now? A guest has been waiting in your office for some time. Did you not receive word?”
As soon as Ezekiel arrived at the mansion, the butler, who had been waiting by the entrance, guided him. Since various parts of the Valdemaira mansion were being repaired after Akenaus’s shooting, visitors were being received in the office for the time being.
He had been about to walk toward the dressing room, but stopped.
“I received no such message. Has this person been waiting for me long?”
“Yes. Though it was late at night, you had not returned, so I sent someone, but it seems you must have missed each other on the road.”
“Damn it.”
Ezekiel cursed under his breath. Without even taking the time to change out of his uniform, he headed straight for the office. His steps quickened of their own accord.
Bang—he opened the door in haste.
There was no need to look around. To his eyes, with their broad field of vision, the red-haired woman sitting on the sofa waiting for him came into view at once.
“Rose?”
His heart began to beat violently. It was a symptom that had appeared after he lost Rose. Whenever he caught a glimpse of red hair fluttering among passersby, or saw the back of a woman who seemed to walk with particular lightness, he would run over regardless of the place and grab hold of that person. Of course, none of the people he had caught like that had been Rose.
“Major Valdemaira?”
Hearing his voice, the woman turned around and sprang up from the sofa.
“I’ve been waiting to see when you would return. When I said I had come looking for you, Major, they guided me here.”
The woman approached with light, pattering steps, her face full of delight.
Out of habit, Ezekiel examined the woman’s eyes first. Her eyes were gray, and her gait was different from Rose’s. Her voice was also one tone higher than Rose’s low voice.
He murmured quietly.
“You’re not Rose.”
At the atmosphere around Ezekiel, which had chilled in an instant, the woman flinched.
“Ah… If you look closely at my eyes under the light, they’re closer to green. And my name is Rosemary.”
“I understand, Miss Rosemary. It’s late at night, so please take care on your way back.”
“Wait. I also graduated from a girls’ school in the north three years ago! Though I am from Claris…”
“I will omit the greetings. As you can see, I have only just returned from work, so I am tired. The butler will see you to the door instead.”
“B-but, um, you haven’t even had a proper conversation with me yet, have you?”
The woman hurriedly grabbed his uniform.
Ezekiel stared at her with an expressionless face.
As the rumor that Ezekiel Valdemaira was searching for a woman with red hair and green eyes spread far and wide, women claiming to be Rose had begun arriving one after another. Of course, they were all women who were confident they could deceive him by pretending to be Rose, or who believed they were better than the real Rose. Very occasionally, there had been women selected and sent by his subordinates, but the majority were women who came of their own accord, like today.
Even so, the reason he had left instructions that if women came to the mansion, they were absolutely not to be driven away but admitted first was because of the threadlike hope that someday, the real Rose might hear the rumors and come on her own. Moreover, even though he knew there was a high chance that the visitor was an unwelcome guest imitating Rose, whenever he heard that there was a visitor, his heart would hurry with vain expectation and make his steps quicken. Especially on days like today, when he returned buried in memories of Rose.
Ezekiel coldly removed the woman’s hand.
“You seem to have come here under some misunderstanding. I do not need a woman who resembles Rose. I need Rose.”
“I may not be that woman called Rose, but if anything, my conditions are better than hers, not lacking. You don’t know my charms, Major.”
“Nor am I curious.”
“……”
The woman stood there blankly, at a loss for words, and then tried to protest, but Ezekiel, who had called the butler, was faster.
“See our guest to the door.”
“Yes. Miss, this way, please.”
After the woman, her resentment plain, was led out half by force by the butler, Ezekiel roughly loosened the cravat of his military uniform. Even though the pressure around his neck had disappeared, he did not feel particularly refreshed.
Until the day Rose returned, this suffocation would probably become an illness and cling to his throat and chest.
Rose, where are you, and what are you doing?
Without you, I have not the slightest reason to smile, I cannot sleep again, and every day feels as though my blood is drying up. How are you living?
There were so many things he wanted to ask when he met her, but it was bleak not knowing where in the world she had gone that not even a single scrap of news had reached him.
Every night was like a nightmare.