40.
[You don’t need to worry about the medicine costs. I intend to collect it in some other way.]
Oh, so I’d guessed right.
At least it was a relief that I wouldn’t have to writhe in embarrassment.
“The duke really said that?”
“Yeah. I guess he felt sorry. He was the one who took me to the Hunting Festival, after all.”
“Then he could have just said so openly and helped you…… Why do it like this?”
Judging by the tone of his reply, it also seemed like something he had done without much thought.
“Isn’t it a little chilling that he says he’ll collect it in some other way later? What if he threatens you?”
Julie fussed, clutching the gossip magazine she usually enjoyed reading tightly in her hands.
“Come on, what could the duke possibly get out of me that he’d resort to threatening me like this?”
I snatched the gossip magazine from Julie’s arms and tossed it over the back of the sofa.
“It’s better not to believe the rumors in these things too blindly, Julie.”
“I know that too, but there’s no harm in being careful, is there?”
Earlier, I’d glimpsed over Julie’s shoulder what she was reading, and it had contained a piece of news that sounded almost like a ghost story: “I accidentally made eye contact with the duke, and something terrible happened that night”…….
“He’s going to become my superior from now on, so I can gradually find out what kind of person he is myself.”
“Mm……”
“There’s no point talking this way and that about him in advance, right? Besides, it’s true that he helped me.”
Julie nodded reluctantly.
“The rain is finally stopping.”
As if seizing an intermission, the rain that had been pouring down all day was slowly ceasing in the darkness.
So I naturally, and vaguely, thought that the day would end like this.
Though when I received a cup of warmed milk before bed, I did think it would taste wonderful with some whiskey mixed in.
And a little honey, too…….
As if she knew exactly what I was thinking, Julie slapped the back of my hand before leaving.
And then, at dawn that day.
“Who are you?”
“Aaaaaaaaagh!”
In front of the kitchen I had secretly gone down to, I ran into some unidentified thief…… or something.
To be specific, she was a madwoman with some strange cloth wrapped round and round over her head, staggering about and performing dazzling footwork as though she couldn’t see because of it.
After watching her trip over her own feet and collapse helplessly onto the carpet, I slowly approached and pulled off the cloth she had over her head.
The face flushed scarlet as it looked up at me was, interestingly enough, one I knew.
What was it again? Dae…….
“……Daern?”
“It’s Daena!”
Daena shrieked, then glanced around like a frightened person and clapped a hand over her own mouth.
“You…… what are you doing here?”
Daena bit down hard on her lip, then suddenly sprang to her feet and shouted.
“A-a-apples!”
Did she mean she’d come to steal apples or something?
“To apologize!”
Ah. That “apples.”
So what she was saying right now was that she had secretly snuck into the mansion at this hour before dawn in order to apologize?
In any case, if we kept talking here, it seemed like we would wake up everyone else one after another, so I took Daena into the dining room.
“How did you get in here?”
“I climbed…… over the wall.”
Perhaps out of embarrassment, Daena’s face flushed bright red again. Her ears were red too.
“Into the mansion?”
“The kitchen…… window was open.”
I’ll have to warn the chef to make sure everything is locked up properly before bed.
I sat angled toward where Daena was seated and gave a slight nod.
“Then go ahead.”
“G-go ahead with what?”
“You said you came to apologize.”
After a brief silence, a look of determination came over Daena’s face.
“What I mean is, what I was trying to say is, thank you for saving me back then.”
Unexpectedly normal words flowed from the intruder of the early dawn.
“Are you feeling…… a little better?”
“Uh…… well, as you can see.”
“I should have come e-earlier. Sorry.”
I rubbed the back of my head and shrugged.
“Well…… it’s not like you were the one who hurt me.”
“……”
“……”
Immediately after that, an awkward and unbearable silence hung in the air.
It suddenly felt strange to meet her eyes.
“And…… and, you know. That thing, that incident. I believe now that you might not have done it.”
“……That incident?”
“The love potion.”
I could hardly believe my ears.
“You believe I didn’t do it?”
“No! Absolutely not! That’s not it!”
Daena hurriedly waved her hands and rushed to pour out her words.
“I’m saying I believe that you might not have done it!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Anyway, in the end, no physical evidence came out of that case! So I’m saying I don’t firmly believe you’re the culprit…… anymore.”
“……”
Now I understood properly.
When I stared at her, Daena flinched, but she did not avert her gaze.
“Well…… all right.”
I lightly kicked the leg of the chair Daena was sitting on with the tip of my foot.
“Then can you tell people the same thing?”
Daena’s face turned serious as she raised a hand toward me with firm resolve and declared.
“No. In front of other people, I’d prefer you not even act like you know me, just in case. Like you’ve done until now.”
“That really is a statement from the person who just apologized to me, right?”
“That’s that, and this is this.”
To be honest, I had asked the question fully knowing what her reaction would be, but still, what a filthy honest answer.
Which made me feel, rather…….
That the things she’d said before carried some sincerity.
Of course, even if one person, Daena, went out of her way to evaluate me positively, it wasn’t as if the tide would change now.
“Anyway, I can’t do that, but…… I can give you this.”
Daena took something out and held it toward me.
The handwriting scrawled across the glossy, high-quality black paper was elegant.
“This is…… a party invitation.”
“Lady Sophie is holding her engagement ceremony this time. It looks like she’ll be getting married within the year too.”
“Who is Lady Sophie?”
“……You don’t even know that? Ah, forget it. You don’t need to know that. Just make sure you come.”
“Why do I have to go there?”
“I barely managed to get that invitation! Oh, and obviously, you know you can’t let it slip that I gave it to you!”
“You really are being awfully demanding for someone who says she came to apologize.”
Even at my admiration, which carried a certain emotion, Daena stood firm.
“I’m telling you to come and raise your reputation a little!”
“How?”
“Just…… You can just stay still! Anyway!”
“What are you going to do if I really am the culprit?”
“That’s why I came to meet you secretly so no one would see me, just in case.”
I shook my head.
To think that because of other people’s gazes, a perfectly respectable young lady had finally climbed over someone else’s wall!
It was a passage that showed just how much reputation and dignity could ruin a person.
“And…… there are quite a few servants wandering around our mansion even at dawn. I was planning to get inside first, then ask someone to bring me to you……”
In other words, she hadn’t intended to sneak into the mansion like a thief.
“Wait, come to think of it, do you even know how to dance?”
Daena narrowed her eyes and looked me over.
“I do.”
“Phew, that’s a relief. Anyway, you have to come dressed up really prettily, okay?”
“I haven’t even decided whether I’m going or not yet……”
Daena, who had brushed my words aside without so much as half listening, began rummaging around inside her arms, then thrust something in front of my eyes.
“……”
Gulp. I swallowed.
“You like alcohol, don’t you?”
It was a very beautiful, enchanting whisky, its golden liquid shimmering brilliantly in the moonlight.
As if bewitched, I nodded.
“Somehow, every time you’re spotted, you’re pouring down heaps of alcohol. So…… I brought this as an apology gift. It’s my father’s.”
“Thanks.”
I pretended not to hear the last part and accepted the bottle.
Daena sneaking into the mansion at this hour before dawn had truly been nothing short of a perfect choice.
“You’re seriously the best.”
Daena looked at me with a reluctant expression.
“Shall we go to our room and keep talking? It was too dark and stuffy here, wasn’t it? Come on, it’s fine, I said come here.”
With very practiced skill, I hid the bottle of alcohol in my arms, then dragged Daena toward a room.
Of course, it wasn’t my room. There were plenty of unused spare rooms lying around the mansion, so all we had to do was find a suitably clean one and go in.
And then, well……
We began drinking, passing the alcohol back and forth.
At first, Daena refused, saying she didn’t want any, but after watching the way I drank, she eventually took a glass herself.
Once I set down some simple snacks I had brought from the kitchen, it was perfect.
Before long, Daena, her face flushed red from the alcohol, poured out a confession to me that was definitely fueled by drink.
“To tell you the truth?”
“Yeah.”
“I liked the count.”
“Which count?”
“Rohwinas Kanesion!”
“Oh.”
“But not anymore!”
“Oh……”
I could guarantee she would definitely regret saying this once she sobered up.
But sorry to say, I was having fun, so it wasn’t my problem.
“How could I not lose affection after seeing him hanging around with that obnoxious wench?”
“By obnoxious wench, you mean?”
“Who else? That oh-so-great young lady of House Peregrine!”
“Are there any young ladies you do think well of?”
“My friends!”
“Right, as long as you like your friends, that’s enough.”
In any case, it seemed that the proud young lady of House Peregrine had not only looked down on me throughout her life.
Apparently, being ignored from the start for belonging to an insignificant baron’s family was actually on the better side.
A certain young lady who had been talking during a meal and accidentally gotten something on the hem of Meriana’s dress was, after that, never again able to speak to Meriana.
Overnight,
she was treated like a complete invisible person.
Daena railed at me, asking whether I had ever imagined how humiliating that must feel.
“It was just cookie crumbs!”
“Right.”
When my lips loosened and I smiled slightly, Daena’s eyes narrowed.
“Why are you laughing? Is what I’m saying funny?”
“No, it’s not that……”
Maybe I was a little drunk too, because the words came out honestly.
“It’s the first time someone’s come over to my house like this and chatted with me, so it feels strange.”
“……”
Daena closed her mouth.