Eliza was descending the corridor and approaching, accompanied by Lady Rexton and Lady Isaac. Grace and Jessie, seeing her in a crow-black dress with a fur shawl draped over her shoulders, reflexively bent their knees in greeting. Meanwhile, Flora’s gaze turned toward Countess Rinco. The Countess, who had been watching the approaching Eliza with eyes gone coldly frigid, offered a curtsy as if she had no other choice; Flora and the noblewomen followed, lowering and raising themselves in turn.
The rustling hem of the black dress settled heavily. Countess Rinco, who had slightly raised her eyes, met black pupils of unfathomable depth. Eliza Richmond neither glared fiercely nor hurled abuse. She merely gazed quietly at the Countess. The silence she created was like a very deep sea. A pressure that permitted no breathing constricted the entire body. In the moment when her forcibly widened eye corners trembled, Eliza called to her in a low voice.
“Emily.”
“……Yes.”
“It seems you toiled to manage the castle together with the Count while I was resting.”
“……”
“You’ve worked hard.”
Countess Rinco, whose lips had merely twitched, answered with a clenched fist.
“Yes. I am merely grateful that you think so.”
The expressions of Lady Isaac and Lady Rexton turned fierce at once, but Eliza merely gazed at her coldly. Then she turned her body elegantly.
The Queen was a woman who came and went without a word. As Grace immediately stepped to follow Eliza’s pace, the Queen glanced at her and rebuked her.
“I waited for quite a while, but you didn’t come, so I came myself.”
“Did you, my lady.”
“My intuition says a blade-like wind will blow tomorrow, so stay outside for a while today. Isn’t Taylor cold around this time as well?”
“It gets chilly.”
At their conversation, the eyes of the noblewomen behind the Countess grew wider and wider. Eliza Richmond, what? Waiting for someone, and coming to get them when they didn’t come? They had said to Grace that she was not even nobility, that she was shameless, impudent, but Eliza Richmond was treating her as one would treat a niece at the very least.
Andrew, who had been following behind Grace and the Dowager as if guarding them, saw the flustered expressions of the distraught noblewomen and grinned, baring his teeth. Lady Rexton, who was beside him, poked his arm.
“What had you been saying to the young lady? Seeing her standing like that earlier, I hurriedly informed the Dowager. Told her she ought to come see.”
It was a whisper close to lip-reading, but Andrew understood her words without missing a single syllable. The boy gave a thumbs up and informed her, as if to say he had been waiting, while avoiding the ears of Grace and Eliza who walked ahead. The quick-witted Lady Rexton also understood at once.
“Shameless, impudent?”
Lady Rexton muttered as if dumbfounded and looked behind her.
“Who is saying that to whom.”
Her cold murmur melted into the winter sunlight.
＊ ＊ ＊
Several nobles had been wandering in the corridor for quite some time. Their complexions were as dark as the black stone pillars lining the corridor, and their expressions looked as anxious as dead leaves barely clinging to the ends of branches.
“They say Baron Demon’s household was destroyed yesterday. The mistress and daughters went to a convent, and the sons and the baron went to the Wall of Death.”
“We knew Demon would end up like that. We all knew it wasn’t just a penny or two that he had embezzled sitting in the Ministry of Finance for ten years. Do you remember five years ago during the great famine, when he even embezzled relief funds?”
“What will you do?”
At the question asked in a greatly lowered voice, the nobles’ expressions hardened stiffly. The one who had asked whispered in what was almost lip shapes.
“It seems Count Rinco’s side is also moving secretly. It seems those who will side with the Count have almost all done so.”
“If we don’t side with the Count, we’ll all be dead, so what choice do we have?”
“Besides, we are all inside the castle now. His Lordship has seized even the defense corps and the knights’ order; aren’t we all rats in a poison jar? If His Lordship sets his mind to it, he can kill us all, can’t he?”
Just then, an unusual sound of military boots was heard from beyond the corridor, and the nobles’ gazes moved all at once toward the sound. There were knights clad in black armor and red cloaks. Their presence was so tremendous that one unwittingly held one’s breath. Yet even those knights of tremendous presence were nothing compared to that man.
Black pupils that seemed to hold not even a scrap of humanity, a mask-like expression that felt cruel rather than merely emotionless.
“It is all the more frightening that he is so quiet.”
“Yes. Truly……”
“They say he was called the Iron-Blooded Duke at the Wall of Death. I feel like I’m truly going mad.”
At that moment, they were not the only ones who thought of the words Iron-Blooded Duke. The bureaucrat who had come to find the Duke carrying documents Grace had sorted was also murmuring that word inwardly.
The Duke was merely turning the documents slowly with his long fingers. But perhaps because of the black knights surrounding him, it seemed a fishy, metallic scent of blood and blades wafted from him. As the bureaucrat gulped, Ares rose from his seat holding the documents. If documents were piled like a mountain on Grace’s desk, a detailed map of the Richmond Duchy was spread wide on Ares’s desk.
Ares stopped at the point where the Steel Gorge was marked, then scanned the documents with his eyes. The words Steel Gorge were nowhere in the documents. Yet why had Grace asserted it was that place? He placed the documents and map together and fell into calm contemplation. Before long, the reason Grace had been able to assert so, and the reason the gold ingots inside the castle could have slipped out without a sound, became clearly visible.
The common point of the nobles whom Count Rinco had given permission to touch the gold ingots was precisely the Steel Gorge. They were lords near the Steel Gorge, and if they went straight from the castle to the Steel Gorge, they would not have been suspected by anyone.
Ares let out a hollow laugh. It felt ridiculous that he had said to leave the internal Richmond documents to the vassals of House Richmond. He roughly swept his face, placed the documents on the desk with a thud, and beckoned to Crimson.
“No word from the reconnaissance team yet?”
“Yes. We are intensively monitoring the territorial forces of the Count’s faction nobles, but there are no special movements.”
Still feeling something was off, Ares pointed near the Ducal castle.
“The Samer underground caves extend from outside the duchy. Just in case, send scouts to this vicinity as well.”
“Yes.”
“Arm yourselves and stand by. We will soon seal the castle gates.”
Crimson, who had flinched, nodded with a grim expression.
“I accept your command.”
Then he beckoned to Joseph.
“Go immediately and in secret to the Steel Gorge with the knights under your command. Secure the gold ingots inside. I permit summary execution of those who try to obstruct you.”
Joseph flinched and gazed at Ares. The words permitting summary execution of those who obstructed meant that armed conflict within the territory was acceptable, which in turn meant he was declaring war on the Count’s faction.
“I accept your command.”
Joseph, who had answered quickly, disappeared like the wind. The bureaucrat was also carefully sorting the documents Ares had placed down, about to leave, when—
“Where is Grace?”
At the chilly question, the surprised bureaucrat hurriedly turned to the Duke. Inhuman black eyes were gazing quietly at him.
“Is she still looking at documents?”
“Ah, s-she was just called by the Dowager……”
“The Dowager?”
“Yes.”
Ares suddenly turned his body. And he strode without hesitation toward the large bay window. Standing by the window where the outside chill could be felt, Ares’s gaze immediately went downward. Through the bare gaps of the huge garden trees that had been lush and green just months before, several people could be seen.
Ares slightly furrowed his brows and muttered sullenly.
“It’s cold, yet she insists on being there. …What a unique taste.”
A woman with long blonde hair spilling down was smiling brightly beside Eliza, who wore a black dress.
＊ ＊ ＊
“I heard you left breakfast, the between-meal finger foods, and lunch. Does the food of House Richmond not suit your palate?”
Grace shook her head with a troubled face.
“No, my lady. There is nothing that is not excellent, from one to ten.”
“Then why do you leave it?”
At the cold, oppressive question of the Queen, Andrew Isaac felt as though he would choke even though he had eaten nothing, and withdrew his head like a turtle. Eliza had told Lady Isaac to take responsibility for Grace’s three daily meals, and Lady Isaac had rolled up her sleeves and taken charge of her meals. Honestly, the breakfast served the moment she opened her eyes was as large in portion as the meal served to Ares.
The problem was that it wasn’t just breakfast. The finger foods between breakfast and lunch, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and even a late-night snack were truly a feast of delicacies. Grace opened her mouth with a feeling that it was rather just as well.
“My lady… it is not that I leave food because I have no appetite, but because there is too much and I cannot eat it all.”