Chapter 84
“I’ll ask again, Sasha. Do you really believe that anonymous accusation was real?”
Ulrich. He had always treated her like an inferior even before the wedding.
He had openly shown he wasn’t satisfied at the wedding, his countless affairs, the man who had led the ridicule of her in society.
Still, I thought that bastard was the father of my son.
After the marriage she felt she had gained only her son and the small world inside the estate.
But the son turned out to be exactly like his father… and now he was trying to destroy even the one small world she had. Humiliating her in front of the servants.
She felt the count’s sneer speaking to her.
He had never once considered Sasha a wife.
So you intend to make me out to be a madwoman here, do you?
At that moment her head turned cold. Extreme hatred steadied her.
“…Ha.”
The countess regained her composure.
“Fine. I framed Mrs. Becker. I accused her of theft because I wanted to drive her out.”
The count sighed as if disappointed. Sasha felt all affection drain away from him.
When she married him, her father had secured only one promise from the count.
“Just promise me one thing. No matter what happens, don’t make my daughter a divorced woman or a madwoman and lock her away in a convent. Treat my daughter only as your lawful wife. If you do that, I won’t suddenly withdraw this investment.”
Now that man thinks I, my father, and my father’s money are worthless.
At the wedding the count skipped even the usual formalities of exchanging vows. So she had treated the promise her father had extracted from him as the husband’s promise in place of wedding vows.
When Sasha realized that promise had been broken, she also painfully understood that he was not a husband.
That she was the only one who had ever considered them family.
“What, so what? At worst she’s just a lowly maid, right? If you want to get rid of a worthless maid like Mrs. Becker, can’t you just accuse her of theft?”
If she were locked away in a convent as a mad noblewoman, her reputation would be finished. The Barche priests were brutal to those they certified as insane, and they could strip a noblewoman of her rights with ease.
And once confined, only a legal guardian — her husband or her son — could free her.
Now that her relationship with Fernand was broken, she might be trapped there to die.
“It’s a pity she was exposed. I could have completely gotten rid of that damned maid.”
She could not live like that. If it came to that, she’d rather be thought of from the start as a cruel noblewoman who framed someone.
“You’re obviously unfit to manage this household. Not fit to be the lady of the house — you scheme with petty feelings instead of managing the staff? What are you doing! Lock that woman up in a room at once!”
Four burly men seized the countess’s arm at the count’s command. They were about to drag her away.
“Count! I have brought the coachman as you ordered!”
A servant who had been belatedly summoned threw open the main hall doors.
“M-master! I heard you called for me.”
The coachman had been dragged in without having heard the circumstances at all.
Seeing the majestic scene with all the household gathered — and the woman, her fingers jingling with jewelry, being hauled away — he made a snap judgment.
Ah. So Paula is being dragged away after all.
Frightened, he ran and prostrated himself at the spot where the countess had been kneeling until a moment ago.
“Oh? You’ve arrived at last? Good. Sasha has already—”
“Master, I know why you called me! You called because Paula shoved Miss Odette into the pond and killed her, right?”
“What?”
“S-sorry, I couldn’t stop that maid. I should have rushed over and pulled her out of the pond—”
“What did you just say? Odette fell into the pond and died?”
But contrary to the coachman’s expectations, everyone in the main hall was hearing this for the first time.
A more shocking event than anything yet had the staff in the main hall murmuring.
“What nonsense is that! What happened to Odette?”
At that moment Fernand returned from the palace.
“Isn’t that why you called? Paula beat Miss and pushed her into the pond at the annex—”
“……”
“She would be dead. She even smelled of sleep scent.”
Instantly the color drained from the faces of the maids and servants in the main hall.
The incident was bigger than anyone there could imagine.
“Everyone here — find Odette and Paula! They’re around the pond!”
At the count’s command, the servants and maids formed search parties with military precision.
Those with the fastest legs headed for the annex, and some servants let the hunting dogs try to pick up Paula’s or Odette’s scent.
Then a dog that caught Paula’s scent ran frantically toward the entrance of the annex’s underground prison.
What? Why is that dog going to the dungeon?
The count frowned. He had never given Paula permission to go to the annex—so why did that dog dash that way?
He followed the hound, doubtful.
“…”
But there was no one in the annex basement where Karl should have been.
“Goddamn it…”
The prison door was open, and the restraints that shouldn’t be casually opened had all been undone.
The count frantically patted his coat. The keys that should have been in his inner pocket were nowhere to be found.
The restraints can only be released with Odette’s blood… damn it. They must have just carried the heavy restraints off and run?
He had had extra chains made to hold Karl here! He had rigged them so only he could unlock them — who had dared to steal his keys?
At that moment, the hunting dog inside the cell began circling a fallen object and barking like mad: woof! woof!
“What is this… a maid’s hairpin?”
The count picked up the hairpin. It was far too luxurious for a maid, and Paula’s name was engraved on it.
Now I know who opened it.
The count ground his teeth.
Come to think of it, Sasha opposed bringing that Karl from the start.
She had said, why bother bringing such a money sink? He could have been put in a holding pen; bringing that insane breed into her house was filthy, she had argued.
Paula is like Sasha’s right hand.
The count curled his lip. They knew nothing.
If they had shared his experience, they would never think that way. If they had even once witnessed what he had seen ten years ago while part of a diplomatic mission to the Fenril kingdom, he thought, they would not be so careless.
“You’re in my way. Move.”
He would never forget the seven-year-old who, in Tundra, wiped out thousands of bears and wolves in an instant. He could not forget the overwhelming inferiority and terror he had felt that day.
It isn’t human. It wasn’t simply about physical skill or technique. It wasn’t human intimidation. It looked human, but it was a weapon meant to exterminate enemies.
It was destruction itself, a natural disaster. Against it he could only be a bug.
The Fenril crown prince had been a nightmare for him ever since; it had throttled the count with terror.
The count remembered in anguish that moment when he felt like vermin.
To relieve that near-death-level inferiority, he had to crush Karl. If he didn’t bind Karl or keep seeing his fall with his own eyes, that nightmare would become real and swallow him.
How dare… how could I have come by such a thing? Something as insignificant as Paula!
Once he started, the coachman spilled everything: the conversation between Paula and the gatekeeper, everything afterwards — even the muttering.
When the count and the young master return, everything will be taken away; if you want to take it, now is the only chance, he said.
Paula had meant Odette, but in the count’s ears it sounded like Karl. Letting Karl out was like letting loose a natural disaster.
Thinking that once Karl was taken as a slave and his nightmares began anew, the count seethed at the thought of killing that maid over and over.
“Even if Sasha or Paula were torn to pieces a hundred times, that thing wouldn’t be freed.”
Grinding his teeth, the count went up to the surface. He snatched one of the hunting rifles the servants carried.
“Give it here! I’ll shoot that Paula girl dead!”
He would not let the maid who had thrown away his lifelong chance to be free of that nightmare go unpunished.
At that moment, the dogs bayed and howled from the pond.
The count ran toward the sound with the gun and found Odette collapsed by the pond, her dress soaked in blood.
