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chapter 9
“Milady, you’ve only just gotten up, and already you’ve come to a place like this.”
“Myrtle, if you don’t feel like it, you can go back.”
“If I go back, I’ll have to bury the food waste.”
Myrtle shuddered. Normally, in other households, disposing of food waste was work given to male servants. Digging through the frozen ground was no small task for young maids.
But in Shawbury, most able-bodied men were employed in the mines run by Sir Gideon Arlington. As a result, the maids of Tierney Haven had to take on all sorts of work that male servants would usually do, but for lower wages. It was no wonder that Madam Kindly, the previous head maid, had ruined her health while still in her prime.
“I’m sorry, you had to come to Shawbury because of me.”
“How is that your fault, milady?”
Their destination lay in one of Shawbury’s outer districts. Small, shabby houses lined the hillside, with narrow alleys winding through like a maze. The two of them slowly walked up one of those alleys.
“Well, if Lord Ebony hadn’t—”
Before the word divorce could be uttered, Myrtle cut in.
“Don’t even bring him up. It’s because of him that you and I are in this situation.”
“You can’t say it’s entirely because of him.”
“Well, even if we’d stayed, it wouldn’t have been peaceful.”
Remembering what happened when they left, Myrtle wrinkled her nose.
“…A royal search warrant from Her Majesty—what on earth could that have been about?”
“…”
“Milady?”
Briiony realized she had stopped walking. She resumed and answered quietly.
“I don’t really know either.”
“Master—no, Lord Ebony—he may be cold-blooded, but he’s not the kind to commit crimes. He looks like he couldn’t even kill an insect.”
That much was true. Briiony pulled up the thoughts she had been avoiding. What crime could possibly be grave enough for a royal warrant to be issued? Had Dmitri returned safely to Ebony? Perhaps she could send him a letter under an alias, just to ask after the situation. That thought gave her a faint sense of relief.
“He could at least kill insects, you know.”
“I was just saying. I’d never even seen him hold a sword until that day.”
The same was true for Briiony.
Keith suited a pen more than a sword. He disliked raising his voice and had a habit of solving problems with logic and reason. Yet that man had picked up a sword that had hung on the wall untouched for years.
…To protect me.
After he had brought up divorce, Briiony had given up trying to guess her husband’s true feelings. She was afraid she might learn something she did not wish to know. But in that moment, there was no mistaking it.
Keith had been furious—furious because the investigators had tried to lay hands on her, furious because they had treated her rudely. She had never before seen him so angry.
“Honestly, I thought he looked rather dashing then.”
“Who?”
“Who else? Lord Ebony. He didn’t seem like the man I thought I knew.”
Briiony said nothing. If she agreed, she would feel frivolous; if she disagreed, it would feel like lying to herself.
At last, they reached the address Harold had given them. It was a ramshackle wooden house, no different from its neighbors. Part of the roof had been patched clumsily with tin, betraying the family’s poor circumstances.
There was no fence, and the front door doubled as a gate. A small curtained window sat beside it. Myrtle adjusted the basket of bread she carried.
“Looks like no one’s home.”
Briiony knocked.
“Is anyone there?”
Myrtle called out loudly, but there was no answer. Harold had said the injured miners all had families, so it was strange that no one was home.
“Milady, look…!”
Myrtle tugged at Briiony’s sleeve. She looked where the maid pointed. Between the house they had come to and the neighboring one, in a space hardly wide enough to be called an alley, a small shadow moved. A child was peering out at them from the shade between the rooftops.
Myrtle’s voice softened.
“Sweetie, do you live here?”
Peeking out with wide, fearful eyes was a grimy-faced child. She wore only a thin, unlined garment, unfit for the season, with hair overgrown to cover eyebrows and ears. Her legs were so thin one wondered how she could even walk. Clearly, there was no one properly caring for her.
Briiony took a warm bread roll from Myrtle’s basket.
“Have you eaten lunch? Would you like this?”
Drawn more by the bread than their gentle tone, the child stepped out of the shadows. Myrtle clicked her tongue.
“Oh, this poor thing. How could she be so thin?”
Briiony took off her shawl and wrapped it around the child. Having grown up in houses without children—neither the Arlingtons nor the Dalmore family had any—she had no sense of the child’s age. She couldn’t even tell if it was a boy or a girl.
“How old are you?”
The child answered not with words but by biting hungrily into the bread.
“Looks about three or four,” Myrtle said.
Since her father was a doctor in Shawbury, Myrtle was probably right. Briiony raised her hand gently.
“Slowly now.”
“Where are your mama and papa?”
The child hesitated, then went back to eating. Myrtle tried again.
“What’s your name?”
“…Amber.”
They hadn’t expected an answer, but the child spoke. That meant she wasn’t too young to communicate. And since Amber was a girl’s name, Briiony finally understood the child’s gender.
Myrtle pointed at the house.
“Is there… no one inside?”
Amber, still clutching the bread in one hand, pushed the door with the other. It swung open easily. The house was dark and empty. Briiony bravely stepped inside.
Fortunately, it wasn’t as she had secretly feared—there were no dead bodies of starving parents. The house was simply deserted. It was one big room without walls, with a kitchen corner where pots and kettles still looked recently used. The furniture showed signs of ordinary life.
“Where could they have gone, leaving such a young child behind?” Myrtle murmured, looking around.
It felt improper, but worried about Amber’s dry throat, Briiony poured her a cup of water from the kettle. The child drank eagerly. In the dim light, her bright brown hair looked almost dark chestnut. That shade of hair inevitably reminded Briiony of her ex-husband—though even thinking of him that way felt strange. Under the sun, light brown and flaxen looked nearly the same.
As she stroked the fine strands, she noticed a faint scar on the girl’s hand.
“Myrtle, what do you think this mark is?”
Myrtle took the little hand and examined it. The scar ran not only across the back of her hand but also up under the sleeve that covered her wrist bone.
“Looks like… a burn scar.”
“Probably just an accident, then?”
“Most likely. Children’s skin is so delicate.”
Myrtle spoke carelessly, but Briiony felt uneasy.
This house was no place for a child. Not because of poverty alone, but because there were no signs of children’s things—no clothes, no toys. Even Briiony, who knew little of children, knew that a home with a child must have such things.
Could she be… neglected or abused?
Compared to this, Briiony’s own upbringing had been rich and stable. Yet she could not say she had been well cared for. Gideon was never a good father, and the servants were too busy currying favor to give her real attention. Her governesses had all been strict, leaving the young girl with no comfort except in her younger maid or her pet cat.
Perhaps that was why she was so sensitive to signs of neglect. In Ebony, there had been no children left to grow up abandoned like this, no servants treated unfairly, so she’d had little chance to show that part of herself.
Amber gently pulled her hand free from Myrtle’s grasp.
Just then, a harsh voice barked from the doorway.
“What do you think you’re doing, barging into someone else’s house?”
