🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 8
Eden Fletcher disappeared from sight after saying he would come again tomorrow.
Erin sat there in a daze, replaying the meaning behind the words he had thrown at her before leaving.
“…Since you got hurt, that worked out well?”
She had no idea what kind of life he’d lived, but he must have been someone truly impossible to associate with.
Even after dragging out every ounce of understanding she could muster to justify him, she still couldn’t comprehend him at all.
I really stepped in it. Of all things, I got tangled up with some lunatic. How unlucky can you get, Erin?
As she struggled to calm her irregularly pounding heart, frozen with anger, the bedding was suddenly pulled back and someone gasped.
“My goodness.”
When she came back to her senses, the head maid was already exposing Erin’s twisted ankle to the doctor while sitting beside her.
“My goodness, my goodness!”
Mrs. Delia fluttered around even more frantically than the doctor himself, unable to touch it but unable to leave it alone either.
“Th-this-this…!”
“I just took a little fall. First one in a while.”
She had soaked it in ice water for quite some time before coming here, so the initial treatment probably hadn’t been bad.
The doctor seemed to notice that as well. After applying ointment, he wrapped her ankle carefully with bandages.
He said the medicine would be delivered later that evening through one of the clinic staff, but Mrs. Delia insisted on sending a maid immediately.
Then the butler entered and escalated things even further, insisting he would personally go himself, leading to another lengthy argument.
And above all else—rest.
When Erin tried to get up, the doctor’s repeated warnings and the head maid’s fussing eventually forced her to obediently pull the blanket back over herself.
Left alone in the suddenly spacious room, she stared at the ceiling for a while before turning over toward the window.
The sun had grown long in the sky.
I wonder if the performance ended safely…
Erin closed her eyes.
She quickly fell into a deep sleep.
Eden strode out with long steps.
Jean, who had been pacing anxiously, immediately started nagging him.
“Honestly, what’s the point of carrying a watch around?”
“Quiet.”
As soon as they climbed into the waiting carriage, the wheels began to turn.
The moment they passed through the gates, the carriage sped up even more.
There wasn’t much time left before the scheduled meeting with the tailor Eden wanted to bring into Le Fité.
It was an important appointment he had cleared his schedule for even before returning to the country.
He had invested considerable effort into it, and mistakes could not be tolerated.
For a first meeting with a notoriously meticulous middle-aged gentleman, being punctual was the bare minimum.
But it already seemed like the very first button had been fastened wrong.
Up until earlier, it hadn’t been this tight.
He had wasted far more time than expected at the mansion.
As a result, Eden kept checking his watch while clutching the documents in his hand.
“Seriously, the more I think about it, the less I understand. Why did we suddenly have to come here of all days—especially on the day we were supposed to meet Mr. Worth?”
Jean grumbled while staring out the window.
Thinking back on all the advance research, the endless attempts at contact, and the repeated rejections they’d faced before finally securing this meeting, he couldn’t help frowning at the current situation.
Was his boss insane or what? Why today of all days?
At that moment, Eden’s gaze lifted from the papers into empty space.
“That’s because… after thinking it over carefully, I realized I just couldn’t let it go.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. It’s the mansion of the Duke of Cornu. If it were you, could you let that sit for a whole day? No. I couldn’t. Absolutely impossible.”
The corner of his mouth curled upward as though the thought alone made his mouth water.
Jean slowly furrowed his brow before shaking his head.
“You cold-blooded bastard!”
“What are you talking about, brat? That’s why you’ll never make it. You’re too soft when it comes to dreams and ambitions.”
“Those aren’t ambitions. In your case, they’re desires.”
Eden lazily stretched his lips into a dismissive grin and picked the documents back up.
“And I’m talking about basic manners here. She’s injured, and you still won’t even let her rest comfortably. Besides, our young lady looked so terribly thin…”
Eden already knew that from seeing her himself.
The image of her lifting her pointed chin while repeatedly saying, ‘Mr. Fletcher,’ was still vivid in his mind.
And the intention behind it—to remind him of the father who had made him a bastard son—had been painfully obvious.
For someone raised so delicately, she can be quite cruel.
Still, what of it?
After all, he had gained Erin Cornu. Complaining over something so minor would be rude.
Thinking about the future Le Fité would have because of this, he would gladly dance naked in the middle of winter.
“But hey, you.”
Lost in blissful visions of the future, Eden suddenly lowered the documents.
The paper crumpled where his hand gripped it.
“…Y-Yes?”
Seeing the abrupt change in expression, ghostlike and chilling, Jean immediately scooted backward until he was pressed against the carriage wall.
“What’s with this sudden ‘our young lady’? You only met her today.”
After sleeping deeply and waking up, her leg felt much lighter.
It was still stiff when she moved it, and putting weight on it brought a dull ache, but there was obvious improvement after just one night.
Even so, Mrs. Delia remained so anxious that she practically played the role of a strict dormitory supervisor.
She personally attended Erin while she washed and changed clothes, had every meal brought directly to her bedroom, and repeatedly warned all the maids never to let Erin use the stairs.
Fortunately, she didn’t seem to mind Erin sitting in a chair, so Erin spent her spare time reading through the letters and documents that had arrived during her absence.
“There’s a lot…”
Among them, something sent from the capital court caught her eye.
She opened it with a letter knife and read through it.
The main content concerned debts that the Cornu Oil Company was required to repay.
But the deadline written at the bottom had already passed by three weeks.
Erin immediately summoned the butler.
“Is this alright? It’s from the court, and the deadline’s already passed.”
The butler examined both the envelope and its contents before nodding calmly.
“Her Highness the Princess received the same notice. She said she would personally handle matters regarding the company’s debts, so I did not involve myself.”
“Oh, I see.”
With practiced ease, he handed the documents back and explained one by one when and how each debt had been repaid.
Aside from the ones Princess Hestina had dealt with in the beginning, all the rest had been handled with Eden Fletcher’s help.
He had apparently taken care of even the smaller debts whose maturity dates had not yet arrived.
And according to the lawyer, there would be no more problems like before.
“…I see.”
“It was fortunate.”
The butler still looked shaken whenever he thought about it.
But knowing Erin’s marriage had been the price exchanged for all of this, he chose not to say more.
At that moment, a maid entered and lit the lamps throughout the drawing room.
At the butler’s gesture, an oil lamp was also placed on the table where Erin sat.
She hadn’t realized it before, but now that there was light, reading became much easier.
“So this is how bright and nice it can be.”
At Erin’s muttered complaint, the butler, who had been about to leave, let out a quiet laugh.
He remembered all too clearly how much wealth the discovery of kerosene had brought to the ducal house.
To him, watching the family stand at its peak only to now fade away was simply regrettable.
“Oh, when did Patrick come by? I don’t remember seeing that before.”
Erin pointed toward a framed painting hanging on the left wall.
A ballerina stood at center stage, balanced on one leg while stretching both arms and the other leg outward.
It was an arabesque.
It was a scene from a short-term production the ballet company had performed last winter, and today she noticed it hanging in the second-floor drawing room.
“He visited about two weeks ago. The colors suited the room, and there happened to be an empty spot, so I hung it there.”
The woman in the painting somehow looked brightly radiant.
Was it because the lamplight flickered across the canvas?
There’s no way I smiled like that, Erin thought, letting out a small laugh.
“I should go to the lodgings tomorrow.”
“The lodgings?”
“I left my belongings there.”
“If that’s all, I can send one of the servants.”
But Erin shook her head.
Her gaze was drawn once more toward the painting.
Toward Erin Cornu on the stage, smiling so clearly and brightly at some unknown point in time.
“No. I’ll go myself. There are people I need to see.”
The butler bowed, saying he would make the arrangements, and withdrew.
Erin organized the papers she had been reading onto a tray before standing up.
When she moved to the window, the vivid orange light of the afternoon had settled across the garden.
And suddenly, over that light, it felt as though she could hear Eden Fletcher’s voice again.
“I’m telling you not to go to the ballet company, Miss Cornu.”
Yesterday, the man had not come.
He had definitely said see you tomorrow before leaving, but the only visitor to the mansion yesterday had been the doctor.
Perhaps there was no point being surprised. Maybe he was simply the sort accustomed to making empty promises.
Actually, this is better.
She had tried not to think about him, yet he kept occupying her thoughts.
He’s the one who didn’t keep his promise, so he can’t complain if I go out for a little while, Erin thought, trying to keep her mind light.
