RAMHM Chapter 6

Always Beautiful, Always Mad

"Madam! Madam!"

The shock hadn't even faded when another maid burst into the drawing room in a rush.

"Someone outside is asking to see whoever went to Her Highness the Grand Duchess's funeral!"

"What?"

"Madam! Is there more trouble outside?"

As if certain I'd caused some incident, Marge's eyes immediately turned toward me without a shred of doubt.

"What did you answer?"

"Pardon? Oh, they weren't asking specifically for you, madam—they said everyone who'd been to the funeral, so I just said I'd check and came right in!"

"I'll go out myself."

"What? In the middle of the night, without knowing who it is? Let me find out who it is first, and then with the butler, in the first-floor guest reception room..."

Marge's interference merely crumbled at my ears.

"No, I need to go check directly myself."

I hastily straightened my clothes. It's Noah. It must be Noah.

Vincento swallowed hard, staring at the deathly pale yet sensual lips before him. Not simply because the lips were beautiful—but because that mouth, which would normally have spewed harsh words first, showed no intention of moving at all.

"Your Highness?"

"......"

Faint light touched the arrogant tip of the nose belonging to the man silently gazing outside the carriage. But his expression remained dark throughout. The beautiful injured man's face—tense in a way that didn't suit him—was not only rigid but had gone utterly ashen. Considering his record of never blinking an eye even when seeing countless corpses or monsters, it was a face that made one suspect he'd become a corpse.

Vincento also cast his gaze toward where his eyes were directed. A rarely beautiful black-haired woman. And in front of her, another aide, Neil, scratching his head while saying something. When the woman—wary of Neil—exchanged a few words before returning inside the Acacia estate, not only Neil but the lord before him couldn't take his eyes off the estate entrance.

"...What's, her name."

After confirming the woman's face, the man who'd been utterly ashen ever since—Rhodness—finally opened his mouth after a long while. Rhodness was so mentally absorbed somewhere that he couldn't even hear Neil returning to them and knocking on the carriage door. Vincento exhaled deeply and opened the carriage door instead of answering. Neil, his face flushed, quickly entered the carriage and sat down, pouring out words.

"A maid named Marge, she says. She went to the Trovika Grand Ducal cemetery. She stayed late searching because the Countess Acacia disappeared without a word. She says she has no memory of seeing Your Highness."

"...Your Highness!"

Vincento and Neil desperately blocked him as he tried to kick the carriage door open. Despite his severe injury, his strength was such that the hands gripping those massive shoulders and arms trembled violently.

"What will you do if you go there!"

"Just say you fell for her instead!"

When the still-red-faced Neil said that, a chilling atmosphere filled the carriage.

"...Have you lost your mind."

You're the most insane one here right now, Your Highness! Neil forcibly swallowed the words trying to burst out and barely opened his mouth.

"If a man wrapped head to toe in bandages asks if she's the ghost you encountered at the cemetery, how terrified will the young lady be?"

"Young lady?"

"She was a beautiful, frightened young lady! Not the ghost Your Highness is seeking."

Neil answered Vincento's question. Then Neil gasped, seeing Rhodness's cold face. Before he could think oops, Neil was kicked right out of the carriage.

"Ahhh!"

"How dare you. Call her a ghost."

"Your Highness! Your Highness!"

He'd always thought his lord was subtly mad, but—Rhodness's eyes had been unhinged ever since hearing the news of the Grand Duchess's death this dawn. They'd barely stopped him, saying if he asked with that face, anyone would flee—and now, not getting what he wanted, he was acting as if some part of his reason had snapped clean through.

"Who on earth are you searching for so desperately?"

"...You don't need to know."

"Your Highness! Forgive me, but..."

Vincento blocked Rhodness with his whole body, speaking low.

"If they see Your Highness's current appearance..."

He wasn't simply referring to the wretched state of being injured enough to have his abdomen pierced through. Rhodness—with a cast Vincento had hurriedly fitted on one arm, wearing bandages Neil had roughly wrapped around his abdomen, a jacket thrown over his bare torso—the problem was his eyes.

"They'll be very, very shocked. It's a countenance you don't show readily, is it not? Moreover, being a commoner, she'll understand even less."

"Yes, that young lady was shocked just seeing me! When she sees red eyes, her body goes completely rigid in an instant, so perhaps..."

"Neil!"

At Vincento's low shout, Neil straightened from clutching his kicked shin and saluted. Rhodness—whom they'd expected to curse and kick as usual—was quiet instead. Neil cautiously emerged from the carriage and looked up at his lord, who would be looking down at him.

'Ah...'

Those beautifully gleaming red eyes weren't directed at him. They were simply glaring at the Acacia estate, filled with deep lingering attachment. In a state where dying any moment wouldn't be strange—with that utterly pallid face.

"Let's go for now, Your Highness."

"I apologize. My slip of the tongue..."

"...You're right."

The burning emotion reflected in Rhodness's eyes wasn't anger directed at Neil. Neil silently struck his own head repeatedly, watching Rhodness enter the carriage without a word. The Second Prince Rhodness—possessing both brilliant golden hair and ominous red eyes. No matter how renowned for beauty and strength, to ordinary people he was merely an object of terror. Feeling he'd spoken too much out of a sense of duty to protect the lady, Neil now used Vincento's hand to slap-slap his own mouth. Rattle. Then, as if by magic, the window opened. Neil approached to apologize properly and showed a parade-ground-perfect salute.

"Investigate that woman who just entered. Thoroughly."

Damn it, of course he wouldn't let it go. Vincento shook his head at the frozen Neil and opened the carriage door to examine Rhodness's emergency-treated body again. And—

"Your Highness!"

He witnessed his beautiful lord clench his well-defined jaw, enduring pain before finally collapsing smoothly.

"Your Highness!"

"Neil! You carry out His Highness's orders. I'll escort him back to the palace."

Vincento slammed the carriage door viciously and urged the coachman on. Neil stared blankly at them disappearing in a cloud of dust, too shocked. Then recalled his lord, who'd been in chaos since this dawn.

Rhodness Casmir de Ronteaux had always been beautiful, and always been mad.

Engaging in combat as if interested in nothing but stabbing, slashing, killing—demanding more from his subordinates even while knowing no one could keep up with his stamina. Simultaneously, his features—delicate as if carved from jewels yet masculine—could fairly be called the Empire's finest without exaggeration.

But perhaps the Lord hadn't given everything to one human—opposite his beautiful face, he was extremely cold-hearted and didn't know how to say pleasant words even a speck. Among themselves, they secretly called him the mad 'Dog Prince'—he was that vicious. The Empire's rake who, when women from all sides lifted their skirts and clung to him, would say with a nonchalant face, 'Try harder.'

Everyone gossiped that because he himself was so beautiful, even when renowned beauties approached, he remained indifferent. Moreover, Rhodness was an unmarried prince who might receive a high title someday. Wherever he traveled to protect any territory, women aiming for his bedchamber were countless.

Today was no different. His already-mad lord had been acting even more deranged for the past two years or so, then at dawn suddenly got severely injured killing a monster large as a house. Worried about the crude treatment of their lord who lived as if there were no tomorrow, when they'd entered his bedchamber, what they saw was a woman trembling nearly naked. Looking closer, she was the daughter of the lord who'd received them.

"Y-Your Highness the Prince...!"

The woman trembled violently yet couldn't hide her flushed face, glancing at the prince. But Rhodness thrust his sword—still not wiped clean of blood—right before the woman's nose and—

"Get out."

—ground his teeth.

The lord's daughter was a beauty—eyes would roll back just looking at her! Neil, who'd swallowed unnecessarily, watched the woman not leaving despite standing there.

"Are your ears blocked?"

"I-I was merely... trying to deliver the newspaper..."

Rhodness didn't speak twice. In the blink of an eye, he'd severed part of the woman's hair, and the atmosphere remained thin ice until the woman screamed and disappeared.

"...The newspaper is innocent, Your Highness."

Worried the spark might fly to him, he picked up the Empire Daily the lord's daughter had used as an excuse and handed it over. Normally Rhodness would have slashed through it with his frost-sharp sword and told him to disappear too—but he'd frozen solid.

"Your Highness?"

The newspaper was snatched from his hands in an instant. The prince—who'd been radiating chill as if washed in ice water—suddenly contorted his fine face.

"...What the hell is this shit?"

"What?"

Rhodness, spitting curses low, tried to leave without properly dressing—they barely stopped him and handed him his uniform, then quickly scanned the crumpled newspaper.

"!"

Was His Highness that close to the Grand Duchess Trovika? While pondering, he heard hoofbeats viciously cutting through the air and opened the window in a panic.

"This insane... Your Highness! Your Highness?!"

At early dawn as the sun began to break, he'd already been staring vacantly at the back of the mad prince galloping away, cape fluttering.

Once the carriage carrying Rhodness had gone too far to see even its rear, Neil finally released his stiffened body and twisted his lips. He might have seen wrong, but—for a moment, it seemed tears had flowed down his lord's cheek as he collapsed.

'I must have seen wrong. The Dog Prince crying?'

Neil thought his insane lord couldn't possibly cry over someone's death, yet felt somehow compelled to properly investigate this woman called Marge, and mounted his horse.

It wasn't Noah. Noah hadn't come to find me. Not even his aide, Sir Jimskehr.

"Madam, by any chance, did His Grace the Grand Duke..."

"No."

I turned away from Marge's disappointed face. I was more disappointed. But I didn't blame her.

I am Marge, a maid working at this residence.

"I'm sorry, Marge."

"Pardon...? For what?"

Marge stared at my apologizing lips as if they might bore holes through them, eyes round.

"Just because."

Marge had frozen as if seeing a ghost. I spoke sincerely and turned my gaze outside the window. The knight called 'Neil' who'd come looking for me had already disappeared. My hands trembled slightly.

Lying was unavoidable. So don't be frightened.

Until I properly met Novian, I didn't want contact with anyone.

"Yona! Go fetch some medicine!"

"Why? What medicine, Miss Marge?"

"...The madam has definitely gone seriously wrong somewhere."

And Marge—still looking utterly dumbfounded—began searching for medicine to feed me.