TMWDS Chapter 26

Dozens of documents hung in disorder across the dark study wall.

Leroy, who had been staring blankly at some point among them, turned his head at the sound of an approaching presence.

The moment the door opened, he spoke.

“You went to fetch your sister, didn't you?”

“I'm actually just getting back.”

“It's late. You could have just stayed and rested at their place tonight.”

“I meant to, but something came up that I needed to deliver.”

As expected, the one who stepped through the door was Yonas.

Leroy uncrossed his arms and walked slowly toward him. He'd said there was something to deliver, but Yonas's hands were empty, which was curious—until Yonas drew a thin slip of paper from his pocket.

“From Dame Ionna. A list of the gatherings she's been invited to—she said to attend as it suits you.”

At the unexpected source, Leroy felt a private stir of surprise, but he took the note without letting it show.

Instead of reading the contents right away, he held it up to the light beside him.

He stood there for a moment, still, then spoke abruptly.

“I don't understand it.”

“Don't understand what?”

“It's like I keep getting pulled along by her.”

Was it because she always managed to catch him off guard?

Being around her seemed to make rational judgment difficult, sometimes.

He couldn't believe he'd granted her another chance, practically spellbound, to someone he shouldn't have exchanged a single word with in the first place.

Leroy quietly recalled the image of Ionna descending the staircase to greet him.

……Was that a siren’s trap?

No.

If that had been her aim, she'd have played the love-at-first-sight card instead. Even granting that she'd been beautiful enough that day to make such a foolish suspicion occur to him, that hardly made it a—

Leroy cut the thought off mid-stride and cursed under his breath. What a goddamn moron he'd been.

As if scolding himself, Leroy said,

“She's called the Crown Prince's dog. It's only natural I can't trust her.”

“No? The Crown Prince is a son of a bitch who doesn't deserve loyalty like that in the first place, and Dame Ionna is smart enough to have recognized it early, and she's an excellent person on top of that. Turns out Your Grace's judgment is lousy too, apparently.”

At the torrent of criticism his aide delivered without pausing for breath, Leroy briefly doubted his own ears.

But judging by the brazen look on Yonas's face, it seemed he hadn't misheard after all. Only then did bewilderment surface on Leroy's face.

Until just recently, this was the same Yonas who'd openly badmouthed Ionna right in front of him. Whatever had happened while delivering that note, he couldn't fathom what had turned the man around a full hundred and eighty degrees.

Leroy asked, suspicion in his voice,

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing happened—it's just that I, in my incompetence and shortsightedness, had been laboring under some needless misconceptions about Dame Ionna. I only hope Your Grace can cast off your own prejudiced view as quickly as I did and arrive at the same enlightenment.”

“Why don't you just say it plainly, while I'm still asking nicely.”

Leroy raised an eyebrow in warning.

Yonas made a show of considering something deeply. But in the end, he held up both hands in a gesture of refusal.

Rare firmness colored his voice.

“No—I won't cloud Your Grace's judgment for my own personal gain. Well, of course I'm right and you're wrong, but still.”

Having spouted this incomprehensible line, Yonas said, “I'll be taking my leave, then,” and made a quick exit.

Leroy was so taken aback he failed to catch him in time.

But apparently Yonas still had something left to say, because he poked his head back through the gap in the door a moment later.

“If you're curious, go see Yulia tomorrow. She probably won't even think to keep the family's dirty laundry quiet.”

“Yulia?”

It was not a name he'd expected to hear.

Yonas's younger sister Yulia had been staying in the capital for the social season since before Leroy's own party had even arrived. Hadn't Yonas volunteered for this posting specifically to look after her, since she'd be alone?

Leroy recalled, too, sending a tailor with several dresses as a gift once he'd heard the news. Yonas, normally so prickly about accepting personal favors, had quietly accepted that particular kindness without argument.

Probably because he'd been bothered, too, by the sorry state of his sister's wardrobe.

“Come to think of it, is Yulia doing alright? I suppose I ought to dance with her at least once at a ball. Let me pick a date now, even—”

Saying this, Leroy walked to his desk and began flipping briskly through his schedule.

Between one thing and another, he hadn't been able to spare her a thought since coming up to the capital.

However busy he might be, surely he could manage one dance for the sister of an aide he valued.

Thinking this, Leroy looked back up at Yonas—and found his aide's reaction strangely off.

Yonas, face pained, finally managed to force out a question.

“……So it really was expected that she'd have gone with a chaperone.”

“Young ladies typically go with a chaperone or family, don't they?”

At Leroy's reply, delivered as though it were obvious, a sigh that could have sunk into the earth escaped Yonas's mouth.

“Guess I'm off to get hit by my sister some more…….”

Muttering this with a strange, drained look in his eyes, Yonas trudged out of the room.

Leroy watched the space where Yonas had disappeared, then, instead of chasing after his aide, simply sat down in his chair.

Because what interested him more than Yonas's cryptic parting words was already in his hand.

Leroy quietly unfolded the note Ionna had sent.

He'd assumed there might be some hidden business she hadn't disclosed to Yonas, but just as he'd been told, all that was written on the page were the names of several noble houses.

The only thing that could be read into it, beyond that, was the neat handwriting—a hand that suited its owner.

Catching himself feeling a strange sense of disappointment, Leroy let out a dry laugh.

“Never once, does she move the way I expect.”

What would happen the next time they met, he wondered. Unbecomingly, he couldn't help the anticipation.

Painful as the memory of abuse remained, Modrov manor had never been an unbearable place for Ionna, exactly—she wasn't someone who invested objects with much meaning.

In fact, after clearing out the people who weren't really her family, she'd grown rather attached to this beautiful house, living in it for years. Since the bad memories were all gone now anyway, there was no particular need to dispose of a perfectly fine house—that had been her judgment then.

Just think of all the effort it would take to move into a new place, purchase furnishings, and rebuild a household staff.

This time around, Ionna's thinking was the same.

'Right—I just need to clear out the people. As quickly as possible.'

Why go to the trouble of leaving the house herself, when she could simply drive out the people who made it unpleasant?

Thinking this, Ionna left her room early in the morning, moving briskly.

Part of it was that her shift started early, but more importantly, she had business to see to first.

Nils and Yvonne had thoroughly settled into the lifestyle of wealthy nobles' children—which was to say, they woke late in the afternoon, spent their time on drink and gatherings, and didn't fall asleep until deep into the night.

There would be no better time than now to catch Hayden alone, away from them.

Reaching the second-floor hallway, Ionna soon spotted Hayden emerging from his room, his face still heavy with sleep.

The moment he caught sight of her, he turned away, visibly flustered.

Then, as naturally as if he'd forgotten something inside, he reached for the doorknob again—

“Count.”

—but failed.

Because Ionna had closed the distance quickly and caught him with a low, foreboding voice.

“Ah, yes. Good morning. I forgot something inside, so—”

Answering as naturally as he could manage, Hayden reached for the door again.

But this attempt, too, failed spectacularly, because Ionna brought her fist down on the doorknob and shattered it outright.

A fragment of the door, wood and all, broke off and hit the floor with a loud crack.

Ionna said, with no apparent effort at sincerity,

“Ah. My mistake.”

Hayden ground his teeth, careful not to let it show.

Ionna leaned her left arm against the wall, studying his face with open interest.

“So, Count—am I some kind of germ to you?”