Karen Florence (5)
"Hm? 'Who,' you ask?"
So close. One more small movement and the tips of our noses would brush. I was careful even with my breathing, lest my breath somehow sour that man's mood.
"Is this something worth hiding? If Lucy won't tell me, I'm liable to go do something wicked."
Something wicked?
At some point, Rihardt's thick hand had come to rest between my thigh and my hip — and when it didn't stop there, when it began drifting toward my groin, I snapped wide awake. I shoved at his chest with both hands. It was an unconscious act, and at the same time a futile one. This was a man who pushed iron doors open without effort; what hope did I have of winning a test of strength against a bastard like that? All my struggling would do was stoke him hotter.
Yet Rihardt, as if laughing at my certainty that he would never budge, gave way all too easily — wearing the expression of a man who found my little resistance adorable.
"Feisty, aren't we."
I stared at him in silence. Had my soundless rebellion boiled his mood a degree hotter? His eyes narrowed.
"Keep being that bratty and I really start wanting to throw you down."
I dropped my gaze at once. You idiot — what exactly do you think you'll gain from poking a madman?
"It was a reflexive action. If it displeased you, I apologize."
"No, it's fine. If anything, I enjoy it more because you react that way."
Wow. That was, handily, among the most horrifying and revolting things I had ever heard. What I wanted, earnestly and desperately, was for you to vanish from my life. Being caught in this situation with my fatigue already maxed out was pure hell; my head, bloated with stress, felt ready to burst like a balloon.
Had he noticed my rattled state? Without warning, Rihardt spread both arms wide toward me. For an instant I couldn't parse the gesture and could only frown in bewilderment.
"What are you doing? Aren't you coming in?"
"...Pardon?"
It wasn't the thing I was imagining — right? While I stood there dumbstruck, Rihardt beckoned.
"You'd really leave my arms hanging here like a fool's?"
"What would you have me do?"
"Lucy, my Lucy. Are you truly this slow in such matters, or only pretending to be?"
My mouth clamped shut at that. Because I understood. Because I knew exactly what it was Rihardt wanted.
"Mm — I do like that indignant look on you."
I wanted none of it. I hated it enough to die of it — but I didn't actually want to die. So I burrowed into his arms, clumsy and stiff.
Every sensation registered vividly: muscle that felt harder than stone, the crush of his thick forearm against my waist. And from this position I could study Rihardt's face in far finer detail than I ever wished to. It was ironic that, for all his vicious temperament, his looks alone were without a single flaw. ...Truly, utterly, wholly information I had never wanted. This was exactly the sort of embrace a Karen Florence would treasure, wasn't it?
Rihardt, arms wound around my waist and the back of my head, buried his nose in the crown of my hair.
"This feels better than I expected — holding you, Lucy. Should have done this ages ago."
Surely he was saying it on purpose, to watch me shudder with mortification. Did he think I'd perform on cue?
We stayed like that for a few minutes, perhaps. Laughably, held in Rihardt's arms, my frayed nerves settled a little. No matter what a son of a bitch he was, human warmth, it turned out, did lend the mind a measure of calm. Somewhat steadied, I ventured a careful question.
"When am I permitted to let go?"
"Shall we sleep like this tonight?"
"...Young Master."
"A joke. Must you glare at me so coldly?"
Exhaustion had slowed my head, but one thing I had to pin down before anything else. There was no chance in hell this man had come without knowing who I'd clashed with. The sane assumption was that he knew everything on arrival.
"If you came here knowing everything, why the games, Young Master?"
Whether my guess had struck true, his mouth drew a fine arc. Before long he released the embrace, perched himself on my bed, and looked down at me — a gaze heavy with pressure.
"Lucy, I'm disappointed. It was because I trusted the Lucy who stood before me and spoke her mind so boldly that I raised you to personal maid — and what is this? Discord breaks out the very moment I do."
So this was a dressing-down by design. She was the one baiting for a fight, and I was supposed to do what, exactly? I answered with all the composure I could gather.
"My reputation is far from spotless. It was a backlash bound to come."
"Are you making excuses to my face right now? Or are you trying to point out, precisely, that the fault is mine — for raising you to personal maid with no preparation whatsoever?"
Ah. There it was. The final scene of that extra — stammering through excuses that would save no one, until Rihardt's hand snapped her neck.
"I apologize."
"Lucy, surely you don't believe the words 'I'm sorry' buy forgiveness for everything?"
Then what would you have me say? I started to ball my hand into a fist, then stopped myself. There was nothing to gain from a display of defiance. And the fact remained that I had, undeniably, stirred up the mess.
"I hear you were rather heavy-handed with a certain Nila."
Nila? Ah — so that was the blonde maid's name. Apparently my treatment of her had looked severe enough to the other staff. I had barely held myself back from kicking her jaw in. If I'd known this was coming, I should have kicked it in properly.
"I take it something unpleasant has been happening lately?"
Yes — it's you, feasting your eyes as I'm driven into a corner, that has made everything so hard. Would it kill you to show a little understanding? It would.
"I apologize."
"This is a real disappointment, Lucy. For all your bold talk, all you've shown me since is one shortcoming after another. At this rate, my trust in you will keep sliding."
"...Then what must I do to lull Young Master Rihardt's displeasure to sleep?"
"Then you'll have to grant me a favor, I suppose?"
"And what favor might that be?"
At my words he folded his arms and stroked his chin. Did he have some chosen punishment in mind?
"Mm. Yes. That will do nicely."
He had evidently reached his conclusion on the spot. I straightened up and studied Rihardt in silence.
"Lucy."
"Yes, Young Master."
"Consider it a special act of grace. When I play with Karen, you'll join in. No — you'll be the one to lead it."
"...Pardon?"
"With Bianca, your reactions left something to be desired, didn't they? I understand. I'd already tamed her through, so of course you couldn't enjoy yourself. Where's the fun in watching someone merely grovel, without a shred of resistance? But Karen will be something different. She's untamed, so she'll spit undiluted resentment and curses straight at you — and every so often she'll try to bite and tear. She has the will and the stamina for it."
"Young Master, that—"
Before I could get a word out, Rihardt cut me off.
"Why? Can't you?"
He simply stared at me with a bone-dry gaze, as if he had never smiled at all.
Had this been his aim from the very beginning? Wow — he truly had set out to work a person to her grave. Yes! I can't do it, you fucking bastard! The words would not come. They jammed in my throat as if a fishbone had lodged there.
"Your silence tells me that's a yes."
What a mind reader — he'd dreamed up an answer I never gave. To my regret, I did not dare contradict him.
Emerging from a tedious dinner, I found the servants whispering among themselves. Curious as to the topic, I lent them an ear — apparently there had been a clash between Lucypher and Nila.
'Hm?'
Nila was the maid who had hated Lucypher above all and bedeviled her at every turn. The chief cause, I judged, was envy and jealousy of the girl's passable looks. 'Learning that the Lucypher she persecuted so relentlessly was now basking in my favor must have made the woman impatient.' Lucypher herself, for her part, had always seemed to regard Nila as beneath notice.
'In any case, an amusing pretext has fallen into my lap.'
I wanted to go to Lucypher at once. But this was the season of Karen Florence's visit; I would call on her, at the earliest, once Karen had gone. 'You have crossed the line, Nila.'
Lucypher was, after all, my personal maid. Laying hands on her left ample room to read it as a challenge to my authority — though truthfully, I couldn't have cared less about such constructions. I was simply displeased. That something had dared touch what I had marked as mine. The insignificant wretch, not even knowing her place.
I sought Nila out and lightly advised her to leave the estate. 'A shave of the hair at her temple, taken with a dagger — that much qualifies as a light recommendation.' Nila's face — ash-gray, frozen, staring at me as if she could not believe her eyes — was truly comical. She had never imagined I would come out like this, it seemed. Insufferable to the last. How dare she lay hands on someone even I have yet to lay hands on? My disgust at her found no adequate expression.
'Perhaps I should kill her after all.'
There was no need to dirty my own hands. Who spares a thought for a maid expelled in disgrace? Slip a few coins into the right palms, and volunteers to murder her would be plentiful. That resolve hardened all the more when I saw Lucypher's body. She seemed not to have noticed herself, but small wounds marked her skin — born, it appeared, of a physical scuffle. 'That leaves a filthy taste.'
Well — the affair had not been purely unpleasant. It was over this very matter that I picked at Lucypher's conduct, and came to share in her leisure hours besides. 'However compliant she appears on the surface, a resentment of my actions lives in her.' That is because she is a human being with ordinary values. And that was precisely what delighted me — that I, the one who had seen straight through to her core, was not of her kind.
How far could Lucypher go, performing acts so ill-suited to her? Surely even her patience had a floor. Was that not why she had overreacted so spectacularly with Nila? How long could she keep strangling her own temper and enduring? Honestly, I anticipated it — the day she could bear it no longer and came at me. I wondered whether this flutter in my chest was what it meant, for a heart to race.
'A pleasure altogether different from taming, this.'
Lucy.
My Lucy.
I will await, and await alone, the day you finally bare your fangs at me.