The Countess (1)
A brown-haired maid came walking toward me from across the corridor.
Having been on the receiving end of something obscene mere moments before, I was tense beneath my calm. Rihardt had stopped at the last possible second, so my appearance was still in disarray — and on top of that, I'd spent the whole ordeal pressed against him at an uncomfortably close range. Anyone with a sharp eye might have gleaned something from the way we were behaving.
Fortunately, her eyes held no trace of suspicion. What she'd brought instead — if you could call it that — was news of a rather awkward sort.
"Young Master Rihardt, so this is where you were!"
"…? Something the matter, Lily?"
The brown-haired maid — Lily — hurried on without pausing. "The Countess has summoned Miss Lucifer."
"Mother summoned Lucy? Why?"
A faint, odd tension crept over Rihardt's previously easy expression. Why on earth is this man getting nervous?
Lily answered evenly. "She says there are several matters concerning the young master's appointment to the capital that she wishes to brief Miss Lucifer on."
"Then she should be asking for Lucy, not me. Why would she want—"
"Miss Lucifer is your personal maid, young master. I imagine the Countess wished to secure your blessing first."
"Ah, I see. I'm a grown man now, but she still fusses over me. If Mother wants it, I can hardly refuse out of filial duty. When should I send Lucy over?"
"If it's at all possible, right now would be ideal."
Right now?
I looked at Rihardt. Rihardt, as it happened, was looking right back at me.
"Well? You heard her."
I cursed him with my eyes. You're telling me to face your mother looking like THIS?
"Since I'm on my way to see the Countess," I hissed at Rihardt, dropping my voice low, "shouldn't I at least tidy myself up first?"
"You look perfectly presentable to me."
At that, Lily glanced my way — then whipped her head aside in a hurry. Even to her, my current state was apparently mortifying to behold.
Well, of course it was. A miniskirt that could bare hip and thigh with one wrong step? Provocative fashion that sat ill with the chaste sensibilities of the age — not that Rihardt, blessed with his famously free values, gave a damn about such conventions.
"Young Master, your jokes go too far."
Rihardt leaned in and whispered at my ear. "Does it feel like a joke?"
I know perfectly well you're a lunatic. But this once, I genuinely wished it were one. He was sending me to stand before his own mother — dressed like this.
I stared at him, dumbstruck. He remained utterly indifferent to whatever I might be feeling.
"Enjoy yourself."
And so it was that I came to receive the invitation of Countess Line.
I studied the door. True to the quarters of the estate's masters, even the door itself was lavish.
So this is the room Count Line and Countess Line share. I'd assumed I would be received somewhere like a parlor at most. Never had I imagined being summoned all the way to the bedchamber — and perhaps that was why my nerves had only wound tighter.
I tried to recall the Countess Line I'd seen at the knighting ceremony. No matter how I looked at her, her appearance was closer to a girl's than a lady's, and her temperament and reputation were widely spoken of as excellent. But then, the same could be said of Rihardt. There was every chance hers was as artfully manufactured as her son's. Where had Rihardt sprung from in the first place, after all? Traced back to its source, Countess Line was, quite literally, his point of origin.
Why does the novel gloss over things like this? It explained everything else in exhausting detail.
Lily, who had escorted me, took her leave at once. She didn't exchange a single word with me, and her manner made it plainly clear she had no wish to grow close to me. I felt neither hurt nor disappointment over it. Getting close to me wouldn't do her any good anyway. One misstep, and she could find herself shortlisted as Rihardt's next plaything. This lukewarm distance suited me fine too — at the very least, it meant no fresh wounds.
I shook my head. The tension had climbed all the way to my throat, it seemed, breeding stray thoughts. I gazed blankly at the heavily ornamented door, drew a long breath, and knocked.
Knock, knock.
I hadn't realized a knock could carry so loudly.
"The maid Lucifer, answering your summons. Might I presume to enter, Countess?"
The reply came at once. "Come in."
I opened the door to find the Countess seated in a chair, dressed in a black dress. Her hair was drawn back and braided into a coil at the nape — call it a "braided bun" if you wanted to sound refined, or a "doo-doo bun" if you were feeling honest.
There's no hairstyle that suits medieval nobility better than that one. Even so, she looked less like a mother with a grown child than a noble daughter still savoring her youth. The title of "Countess" sat upon her with a jarring sense of mismatch.
Had she been in the middle of tea? She set down a cup of some unfamiliar drink and smiled.
"Ah. So that's the boy's taste."
The boy's taste? Countess Line had said something incomprehensible out of nowhere — and I couldn't react to it the way I did with Rihardt. Whatever else one said of her, she was a noble. Rihardt only let my insolence slide because he took pleasure in it; with anyone else, a dozen pretexts could have been dredged up to put my head on the block for far less than what I'd grown accustomed to dishing out.
She seemed good-natured, but there was no harm in minding my tongue.
"Forgive me, my lady, but I don't understand what prompted those words."
"Your outfit. Rihardt made you wear it, didn't he?"
"…Ah."
A short sigh escaped me at her observation. That she'd grasped in an instant that this was her son's doing — mothers really did operate on a different wavelength. A faintly apologetic look crossed her face.
"He's clever with his hands and prone to outlandish notions, so he sometimes makes clothes as a hobby. Somewhat unconventional ones, granted."
"'Somewhat unconventional' seems rather generous, wouldn't you say?"
Too late, I realized my slip. Perhaps I'd grown too accustomed to sparring with Rihardt — despite my resolve to watch myself, the retort had flown out unbidden.
The Countess didn't mind my rudeness in the slightest. If anything, she settled deeper into a serene smile — the most feminine, gentlest smile I had ever seen. Watching her smile so softly loosened, if only a little, the nerves wound taut inside me.
"You're not wrong, though, are you?"
I lowered my head. "Forgive my discourtesy. And please, speak down to me, Countess. There's no need for formality."
"I don't consider it discourtesy. And I speak this way to everyone."
Neither a high voice nor a low one; a tone that put the listener at ease. She left the impression of someone good by nature.
"Won't you take a seat for now?"
My stomach dropped through the floor at the invitation, like a rider cresting the first hill of some thrill attraction built for people who enjoyed flirting with death.
"I'm comfortable standing."
"It's uncomfortable for me to look at, so won't you please sit?"
The phrasing was courteous, but the peculiar pressure beneath it told me the apple hadn't fallen far from the tree. Asked that far, I had no decent excuse left to refuse — and it wasn't as though I could exactly say, Your son just stripped my panties off, my lady, so sitting down presents certain difficulties.
I lowered myself into the chair in a clumsy, guarded crouch. Clamping the hem of my skirt down with both hands was beyond my control; I had to forestall, at all costs, the catastrophe of flashing my crotch at the Countess.
"Did they tell you why I summoned you, Miss Lucifer?"
"I heard it concerns the young master's appointment to the capital."
"That is the stated reason."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. The true one lies elsewhere."
Her way with words was uncannily reminiscent of Rihardt's. No — in this case, it was Rihardt who took after his mother.
"Curious, are you, Miss Lucifer?"
"It would be a lie to say I'm not. But is it proper for you to tell me?"
I had no desire to listen my way into some tangled affair. I was already tangled in quite enough of those.
At my careful retreat, the Countess smiled gently. "It's hardly a great secret. My reason for summoning you is a simple one. I called you here because I wanted to know who had caught that lonely boy's fancy. A small curiosity that any mother would naturally come to harbor, I'd say."
A lonely boy? I barely kept my brows from knitting. Just how lonely did a person have to be to kill people and carry on as though nothing had happened?
"You suffer a great deal from that boy's forcing, don't you, Miss Lucifer?"
The question struck true — struck somewhere I hadn't guarded. That was precisely why I couldn't answer at once. The Countess went on, her expression tinged with pity.
"If that excessive affection of his weighs upon you, I could arrange for you to be free of it."
"…Arrange for me to be free of it?"
"I mean precisely what I said."
I did not answer readily. Free of Rihardt's tyranny? It was the very thing I had longed for all this time. If it happened just as she said, nothing could be better.
And yet — judging by the obsession Rihardt had shown me, this was not a situation that would end with a brief escape. He would come looking for me again, one way or another; of that I had no doubt. Above all, I couldn't very well run off alone and leave Karen Florence behind.
Having arranged my thoughts, I shook my head. "I'm grateful for your concern, Countess, but I am quite all right."
"Are you? Then I suppose it was my mistake — you only looked burdened to me."
"It does weigh on me. But it is a path I chose of my own will."
"Oh my. He would be delighted to hear you say that."
Oh, he'd be delighted, all right. Delighted in a sense she couldn't begin to imagine.
I smiled, awkwardly.