A New Job (5)
Where on earth had the Marquis fled to, escaping through the balcony first thing in the morning?
And just like that, I found myself reduced to an old housemaid chasing down a rebellious young master.
The problem was, the one I was chasing wasn't some brat—it was a fully grown man.
"Have you seen the Marquis anywhere?"
"No. Shouldn't wrangling the Marquis be your job as his attendant?"
"······."
I gave up on asking around pretty quickly. The more I asked, the more I was just broadcasting the fact that I'd failed at the one duty assigned to me as his attendant.
If word of that reached the butler's ears, I'd get a proper dressing-down.
Just as I was quietly resuming the search on my own, a sinister thought flashed through my mind.
"Ah."
No. It couldn't be.
Even as I kept muttering no way under my breath, my feet were already carrying me toward the dormitory, skirts gathered in my fists, walking fast enough to be called a run.
At this hour, Tia wouldn't be awake yet.
Which meant she should have been asleep in my room, obviously.
"I'm going to lose my mind."
She wasn't there.
Tia was gone.
I searched not just my room but the entire dormitory top to bottom—not a trace of her anywhere.
Sweat broke out across my body like a downpour, and a suffocating tightness settled into my chest.
The Marquis and Tia had both vanished.
And it was the very day after he'd learned that Tia was a dragon's daughter.
Trying to calm myself was useless. The tiny possibility had already swelled into an enormous delusion, and it had seized control of my head.
"Haa······ haaah······."
Clutching my aching chest, short of breath, I sprinted for the main entrance. I had to check the carriages right away.
I rounded the stable and stepped into the villa's sprawling garden—and at the sound of Tia's voice, my body went rigid.
"All right. I'm going to throw it your way—see if you can catch it!"
"Muh! Muuu!"
"There it goes!"
A wide, open field. The Marquis and Tia stood in the middle of it.
The moment the Marquis hurled the disc in his hand, Tia leapt after it, her eyes locked on it like a hunting hound's.
"Muhehe! Got it!"
"Good. Now, can you throw it back to me?"
"Like this?"
"Whoa there! The wind's picking it up—aim a little more to the left!"
Every part of me wanted to shout right then and there and call Tia back to me.
But watching the disc fly back and forth between them, watching Tia giggle in obvious delight, I hesitated.
The Marquis wasn't the beast I'd seen at the party, either.
The dignified nobleman was nowhere in sight—there was only a middle-aged fool rolling around in the grass, playing with a child.
After barely managing to snatch the disc Tia had thrown, the Marquis lay in the field laughing for a long while—then tipped his head back, and our eyes met.
"Hey. Your mom's here. Run for it."
"Eep!"
The moment the Marquis murmured it, Tia spat out her death rattle—and then, in the blink of an eye, she slithered away and vanished from my sight.
So that's how it is, huh······.
"Miss Yulia. I require your assistance. Come here, please."
"Actually, I need to have a word with my daughter first—"
"Come here. Now."
"······"
My temper flared white-hot and I made to storm after her, but the Marquis's order, delivered with a gentle smile, stopped me in my tracks. He rose from the field, brushed the dirt from his clothes, and simply watched me, waiting.
Left with no choice, I pulled out my handkerchief, walked over, and wiped the dirt from his face.
"What do you think you're doing with an employee's daughter?"
"What am I doing? Playing with her, that's all. You're the one who won't let her set foot outside the dormitory, Miss Yulia."
"······."
And whose fault is that, exactly?
I keep her locked away because I'm terrified she'll run into that rabid dog of an aristocrat who drives every woman he meets out of her mind—but anyone listening would think I'm some lunatic mother caging her own child.
"Stay out of my parenting. She's my child."
"She's my employee's child, too. And the Seed of Calamity, besides."
"I'm sorry—what did you just say?"
"······A slip of the tongue."
"Don't you ever call Tia that again."
"Understood."
The Seed of Calamity.
I'd nearly lost my mind at those words. When I glared straight at the Marquis and laid down the law, syllable by syllable, he actually wilted a little and took a step back.
The Seed of Calamity.
I'd heard it from Leopard—so was he planning to use it as leverage over me?
Nothing but absolute bastards in every direction, all of them just trying to wring me dry. The thought alone nearly brought tears to my eyes.
"Do you know why Leopard entrusted you and your daughter to me?"
"Because you're the kind of aristocrat who drives women insane?"
"No. I'm not that kind of man."
"······."
Not that kind of man, he says.
Coming from the guy who violated a woman he'd just met in a dark corridor behind the banquet hall, that carried all the persuasive force of a wet paper bag.
"Let's say I believe you. What exactly are you trying to tell me?"
"That at my side is the safest place in the world. As long as you remain within my domain, you and your daughter are safer than anyone else alive."
"That's a hard sell. Do you have any proof I can actually trust?"
"I do have proof—but if I showed it to you now, it would only put you in a difficult position. Some things are better left unknown."
"Hmm······."
He didn't strike me as the type to lie about things like this. Beyond the fact of the Marquis family's raw power, he clearly had some other ace up his sleeve.
Besides, there was that strange sense of security that crept over me whenever I was near him—for some reason, it made me trust him.
Granted, that sense of security was heavily discounted by the constant awareness that the Marquis might pounce on me again at any moment.
"So you're saying you'll protect me and my daughter. Is that it?"
"It is. Now that I know about the oracle, I have no choice. Both of you—I will protect you with everything I have."
"Without asking anything in return?"
"Without anything in return."
"······."
Something felt off.
He'd heard the oracle that Tia would become the Seed of Calamity—and he'd still protect us both? Without taking any payment?
Exactly. Men like this were the most suspicious of all.
"I'm uneasy, so humor me. Ask for something. Anything."
"Then, may I ask you to marry me?"
"······."
"That was a joke."
"······."
"Really, it was. Please believe me."
"······."
Perhaps because my face had started visibly curdling, the Marquis hurriedly began to backpedal. Half joke, half serious, if you asked me. No—more like sixty percent serious.
Lunatic······.
"The truth is, I've already been paid in full—by Leopard. But if it would ease your mind, Miss Yulia, then let me say this. When I look at Tia, I think of the daughter I lost long ago. The daughter I abandoned and left behind, because I was a coward······. I'm poor with faces, and I never even learned her name, so by now there's no way to find her. If I could meet her again, I would apologize to her mother. I'm sorry she suffered because of me. I'm sorry I ran away."
"······."
The Marquis suddenly turned his eyes to the sky and launched into his sob story. He told it all very wistfully, but boiled down to the essentials: he'd picked out nameless women one after another and had his fill of them, then when one unexpected child came along, he'd panicked and bolted.
Lunatic.
The poor mother, is all I could think.
He was exactly the kind of human being I'd refuse to breathe the same air as, if our interests didn't happen to align.
"Even if you do protect us, there's one thing you have to promise me. Tia always comes first. You can push my priority down as far as you like, but you must put Tia above everything. And if there's ever no way out—if you can get Tia to safety by running—then don't hesitate. Leave me behind."
"Uh······."
"Do you understand? Answer me."
"I promise. If it ever comes to that, I will abandon you without hesitation and save Tia above all else."
Only then did I finally relax.
Since vowing not to assault me, the Marquis hadn't laid a single finger on me. So at the very least, he apparently wasn't the sort of contemptible man who'd break a promise made with his own mouth.
Granted, that only meant he hadn't pounced yet—he could still be biding his time······.
"Fine. That's the answer I wanted to hear."
"What remarkable maternal devotion."
"Tell me about it. I surprise myself. I never thought I'd come to cherish someone this fiercely. Is it a Saintess's instinct, maybe?"
"Ah. Now that you mention it—you were the Saintess, weren't you······."
The Marquis's mouth hung open for a moment before he raised a hand to cover it. Apparently, he'd also learned I was the Saintess from the Hero.
Up until now, he'd genuinely seemed not to know.
"I'm a little cross with Leopard for not telling me. If I had known your identity in advance······."
"Known it, and then what? You wouldn't have violated me?"
"I would have paid special attention······. To protecting the Saintess's purity······."
The Marquis answered, sweat trickling down his face. So he did know it was his own fault.
But there was one thing wrong with that answer. And of course, it happened to be the thing that set my teeth on edge.
"You're laboring under one misconception. I'm not a virgin. I wasn't one when you assaulted me either—so don't go getting any strange sense of superiority about it."
"What sense of superiority are you talking about?!"
"The smug pride of a man who devoured the Saintess's purity."
"I feel no such thing! Isn't it obvious? You have a daughter—how could anyone possibly assume you were a virgin? Besides, I wasn't your first either, so don't get any ideas!"
"Excuse me?! That thought never even crossed my mind! Who'd look at a shameless philanderer like you and think 'virgin'?"
"I was a virgin until four months ago—"
"Did I ask?!"
After we'd both finished screaming at each other, I suddenly felt my face burning scarlet. To think we'd had this mortifying shouting match, loud and proud, in the middle of the garden······.
What if someone else had heard us?
Overcome with embarrassment, I turned my back on the Marquis before I could stop myself.
"Whew. My face feels hot."
"Shall I bring out some ice cream, then?"
"Ashu-cream?!"
"Hey. Get over here."
The instant the word ice cream left my mouth, Tia's head popped up from behind a patch of brush. Seizing the moment, I sprinted over, grabbed her by the nape, and placed her under arrest.
Why, this little······.
Won't listen to her own mother, but jumps the second some perverted old man calls.
She'll learn her lesson the first time it blows up in her face.
"Shall the three of us go eat some ice cream?"
"All free of us! Yay!"
"You're going to spoil her rotten."
"It's quite all right. Let her be spoiled."
"'Not your own child,' was it······."
"What was that just now?"
"Nothing at all, my lady. And if you're going to have ice cream, kindly change your clothes first. You're a mess—covered in dirt. Tia, you too. Go change."
"Muuuh? I'm fiiiine!"
Sigh after sigh escaped me the whole walk back to the dormitory, Tia's nape clamped in my hand.
Not knowing what scheme lay behind the Marquis's promise to protect us.
Not knowing what it meant, that Tia was the Seed of Calamity.
I was riddled with worry over things I couldn't understand—and yet, right now, I didn't feel entirely bad.
Why was that, I wondered······.