A Suspicious Guest (2)
Being transmigrated into this body wasn't entirely without its perks, I supposed.
Thanks to the Saintess's regenerative powers, I never had to waste a single day lying in bed with some minor illness.
Since falling into this world, I hadn't caught so much as a cold or come down with a fever even once.
That said, my original nature came with its own handful of afflictions.
One of them was period cramps.
Another was stiff, aching shoulders.
And the last one was pain in my chest.
"Ugh. It hurts so bad······."
My best guess was that it came from breast milk pooling up in there.
While Tia was actually nursing, it was more or less bearable — but the moment she was done, the pain would come on fast and fierce.
At its worst, even the lightest brush of fabric would sting, and a stray bump would leave me doubled over in agony.
I'd never found a real solution.
Pumping the milk out every single day was the only thing keeping it from getting worse.
All I could do now was endure it until the milk finally stopped coming altogether.
"She emptied the whole thing again······."
The milk jug was bone dry.
And I could have sworn I'd filled it to the brim just yesterday morning.
I lifted my head just enough to glance at Tia, still fast asleep.
All that, and she'd drunk it on her own in a single day······.
Not that Tia had any idea it was my breast milk she'd been gulping down.
A small worry gnawed at me — what on earth would I do when the milk dried up and she started demanding milk?
"Hnnng······. Ugh······."
And so the long, agonizing ritual of expressing milk came to an end at last.
I hurried through my preparations and stepped out of my quarters.
In the old days, I probably would have taken up a silent vigil right outside the Marquis's bedroom door.
But I knew perfectly well by now that doing that was a mistake.
Instead of heading straight into the villa, I turned on my heel and made for the back garden.
"Good morning, my lord."
"Ah."
There he was — head tilted up, one leg already swung over the balustrade, poised to leap from the balcony.
The moment the Marquis saw my face, he froze for a beat, then sheepishly drew his leg back over the railing.
The way he scrambled to straighten himself, arched his back, and peered down at me was truly a sight to behold.
"And what, exactly, were you just doing?"
"Nothing at all. Just my morning exercise."
"You weren't about to jump off that balcony, were you?"
"Oh, come now. Why on earth would I jump off a balcony?"
"That's what I thought."
"Right. So, will you go up and wait by the door? I'll be down as soon as I've got my shoes on."
"Do as you like. I'll head straight up, my lord."
I gave him a polite nod and turned toward the villa's front entrance······ or at least, I pretended to.
I rounded the corner, stopped, and waited about five seconds until I heard the soft thump of something landing.
Timing it just so, I peeked back around the corner······
"I don't believe I said you could jump down."
"I misstepped······."
"Misstepped, and yet executed a flawless landing. How impressive."
"······."
There stood the Marquis, planted on the ground in a perfect three-point landing.
Typical of the natives of this world — a two-story drop and apparently not a scratch on him.
He'd clearly planned to double back upstairs the moment I left, then leap down and slip away. Fat chance.
I'd been ambushed by this routine so many times now that I had his behavior patterns completely mapped out.
What I couldn't figure out, no matter how hard I tried, was why on earth he avoided me this desperately, every single morning.
"How embarrassing."
"Shall we have breakfast first?"
"No. There should be express mail waiting. Business first."
"As you say, my lord."
I brushed the dirt from his clothes, then trailed after him as he strode toward the study.
He must have been genuinely mortified, because his pace was so brisk I nearly had to jog to keep up.
Come to think of it, his gait did look a little off.
Twist an ankle on the landing, did he?
Serves him right.
"Could you finally tell me why you've been avoiding me every morning? And don't pretend you didn't hear that, my lord."
"It's just how it is. A matter between men — you wouldn't understand even if I explained, Miss Yulia."
"······."
I used to be one of those men, you know.
The words climbed all the way to the tip of my tongue before I swallowed them back down.
What in the world could this "matter between men" possibly be?
Considering that I — a man by birth, for crying out loud — couldn't conjure up a single plausible explanation no matter how hard I racked my brain, it sounded like pure fabrication.
And so the mystery of the Marquis's bizarre morning behavior vanished once more into the fog of the unknowable.
"Bring everything inside the mail box to the study. I'll head there first."
"Yes, sir. Hm······?"
The moment I opened the mailbox, I nearly toppled over in shock.
A cascade of envelopes came tumbling out, burying me where I stood······.
For a second, I thought I'd stumbled into a pile of fan mail for some idol.
The only real difference was that these weren't white envelopes sealed with cute little stickers — they were grim, drab document envelopes.
There were a lot of them, but not so many that I couldn't manage.
I heaped them up against my chest to carry them, which was actually rather convenient.
One of the very few perks of having a large chest.
"Excuse me, my lord?"
"What is it?"
"The door is locked."
"I must have locked it by mistake. One moment, please."
The man who never so much as glanced at a lock had locked the door by accident?
Absolutely ridiculous.
He was clearly trying to get a rise out of me.
I'd just finished sweeping the envelopes back into my arms when the door suddenly swung open.
"Come in."
"Yes······."
The Marquis's face looked a touch awkward as he held the door.
His breathing was a little ragged, too.
And there was a faint, heavy scent hanging in the room — something distinctly strange.
A nutty, musky smell.
That smell was definitely······ definitely······.
Hm. What was it again? I felt like I knew it.
I was sure I knew it, but the memory wouldn't surface.
"Would it be all right if I aired the room out, my lord?"
"Ah— ahem. Does it smell?"
"A little off-putting, but bearable."
"Then air it out. Immediately."
Honestly, I couldn't stand it a second longer.
I'd sooner brave the biting autumn wind than let that smell linger.
It was unpleasant, no question — and yet, for some inexplicable reason, it had this odd addictive quality that kept drawing my nose back to it······.
I shook the distraction loose and dumped the envelopes onto the study desk.
Seeing them all laid out, I was struck all over again by just how many there were.
So all of this had been riding against my chest.
"Come stand beside me. As my maid, you'll be handling some clerical work."
"Of course. What would you like me to do?"
"Nothing difficult. You'll only need to lend a small hand."
I circled around behind the desk and stood at the Marquis's side.
Whereupon the Marquis promptly vacated his seat entirely and steered me into it in his place.
Before I knew it, I was sitting down, following along as he explained, piecing together what my task would be.
"You can read, I trust?"
"Of course."
"And figures?"
"Basic arithmetic······. Though if you don't mind my asking, what exactly are you doing with my hair right now, my lord?"
"It's simply too pretty. I lost myself for a moment."
"······."
The Marquis had scooped up a fistful of my hair and was sniffing it — and when he caught me watching, he had the audacity to act like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He promised he would never lay a hand on my body, didn't he?
So does hair not count as part of one's body, in his book?
Absolute lunatic······.
"Please continue the briefing, my lord."
"Ah. Right, of course."
Check that the dates written within each document aren't inconsistent. Here's a chart — verify that the author's name, the family crest, and the seal all match. Look for minor arithmetic errors in the ledgers.
That was the extent of it — simple instructions, nothing grand.
As long as you could read and manage addition and multiplication, anyone could do it.
Then again, in this world, maybe being able to do even that much made you skilled labor by commoner standards.
"Nothing too complicated, then?"
"Exactly. These are the annual business reports and approval documents that come up every year. There's nothing in the content itself that needs checking. By the time anything reaches this desk, the only work left is catching the occasional simple oversight that slipped through."
"Then······ aren't I effectively doing all the work that's supposed to be yours, my lord?"
"Oh, come now. I give the final approval."
"You call giving final approval stamping things willy-nilly without reading a word of them?"
The instant I checked a document and slid it across, thunk thunk — the seal came slamming down.
Far too fast for anyone to have actually read them through.
Handing the paperwork to a maid who'd barely been here any time at all, then approving it all without reading a single page.
Flabbergasted, I turned in my seat and stared at him dead-on.
The Marquis wore the face of a man who genuinely could not fathom what the problem was.
"What do you suppose would happen if I falsified the documents and passed them along maliciously?"
"Oh, I trust you'd never do such a thing."
"And why is that?"
"Because I sense no malice from you, Miss Yulia. You're the sort of person who's incapable of deliberately harming another."
"······."
What in the world was that supposed to mean?
I was, at this very moment, fighting the urge to strangle the life out of him.
Granted, it wasn't remotely feasible, which was the only reason I refrained.
If I'd had the strength — the real power — the man who violated me would have been dead long ago, his corpse dumped in some back alley.
And I was supposed to be free of malice?
The sort of person incapable of deliberately harming another?
Utter nonsense.
My teeth ground together before I could stop them.
"My lord. Forgive my bluntness, but you have me entirely wro—"
"A visitor has arrived, Marquis."
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Just as I'd finally lost my patience and was about to let him have it, a knock at the door cut me off, followed by the Butler's voice.
Perfect timing, really.
There was nothing to gain from airing grievances at the man who paid my wages.
"We'll go now."
Apparently this was quite the important guest — the Marquis set down his seal and rose at once.
I stood as well and followed him out.
From here on, it was time to receive a guest, which meant I truly had to be on my guard.
Even more on my guard than when dealing with the Marquis himself.
A maid's mistake was, for all intents and purposes, the Marquis's own mistake.
"Did you show them to the drawing room?"
"No. They should still be at the front gate."
"What are they doing, standing out there instead of coming in······."
I stepped out of the villa without a thought in my head.
And then I froze in horror.
"Hee-hee-hee! So hiiiigh······!"
"······."
A man in pitch-black clothes stood at the front gate.
Given the circumstances, the odds were good that this man was the Marquis's visitor.
The problem was that Tia was riding on that visitor's shoulders, giggling her head off.
My vision went dark.