Chapter 15

I asked Karl to bring me the documents regarding my fiancé, but surprisingly, he asked me if I could wait a day.

Certainly, he would’ve prepared it immediately if he was told that it was a high priority, but I understood that it wasn’t something to be rushed. There was also something unusual about it. I wondered if it was buried deep inside of me since it had been neglected so much.

Well, that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was…

“…ord. …lord. My lord.”

Suddenly, I emerged into consciousness and woke up. Once I opened my eyelids, I was met with the deep emerald eyes that captured the light coming in through the windows.

“Good morning. The sun is up.”

“Good morning…”

Too close. He wasn’t in front of my face, but he was too close.

After we had exchanged our morning greetings, which had become completely customary, I pushed Craig away, who was peering at me from quite an unusual distance and got up. Regardless, Craig had been acting strange ever since we returned from the garden yesterday. No, he stared even while we were in the garden; but in any case, he had been staring at me for so long that it got to the point where he was burning a hole through me.

After what happened, I’d understand if he would glare at me, but I was left confused by the lack of anger in his face. If he was concealing his rage, then he wouldn’t be giving me such an insolent gaze.

I thought that the attitude you had towards people you dislike was to either turn on them or ignore them thoroughly, but I wonder if Craig’s different… Don’t tell me he’s in despair because I forced him to attack Sieg or something?

Honestly, I felt uncomfortable about the staring, so I’d rather Craig cut it out if possible, but it was quite impossible to break out from it because of all the indebtedness I felt.

…Nonetheless.

“…Craig.”

“Yes.”

Don’t give me that ‘Yes’.

“Well, I’m already up.”

“I am aware.”

“If you’re aware of it, then can you leave? I’m going to get dressed.”

Normally, Craig would immediately leave the room as soon as his duty came to an end when I woke up, but for some reason, he stayed here today. It wasn’t as if I didn’t like having some guy look at my body, but Craig had been staring at me fixedly. If I were to change my clothes under his stares, it would prove to be quite… difficult.

That was why I asked him to leave the room, but rather than complying, Craig had dropped a bombshell.

“Shall I help you with that?”

“Ha?”

”

”

What is this guy talking about? Did he hit his head and had a change in personality? …Isn’t that me.

However, it didn’t make sense to me when I thought otherwise.

“I don’t think it’s strange. A servant helping his master get dressed and such is commonplace among the nobility. I’m sure my lord lets the butler do it as well.”

I was pretty sure I grimaced at him as much as I could, yet Craig said those things as if nothing happened.

It was true that Karl sometimes prepared my clothes when I would go outside, but… that was all. I would never order him, nor let him do things like taking off my nightclothes and dressing me up again as if I were a preschooler.

…I still think it’s strange. What he said had some sense in it, but there’s no way Craig would say that until he’s seized Heinreid. Did I perhaps show a little bit of a gap by not being a villain? In any case, it’s not a good idea to let my guard down too much. Do I have to do more than relying on my past misdeeds and tighten myself up as much as I can…?

Damn it, I didn’t want to act like this for a while.

“…Did I ever ask you to do that? I don’t recall allowing you to make your own decisions and unnecessary suggestions.”

With indifferent eyes, I shot Craig with cold words that were par for the course for Heinreid.

However.

“Indeed, that is so. Well then, please call me if you need me.”

I-I didn’t respond. He finally got out of the room, but he was like a parent dismissing their child’s selfishness with a “Yes, yes”… How… How cheeky!

Although I felt unsettled about it, I started to change my clothes in my room that was finally free of anyone.

“I completed your orders from yesterday. This was on your fiancé’s profile.”

Perfectly straight posture, slender glasses and not a hair out of place;donning an unchanging iron mask, Karl held out several sheets of paper.

…All I could think of was that it was a difficult thing to do since I usually didn’t know what he was thinking, but seeing how Craig had become like that… I thought that it was a good thing that Karl had a good sense of stability, but I shouldn’t start to jinx that. I mean, Karl didn’t go around as much as Craig did, and we just hadn’t let our guards down around each other.

“And, here.”

“…What’s this?”

I nodded and received a bundle of papers, then was handed a large, thick envelope in addition to it.

Karl explained it to me right away.

“Those are the ‘findings of my investigation’. I just finished consolidating them yesterday, so I brought them to you compiled.”

…So, it was finally done. I guess the reason why he couldn’t bring the documents right away yesterday was because he was around the end of consolidating them. However, Karl might’ve not stayed up all night, unlike me and Craig, who had been cutting our sleeping hours, since there were no dark circles underneath his eyes. I knew he was a capable man.

As I took them, once again impressed with his work, Karl bowed and left the room.

Okay, what should I check first? Hmm, how about the profile? There’s a high chance that I would just scan through it quickly, so let’s just get it out of the way. With that in mind, I started to follow the letters from the beginning, but…

As I read through it, the more I realized that the world wasn’t so sweet.

First of all, my fiancé’s name was Angelica Sekles. She was seventeen years old. She was the eldest daughter of a marquess family, with her family consisting of a father and one very young brother, and a mother that had passed away due to illness. Her relationship to Eberhardt was that… she was Eberhardt’s father’s (assassinated) younger sister’s (executed) husband’s (executed) younger brother’s daughter. She was the daughter of a house that narrowly escaped the clutches of Eberhardt and Heinreid, who had executed the royal family one after another. She was considered as a distant relative despite having no blood connection with him.

…Putting aside the fact that looking through my bloody history of misdeeds made me feel sick, or that seventeen years old was too young in my point of view, what caught my mind was her family name.

Sekles. It was certainly the name of an enemy that appeared in the novel, ‘Sieg of the Rebellion’ and was defeated by Sieg. However, it was her father who had made an appearance, but I guess he had a daughter… And he took advantage of her, tying her together not only with Eberhardt, but also with Heinreid. How much agony that must’ve caused.

I now understood the reason why the Marquis of Sekles was unusually frightened in the novel. Come to think of it, he did say something about his brother being killed…

Although he had extenuating circumstances, the Marquis of Sekles didn’t listen to Sieg’s persuasion until the end in the novel and died after continuing to fight. He said that it was better to die there than to make enemies of both the Extraordinary Tyrant and the Nation’s Deadliest Poison.

…Why did I ever put this matter on hold? It’s going to cause a lot of deaths.

I held my head with my hand as I looked down on the documents.

But how could I help them with this? So long as Heinreid and Angelica were not officially married at this point in time, Eberhardt would be the one to give direct orders to the Marquis of Sekles. He would definitely continue to put pressure on the Marquis to fight Sieg, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. If I were to release him from his fears somehow… Release?

I had an idea. I picked up another document that Karl had left behind. I snapped open the sturdy envelope and took out all the papers that were packed inside. Written in beautiful letters was a list of all the traitors and their associates that I ordered Karl to dig up.

I traced my fingers in order from the top, turned over some sheets of paper and stopped at one point.

The remarks written orderly next to the names made me sigh in admiration.

…Karl, you do a really good job.

“Craig, I have orders for you. Come in.”

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

My plans hereafter had been set thanks to the documents, so I decided to inform Craig too. Report, communication and consultation was important no matter what type of job you had.

Craig wasn’t surprised when I called for him out from the door of my office with only my head sticking out and accepted.

…I only thought about it after doing that, but perhaps that kind of demeanor wasn’t good. I felt like I had become more casual and less dignified. I was even starting to feel that Craig was getting used to it… I should be more careful next time.

I intentionally cleared my throat to gloss over my blunder in my mind and stated my business as soon as Craig closed the door.

“I was able to schedule a visit to the Marquis of Sekles’s estate five days from now. The preparations for the carriage… I guess that’s Karl’s job. Yours is to inform the matter to the guards.”

“To the Sekles family? What business do you have with them at this time?”

Craig asked in a surprised voice. …Well, Heinreid had almost forgotten about it until now, and we were to talk about what I was going to do. But he shouldn’t poke his nose into these things too much.

“…And why do you need to know that?”

Normally, Craig would’ve played things in his hands… However, things were not going to go the way he wants it to today. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but his eyes silently pierced through me.

I had also been silent for a while as opposed to his, but… I was the one who gave in.

“Haa… It’s just a greeting to my fiancé. My lord brought it up to me yesterday. How capricious.”

“Really?”

“Hey, you really are persistent. That’s enough.”

Don’t bite off more than you can chew! What the hell is up with you? No, what’s really wrong with you? I’m not saying another word!

I gave him a glancing glare and Craig finally lowered his eyes and backed down.

“…Pardon me. I will assemble a squad.”

“…Good.”

I had a bad feeling about Craig, who had become a little, or rather, quite hard to handle.

But for now, I decided to move on towards a new settling of my affairs five days later.