Chapter 63
The faint dawn light broke before even the birds had stirred from their sleep.
Barbara climbed the central staircase of the Main Building with hurried steps. A few servants changing lamps or tending to the heating, along with some of the dawn-shift wolves, looked at her with curiosity, but Barbara didn’t give them a second glance. Reaching the main hall in an instant, she sent out the servant tending to the hall’s heating and cautiously opened the door to the Marquis’s room.
A chill air hit her the moment she opened the door. In the entire mansion, the only place colder than the Marquis’s quarters was the underground storage. Even in the dead of winter, there were never days when the heating was turned on. Yet now, the Marquis’s room felt even colder than the storage cellar.
After closing the door quietly, Barbara bowed toward the pitch-black darkness.
“You called, Your Excellency?”
There was a slow movement from the dressing room connected to the reception area, and then a lamp was lit. Oscar changed his clothes in silence. A cold, damp moisture seemed to hang in the air, as if he had bathed in this early hour.
Oscar was a man of little sleep, but even so, it was rare for him to be up and moving this early. He more often fell asleep just as dawn was breaking. Furthermore, even when he was awake, it was unusual for him to intentionally summon her.
An unsettling tension crept up her spine at this unusual summons.
Had something happened?
Ever since Oscar returned to the mansion, a nagging sense of unease had occupied a corner of her mind, yet she couldn’t quite grasp its cause. Where should she start looking, where on earth…
“Bring a contraceptive.”
The thread of her thoughts was abruptly severed.
“If there aren’t any, go find some.”
Barbara straightened her back and lifted her head. She then asked her master, who was just beginning to fasten his shirt buttons one by one.
“Do you mean pre-coital or post-coital, sir?”
Oscar replied apathetically, without sparing her a look.
“Post-coital.”
Barbara stopped thinking and began to react to the task at hand.
“We have them in the mansion. How many shall I bring?”
“One pill is enough.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. Please wait a moment. I shall bring…”
“Give it to the target.”
However, she faltered at the words that followed, finding it difficult to maintain even a mechanical response.
In contrast, Oscar’s demeanor was casual. His expression, attitude, and tone—none of it differed from his usual self. Fastening the buttons of his cuffs, he turned to look at Barbara when she didn’t answer.
“I said, give it to the target.”
Only then did Barbara stiffen her shoulders like a disciplined soldier and answer quickly.
“Understood, Your Excellency.”
Oscar turned back to the mirror and fastened the button on his other cuff.
“Change all the sofa covers, the bedsheets, and the blankets as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barbara gave a respectful bow and stepped outside. After closing the door soundlessly, she crossed the hall with her usual steady gait. She took one tablet of a potent morning-after pill from the medicinal cabinet in the first-floor office and headed back up to the second floor. Then, after moving the wolves guarding the second-floor corridor elsewhere, she entered through the door leading to the study.
The study, draped in curtains, was enveloped in a dark silence.
Barbara crossed the stillness of the study and stood before the door connecting to Oscar’s bedroom. She opened the door without a moment’s hesitation. No matter what scene lay beyond that door, it shouldn’t have been enough to make a seasoned wolf so much as bat an eye.
However, the room was empty. There was no one to be seen, and no objects were strewn across the floor. Only the blankets and sheets were missing.
“Change all the sofa covers, the bedsheets, and the blankets.”
There were four sofas in total in Oscar’s bedroom. Two long couch-style sofas and two single-seaters. Did he mean for her to change all four? The question didn’t last long, however. It was immediately obvious which sofa needed its cover changed.
Barbara turned quietly and headed straight for the room used by the target. And unlike the way she had always knocked until now, she opened the door immediately.
But that room was also empty.
On the bed, which showed no signs of having been slept in, only neatly folded clothes were placed. A red ribbon lying atop the clothes was so vivid that her gaze lingered on it for a moment, and then she heard the sound of water.
It seemed the stranger was in the bathroom.
Barbara closed the door and walked toward the bathroom. Then, she knocked.
“…”
Knock, knock, knock.
“…”
When there was no answer even after two attempts, Barbara opened the bathroom door without hesitation.
And the seasoned wolf, who shouldn’t have been moved by any sight, was momentarily lost for words at the scene in the bathroom.
“…What are you doing?”
At Barbara’s question, the stranger, who had been squatting and washing a blanket, jumped to her feet.
“Ah, Madame Barbara…”
She was so distracted that her shirt buttons were fastened crookedly, and even then, she was a mess, having been drenched in water.
Barbara let out an involuntary sigh and spoke.
“Please come out.”
“…”
“I will take care of the blanket myself, so come out and don’t worry.”
Despite those words, the woman could not easily bring herself to leave the bathroom. By the looks of it, she had never done laundry in her life. She couldn’t easily let go of the blanket, as if she wanted to erase some trace with her clumsy hands that had never washed a thing.
Eventually, Barbara stepped into the water-slicked bathroom. She expertly gathered up the Marquis’s blanket, which had become heavy with water, and spoke.
“Blood is naturally difficult to remove. It needs to be treated with chemicals, so there is no use rubbing it like that.”
“Ah…”
“And even if you do wash it, where do you plan on drying this?”
“…”
“Leave it be and come out.”
Barbara stepped out of the bathroom without waiting further, and a moment later, Seo-ah followed, her shirt and even her skirt completely soaked. Barbara poured water into a cup from the side table and held it out along with the medicine she had brought.
“Take this. It is a morning-after pill.”
“…A morning-after pill?”
“It is medicine to prepare for any potential consequences after a relationship between a man and a woman.”
“…”
“Take it.”
Unlike her hesitation to let go of the blanket, she took the pill and chewed it without a word. It was quite startling to Barbara, who hadn’t expected her to chew the tablet, but the woman swallowed it all down, chewing thoroughly without even a furrow of her brow.
“…I will bring a trolley to carry the blanket. Since I’m washing the blanket anyway, I’ll wash your clothes too, so please change into something else.”
“Yes.”
Barbara hurried out of the room. Just before the door closed, a small voice came from behind her.
“Thank you.”
Instead of answering, she closed the door. She was crossing the corridor past the study when she stopped. Coffee had just been brought up from the first floor; Barbara took the tray with the cup from the wolf and went straight into Oscar’s room.
He was in his office.
Looking no different than usual, he was leaning obliquely against the window frame, smoking a cigarette. Even though he knew she had entered, his gaze did not turn toward her. Of course, Barbara was not one to expect that.
She placed the tray on the side table and poured coffee into the cup, speaking in an apathetic tone.
“She has taken one morning-after pill.”
“…”
Oscar did not reply.
But sometimes, no answer is an answer in itself.
Barbara, the seasoned wolf who protected Lichtenhardt, caught her breath as she tried to make a judgment as dispassionately as possible.
The stranger, who had been perfectly fine until last night, was now half out of her mind washing Oscar’s blanket, and Oscar had told her to give the woman a morning-after pill. There was no need to ask; something had happened between the two of them last night.
Not between her and Abel, but between her and Oscar.
If Abel Sting, who had been following the stranger around looking like a dying man, found out, he would surely writhe in self-loathing. Of course, Barbara didn’t care whether Abel felt self-loathing or confidence.
Ultimately, she was focused on only one thing.
What would be the fallout of this? What was the worst-case scenario among the possibilities this event would bring, and what damage would Lichtenhardt suffer then?
However, just as important as the possibilities this event would bring was how such a thing had happened in the first place. One had to know the cause to even slightly predict what was to come.
Had the stranger seduced Oscar? Or had Oscar forced the relationship upon her?
Barbara’s eyes narrowed instinctively.
When deducing the cause of this event, it was certain to be one of those two, but the former felt utterly preposterous.
