Previously
Ash questions Emma about the presence of a footman in her bedroom during the fire, sparking Emma's memory of the real Rosaline flirting with a handsome servant. Emma manages to deflect his suspicion, but Ash remains convinced she is hiding something and vows to keep investigating her.
Her gaze returned a moment later, but Ash didn't miss that brief lapse.
‘Yes, this isn't an easy case. There's a lot hidden, and something's twisted.’
But why was it so much fun?
His colleagues at the police headquarters would be appalled to hear it, but Ash found this case truly entertaining. So much so that he had stopped dreaming of the battlefield.
Melinda Brow spoke to her husband as she sipped her warm night tea.
As the long-standing mistress of the vast Brow estate, her poise was impeccable.
At the word ‘bastard,’ Count Brow furrowed his brow as if he had seen something filthy.
He lit a cigar, sitting in a chair slightly apart from his tea-drinking wife.
Silence settled between the two while he puffed to ensure the embers caught the end of the tobacco properly. However, after living together for over forty years, the couple was thinking the same thing without needing to speak.
Melinda took another sip of her tea with a bitter expression.
The era when one could enjoy all sorts of luxuries without working simply by being a noble was over. What could one even do with tax collection rights that didn't allow for anything above the legal rate?
In this age where wealth and power had become the most important criteria for judging others, the more money one had, the better. Now, even nobles had to work.
The foundation of that great change was the increased income and standard of living of the commoners. They were no longer merely fertilizer spread for the affluent lives of the nobility.
The Brows knew that humans would try to grasp even a handful of power if it were available.
Thus, the marriage business of buying and selling that power was very natural to them, even if the capital for the trade wasn't their own child.
In fact, they were quite sensible and considerate by their standards. The match they had chosen wasn't an old man with a marriage history or a pervert, but a very respectable young man.
Count Brow shrugged as he flicked the ash from his cigar.
Then, Melinda spoke as if she had suddenly remembered something.
Rosaline's trip to the estate was of only that much interest to them.
Having finished their discussion about their live-in cousin once removed, the two ended their ordinary day, each enjoying their tea and cigar.
Of course, Rosaline had no idea that her marriage partner had already been decided.
However, since the day before yesterday, the mansion remained silent even when morning came.
Getting out of bed, Glen exhaled a sigh as he always did.
‘At this rate, the Barony of Tesis will go bankrupt before I can even retire.’
He had racked his brains and handled all sorts of dirty work to prevent the downfall of this family, but he had reached his limit.
The Merchants' Association, which should have paid the most taxes, used the excuse of bandits to cut their payments and was now even delaying the deadline. It looked like he wouldn't receive them until next year at this rate.
What worried him more was that other taxpayers might try to cut their taxes as well, using the Merchants' Association as an excuse.
The Baron himself should have made a decision and cracked down firmly on such matters, but Baron Tesis found such things bothersome and always took the easy path.
Normally, one should appeal to the police station in a large city to borrow police or soldiers. If that wasn't feasible, one should at least hire mercenaries with private funds.
But Baron Tesis simply accepted the Merchants' Association's demand for funding and tax cuts in exchange for forming a vigilante group to stop the bandits.
Then, whenever money ran short, he hounded Glen.
That wasn't all. Whenever the residents of the estate came to complain about something, he had to meet them in the Baron's stead.
The residents might have been submissive if their opponent were a noble, but they often showed a rough attitude when they saw a butler from the same commoner background.
‘If this family had been of any help to the lives of the people, I could have held my head high. Instead, it was the opposite, so I had to be the sinner every time.’
Even so, he hadn't left this Lord's Castle and had remained loyal, giving his all from his youth until now. It was his hometown, it was the lordly family he had known since childhood, and his mother had been proud of the fact that he was the butler of that family.
But now, he felt a sense of skepticism about what exactly he was doing this for. It was because his mother had recently departed to be with the gods.
‘Should I take my family and leave? Anywhere would be better than here.’
With those thoughts, he stepped out of his room and naturally picked up a broom.
Since there were only eight servants left in the barony—no, only four if you excluded the guards—he, the butler, had to do the sweeping himself.
He had asked the Baron to choose which of the remaining servants to let go, but in truth, he had already fired most of them.
Given the precarious financial situation of the barony, there was neither the capacity nor the luxury to manage servants who just idled around all day.
He wasn't afraid of being criticized for acting without the master's permission.
‘If he says they're absolutely necessary, I can just call them back then. I can at least save on labor costs until the master returns. But if he insists on keeping servants even after seeing the ledgers…’
If the Baron's sense of reality had deteriorated to that extent, Glen no longer had the confidence to serve him.
He was sweeping the front of the castle as if to clear his cluttered mind when a mail carrier came riding from afar.
Upon hearing that a reply had arrived, Glen somehow felt a sigh escape him. It was because he was already worried that the Baron might have scribbled something strange again.
However, he thanked the mail carrier and went inside, neatly opening the envelope with a letter knife.
‘If worst comes to worst, I can just quit.’
He opened the envelope with that resolve, but what was inside was a letter in a somewhat unfamiliar handwriting.
The reason wasn't written, but it said she would arrive as quickly as possible. In the meantime, he was to dismiss all unnecessary servants and stop providing the vigilante subsidies to the Merchants' Association.
The final line, telling him to prepare the household ledgers and financial documents for review, felt ominous for some reason.
‘If someone is going to check those things, it should be the Baron. Why Lady Rosaline…?’
It was a reasonable question. The Rosaline Tesis he had known until now was the sole heir to this family, yet she was someone who had turned a blind eye to the family's serious problems and affairs.
Why would such a person, who should be busy looking for a marriage partner in the capital right now, be returning alone?
‘Surely, she hasn't been ousted from the capital's social circles, has she?’