As he climbed the stairs, a low ceiling greeted him. It was barely a hand’s length above his height.
And right next to the stairs was Elaine’s room.
Lark sighed softly and slowly turned the doorknob.
The door opened with a click, and a small, shabby room appeared before his eyes, with nothing much to look at.
‘It was such a desolate place….’
Because there were no curtains, the moonlight at night brightly illuminated the small attic.
The room, which had been swept clean by the countess’s order, had no trace of Elaine left. It was just an attic used as a storage room.
The shabby but neat bed and the table and desk that were a little small for Elaine’s body had already been thrown away, and the once shiny window sill and floor were covered in dust.
Lark smiled bitterly, as if the empty space was a corner of his heart.
As he was looking out the window for a while, lost in thought about Elaine, he heard a creaking sound coming from the stairs again.
‘You’re here.’
Lark stood by the moonlit window, waiting for the person he had invited to enter the room.
“Lark…?”
From behind him, a voice with a hint of surprise called out to him.
“The moon is really bright today.”
“You! What the hell are you doing…?”
The one summoned to the third-floor attic in the middle of the night was Rubaine. He stood clutching a letter in his hand, glaring at Lark.
The letter had been written in the handwriting of the young maid Rubaine had been flirting with recently, inviting him to a secret meeting.
“You’re trying to have an affair with a maid in the house where you live with your wife and children…I’m not sure whether I should say I’m disappointed or thank you for shattering my last bit of hope.”
“I-It’s not like that! I just wanted to meet her and give her a scolding!”
“At this hour?”
Lark chuckled.
Rubaine couldn’t scold his son loudly because he had sinned.
Instead, he kept making pitiful remarks while looking at Lark’s face.
“You didn’t tell your mother, did you?”
“So you are afraid of Mother’s reaction?”
“Ahem! Afraid? No, I merely… didn’t want her to misunderstand.”
The fact that the Newt family’s honor, which had fallen to rock bottom after the Mariel incident, was able to recover to this extent was entirely thanks to the Countess.
If she had returned to her parent’s home because she could not bear the humiliation, the name of the Newt family would have been buried in the mud, but the Countess defended Rubaine to the end and kept her position.
That’s why Mariel’s incident was passed off as a ‘small mistake’, and since then, Rubaine has been keeping an eye on his wife.
But, in the end, he couldn’t bear to cheat again.
Anyway, Lark felt relieved to have confirmed once again that his father was not fit for the position of head of the household.
“I’ll keep my mouth shut just this once. But if I ever see you looking at another woman again….”
“Never! That will never happen. I promise!”
“I’ll believe you. Now, please go downstairs. If we go down together and someone sees us, we’ll be in trouble.”
“Ah, y-yes. I’ll go down first. Good night, Lark.”
As Ruben hastily turned to leave, Lark followed closely behind, whispering in a low voice.
“Yes. You too, Father, sleep well.”
Then, as Rubaine was about to go down the stairs, Lark strongly pushed Rubaine toward the railing.
Already flustered and distracted, Rubaine lost his balance and slammed into the fragile railing. It gave way with a splintering crack.
“Aahhh!”
In the midnight mansion, a terrible scream and a thud as something fell echoed.
As the lights in each room that had been asleep began to turn back on, Lark, who went downstairs, shouted while holding the body of his father, who had died instantly with his neck broken.
“Father! Father!”
What sounded like a son’s anguished lamentation over a tragic accident was, in truth, a declaration of victory.
* * *
On a dreary afternoon with low-hanging gray clouds, Elaine was reading a book while drinking warm tea when she received an unexpected guest.
“Damon…?”
He was the third son of the Newt family, Damon, with his coat collar turned up and his face hidden by his hat.
“Long time no see, Elaine.”
He kept looking around with an awkward smile and an anxious look on his face.
Damon’s visit was quite unexpected, as he had never contacted Elaine to visit and had not been in touch since his last letter.
But the fact that Sergey allowed Damon’s rude visit must have meant that he had something important and urgent to talk about.
Elaine sat down across from Damon and asked about his well-being.
“How are you? Thank you for your letter last time—”
“Something terrible has happened.”
Damon cut Elaine off without even pretending to hear her greeting.
“What is it’?”
However, despite the hasty tone of his speech, the main point was not easily brought out. He shook his hands nervously as if he was afraid of something, took a deep breath, and then spoke.
“My father passed away.”
“What?”
“This morning.”
Elaine just blinked with her mouth open. It felt as if her mind had suddenly stopped working.
“Uncle passed away? That’s impossible…!”
‘This is something that never happened in a past life.’
When Elaine was dragged to Calgore Cave at the age of twenty-six, Rubaine had been alive and spouting cruel words to the very end.
‘My uncle, who lived until then, died at this point… Could it be… because of me?’
Most things went the same as in her previous life. If anything changed, it was definitely because Elaine herself knew the future and returned.
The thought sent a chill down her spine, but she couldn’t understand how she could be the cause of Rubaine’s death.
“But how did you get here?”
“I came while the whole family was busy preparing for my father’s funeral.”
“Why…?”
Elaine was filled with confusion.
If Rubaine was dead, it would have been rumored sooner or later even if Damon hadn’t come to tell her.
Count Newt’s death would have been quite the topic of conversation.
‘Why did Damon come here, avoiding the eyes of his family?’
As if he knew Elaine’s question, Damon leaned closer to her and whispered.
“I owe you something, so I’m just trying to repay it. You, be careful.”
“Be careful? Of what?”
“My brother is acting strange.”
“Brother? If you say brother, who are you talking about?”
“Of course it’s Lark!”
Damon’s hands seemed to shake more.
“This morning, my father fell from the stair railing and died. The person who found him was Lark, and he’s been fighting with my father a lot lately. Because of you.”
“Because of me?”
“All I know is that my brother wanted to bring you home and my father was against it. I don’t know the details, but it’s clear you were the issue.”
Elaine became more and more confused.
She had made it perfectly clear at last year’s debutante ball that she had no intention of returning to the Newt family. Yet, Lark had been insisting otherwise.
‘Of course, my uncle would have been against it. If I went back, Damon or Ellie would have to go to the temple instead, and he probably thought that taking me would be useless. But why is Lark so desperate to bring me back?’
When Elaine remained silent with a confused expression, Damon took a deep breath and drank the already cold tea in one gulp. His throat felt parched from nervousness.
“I’m scared of my brother Lark now. These days, when I see him, he seems a bit…crazy.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know. He’s just a perfect guy on the outside, like always…but sometimes, his eyes….”
Damon recalled the dry look in Lark’s eyes as he told him of his father’s death.
Lark tried hard to show his grief over his father’s death, but Damon, who had been keeping an eye on Lark thanks to Elaine, noticed that he was not sad at all.
Damon’s suspicions turned into certainty because Lark took care of the family succession procedures before the funeral.
“Anyway, now my father is dead, once the Imperial family approves, Lark will officially become the Count of Newt. And this is just my guess, but I think that once my brother gains the authority of the head of the family, the first thing he will do is try to take you back home.”
Elaine still couldn’t answer.
Then Damon grabbed Elaine’s wrist and asked, looking frustrated.
“What happened between you and my brother? Why on earth is he acting like that?”
“I don’t know! I really don’t know. He used to think I was a nuisance, but why is he suddenly so fixated on me?!”
“Haa…even you don’t know the reason…Oh, maybe Lorina knows?”
“Who knows. The only thing I’m certain of is that Lark’s obsession with bringing me back isn’t for my sake. I’m just a tool to him. What he plans to do with me, I don’t know.”
Elaine followed Damon’s sighed deeply, then she grabbed his wrist in return and said:
“Thank you for coming all the way here for me. But you’re in more danger than me. Lark will try to use his siblings as tools right away.”
“That’s right. Once he becomes the Count, I have to follow his orders or leave home. I’m not ready….I’m not ready yet….”
* * *
Damon poor baby ☹️☹️