— Chapter 49:………………….
Count Martin
Until just a moment ago there had clearly been no one here — when on earth did he arrive?
He hadn’t even heard the wheels of a carriage. It wasn’t as if a woman like Mariana had walked all the way from the mansion to here.
Count Martin tilted his head in puzzlement.
Then, remembering that it didn’t really matter, he quickly put on a bright smile and moved toward Mariana.
“Milady! I was worried something had happened to you!”
“I’m sorry. I’m terribly late, aren’t I?”
Mariana, veil pulled low beneath a wide-brimmed hat as if she had a cold, spoke in a nasal voice.
‘Come to think of it, she looks a little shorter, too.’
“I suddenly had a bit of a fever this morning. The physician came and the maids kept going in and out of my room, so I couldn’t even prepare for a trip — I barely sneaked out.”
“Oh my…”
Count Martin François, who had a momentary look of sympathy, hurried to open the carriage door.
‘If she says she’s sick, a gentleman would tell her to go back and rest.’
Ange — who worried the count might check her forehead — stifled a laugh. Count Martin didn’t seem to care one whit about Mariana’s fever.
Oblivious to the fact that Ange’s face was hidden by a deep purple veil and that Ange regarded him with suspicion, Count Martin extended a friendly hand.
“Please get in. We’re running quite late.”
“I’m so sorry, Count, because of me…”
Watching Ange give an apologetic, cutesy little bow with her hands clasped, the corner of the count’s mouth twitched in annoyance.
“Now is not the time to be apologizing and taking things easy…”
He caught himself uttering a harsh remark and then glanced at the woman standing before him.
“Mariana, please get in. It’s a long way.”
Ange pretended not to hear the pleading count and asked another question. It would take a little while for Duke Saide to finish his preparations and follow.
“Where exactly did you say the villa is?”
“Do you know Kenaz? It’s famous as a resort. You said you had a fever? Well, that’s convenient. A few days of proper rest there will cure you.”
To say getting sick was a good thing? The expression under Ange’s veil soured.
In his hurry the count seemed barely aware of the words coming out of his mouth.
“A few days? I thought I’d be back right away and I made no preparations. If I’d known I’d have brought Josh. And I don’t have another dress. I can’t — I must go back and pack again…”
“No, no. We can just buy whatever you need. Do you think I don’t have the means?”
Ange stifled a laugh while reading the count’s expression. Someone with the means usually wouldn’t speak that way.
He wouldn’t borrow a shabby carriage and pretend it was his own, nor wear worn shoes under pants made from the finest cloth.
Most decisively, he wouldn’t try to force a sick woman into a carriage and take her far away if that were not his intention.
“Milady, please.”
The count wiped the cold sweat from his brow and pleaded.
Ange, feigning a leisurely glance around to check behind her, stepped into the carriage.
The count quickly followed, shut the carriage door, and rapped on the side.
“Go!”
Only after the carriage left Primrose Hill’s avenue and entered the city center did Count Martin let out a long sigh of relief.
From now on there was nothing to worry about.
He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed the sweat from his brow.
“The day isn’t that hot yet.”
Count Martin’s hand stopped as he caught the trace of a smile under the woman’s voice. She had been getting on his nerves in a subtle way since earlier.
‘Is it just my imagination?’
Mariana Side was a timid woman in name and manner. She never raised her voice, nor was she assertive.
A woman with hardly any presence.
Hildegard would sometimes cast a scornful look at Mariana and say aloud,
“Isn’t it unfair? Someone like her is a noblewoman. She makes no effort her whole life, acts like a child out of shyness, and everyone bows before her. Some even praise her as ‘innocent’.”
Count Martin usually just shrugged off Hildegarde’s baseless hostility.
But the Mariana in front of him now was different.
Had she ever spoken to him so freely before? She always blushed shyly, hesitated for a long time, and then offered one or two careful words.
“You were standing in the sun for quite a while waiting for Milady earlier, weren’t you? That’s why.”
Count Martin François reproached her gently for being late.
“Oh, it was only a spring day. You said you studied abroad in a kingdom with a hot climate, Count. So this weather should be nothing to you, no? Or — even if you lived in a hot country, did you never feel the heat because you were always out at night for the sake of your lovely complexion?”
Mariana muttered to herself in a half-asked, half-to-herself tone that was neither a question nor a statement.
“Milady? I don’t know why you’d think that. I studied hard at the kingdom’s academy. Out at night? Whatever are you talking about… Ah! I did stay late at the library studying sometimes.”
“Studying…”
Ange clicked her tongue as she dragged the word out.
“With a strong ‘peach-blossom star’ and a jumbled Four Pillars chart… juggling this woman and that — when would she have had time to study?”
Count Martin’s face hardened instantly as he glared at Ange.
He couldn’t understand the exact words, but the tone told him she had guessed his plan. Otherwise she wouldn’t be so sullen.
“Lady Mariana, did you investigate me?”
“I’m too busy to have the time for that.”
Ange shook her head. The veil trembled and the outline of her face appeared and disappeared.
Watching that, Count Martin’s expression fell.
“Not Mariana. Who are you?”
He squinted and reached toward the woman’s neck, but his hand met only a serpent-skin-like veil.
Ange cast off her hat and veil in one motion and sat nonchalantly in the opposite seat.
For a moment surprised by her quick movement, the count’s face soon contorted. He rummaged his coat and took out a small pouch.
“You’re an aide to Duke Saide, aren’t you? In place of Hildegarde… Why are you here? Where’s Mariana?”
Furious, the count emptied the pouch toward Ange’s face. A cloud of unidentified powder sprinkled into the air and Ange quickly held her breath.
With one hand she clamped her nose and mouth and with the other — the hand holding a fan — she fanned, driving air toward Count Martin.
‘Not twice, I won’t fall for that twice.’
The powder the count scattered was familiar to Ange. Years ago, when she was shopping for an office, she’d met a con man who used this sort of powder, probably.
“Achoo!”
The count sneezed loudly after inhaling the powder, his eyes glazing over. Still burning with hostility toward Ange, he reached for her.
Ange dodged the count’s wildly flailing arms.
Even unable to wield his full strength, he was a robust man. If he managed to catch her…
“Ugh!”
With bloodshot eyes he blinked hard and finally succeeded in grabbing the hem of Ange’s dress.
He shoved Ange into a seat and climbed on top of her. Grasping her slender neck, the count smiled a triumphant smile.
“It was genius to have taken money from that woman in advance.”
“Ugh…! Woman? Who?”
Ange managed to choke out the question amid her struggles; the count answered with a sneer.
“Does it matter? She’ll be dead soon.”
He tightened his grip until Ange’s face contorted.
Her vision began to whiten and her consciousness dimmed.
Bang!
At that instant, the carriage struck something with a violent jolt and came to a halt.
When Count Martin — who had been choking Ange — frowned and turned toward the window, a huge hand reached in and grabbed the count’s neck and hurled him against the carriage wall.
Not satisfied with that, another large hand seized the count’s nape and smashed him back and forth against the carriage wall.
“Guh…! You can’t kill him! Sir — we have to find the mastermind.”
With a clamorous noise, the carriage door flew off and the duke appeared.
“Mastermind?”
