Chapter 74
While Grace was at a loss, there was a sudden sound and the sack was ripped off.
Blinded by the sudden burst of bright light, Grace squeezed her eyes shut.
She opened them slowly. When she recognized who was looking at her, she was so shocked she dropped her jaw.
“Kanna! You—”
“It’s been a long time, head housemaid.”
But the one who spoke wasn’t Kanna — it was the mysterious woman standing beside her.
The voice was, however, familiar.
As Grace groped through her memories, the unknown woman slowly removed the hood of her robe.
When Grace confirmed the woman’s identity, she gasped for breath as if about to faint.
“Re-Rebecca—my lady?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
She couldn’t believe it.
The last image Grace had of Rebecca was a hideous figure covered in blisters. But the woman in front of her showed no terrible marks at all.
If anything, she was standing there more beautiful than she had ever been.
“How—how are you back to your old self?”
“How am I back? I have been my original self all along. The only thing that changed was the way you looked at me.”
At Rebecca’s cold glance, Grace gaped.
Rebecca seemed to realize something and spoke.
“Oh, that’s right. Since you and I have nothing to do with one another anymore, I suppose you can stop addressing me with that condescending tone? I am not the Countess of Devonshire you used to coddle like a child.”
“Lady Rebecca… I am so glad you’ve returned…”
No matter what Rebecca said, Grace’s mind was filled with the image of Rebecca restored to her former, radiant self.
It was truly a relief — the figure she loved had not disappeared from the world.
Grace wept with the gratitude of a parent who’d regained a lost child.
When Rebecca understood the meaning of those tears, her face contorted with disgust. She felt offended.
But she didn’t release that feeling just then.
Grace was still useful.
“You seem quite moved by my return — moved enough to cry like that,” Rebecca said.
“Of course. Lady Rebecca, the Count has lost his memory. In the meantime, Alicia has taken the mistress’s place. But you’ve come back to life. Return to the Count’s house. The Count will surely forgive past wrongs and—”
“Forgive?” Rebecca scoffed, incredulous.
Without noticing Rebecca’s face twisting grotesquely, Grace nodded vigorously.
“Yes. The Count will certainly forgive you. He’ll make you the Countess again. Then everything will return to the way it was. Oh, how wonderful!”
Kanna, eyes burning with fury, drew a small dagger hidden in her sleeve.
Rebecca glanced at Kanna’s hand and quietly took the dagger from her.
Holding the knife, she lunged at Grace like a striking animal.
Rebecca grabbed Grace by the hair and violently tilted her head back.
The blade flashed before Grace’s eyes.
The gust Rebecca created blew out the candle that was the only thing lighting the small room.
Darkness fell quickly.
A thin twilight seeped through the little window.
Everything had happened so fast that Kanna just stared blankly.
A chill of menace radiated from Rebecca’s back.
“Grace Duncan. How dare you tell me to go back to that place? To beg for forgiveness? Let me tell you something interesting. I left on my own. You didn’t drive me out.”
“Guh… guh—”
Grace trembled at the feel of the sharp blade as if it might pierce her eyes at any moment.
Rebecca intoned in a bleak voice.
“Begging to come back and ask for forgiveness? Forgive what, exactly? Oh, that some foolish doll got broken and you couldn’t make another one? While you lot played that damned doll game with me, I was alive. I was breathing the whole time!”
“Aaagh!”
Rebecca increased the force of her grip on Grace’s hair. The pain felt as if Grace’s scalp would be torn away; she screamed.
Rebecca pressed the knife to Grace’s cheek and said,
“I want, right now, to slit the throats of those who did this to me. But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? I want you to regret being alive. Don’t you think so?”
Rebecca released the knife and shoved Grace’s head roughly back down.
A drop of blood welled from the cut on Grace’s cheek.
Grace’s once-tidy hair was now tattered.
With her hair in disarray, Grace sobbed.
“You aren’t… you weren’t like this before.”
Rebecca answered with barren coldness.
“Maybe I wasn’t always like this. But you made me like this.”
Grace opened her eyes wide as if in one last desperate appeal.
“Then what will you do now? Seek revenge? What power do you have? You don’t mean to think you could damage the great Devonshire household, do you?”
“False hopes are precisely the ones people long for most. And I don’t see why I lack power.”
Grace looked up at Rebecca with a face full of confusion.
She couldn’t understand what on earth was happening.
The angelic countess was lunging at her with a knife, uttering harsh words from those pretty lips.
Everything felt like a dream.
And the thought that this might be a dream only grew firmer as Rebecca continued.
On Rebecca’s instruction, Kanna covered Grace’s nose and mouth with cloth and lit a red candle.
Rebecca slowly removed her robe and stood before Grace.
She shed the murderous glare from before and looked at Grace gently.
“You have me, remember? So why would I be powerless?”
“Aah—ah…”
Grace’s teeth chattered wildy. Tears streamed endlessly from her eyes, full of dread of what might come.
“Re—Reila…”
Rebecca’s mouth curved up slowly.
She wore a plain, neat brown nightgown with no adornment — the exact kind of dress Grace’s daughter Leila often wore.
Leila, small, brown-haired with dark eyes, bore no resemblance to Rebecca. Yet Grace somehow felt as if Leila herself were looking at her.
“Leila! Leila!”
Grace screamed in agony, her cry filled with clinging attachment.
Rebecca paused for a moment at the intensity of Grace’s reaction.
Then she smiled.
It was a smile of victory.
Leila Duncan had been a woman who rarely made her presence felt.
She walked so quietly she made no sound; she never asserted her opinions aloud.
Even when Leila had stood beside someone for half an hour, many people failed to notice and would startle belatedly when they realized she was there.
Before her health declined, Leila had accompanied Grace to every event held at the Devonshire household.
Grace had marked Leila as future head housemaid of the Devonshires and had trained her rigorously from childhood.
Had Leila not fallen ill, she would soon have started working at Devonshire.
Amid all the ostentatiously dressed people, Leila always stood simply dressed like a screen behind the festivities.
When Rebecca wore the revealing, glittering gowns that pleased Zeplin, Grace would frown and pin the dress more modestly.
“Modesty makes a woman beautiful,” Grace would say, and thus had dressed Leila according to her tastes.
Though Leila had little presence, Rebecca had watched her closely.
She thought there was something empty in Leila’s eyes that resembled her own.
Sometimes Leila would stare vacantly into the air; at those moments Rebecca would, without realizing it, follow her gaze.
Perhaps Leila had done the same.
At times, she would look at Rebecca; when their eyes met, Leila would respond with the slightest smile — a smile as precarious as the smile of someone standing at a cliff’s edge.
Rebecca often felt that Leila might have taken her own life.
If so, she would have wanted to show her last face to her mother.
She would have wanted revenge — she would have, if she were Leila.
So when Leila was in danger, Rebecca had, without quite knowing why, helped Grace with fervor.
So Leila could have the chance to say to Grace,
“You killed me, Mother.”
Leila’s phantom voice whispered in Grace’s ear. Bound at the arms, Grace wriggled in her chair.
“Leila… I raised you with all my heart! Why did you leave me first? I never taught you to do this! That’s not you!”
“Look carefully, Grace. I am not Leila.”
Rebecca stepped closer to Grace one step at a time.
The impenetrable fortress of Grace’s heart began to crack.
Using Leila as a tool felt distasteful, but the effect was undeniable.
Rebecca sneered at the disheveled Grace.
Grace blinked wetly, unable to muster the strength even to lift the chair.
She sagged, watching Rebecca, who was about to shatter her broken heart.
“So no matter how much you scold me about Leila, she won’t hear you. Your regrets won’t wash away. Leila is dead. Because of you.”
“No… no! I didn’t kill Leila…”
“Yes. I suspected you wouldn’t understand anything I said, so I decided to use your foolishness.”
Rebecca pressed her face close to the half-out-of-it Grace.
At the dizzyingly close sight of Rebecca’s face, Grace briefly stopped breathing.
“You promised once to help me, didn’t you? Keep the doors of Devonshire wide open for me when I want them open.”
The word “Devonshire” seemed to bring Grace to her senses for a moment; a fleck of clarity passed through her eyes.
Grace widened her eyes.
“Do you truly intend to ruin the Count’s household? Do you think I will watch such a thing happen? How dare you threaten me with Leila’s name.”
“How laughable. For someone who has no right to grieve Leila most, you say that.”
“What on earth are you saying—?”
“Don’t worry. The house you so adore is not the object of my revenge. I’ll let you have it. That filthy place.”
Grace’s eyes rolled as she fainted.
