A Mad Lady’s Confession - Chapter 83

Two maids carrying buckets and brushes had just climbed the stairs to clean the corridor.

Before either could set foot on the next step, the butler blocked their path.

“Master and Madam haven’t risen yet. Do the cleaning later.”

The two maids immediately bowed their heads and quietly descended the stairs again.

The butler took his pocket watch from inside his coat and checked the time. Even without considering that his master usually began his day at the first light of dawn, it was already long past the usual waking hour.

There was no need to ask or speculate. Madam had returned. Only now did it feel as though his master, the estate, and everything within it were functioning properly again.

Just as the butler slipped the watch back into his pocket, a door opened at the end of the corridor. The butler’s eyes widened slightly when he saw the person rush out.

The man who hurried from the room in obvious sleepwear with only a robe thrown over it was Matthias Nielsen, the master of this family and a nobleman to his very bones.

Appearing with his unkempt blond hair in disarray, Matthias urgently asked, without caring whether the butler was surprised, “Where’s Eleanor?”

Ah. So that was it.

Before the butler could answer, Matthias strode toward a room in the opposite corridor. Following quickly behind him, the butler calmly explained, “Madam hasn’t risen yet.”

“…Haa….”

Only then did Matthias stop. The way he dragged his hands over his face, troubled yet relieved, made it perfectly clear what conclusion he reached upon waking.

It must have been something like this. On the day Eleanor returned to the Nielsen estate, Matthias Nielsen finally slept deeply for the first time in a long while. The moment he opened his eyes the following morning, he leaped from bed in a panic, afraid his wife might have gone somewhere again.

“Shall I prepare tea, Master?”

“…Set it out in the small drawing room so my wife can drink it as soon as she wakes.”

After speaking, he began walking again. He steadied his breathing before the door, then carefully opened it with a click and stepped inside.

The curtains were drawn, leaving the room dim. He moved through the familiar twilight. Only when he found the woman breathing evenly on the bed did his wildly pounding heart gradually return to its proper rhythm.

He quietly reached out and stroked the woman’s thinner cheek as though his heart ached for her. The night before, Eleanor poured out the memories of her childhood as though something inside her had burst. Exhausted, she soon fell asleep.

He wanted to lie beside her. He wanted to hold her in his arms, stroke her back as she slept, and bury his face against the nape of her neck. But Matthias rebuked himself and turned away.

When he hadn’t returned a single confession to her, when once again he’d done nothing but listen to hers.

His shamelessness was now worn too thin for him to lie beside her merely because she’d returned. Eleanor hadn’t even returned of her own accord. She only came because he caught her and left her no choice.

So all he could do was secretly watch the sleeping woman and touch her cheek while she remained lost in dreams.

“….”

Her lashes slowly, languidly fluttered upward.

“You’re awake?”

“…What time is it?”

“You woke at just the right time.”

Although it was far too late for the two masters of Nielsen to awaken, when they were hardly some pair of reckless aristocrats, Matthias reassured her that way.

“Would you like to have breakfast with me?”

Eleanor gave a small nod.

A simple breakfast was laid near the window in the small drawing room, where the fireplace was lit.

Only a few months earlier, Matthias began his days here by looking over newspapers or documents while listening to Eleanor chatter. The scene from the height of summer remained vivid in his mind.

Matthias’s gaze suddenly fell upon the garden beyond the window. When did it become winter? he wondered. The autumn in which the woman disappeared passed as though it were a season that never existed for him, so the thought wasn’t entirely unreasonable.

He looked once more at Eleanor, who was sipping tea before him. Over her indoor dress, she wore an old shawl he’d never seen before and the vaguely familiar beetle-shaped brooch.

“Is it something you treasure?”

At his question, Eleanor followed his gaze to the front of her dress. The hand caressing the brooch was laden with lingering attachment.

“Yes, Del gave it to me. It’s pretty, isn’t it? …Del had an exceptional aesthetic sense.”

It wasn’t an object he could call pretty even as an empty compliment, but Matthias nodded. Incongruously, he suddenly remembered the woman’s taste in dresses from long ago. Her attire could generously be described as classic.

“…So do you.”

Eleanor looked a little embarrassed, sniffled softly, then nodded. The gesture, as though she agreed, was somewhat absurd and endearing even at a moment like this.

He cleared his throat briefly and continued the conversation they hadn’t finished the previous night.

“Didn’t you miss me?” he asked with feigned mischief, and the answer came immediately.

“I missed you. Very much.”

She didn’t hesitate in the slightest. Matthias’s heart thudded heavily.

Eleanor was always like that. She expressed her feelings honestly without ever hesitating, concealing them, or speaking around them.

“Then why did you only appear now?”

“…Because I had no right to see you. I… made up my mind to….”

Made up her mind.

After once again surveying their surroundings, from which he dismissed the butler, maids, and all other attendants, he said, “Do you truly want to kill the crown prince?”

At the words crown prince and kill, the thin shoulders beneath the shawl flinched. Eleanor hesitated briefly before answering, “Because that’s the only way I have to avenge Del.”

Throughout the autumn, Eleanor thought about what she could do. But there weren’t many options. That was true both of the methods her mind could conceive and of the things she could accomplish when she wasn’t even a “real duchess.”

As helplessness consumed her, she ultimately reached a single conclusion.

To make the crown prince experience death, just as Del had.

“…That’s the only way….”

Her clasped hands trembled faintly. Even after reaching that conclusion, she hesitated for a long time. Mad blood truly flowed through her veins like her father’s, if she could plan to harm another person. The thought also filled her with sorrow. But there was no other way.

Eleanor looked directly at him and continued, “I’m sorry I disappeared without saying anything…. At the time, I thought I had to. And… perhaps it’s for the best that we met like this.”

“….”

“I think… it would be best to formally proceed with a divorce, Your Grace.”

She no longer called him Matthias. It was as though she were trying to put distance between them. At the realization, Matthias’s throat moved tightly.

“…Why?”

“Completing the full year no longer seems reasonable… and I-I don’t think I should continue bearing the Nielsen name as the duchess….”

Because she would soon become a murderer.

Matthias immediately understood the words Eleanor left unsaid.

She would assassinate the crown prince. Klaus would die. He was once Matthias’s friend, someone who shared his childhood, the sovereign of this country whom Matthias would one day serve, and the sun upheld by Nielsen.

As a great nobleman of Römern, he would lose the person to whom he rightfully owed his loyalty, just as his ancestors had.

He would have to part from Eleanor. She would soon become the criminal who assassinated the empire’s crown prince, and Nielsen would likely suffer harm as well.

But before any of those facts, something else occurred to Matthias.

“…Why must you become a murderer?”

Why should you? What in the world have you done wrong that you must become such a person yet again?

“Can you do it? Eleanor, tell me. Can you truly kill him?”

He remembered how violently the hand holding the knife trembled. With a hand like that, the blade would never reach his heart. At most, it might barely pierce the fabric.

“Eleanor, is a knife truly what you want to hold in your hand?”

The Eleanor Brynhill he knew couldn’t kill another person. She wasn’t someone who could commit such an act and continue living as though nothing happened.

That was what Matthias feared. More than Eleanor Brynhill resolving to kill the crown prince, he feared the crown prince’s death would ruin Eleanor Brynhill. That it would break her.

At his question, the light faded from Eleanor’s eyes. Was that truly what she wanted? Did she really want to see the crown prince’s blood?

“…No.”

Eleanor shook her head faintly. It didn’t mean she wanted to abandon her revenge. But as Matthias said, she couldn’t do it that way. She didn’t want to.

“…What I want is….”

Eleanor remembered Del as Del’s life faded away moment by moment. That pale face, those cracked lips, and eyes gradually losing their light. The face that finally left Eleanor no choice but to take up a knife in anger and sorrow.

But a knife wasn’t what Eleanor wanted to hold. To make the crown prince suffer the same death as Del. That wasn’t what she truly wanted.

“I want Del’s honor restored.”

The honor obscured by vilified love, betrayal, and countless scandals.

“I want people to know Del existed, and I want the crown prince to acknowledge what he did and apologize.”

She wanted everyone to know that Del existed in this world. That was what Eleanor wanted. And perhaps it was what Del wanted too.

Meeting her resolute eyes, tearful yet shedding no tears, Matthias spoke firmly, “I’ll help you.”

The answer left his mouth on its own.

What the hell are you doing? How deeply do you intend to involve the family? You have responsibilities greater than that of that woman. The family, your ancestors, the businesses all trailing at your feet….

He seized the throat of the raging “Nielsen” so it couldn’t add another word. He’d already made his decision.

“I’ll show you how, Eleanor.”

“…H-How?”

Instead of answering, he kept his gaze fixed on the woman’s eyes, as though doing so were the only way he could breathe.