Maylily - Chapter 98

Even though Maylily had begged him not to go looking for her aunt, the reason Hugh came to Purdshire was half hope and half anger.

He hadn’t intended to come here from the start. How far could a woman who was practically empty-handed get by running away on her own? Meanwhile, he had manpower and resources he could pour into finding her without limit.

So getting her back was only a matter of time.

Even as he lay alone in Maylily’s bedroom and spent night after night wide awake, Hugh indulged in that flimsy composure.

“A young woman with a similar appearance to Miss Aile has reportedly been found in a village in Melden.”

“We found a woman presumed to be Miss Aile among the guests staying at an inn near Dunwell Station.”

“In Kennington, someone has come forward saying they saw a woman with a similar appearance to Miss Aile getting off a train.”

Just as he’d expected, the informants dispatched north brought in new reports day after day. But each time, it was a waste. Even after several days, they couldn’t get anywhere near even the edge of Maylily’s shadow.

The stalemate steadily gnawed away at his composure. There was no longer room to be picky about means or methods. Hugh came to Purdshire clinging to his last hope.

If he found Maylily here, he meant it literally. He would tie a leash on her and keep her bound at his side. And if he couldn’t find her here either, it wasn’t as if he had no intention of ruining her family, and the world, until she appeared before him and submitted.

So that Maylily would have nowhere to return to once she left him. So that he could be her only destination.

But as Hugh watched Diane Brooks crying beneath a faint lamp, he realized.

That Maylily’s world had already been shattered. That even if he did nothing more, Maylily had already lost the place she could return to. That what his blind affection had given her was nothing more than ruin.

If you, who’ve lost the place you can return to, still don’t come to me in the end, then where am I supposed to find you?

All at once, Hugh felt like a lost child inside Maylily’s small, ruined world. He didn’t even know where he should head next, leaving this street behind.

Suddenly, the air inside the carriage weighed heavily on his chest. Hugh let out a low sigh and loosened his tie, and just as he opened the window to cool the heat that had gathered around his eyes.

Jace Brooks came walking out of the grocery store and crossed the road, and that sight entered his view. Hugh slowly turned his head forward and sent David a quiet look.

“I’ll be back.”

David immediately understood the meaning and stepped down from the carriage. In the meantime, his face formed a businesslike smile as he met Jace Brooks, who had come right up close.

“Mr. Brooks, do you have something more to say….”

“What happened to May? The kids’ mother’s crying and carrying on. Please tell me straight. We are May’s family.”

His voice, raised with agitation, echoed through the empty street. Even Jace didn’t know whether he was angry or begging. He didn’t show it in front of Diane, but he was just as uneasy.

Ever since he’d tipped off Victor Heywood, Maylily’s biological father who had suddenly appeared one day, about the child’s information, he’d been waiting for news. Yet there was no sign of hearing about any compensation, or Maylily’s marriage news.

Then an article was reported saying the Count of Everscourt was Maylily’s patron. Even then, Victor didn’t show his face at all. Was that bastard a con man? Late suspicion rose up, but Jace brushed it off as nothing.

In any case, what mattered was that Maylily had entered into a patron relationship with the Count of Everscourt. Soon enough, he would be compensated for the hardship he’d endured to raise Maylily into a singer. Maylily was kind-hearted, so there was no way she would throw away a debt of gratitude.

He’d been swelling with expectation like that. And then, all of a sudden, Maylily disappeared. What a disaster.

Putting aside that his expectation of benefiting from Maylily had been dashed, Jace was dumbfounded that he couldn’t even be sure the girl was alive.

It was true he didn’t cherish Maylily as much as his own child, but he swore he had never once wished for that child’s misfortune.

“It’s exactly as I explained inside. We simply have business with Miss Aile and we’re looking for a way to contact her.”

As if weighing whether those words were true, Jace rolled his eyes and then spotted a tall, striking figure sitting inside the carriage.

That man, isn’t he the Count of Everscourt?

He had only seen the Count once, but his looks were so striking that Jace recognized him easily. Unlike then, when he overflowed with authority and refinement, today he looked strangely sunk in sorrow.

The Count himself is coming out. This really doesn’t seem like an ordinary matter….

“You expect us to believe that, right now?”

“Even if you don’t believe it, there’s nothing I can do. Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

The Count’s secretary was courteous, but at the same time cold. It didn’t seem like he would open his mouth no matter what was said.

“If Miss Aile contacts you, please let us know.”

To Jace, who fell silent in resignation, David took a business card and high-denomination bills out of his wallet and handed them over.

“This amount should be more than enough to cover the telegraph fee. If you help us, we’ll make sure the compensation is sufficient. Please.”

The Count’s secretary said it while bowing with strict politeness. Jace stared down wordlessly at what lay in his palm, and only after a long while did he put it into his pocket and turn away.

***

Small feet no bigger than a palm ran busily across the light beige carpet laid over the marble floor. Warm midday sunlight poured through the windows placed at regular intervals along one wall, spilling over the small, white instep.

As they brushed past the withered flowers stuck into black vases displayed in neat order along the opposite wall, breath gradually climbed up to the chin. Even so, the pace couldn’t slow. It felt like even a moment’s delay would be dangerous.

The feet that ran and ran down the long corridor finally stopped. Before them stood a pair of towering mahogany double doors, engraved with an intricate pattern that geometrically shaped surging waves. It was the bedroom of the Countess of Everscourt.

When the two handles were turned and the doors were flung wide open, light surging in with a strong gust of wind swallowed the view in white for an instant. A faint sound of waves and a refreshing scent of wood filled the senses all at once, then swept away the white light that had covered the view.

When the view cleared, a panorama of a forest of fir trees rising high into the sky spread out beyond the wide-open window. While staring at the greenery shining brilliantly beneath the midsummer sun, thud. A long, gray form dropped from the ceiling and shattered the midday calm.

Bare, gaunt feet and ankles, limbs hanging heavily as if weights were attached, a dark gray dress torn and stained in places, a neck bent grotesquely, blonde hair tangled with dust and scattered wildly, and beneath it, a pale face hidden from view.

The face, lowered deeply so that it seemed like it might be seen and yet not, stirred an inexplicable thirst and impatience.

To look closely at that face, Hugh took a step forward. In the wind that softly billowed the white chiffon curtains by the door like clouds, the woman’s body, hanging by the neck from the ceiling, fluttered limply.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

Amid the irregular heartbeat pounding in his ears, the moment he stepped closer, the woman snapped her bent neck upright with a crack and opened her eyes. Hugh’s eyelids flew wide when his gaze met those water-colored eyes submerged in clear tears.

“Gah…!”

Gulping in air like someone hauled out of the water just before drowning, Hugh slowly blinked. The shape of the wooden panels decorating the ceiling gradually became clear in the darkness.

It was Maylily’s bedroom. The events of last evening, when he’d returned from Purdshire without any results and came straight here, came back to him belatedly. Feeling his heart still pounding thud, thud like a beater, Hugh pushed himself upright.

He threw off the pajamas damp with cold sweat, then swept back the bangs stuck messily to his forehead. In the room sunk deep in the predawn hours, faint moonlight drifting in through the balcony window floated quietly.

Over it, the faces of his mother, who had met his eyes in that endlessly repeated dream, brushed past.

It was the form of guilt that had chased him like a shadow for twenty years. When he opened those heavy mahogany doors, Hugh clearly saw her eyes close.

If only I’d found her a little earlier.

If only I’d run a little faster.

Guilt covered in futile assumptions and self-reproach repeated over long years. And on top of it, another guilt piled up.

“Maylily.”

The name of this new guilt, spoken low, seeped into the moonlight. The face he’d seen in the dream, pale like a corpse, rose vividly before his eyes.

Hugh consciously exhaled the breath choking in his chest, then rubbed his dry face as if to wipe away the apparition. As he slowly dragged his hands down his face, his large palms soon grew wet with hot tears.