The Serpent of Paradise - Chapter 75

6. The End of the Game

Mikhail sat in the Count’s room, tapping his fingers against the armrest of the sofa.

He couldn’t go to the annex yesterday either. A large stack of documents that arrived from Sokolov was piled beside him. Mikhail looked at the letter before him. It was from the butler of the Sokolov estate. The letter said that the estate’s main building was now secure with trustworthy people and that, as he ordered before, all preparations for his “wife” were complete.

Mikhail looked over the list of things the butler recently purchased. From the list alone, he could vividly picture how lavish and beautiful the room prepared for the mistress of the Sokolov estate would be.

Only the rarest things in Novgod, no, in the entire world, could enter that room. A hat decorated with the feathers of a golden peacock, which people in Ils were desperate to obtain, curtains made from purple fabric that required ten thousand murex snails to dye a single handspan, and beautiful flowers that grew only deep within the mountain ranges of Flanre.

It was a level of luxury even Novgod’s imperial family couldn’t dare imagine. But the woman by his side could enjoy all of it. As she rightfully should.

Mikhail flinched at his own thoughts.

Was he insane? Since when did he intend to keep someone like that? There were many people he wanted to kill, but no one he wanted by his side. Even trusted aides like Igor and Yuri were ultimately kept near him for his own convenience. He never particularly thought about doing anything for their sake. He merely compensated them according to how useful they were to him. That was how it always was. He only gave back as much as they offered him. Then why was he going to such lengths to welcome Anastasia….

Unable to settle his troubled mind, Mikhail put down the letter. He picked up another document, but when he realized none of it was registering, he tossed it carelessly onto the desk.

In truth, this wasn’t the only matter troubling him.

‘There’s the coachman too.’

Yesterday, he instructed Natasha to tell Anastasia that the coachman came looking for her. When night fell, Natasha came to report on the task he gave her. Natasha described Anastasia’s reaction in detail.

“Miss Anastasia seemed quite startled. She tried to hide it from me.”

She said Anastasia even forgot to speak and trembled uncontrollably. So Mikhail immediately summoned the coachman. The man appeared extremely nervous at being summoned so suddenly by his master. Mikhail ordered him to explain what he intended to ask Anastasia. Watching Mikhail’s expression closely, he began to speak.

“There was one of the Count’s possessions that we couldn’t find when he died. We had to leave the estate in a hurry at the time, so we left without properly searching the forest and hunting grounds…. Then I heard that Miss Anastasia often wandered through the forest while we were gone, so I thought perhaps….”

“One of his possessions?”

“It’s true! You can ask Miss Elizabeth. She’ll know!”

When Mikhail narrowed his eyes, the coachman answered in a fluster. He seemed bewildered, but didn’t appear clever enough to devise a separate lie. Mikhail told him that he would ask Anastasia himself and sent the coachman away.

‘It’s nothing important.’

He merely intended to ask whether she saw an object, so why was Anastasia so frightened?

Anastasia’s shadow kept falling over the matters involving Edward and the late Count. Perhaps that was why Mikhail considered abandoning his investigation into the late Count. It was something he began looking into out of personal curiosity. Even if the truth came to light, there would be no real benefit beyond the remaining members of the Lauderdale family being disgraced. Even if he stopped here, he had nothing in particular to lose aside from Yuri whining about why he went through all that damned trouble.

Mikhail decided to dismiss the former coachmen he hired temporarily as soon as the coachmen receiving treatment returned.

Then his gaze shifted to the letter from the butler.

Giving up halfway through something that once caught his interest. In the past, it would’ve been unthinkable. But if his curiosity was causing Anastasia pain, he was fully willing to set aside his own wishes.

She looked beautiful both when she smiled and when she cried, but those were expressions she was supposed to show because of him. It was extremely displeasing when others drew emotions out of Anastasia.

Scanning the letter with his eyes, Mikhail rose from his seat.

‘I should take her with me.’

Her green eyes sparkled with delight whenever he spoke about Sokolov, the capital, and Ils. They were also eyes he hadn’t seen for the past several weeks.

‘We can leave sometime next week.’

The preparations in Sokolov were complete, so all that remained was to settle the final matters at Edenhurst and depart. Mikhail left the room and headed toward the annex.

He was still reluctant to show her to others. But that was merely an unsightly admission that he lacked confidence in himself. Once he took Anastasia to Sokolov, she would realize it too. That no one else would ever treat her better than he did. Materially or physically.

Once he made up his mind, his steps felt light. As he quickly descended the stairs, thinking that from tonight onward he would once again fall asleep holding her, he saw Ilya walking through the garden.

‘I was thinking of throwing him out.’

Perhaps he should leave him alone so he could at least watch them depart.

Mikhail watched Ilya recede into the distance with a sneer curling at the corners of his mouth. But Mikhail’s expression soon hardened. Ilya, who seemed to be taking a walk through the garden, hurried into the forest. Among the people of the estate, the one who entered the forest was….

The next moment, Mikhail swiftly descended the stairs and stepped into the garden. In the distance, he could see the forest where Ilya disappeared.

***

Anastasia looked at the red sky stained by the setting sun. It was a clear summer sky as always, so today too, the sky was dyed in beautiful colors. Even so, she trembled for a moment at the color of the sky, which looked exceptionally red today.

A long time passed since she emerged from the forest, yet Anastasia couldn’t enter the estate and continued wandering around a deserted corner of the garden. The cries of the birds gathering in the zelkova trees to prepare for the night were loud. Even sounds she would normally have enjoyed only made Anastasia’s mind more confused now.

‘Will it be all right?’

Anastasia gave a bitter smile at her own thought.

Several hours earlier, Anastasia met Ilya in the forest. And she ended up asking him if he could help her if she ran away from here.

Ilya was overjoyed and said that if she made up her mind, he would finish the preparations immediately. As he spoke, he repeatedly maligned Mikhail. Listening to the flood of insults directed at Mikhail only made Anastasia’s heart grow heavier. Ilya thought she was afraid of Mikhail and was fleeing his unjust and humiliating treatment.

‘That’s not it.’

It was true that she intended to run away from Mikhail. But it wasn’t because of what he did. Mikhail’s actions might have caused Anastasia sorrow, but they couldn’t wound her. Hadn’t she endured things far more horrible and disgusting than that? What Anastasia feared was something else.

‘If even Mikhail looks at me that way… I….’

Unlike the others, Mikhail never once looked at her with contempt or pity from the very beginning. Even Ilya, who showed goodwill and offered to help her, sometimes looked at her with pity, yet Mikhail never once looked that way at her, someone so far beneath him that there was no comparison.

Thinking about it, that seemed to be why she was drawn to Mikhail. Because he was someone who didn’t feel superior to her. What would happen if he learned about what happened between her and Edward?

Anastasia remembered the gazes people directed at her. Disgust. Would Mikhail begin looking at her that way too?

She couldn’t endure that. Rather than see that gaze, it would be better for her to disappear somewhere far away.

Even after the sunset deepened and the evening star finally rose, Anastasia couldn’t return to the mansion. Then she heard Natasha and the other maids calling for her.

“Miss!”

After finding Anastasia, Natasha hurried over and wrapped a summer shawl around her. Only then did Anastasia realize that the cool chill surrounded her, and she clutched the shawl.

“Why are you here? No, more importantly….”

Natasha rubbed Anastasia’s cold hands, then spoke with a troubled expression, “I think you should hurry back to the annex. Lord Mikhail is waiting for you.”

“Mikhail is…?”

Her heart sank again. Why? Did he already know? That couldn’t be. But if someone told him….

When Anastasia stood frozen in terror, Natasha seemed frustrated and took her hand, pulling her along. Stiff as a wooden doll, Anastasia was practically dragged to the annex with the maids. After bringing Anastasia to the corridor leading to her room, the maids hesitated and withdrew. Only Natasha remained and spoke to Anastasia.

“Please go inside. He’s been waiting for a long time.”

There was fear in Natasha’s voice. Why on earth was everyone behaving like this? Anastasia opened the door with a trembling hand. A strong smell of liquor immediately washed over her.

“…Mikhail?”

Mikhail was sitting on the sofa. On the table before him were bottles of the liquor whose strong, strange smell once made her frown even when she merely smelled it. Every bottle was completely empty. Mikhail clearly drank all of them.

“You’re here.”

Mikhail glanced at Anastasia as she entered, then drained the liquor in the glass he held in one gulp. Anastasia hesitated as she looked at him. She never saw Mikhail like this before.

Silence filled the room for a moment. She thought he might shout the instant he saw her that she was a criminal complicit in murder, but he showed no sign of doing so.

‘Then… why…?’

Was there some other problem? Come to think of it, when she asked through Natasha why he didn’t come yesterday, she replied that he was busy with work and told her to go to sleep first. Was there some problem with his business? Anastasia approached him worriedly, and Mikhail suddenly seized her wrist.

“…!”

Mikhail looked at Anastasia as she flinched in surprise. Her hair was disheveled by the wind, showing how long she was outside. And though she didn’t seem to notice it yet, the dark grass stains on the hem of her white clothes also entered his sight.

Still gripping her wrist, Mikhail asked, “Where have you been?”