Chapter 44

Just before the article that would have made Carlisle out to be a violent husband was about to be published, everything he had been preparing had to be scrapped because of the article that had already appeared in the press. Unless he knew for certain whether Yvonne’s change of heart was real, it was all too easy for things to turn into a counterattack against him if he moved wrongly.

“I got played like an idiot.”

At the filthy mood he had not felt in a long time, all that came out, absurdly enough, was a hollow laugh.

“Why are you drinking in broad daylight. I get how you feel, but take it easy. Do you want to add drunkard to the rumors that you’re a wastrel?”

Ethan lifted only his eyes slightly and looked at the owner of the meddling voice. It was Hugo Freud.

Though Ethan normally welcomed seeing Hugo, a fellow military academy alumnus and friend, right now he was not particularly pleased to see him, since Hugo was also close to Carlisle.

“You know how I feel? Then I suppose you know I’m in a filthy mood.”

At the crooked reply, Hugo briefly asked the acquaintances waiting behind him for their understanding, then sat down on the sofa.

Ethan raised one brow.

“Did Carlisle tell you to come? To see how ridiculous I look?”

“What are you talking about. I found out from the paper too. I get that you want to vent, but enough.”

Hugo, denying it as if jumping up in protest, shook his head as though wondering why he had even bothered to come.

Really now. The crime was simply being their fellow alumnus.

If once they had been ordinary close friends, now two old friends who had recently grown sensitive in similar ways were both showing distrust toward him. It felt a little unfair to be treated by both sides like a spy sent to snoop on the other, but since he knew the two of them spoke like that only on the surface and felt differently inside, he decided to let it go.

Hugo, thinking it was one unexpected similarity between his two friends that both were far removed from honesty, clicked his tongue at the sight of the table already crowded with empty bottles.

“Have a drink.”

Ethan poured a whiskey glass generously, as full of his own feeling as could be, and handed it to the friend who smiled guilelessly even at such a teasing offer.

“I’ve told you again and again since our student days, but I’m not on either side. You’re both dear friends to me. So there’s no need to act like this even in front of me.”

Hugo generally got along well with most of their fellow alumni. The very fact that he maintained smooth friendships with two men of utterly different personalities all but testified to his good character. But even Hugo sometimes found it burdensome dealing with two friends who were hostile toward each other.

After all, he was the only one who knew that the relationship between the two men, publicly known as friends, was in fact quite bad.

Still, unlike taciturn Carlisle, Ethan’s lighter manner often invited misunderstanding from others, and that made Hugo feel a little sorry for him.

“How long are you two going to keep this up. The two of you should settle that twisted grudge as soon as possible.”

“Well. I’m not the kind of person who pretends loftily as if no such grudge exists and then stabs someone in the back.”

At Hugo’s usual large-hearted advice, unchanged as ever, Ethan felt almost touched and extended his own glass. Hugo clinked his against it, drained about half, and asked,

“Ethan, you don’t need to be this upset. Honestly, I know you weren’t serious about the Duchess.”

At Hugo’s confidence that it was obvious without even looking, Ethan let out a crooked laugh.

“You too are saying the same thing. Why. Do you think I’m incapable of being sincere?”

For an instant Hugo’s eyes widened, thinking he meant it, but then he realized he had been fooled again and shook his head.

“You’re starting to sound like Carlisle, if nothing else.”

Tsk. Clicking his tongue, Hugo studied Ethan’s expression, always particularly hard to read. Naturally, he felt sure that Ethan, who favored light romances, could not possibly have been serious about the Duchess he had seen for only a few weeks, and yet looking at him like this, he could not quite get a grasp on it.

After all, Ethan usually looked pleased when he broke up with a woman.

“Even if you were serious, give it up. I don’t know all the details, but it isn’t right to interfere with a married couple who’ve decided to try again.”

“What nonsense about what’s right. If such a thing truly existed, the world wouldn’t need wars and would already be running peacefully.”

Chuckling, Ethan grabbed the neck of the whiskey bottle, poured until his own glass overflowed, and brought it to his mouth.

“There’s no way something like what’s right could exist between Carlisle and me. That bastard acted indifferent the entire time even when his wife said she wanted a divorce, but the moment he heard I was approaching Miss Yvonne, he moved. That bastard who’s stiff as iron.”

“Well, that….”

Hugo dragged out his answer, because he too could not completely rule out that possibility. Then Ethan straightened his back, rested both arms on his knees, and leaned his upper body forward.

“That bastard just didn’t like me fooling around with the woman who used to be his wife. Doesn’t it show, with him coming all the way here to see me?”

“Carlisle came all the way here in person to see you?”

Good God. 

Hugo, who had known nothing at all about that, gaped open-mouthed. Knowing Carlisle’s temperament, he would never have imagined such a thing possible.

Up until now, Carlisle had responded with nothing but indifference no matter how much Ethan had scratched at his nerves, so for him to deliberately come all the way here to see Ethan must mean that even his strong patience had finally given out.

Continuing that line of thought, Hugo shook his head as though he had a headache.

“Honestly, I don’t know what’s what anymore. Fine, handle it yourselves. Have you two idiots ever once listened to me.”

Hugo, who for a brief moment had felt sympathy for Ethan, rose to his feet as if it had been a pointless thing to do. At that, Ethan looked toward the manager standing by the bar and snapped his fingers.

“It’ll be noisy here with all the fools who still haven’t sobered up. If you’re going to have an important conversation, go to the Royal Room upstairs.”

“Thanks. Sober up a bit and contact me.”

Hugo waved a hand at Ethan, who, though blunt, was still being considerate as a friend, and then left with his acquaintances.

After confirming that Hugo’s group had gone upstairs under the manager’s guidance, Ethan set down his glass. Then a woman with long brown hair approached and naturally sat beside him.

“No matter how I look at it, I still can’t believe you and that diligent man are friends.”

Once Hugo had completely disappeared from view, Trisha smiled brightly and popped one of the cheese balls served as snacks into her mouth. At the motion, the full br*asts made prominent by the tightly cinched waist of her dress swayed alluringly.

At that sight, several men in the distance whistled, and Trisha laughed and raised a hand lightly to her lips, then made a little gesture as if blowing them a kiss.

“Come on, is there really a single one among those men who’d believe that spying suits you better than singing?”

Watching the men giggle over a single blown kiss with contemptuous eyes, Ethan turned his gaze to Trisha.

Called the Queen of Art Song in Aerondo and gaining popularity rivaling even the Crown Prince, she curved the corners of her eyes seductively.

A singer and dancer at Avandonasser, she was an employee who had contributed enormously to the great success of this club with her songs sung in a lovely voice like birdsong and her high-level sensual dancing. Of course, Ethan had discovered her for a different purpose, but her abilities in many areas were quite satisfactory.

“Who exactly is it that benefits from my help.”

Pouting her lips, Trisha kept her eyes on the customers while moving only her lips quietly.

“It seems the company run by the Freud family is taking part in railway construction in the Kingdom of Dolstino this time. It looks like that overly nice man from earlier is supposed to lead it.”

“No wonder I saw a Dolstino man.”

Ethan recalled the face of someone among the acquaintances who had been waiting for Hugo and nodded.

By now, his expression, which only moments ago had looked like that of a useless idler drinking without a care, had turned serious.

The Freud family’s principal business was exports using ore from the mountain range in their territory. All the railroads laid across Windfog’s land had been done by their family.

Hugo, who had become chief director in place of the previous head who retired from active affairs last year, was managing things surprisingly well for a businessman, doing so not with coldness but with a gentle temperament.

Still, because of that good nature, he was also known for being unable to refuse unreasonable requests from the royal family.

“It must be the royal family’s order. Dolstino is an ally of Windfog. More importantly, did you look into that?”

“I did, but it’s not much different from what the manager reported last time. There’s simply no information about what she did before that.”

“You mean there are no records?”

“Yeah. There’s no record of that woman before she became Yvonne Sellus. No birthplace, no place where she spent her childhood. No one who knows her. Even the maids who had worked at the Earl’s residence and later quit said they never paid much attention to the child who had suddenly appeared. Apparently Countess Denise would throw a near fit if anyone showed her even a little kindness.”

Trisha, continuing her report, let out a small laugh.

“That so-called refined Countess known in society? It was all an act. Judging only by that, I almost think the Countess knew who the real mother was, but there’s still no more information moving from that side.”

“So the Earl thoroughly erased her past.”

Ethan tilted his head, stroking his chin.

After learning what he could about the Duchess, he had sent people once more and found out that she was not in fact the biological child of the Countess. Just in case, he had ordered them to dig into her earlier past as well, but the answer that came back was that no information could be found anywhere.

And so Ethan had separately instructed Trisha, who came from a background similar to Yvonne’s as an illegitimate child, to look into it.

Faced again with a disappointing result, Ethan clicked his tongue softly against his lips.

“I was curious why he’d go so far as to pass her off as his true daughter just to push her into the Polshared family, but do I have no choice except to ask her myself?”

“More importantly, Chief, the rumor’s everywhere that you got cast aside by the Duchess, so what’s the point of digging into this? Shouldn’t you be dealing first with the blow to your great reputation?”