Chapter 39 – Such a Sweet Spoil of War

Sasha stood hesitating in front of the gate of Hawthorn Mansion, unable to go in.

<But how could Mr. Robert? He doesn’t even work at the academy.>

Grandma Rollo stared straight at Sasha and said,

<Wouldn’t the fastest way be to ask the man himself directly?>

Struck right in the center, Sasha quietly closed her mouth. Her summer cold had long since gone away, but even after that it had been a long time since she had avoided coming to Hawthorn Mansion.

‘Would he be home now?’

It was a gate she had used to come and go through without hesitation until recently, but today of all days she hesitated. If she ran into that man, she did not know what she should say. To think she had reached the point of resenting how quickly her cold had gone away. Sasha barely swallowed the sigh rising from deep inside.

Just then, not far away, came the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. There was also a sound like someone holding back a laugh. Sasha jerked her head up. In the dazzling sunlight, Mr. Robert appeared.

“What are you doing standing there?”

At his casual question, Sasha blinked both eyes. She was the one who wanted to ask that. Since when had he been up on a ladder? Had he seen everything over the wall while she stood there agonizing, unable to go in through the gate? In an instant, the back of her neck flushed bright red.

“Is the gate locked? I gave you a key, didn’t I.”

Robert, gazing slowly at the scene as if savoring it, said it calmly. As though what had happened that day at the swimming pool had been nothing at all. No, as though such a thing had never happened in the first place. Sasha was thrown into confusion by the way he acted as if there had never been anything between them. Was that much skinship really nothing to people from Laurent? If so, was it provincial of her to dwell on it one by one like this.

“And what are you doing up there?”

Sasha forced herself to ask. Robert, looking down for quite a while at the woman ripened bright red below him, shrugged.

“I’m trying to pick a peach.”

At the very top of the peach tree growing close to the mansion wall hung fruit ripened to a luscious red. The large man standing on the ladder gripped a long pole and shook the branches hard. He did not look particularly skilled at it, perhaps because he had little experience doing this sort of thing. Watching him, Sasha asked carefully,

“Couldn’t you just eat the ones growing lower down on the tree?”

“I want the ones up top.”

The man, who did not seem the sort, turned out to be stubborn over strange things. He gave instructions to Sasha, who stood outside the wall.

“Go over there. If I knock it down, do you think you can catch it with your skirt?”

“I’ll try.”

Sasha nodded at once and ran beneath the overhanging branches of the peach tree, quickly spreading out her skirt. As the long pole mercilessly shook the branch, before long one fist-sized peach from the very top fell into Sasha’s skirt.

In the fading fullness of summer, the fruit that had ripened deliciously under the sunlight at the top of the tree gave off a sweet scent as if luring bees. Holding the peach, its pretty pink and yellow colors mingled together, Sasha studied it closely. When she blew softly on the dirt clinging near the stem, the downy fuzz flew off with it. White fuzz, floating into the air and shining silver. Watching the sight, the tip of her nose began to tingle as though she might sneeze.

“Throw it here.”

Calling from the ladder, Robert deftly caught the peach Sasha threw. Then he took out a folding knife from his pocket, split their spoil cleanly in half without hesitation, and tossed it back down. Sasha received half the peach before she quite knew what was happening.

She gripped it tightly for fear of dropping it, and juice ran from the bruised flesh and sticky down over her wrist. The thin skin folding inward. The soft flesh beneath it. From the peach, now exposing its inside, rose a thick sweet smell incomparable to before.

“You……”

Frowning, Robert jumped down from over the wall just like that. Watching him stride toward her, Sasha suddenly felt as though something were running from her nose and reflexively held up her palm. A vivid red. Sasha stared blankly at the drops of blood that had fallen into her hand.

“Aren’t you still not fully recovered? Just how badly did that summer cold hit you?”

He muttered in displeasure, and yet without hesitation he wiped away her nosebleed with his sleeve. The red stain left on the white shirt looked like a sin.

‘Why is he doing this much for me? Why for me……’

Her head held in a large hand, Sasha lowered her chin before she even had a chance to resist and thought while her nose bled. She raised her head when Robert’s hand fell from the back of it for a moment, and their eyes met.

“Keep your head lowered a little. So it doesn’t go into your airway.”

Ah, that was the face of a man thoroughly angry. One seeped through with uneasy concern and worry. And hidden furthest behind it, a strange heat……. The heat of this summer, impossible to conceal, like the sweet scent of the overripe peach still in her hand.

This person likes me.

Sasha’s realization came like a flash. Her dreadful cold had certainly already healed, and yet in that moment she felt fever rise. An unexplainable heat boiled all the way to the top of her head. Her cheeks burned as if all the blood in her body had rushed into her face.

And I also…… like this person.

Like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place, all her doubts until now unraveled. The days she had waited for the man who did not come even when summer arrived. The nights after he did come, when she lay awake thinking of him. The bewildering jealousy she had felt seeing him with another woman. All those strange, confusing feelings tangled like a knot that would never come undone, the identity of those moments she had not dared name.

“Come inside.”

Robert caught hold of her slender wrist and tried to lead her in through the gate, but Sasha flinched. He paused, then slowly withdrew his hand. His roughened voice sank low and heavy.

“I won’t touch you. So at least come in until the bleeding stops.”

The fallen half of the peach rolled over the green grass. Sasha glanced at it with visible reluctance before slowly taking her eyes away. And then one step. That one step she had not been able to take all morning while agonizing over it. She finally took it and stepped through the gate of Hawthorn Mansion. It was one sweltering summer day when the flushed fruit peeking over the mansion wall carried their ripened scent on the muggy wind.

* * *

In the mirror hanging on the wall was reflected the image of Sasha sitting neatly on a brown leather sofa. Watching her half-lost expression, Robert clicked his tongue. If it was going to be like this, he should have just sent her back home. He should not have teased her for no reason. No, perhaps he should go back even further and say he should have warned her sooner not to step on the broken faucet by the pool.

At the memory that rose without warning, his back teeth gently clenched together. Releasing the tension in his jaw, he got up with the first-aid box he had originally meant to bring.

“Take your hand away.”

Sasha obediently removed the hand that had been covering her nose. Robert gripped her small chin as gently as he could and examined her face. Fortunately, the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

While he wiped her dirty face clean with a wet cloth dampened from the kettle, those big eyes, as if she might burst into tears at any moment, were looking at him. In those pale green eyes shining transparently, he found traces of the little girl who had once freely handed him summer fruit.

“There’s something I want to ask. Was it you who helped me receive the rest of the money from the sale of my painting?”

Robert stared at the woman whose tension was obvious, then opened his mouth.

“The compensation you said you received was absurdly low compared to the amount I generally know. I simply have an acquaintance at the Royal Academy of Arts, so when I went to Laurent this time, I asked about it.”

The instant she heard those words, Sasha’s face brightened. Such a transparent reaction. Robert let out a faint laugh. It was unclear whether she was happy because she had been helped, or because it was he who had helped her.

“Thank you for helping me. There was somewhere we urgently needed money, and we were able to take care of it with the money the academy sent.”

“It’s not something you need to thank me for. It was money you should have received in the first place.”

“No. Even so, thanks to you, Mr. Robert, I received money I might otherwise have lived my whole life never knowing about. And thanks to you, I also learned the true value of my painting.”

Sasha said it firmly. Even if he told her she did not need to, it seemed she would never accept that. Instead of making a meaningless objection, Robert only smiled silently. Sasha, perhaps thinking it a reply to her thanks, smiled shyly back at him.

Innocence, if taken too far, is no virtue. If Sasha went around scattering gratitude like this, then in Laurent, filled with swindlers who were forever looking to live off others, and curious busybodies who swarmed like schools of piranhas ready to tear into some bit of gossip with delight, she would certainly become a target.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she had already been plucked once. Sasha had believed that the painting she submitted to the Royal Academy of Arts had sold for a pittance. That was partly because of one small problem Robert had failed to consider at the time. He had not anticipated that if he did not reveal his identity to the painter, the employee in charge of paying the compensation would run the numbers as he pleased.

To that academy employee, the amount the Duke of Guienne had paid for a child’s painting was absurdly high, and since the painter had no way of contacting the Duke anyway, he had pocketed the difference in the middle. Thus, the amount Sasha received had been only an extremely small part of what Robert had paid. When Robert learned that fact, he corrected the wrongdoing, and only after eight years did Sasha receive the rightful price of her painting. It seemed as though she ought to feel at least a little wronged, but instead her face only looked happy simply because she had finally received the money.

This woman seemed as though she needed to become a little more shrewd. Unlike Robert’s thoughts, Sasha, not knowing what he was thinking, sat on the sofa and only smiled shyly. Seeing her, Robert lifted a brow. It had not been mere coincidence that he found Sasha Vinoche and her friend at the Laurent police station.

“As a token of thanks, Grandma Rollo says she would like to invite you to dinner tomorrow evening, Mr. Robert. Actually, I came today to tell you that.”

Ah. That cool-headed old lady who believed that kindness without compensation was impossible. And the innocent granddaughter who had grown up flourishing under her. Amused, Robert readily accepted the invitation.