Chapter 14 – Part 3

“Have you been escorting me since I left the Edith estate?”

The knights exchanged puzzled looks before one cautiously answered.

“We arrived here two hours ago and have been waiting for you, Lady Kristin. If we had gone to the Edith estate, we might have missed you, and Lady Beatrice Charlotte instructed us to guard you from here.”

“Oh, I see.”

Then who was in the carriage that had been following them?

Kristin couldn’t help but be concerned, even though she didn’t want to be. She smiled at the knights watching her.

“I must have been mistaken. You don’t need to worry about it anymore. If I need your help, I’ll call you. Thank you.”

“Yes, Your Ladyship.”

The knights responded, adjusting their postures and keeping a lookout ahead.

The thick fog was slowly beginning to lift.

As Kristin looked around, she noticed someone.

‘That person…’

It was a middle-aged man with a long, dark face, just as Lady Beatrice Charlotte had described. He was anxiously searching for something among the graves.

Kristin walked towards him, trying to appear as calm as possible. Only when she stood beside him did she realize which grave he was standing in front of.

It was Elesia Edith’s.

Finn Declan was standing in front of her mother’s tombstone.

Finn Declan likely didn’t know that Kristin was the daughter of Elesia, his patient. She had never encountered him, not even once, during her childhood.

Her father had sought out famous doctors within the Union Empire after her mother’s condition worsened, but that wasn’t the whole truth.

If the symptoms of poisoning were revealed, everything would be exposed, so he couldn’t consult other doctors.

However, foolishly, young Kristin had no choice but to believe her father’s words.

For months, she had cared for her mother in the mansion without being able to eat or drink properly, which made it seem plausible.

But her father must have had no choice.

If he entrusted his wife to someone else, whether a servant or anyone else, they would surely find it strange at least once.

Therefore, he couldn’t leave her mother in the care of others, and around that time, he had called Rose Veronica to the mansion as a dedicated caregiver.

Kristin now understands the full extent of the situation. She was angry at herself for not realizing it sooner and for not being suspicious from the beginning.

“Are you looking for someone?” Kristin asked Finn Declan with courage.

Finn Declan pushed up his glasses, which kept sliding down his nose and answered with a trembling voice.

“How do you know that? Yes, I am.”

After saying that, Finn Declan stared silently at her mother’s tomb before speaking to Kristin again.

“Are you here to see someone too?”

“Yes. I’m here to see this person.”

“This person?”

Finn Declan looked at Kristin and Elesia’s tombstone and seemed to realize something, stepping back cautiously.

He had never seen Elesia’s daughter before, but Elesia had always told him:

“I must survive. I can’t leave my poor Kristin alone. Please, make me well. I have to live.”

Elesia’s hair was a rare red color in the empire, and the young lady standing before him had the same red hair. Finn Declan, being quick-witted, looked at Kristin and spoke with certainty.

“Are you related to her? Are you her child?”

“You guessed right.”

Kristin nodded slowly in response to Finn Declan’s words. There was no longer any reason to hide.

When she had initially planned this meeting, Kristin wanted to grab him by the collar. If this doctor had revealed everything back then—if he had uncovered the truth before her mother died rather than six years later—she wouldn’t have harbored such resentment. From his perspective, there was nothing he could do for her deceased mother now.

“I see. I am sorry. I was the doctor who treated your mother six years ago. I apologize for not being able to save her.”Kristin didn’t respond to his words. Despite the cold weather, Finn Declan took out a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat dripping from his forehead and nervously watched Kristin.

He glanced around her mother’s grave, then started muttering to himself as if searching for something.

“It’s strange. They should have shown up by now. Who on earth published my obituary in the newspaper? I just don’t understand.”

Hearing his words drift by, Kristin spoke to him in a cold voice.

“Do you remember Viscount Vernon?”

At the mention of Viscount Vernon, Finn Declan froze on the spot.

His lips trembled uncontrollably, unable to answer properly. The tremor spread from his lips to his entire body. The buttoned collar seemed to be suffocating him, and he began to unbutton it to breathe more easily. After undoing the first button, then the second, he finally took a deep breath and looked at Kristin.

“Did he publish the obituary to meet me? Could it be that he already knows about my meeting with Lady Beatrice Charlotte? ”

Finn Declan’s eyes were half-closed as if he had lost his mind. Kristin pulled out his handwritten letter and her mother’s medical records from her bag and showed them to him.

“Why are you trembling so much? Did my father give you any orders? And did you write this medical record yourself?”

“It’s not that… The medical record and the letter… That is…”

Finn Declan could no longer speak. Instead, overwhelmed with guilt for failing to save his patient and letting her die, he began to cry. Wiping his tears with the sleeve of his jacket, he continued.

“Am I… supposed to leave the Union Empire now?”

“That won’t happen.”

At that moment, Kristin couldn’t help but be surprised by the voice coming from behind her.

Raphael was standing there with his aide and dozens of knights.

The Hudson Mausoleum was a small space reserved for nobles, and the presence of Raphael, his secretary, and the knights filled the space.

“W-why are you here, Your Grace?”

“Didn’t you know? It was my carriage that was following you, Kristin.”

“What… what will happen to me?”

Finn Declan’s hands shook violently at Raphael’s appearance.

“Tell me everything my father and stepmother said and did to you. I need to know the whole truth. I found out about the suspicious circumstances surrounding my mother’s death from the letter you sent to Lady Beatrice Charlotte. That’s why I published the obituary to meet you.”

Kristin looked at Raphael, who responded with a casual expression.

“Well, I guess you’re curious how I knew to come here. I was trying to meet you after coming back from Lake Matheo. Then I happened to see you entering the Jamir Newspaper, and I checked what you were here for as soon as you came out.”

This meant that he had been following her all along. Kristin shifted her gaze from Finn Declan to Raphael, who smiled slightly as he spoke.

“I wanted to be there in case you needed help. I couldn’t let you be taken by Marquis Winston again.”

“I can handle things on my own. You didn’t need to follow me for something I could do myself, Your Grace.”

But Raphael seemed not to hear Kristin’s words. Sighing briefly, Kristin turned her attention back to Finn Declan.

“Regardless, tell me everything about the events of six years ago involving my father and stepmother.”

“If I reveal everything, will you forgive me? ”

Kristin hesitated at the mention of forgiveness. She hadn’t come here to forgive him for his mistakes. He had to pay for his crimes. Regardless of any threats he might have received, he trampled on his life to protect himself. If he had at least warned her mother, she might not have died that way. Thinking of this, Kristin replied in a low voice.

“You shouldn’t have done it in the first place if you wanted forgiveness from me.”

Finn Declan kneeled in despair, tears streaming down his face. But Kristin didn’t see him; all she could see was her mother’s tombstone, and it strengthened her resolve.

“I don’t know if my mother would forgive you, but I won’t.”

At her words, Finn Declan, looking resigned, nodded.

“Understood. I will tell you everything that happened at my hospital six years ago.”

Finn Declan pulled out an old notebook from his jacket and handed it to Kristin.

“This notebook contains additional notes I wrote while treating the Viscountess, beyond the official medical records. Usually, all patient information is written in the medical record. However, I retrieved Viscountess Elesia’s medical records before my hospital was shut down. If someone had seen those records, it would have caused a major scandal within the Empire.”

Kristin was both astonished and infuriated. So, he had not reflected on his patient’s death but had hidden the truth out of fear for his safety.

A true doctor should have taken responsibility instead of covering up the death. However, Kristin could also understand his actions to some extent.

In the Empire, doctors were neither nobles nor commoners but belonged to a class that hovered around those ranks.

Nobles often looked down on doctors, considering them dirty for examining bodies with their tools.

They believed that doctors, who touched wounded bodies and were close to patients suffering from food poisoning and persistent coughs, could never be clean, leading them to dislike and dismiss physicians.

For this reason, nobles with some wealth often hired personal physicians, like Raphael, to treat only their family members, paying them a salary.

Additionally, doctors had to bear immense responsibility in the event of medical accidents.

Since most doctors couldn’t afford compensation for nobles if a patient died due to their negligence, they would lose their medical license, their only means of livelihood. This risked their entire livelihood.

If a doctor lost their license after living their entire life as a physician, they would have to live as commoners, a life they detested. To avoid this, they would falsify medical records, claiming that patients died from infectious diseases rather than their negligence.

Because of this, there was a time when infectious diseases were rampant in the Union Empire, and Kristin’s mother, Elesia, who had developed a rash along with a cough, was diagnosed with a simple infectious disease.

At the time, such occurrences were common, so Kristin had no choice but to believe her father’s words and the doctor’s diagnosis without suspicion. Looking back now, she realizes there might have been other victims besides her mother.

“Is there any hidden truth besides my mother’s death? When the Empire had an outbreak of an infectious disease, did the doctors cover up something about those who died then?” Kristin asked Finn Declan.