The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 62

Where Sheila entered was the Master’s, more precisely, the guildmaster’s office.

“Master, it’s been a while.”

Sheila greeted the guildmaster sitting at the desk warmly. The guildmaster was a man named “Bill,” whether that was his real name or not.

“Sheila.”

Bill also replied cheerfully to Sheila’s friendly greeting.

Even though she only saw him once every half year at most, Bill was always the same.

Bill, who was about ten years older than Sheila, was only around thirty at most now.

Back then, why did he look so much like an old man….

Well, to seventeen-year-old Sheila at the time, a man in his late twenties was all an old man anyway.

She only called an old man an old man, but the response she got back was downright cold.

“What do you mean, old man, you little brat. Call me Master.”

He told her not to call him an old man, but then what was “little brat” supposed to be?

“I’m not a little brat either, I’m Sheila!”

After sorting out forms of address that first, no, second day they met, their relationship had stayed peaceful.

“You’re later than usual,” Bill said, tapping the desk with his fingertips. His sharp gaze swept over Sheila’s outfit.

“What’s with those clothes? Seeing you wear new clothes, I guess you really do live long enough to see anything.”

Sheila said, “Come on, do you take me for some kind of penny-pincher? I spend when it’s time to spend.”

Well, she didn’t buy them with her own hands, but since she received them in return after Molly spent a huge amount on her, it was basically the same.

At Sheila’s retort, Jerry, who was beside her, cut in, “You?”

The name Jerry was also hard to tell whether it was real or fake, but it suited his nimble movements perfectly.

When they first met, Jerry was about the same height as Sheila, but at some point, he had shot up, though that particular nimbleness of his stayed the same. The way he stuck his nose in annoyingly and acted cheeky stayed the same too.

Sheila clenched her teeth and asked with her eyes curved into crescents, “You’re still not leaving?”

“Why would I leave? I’m going to stay here.”

At Jerry’s cheekiness, Sheila smiled and curled her hand into a fist. Just then, Bill slapped a ledger down and spoke,

“Money?”

Sheila turned her gaze to Bill and took out a money pouch from her inner pocket.

“Here. Fifty solids.”

Bill swept his sharp eyes over Sheila’s money pouch that she set down boldly. Then he asked, “Where’d you get it?”

At the voice thick with suspicion, Sheila bristled.

“What did you say?”

To be honest, Bill’s reaction wasn’t something she couldn’t understand.

After getting her wages and sending money to her family home, all she had left was a single solid. Even adding the money from side work, it took a full six months to make twenty solids.

To save up that money, Sheila couldn’t even buy new clothes, let alone freely buy a piece of bread at the market.

And the person who knew that situation better than anyone was Bill.

“Tell me properly. I don’t handle suspicious money.”

Since Sheila, who used to barely scrape together twenty solids in six months, suddenly showed up with fifty solids all at once, there was no way he wouldn’t say something.

In fact, before coming here, Sheila had agonized. Whether she should bring only the twenty solids she’d saved from side work, or whether she should bring everything, including the money she received for being a whipping maid.

Just like from the start, the money she earned from getting whipped didn’t feel like her money. And after learning she would even have to pay a penalty fee if she didn’t safely complete the contract period, it felt even more so.

Still, her agonizing didn’t last long.

‘So, are you going to get whipped to your heart’s content and then quit?’

Sheila asked herself.

In Sheila’s dictionary, handing back money that had already gone into her pocket was something that could never happen.

If she entrusted the money like this, the distracting thoughts would probably disappear too.

In the end, bringing the money was Sheila’s desperate last stand to grit her teeth and endure until the very end.

Anyway, taking the whipping in place of the young lady was still part of a maid’s work, and it wasn’t anything suspicious like the Master was imagining. The fact that the whipping had taken an unpredictable turn was something that came afterward.

Thinking it was ridiculous that people who made a living handling shady requests claimed they didn’t deal with suspicious money, Sheila snorted inwardly.

“You were thinking that we’re the ones doing suspicious things but we’re being damn picky about it, weren’t you?” Bill said, reading Sheila’s expression.

“No…, I wasn’t!”

Sheila hurriedly denied it.

Seeing how both Cedric and Bill read her thoughts so easily, the problem clearly lay in her face.

Seeing Sheila’s intense reaction, Bill was convinced his guess was right and let out a short laugh.

“Because we do suspicious work, we only take clean money. We can’t afford to get tripped up by something stupid,” he said sternly. “You’re the same, aren’t you? Client of an assassin-for-hire?”

***

Cedric headed to the empty attic room.

A maid’s room had no device to lock it from the outside. It had been that way for a very long time.

There was a bolt on the inside, but since Sheila wasn’t there, it was obviously open. From the start, it was a structure that gave no consideration whatsoever to a maid’s privacy.

Cedric entered the empty room boldly, as if he were entering his own.

He closed the door, but didn’t bother fastening the bolt.

There was no way Sheila, who’d gone to her hometown, would be back already, and even if she did see Cedric barging into her room, she wouldn’t be able to say a word in protest.

That was simply the position between a Young Count and a maid.

Without hesitation, Cedric knelt down on one knee and lifted up a loose floorboard.

Soon, a familiar hidden space was revealed.

The first time he’d opened this space was on the day he had called the old doctor to this room.

That day, Sheila, who’d been groaning with a feverish illness, took the medicine the doctor had sent and fell back asleep as if intoxicated.

Cedric sat with his legs crossed on a shabby chair and stared at the sleeping Sheila for a long time. Even after that, instead of returning to his own room, he got up and began exploring the maid’s room.

He didn’t know why it was so interesting to look around a palm-sized room with nothing to see, just because it belonged to a mere maid.

In the old chest of drawers, freshly washed clothes were neatly folded. Those were the clothes Sheila wore every day. And on the worktable, a knitting basket and various tools were tidily arranged.

‘Her thighs must hurt, and yet she sits here and works.’

He couldn’t tell what she was saving all that money for. She didn’t buy food or clothes like the other maids.

Did she have some other expense?

Cedric paced around the small room, making various guesses, occasionally looking at the deeply sleeping maid.

That was when he stepped on the creaking floor.

Come to think of it, this floor was like this.

Without hesitation, Cedric dropped down and lifted the floorboard.

‘She’s not a squirrel, so what is she hiding so much….’

Without realizing it, Cedric lifted the corners of his mouth as he examined the items Sheila had hidden under the floor.

Inside were a pouch containing black leather shoes, the whipping-maid contract he’d had her use, a ledger, accessories, a doll, and other things. And there was also a money pouch she must’ve saved coin by coin.

Cedric opened the fairly heavy money pouch.

‘She must’ve saved it by selling those things.’

Cedric’s gaze went to a bundle in one corner of the room. He’d already opened the bundle she’d tossed aside. Inside were mended accessories and finished knitting pieces.

After finishing his search of the hidden space, Cedric put the items back in place and closed the floor.

Even after that day, though he came and went from the room often, he pretended not to know about this space. Aside from using it to tease the maid by deliberately making the floor creak.

And then, this was the first time he was opening it again.

He had hoped, but as expected, it was gone.

All the money she had worked so hard to save.

Cedric took out the ledger he had only flipped through roughly last time and opened it.

Because this was the only thing that might be a clue.

From what he’d seen last time, it seemed like she had written down the details of the money she’d saved….

「-20」

“…?”

Looking closely, there were things he’d missed last time.

“Minus twenty… minus twenty….”

With no item listed, just the number ‘-20,’ it continued at roughly six-month intervals.

Six months also matched the cycle of when a maid went to her family home.

Even after sending almost all of a maid’s wages to her family home, and that too was written in the ledger, she earned money again to take to her family home?

‘No, should I say she goes home when the money piles up?’

Maid work at the estate paid far better than rural jobs. Cedric was curious why she would send almost all of that wage, then still scrape money together and bring it herself every six months, even if it was simply for saving.

In that moment, the guy who had come to the estate a few days ago claiming to be her hometown younger brother popped into his mind.

Was he really nothing more than a hometown younger brother?

Compared to the younger brother’s delighted face, Sheila’s movements had looked stiff somehow.

It might be too rash to draw a conclusion from only seeing her back.

Cedric closed the ledger with a furrowed brow.

For now, he had no choice but to wait for the person he had sent to tail her through Rufus.

***

“So, tell me honestly. Where did this money come from?” Bill asked again.

“I told you! I earned it by working hard.”

Sheila was repeating the same answer.

Despite Sheila’s words, Bill kept looking at her with suspicious eyes.

“I know your wages, and in the same period you saved almost three times as much money and even bought new clothes?”

Bill tapped the desk with his fingertips again.

Sheila couldn’t tell him honestly and only watched his mood. Seeing that, Bill said, “Jerry, get out.”

“Why!”

Jerry, who had been planning to stick to Sheila’s side all day, immediately protested at being told to leave.

“Go out and get Sheila lunch. She hasn’t eaten, has she?”

Growling.

As if answering Bill’s mention of lunch, a sound demanding food rumbled from Sheila’s stomach.

“What do you want to eat?”

“Um, I… lamb rib steak?”

“Good grief, that mouth of yours! I’ll bring whatever. Eat what you’re given.”

After Jerry slammed the door and left, Bill looked at her like he was telling her to say the real truth now.

“Actually….”

After stalling for a long time, Sheila finally opened her mouth.