The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 63

Bill’s sharp eyes flashed.

“But you really have to make sure only you know about this, Master!”

At Sheila’s warning, Bill ground his teeth and said, “Haah… fine, just say it already.”

“You know, Master, that I attend to Young Lady Judith. This time, her engagement was about to proceed, but fell through. Because of that, the Young Count who returned from studying abroad became the young lady’s new private tutor. As you know, the young lady has no interest in studying at all, and her manners are completely nonexistent, so the engagement fell apart. Because of that, the one who had been in charge of her tutoring before… there was someone, you know, Madam Margaret… anyway, the Young Count dismissed her. And then Young Count Cedric personally became the private tutor….”

Sheila kept circling around her words, and Bill, who had been tapping the desk as if bored, finally exploded.

“Get to the point!”

Startled by Bill’s roar, Sheila squeezed her eyes shut and said, “I became the young lady’s whipping maid!”

For a moment, silence settled over the room.

“Whipping… what?”

Bill asked back, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard even though he’d heard it clearly.

A whipping maid…. Even for a count’s family, how could they dig up a relic from the old days like that…!

“That’s how it turned out. Thanks to that, I get additional pay as a whipping maid too….”

“Hah, seriously….”

Bill let out a hollow laugh as if he was dumbfounded. Then he asked, “How much do you get?”

“Hoo….”

Sheila sighed. Becoming a whipping maid was a little embarrassing, but it wasn’t a secret. The contents of the contract, however, were secret.

But since she’d brought this much money, it was something that could be easily inferred if you calculated it. And Bill was someone she could trust when it came to keeping secrets.

“Fifteen solids a month.”

Sheila answered by averaging two months.

Ten solid was already unbelievable, and saying twenty solid out loud made it feel even more unreal.

Besides, if she stated that large a sum outright, she felt like Bill might start suspecting something strange.

She’d ended up entering the punishment room and doing strange things, but she hadn’t accepted the money for that purpose from the start.

“Are you okay with that?” Bill asked.

“Yes…?”

Sheila was flustered by the unexpectedly gentle question.

“I’m asking if you’re okay with getting whipped.”

Hoo….

“Of course. As you can see.”

Even at Sheila’s brisk answer, Bill was still worried.

Money always came with a price. No matter how much money someone had, there was no one who scattered it for free.

Getting paid a lot meant the work was that hard. And that work happened to be getting whipped.

Facing Bill’s worried expression, Sheila smiled at him.

But Bill’s expression didn’t improve. No one knew better than Bill how stubborn Sheila was.

After signing the contract, for three years straight, Sheila brought exactly twenty solids every six months. Bill also knew that she sent ninety percent of it to her family home, so he knew how difficult that was.

Even the fact that she couldn’t afford to use that hard-earned money for travel expenses and instead walked a four-hour distance to go back.

She looked frail and weak, so where did that resolve even come from….

Bill was one of the very few people who knew all of Sheila’s circumstances. And having circumstances like that didn’t mean anyone could live the way Sheila did.

Seeing Bill still unable to relax his expression, Sheila added, “I told you there’s no need to worry. I’m only going to do it for three months anyway, so you can rest easy.”

“How can I believe that?” Bill asked bluntly.

“I signed a contract.”

“What?”

Rather than being reassured, Bill shouted in an even more worried voice.

“Did you bring it?”

“What are you talking about? The contract?”

Bill jerked his chin at Sheila, who asked calmly.

“No. I kept it safe in my room.”

“Did you forget what I told you about not signing contracts carelessly?”

Bill kept raising his voice.

Should I have emphasized even more every time she came that she shouldn’t write contracts carelessly?

Three years ago, the reason he signed a contract with a seventeen-year-old girl was because Sheila had looked that desperate. Even though it cost the enormous sum of two hundred solids to have someone killed, Sheila didn’t blink.

“People’s hearts change. Sadness and anger get forgotten someday. And you’re saying you’ll spend that much money on something like that?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it. Of course you’d say that right now. Let’s say I sign a contract with you. How can I believe your mind won’t change?”

“If I don’t do that, I’ll be dragged around forever too. I want to end everything and live my own life completely.”

“Haah….”

Bill said, agonizing over Sheila’s answer, “Fine. We’ll sign the contract. But we won’t carry it out until the full two hundred solids are gathered. Understood?”

If you set your mind to it, what kind of world is it where it’s so easy to swindle people you don’t know?

But Bill had no intention of swindling a seventeen-year-old girl. A guild was a place that valued trust to begin with, but Bill wasn’t the kind of person to do something like that by nature.

Before signing the contract, Bill told Sheila, “Think it through, kid. Once you sign the contract, you won’t be able to take it back.”

At Bill’s warning, Sheila looked over the contract again with a serious face.

And that day, the seventeen-year-old Sheila wrote a contract to request a hired killing for two hundred solids.

Three years passed, and Sheila became twenty, but she hadn’t changed much then and now. Despite how she looked, she was bold….

“It’s fine. I heard the explanation properly, and it wasn’t that different from the employment contract I signed at the estate before, you know.”

Bill had also obtained and read the employment contract the count’s servants had signed.

In a large estate like a count’s household, writing employment contracts for all servants was symbolic in itself.

It was a clean, standard contract with nothing harmful to the servants. Bill could tell at a glance that this wasn’t something the count pushed, but the real power of the count’s household, Cedric Calley, who was studying abroad, had driven it.

As for Cedric Calley, the count’s eldest son, Bill had heard about him often since the former count’s time.

Recalling how the former guildmaster died of a stress-related illness after clashing with Count Bernard Calley, Bill had expectations and confidence that the next count would be better than the current one.

Sheila continued, dressing up the truth a little, “The Young Count’s a bit strict and has a weird side, but.”

A little, no, a lot perverted, but.

“I don’t think he’s a bad person.”

He’s not that stingy with money, either.

“That’s not something you can know.”

Bill replied sharply. Even though just a moment ago he’d been thinking, If it’s a contract that ‘that’ Cedric wrote, it should be fine.

‘If only I could see the contract myself….’

Sheila wasn’t unaware of Bill’s worry. Just as Bill worried, it was true she’d gotten her ankle grabbed by the contract.

But that was exactly why she couldn’t show him the contract.

“Anyway, it’s really not anything suspicious, right? So don’t worry, and just check the remaining amount.”

In any case, it was something that would end if she just endured one more month and a little.

At Sheila’s words, Bill wrote down the amount he received today and the total of what had been gathered so far in the ledger, then left his signature beside it.

“If you include what you brought today, it’s one hundred sixty-two solids. Now there are exactly thirty-eight solids left.”

Then he turned the ledger around and set it down so Sheila could see.

“Check it and sign.”

It was a mutual signature to prevent tampering with the ledger.

In the empty space beside Bill’s signature, Sheila signed. Above, the records and signatures from all that time were packed in tightly.

Now the money left was 38 solids. But to Sheila, it felt like there were only 18 solid lefts.

Because in just a few more days, another 20 solid of whipping-maid pay would come in.

After she started receiving whipping-maid pay, Sheila’s wages became three times her original salary.

But the money she could save wasn’t simply three times.

Unlike a maid’s wages, where she had to send ninety percent to her family home, the whipping pay was money that fell entirely into Sheila’s hands.

In other words, if she used to have one solid left after sending money to her family home, now she had twenty-one solids left.

‘It was a twenty-one-fold difference!’

Only after coming here did Sheila clearly feel that difference.

Now the whipping-maid pay had only one last payment left, but it didn’t matter. Thanks to it, she had almost gathered the target amount.

If she did side work for about half a year going forward….

In return for working hard at that “work” for three months, the period she had been looking at as two years was reduced to half a year.

“If it’s such a good job, why don’t you keep doing it? You’ll be rich in no time.”

Bill, as befit the guild’s head, was quick with money calculations and continued.

“If you do it for a few more months, wouldn’t you still have plenty left even after paying it all?”

Sheila felt it too. But the problem was that it wasn’t simply getting whipped.

“From the start, the period was set.”

Coincidentally, in about a month, there would be the Young Count’s appointment ceremony, and according to Alfonso, his fiancée would be decided then.

The appointment ceremony might overlap with the whipping period, but the work would end before the engagement ceremony.

From Sheila’s standpoint, it couldn’t be more fortunate. Because it wasn’t as if she was doing that kind of thing with a man who had a fiancée.

“Anyway, it’ll move along faster than expected.”

Bill, who muttered as if to himself, looked Sheila straight in the eyes and asked, “I’ll ask you again. There’s no change to the job you requested, is there?”

“Of course.”

Sheila said without hesitation.

Even so, Bill didn’t take his eyes off Sheila.

“You remember what I said at the beginning, right?”

Sheila nodded.

In the past, after Sheila finished signing the contract, Bill had told her. He would keep receiving the request fee and gather it for her, but later, she didn’t necessarily have to use it for “that job.”

But Sheila’s feelings remained unchanged. Rather, now that what she wanted was right in front of her, she was so impatient she wanted to hurry up and get it done.