The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 74

The next morning, Cedric really did barge into Judith’s room.

“If you understand, get out. I’ll come to check it tomorrow morning, so keep that in mind.”

What Sheila had found strange the day before had become reality.

Usually, homework inspections were done during the next lesson, so it was rare for Cedric to deliberately seek out Judith’s room.

“You don’t need to attend to Judith today, so all of you leave.”

Cedric dismissed the three maids who were hovering by Judith’s side.

They didn’t need to attend to Judith…?

Sheila, Molly, and Anne stepped outside, exchanging puzzled looks.

“What is it this time? He really said we don’t need to attend to Miss Judith today, right?”

“That’s right,” Sheila answered Molly in a worried tone.

“What on earth is going on?”

Leaving the still-confused Molly, Anne spoke with clear, innocent eyes, “Then does that mean I can go back to my room?”

She spoke as if whatever was happening had nothing to do with her. Molly shot Anne a glare.

Before the two of them could start glaring at each other again, Sheila spoke to Anne.

“Yes. For now, go back to your room. Don’t go out, just in case he calls for you again.”

“Come on, he wouldn’t go back on his word over something like this.”

Molly had once said this about Anne.

She wasn’t wrong, but somehow it still rubbed her the wrong way. Sheila felt like she understood what Molly meant.

As Anne turned away, Sheila said to Molly, “Let’s report this to the head maid first, then you should go home. Anne and I are stationed here anyway.”

If it were anyone else, maybe. But Cedric wasn’t the type to say one thing and then say another, just as Anne claimed.

Inside the room, after the maids were dismissed, Judith questioned Cedric.

“You sent all the maids away. Why are you doing this to me?”

Perhaps because there had been some results over the past two months, Judith no longer referred to herself in the third person.

Instead, she was still sulking over the barrage of questions Cedric had thrown at her the day before.

There was no greater humiliation than that, being embarrassed in front of the maids.

“You laid hands on your maid yesterday.”

“W-when did I ever do that?”

At Judith’s denial, Cedric let out a hollow laugh.

It was a bleak sound.

In Cedric’s mind rose the image of Sheila’s damp face.

She had cried. When he asked whether the place Judith hit hurt, she said she was fine, yet tears still fell.

Because of the face she put on, pretending nothing was wrong, it bothered him even more.

Even if she hadn’t cried, Cedric had already decided to firmly correct Judith’s habit of hitting servants from the moment he saw the handprint on Sheila’s face.

A fleeting look of self-mockery crossed Cedric’s face. The thought occurred to him whether he even had the right to do so, when he himself had turned her into a whipping maid because of his own desire.

But setting that aside, Judith’s indiscriminate violence toward the servants was something that needed to be stopped first.

“I clearly had Rufus warn you last time. Did you think that was something that applied only then? Did you fail to understand that it meant you are to refrain from laying hands on those beneath you at all times?”

Faced with Cedric’s sharp questioning, Judith stared straight ahead and replied, “I-it’s because she fell over!”

“How do you fall and end up with a handprint on your face? And one the size of a thirteen-year-old child’s palm?”

Judith huffed.

She was clearly convinced that Sheila had tattled.

“For the record, I didn’t ask your maid anything. I figured I’d be even angrier if I found out you even made her cover for you with a lie.”

At Cedric’s expression as he spoke, Judith flinched.

Just as he said, Cedric looked furious. It was a side of him she had never seen before.

Facing the now subdued Judith, Cedric continued, “Today, you’ll live without maids.”

“No….”

Judith despaired and burst into tears.

Judith had never spent a single day of her life without maids. Being told to live without their attendance was more frightening than she expected.

“If this happens again, I’ll increase the days you live without maids to two, then three. While you’re alone, think about how it would feel if you were the one being hit like that.”

Cedric set Judith a difficult assignment.

Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and considering how they felt was something thirteen-year-old Judith had never done even once.

***

The day Sheila went to Holzeroad, Rufus left for that place at once on Cedric’s order. He returned to the estate three days later.

“It wasn’t a suspicious place, like we expected. To get straight to the conclusion, it was a restaurant and pub run by the guildmaster of that area. The second floor also serves as an inn.”

“A guild…?”

Cedric’s eyes narrowed.

There had been a time when guilds were thriving, but that was all in the past. Guilds were gradually disappearing.

Especially in Calley County, as soon as Bernard inherited the title, he clashed with the guildmasters in the territory over taxes and fought a power struggle over control of the local commerce. Most of the guilds had collapsed.

But Holzeroad was far from the count’s estate, and it was a region where handicrafts had developed. In a place like that, it made sense that a guild could still remain.

“Most of the guilds in this region have disappeared, but that one is still standing. Since it’s an area with many merchants, there’s still a need for a guild as well.”

Rufus continued, having reached the same conclusion as Cedric.

“It seems a young guildmaster named Bill has earned a fair amount of trust in the area.”

“Why did Sheila go there?” Cedric asked, cutting straight to the point.

As if all that mattered was knowing why Sheila went there, regardless of what the organization was.

“Finding out that much was impossible. They weren’t going to willingly tell us their transaction records.”

At Rufus’s answer, Cedric furrowed his brow.

Of course, there was something he could easily guess.

She brought the money she’d saved and saved, so she was probably trying to pool it there.

From long ago, guilds had performed various functions within a region, and one of them was like a bank. In other words, they pooled money to build a lump sum, and they lent money to those who needed it and received interest.

Since banks were hard to access, the lower class each found their own ways to save. One of those ways was a guild. But the problem was why Sheila, of all places, ended up using that place to save money. And what exactly was her purpose in gathering a lump sum?

“But I did learn one fact.”

At Rufus’s suddenly meaningful tone, Cedric raised sharp eyes to look at him.

“What is it?”

“Miss Sheila has an older sister, doesn’t she?”

Cedric nodded.

He already knew about her family. When she first entered the estate, her personal file listed her family details.

“Fabiola… I heard Miss Sheila’s older sister married into that place. To a man named Duker who runs a butcher shop.”

“When was that?”

“About five years ago.”

As Cedric measured the timing at the words “five years ago,” Rufus spoke again carefully.

“And less than two years after she went there, I’m told she took her own life.”

At Rufus’s report, Cedric lifted his brows and asked, “The reason?”

“They say her husband was a piece of trash. I’m told he often beat his wife in the street. The decisive incident was that she miscarried.”

Hearing the report left a bitter taste in Cedric’s mouth.

Sheila’s face, brimming with tears, rose in his mind on its own.

Four years ago, when Sheila came to this estate as a maid, it was probably because the village her sister married into also belonged to Calley County.

Timing-wise, she would have learned of her sister’s death while she was working as a maid.

But with her sister dead, she should have had no ties here anymore. And yet Sheila didn’t quit. She endured Judith’s tyranny and kept on working steadily as a maid.

What’s more, she didn’t go back to her home where she supposedly had an older brother, yet she regularly went in and out of Holzeroad, where her sister died.

“Rufus, look into who recommended Sheila when she entered the estate, and send people to investigate that man who claims to be her hometown brother.”

“Yes… then I’ll send two or three.”

Cedric nodded.

If he weren’t so busy, he would have sent Rufus himself, but the appointment ceremony was right around the corner. The entire estate was bustling because of it, and he couldn’t keep pulling his personal secretary away for other matters.

Rufus seemed to be thinking the same. He answered promptly, but his expression looked oddly regretful.

What do you have to be…?

“Regretful?”

“N-no, sir.”

Rufus answered immediately, but Cedric didn’t withdraw his suspicious gaze.

He’d assigned it to him because he was the most trustworthy, but the more his secretary learned about Sheila, the less he liked it.

“Fine. Just do your job.”

“Yes, Young Count.”

Cedric compromised with himself, deciding he would hear the next report without Rufus present.