The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 90

“Yes?”

Sheila stopped mid-sentence and stared blankly as she asked back.

“No. Nothing. So…?”

Cedric held back his words and gestured for Sheila to continue.

Part of him felt childish enough to ask whether she took money because she knew who Sylvia was, but he endured it.

Of course Sylvia was still his friend. But she was also his former partner, and a woman who had just proposed to him.

If she accepted his rejection neatly, they would remain friends. If not, they stood at a turning point where they would become nothing.

At Cedric’s gesture, Sheila fumbled on with her excuses.

“I mean… anyway, Miss Sylvia came all the way here without even a maid, and she looks so worn out, and she even asked me directly to help her….”

“I got it, so do whatever you want.”

“Yes. Thank you, Young Count.”

Hah. Even after I say this much, you’re still leaving?

Cedric didn’t stop the woman as she left the room. He just glared after her.

His anger clearly kept piling up, and there was no way to release it until the appointment ceremony ended.

***

Watching Cedric’s mood, Sheila slipped out of his room at a suitable timing and headed for Sylvia’s room.

It was already the last day of the banquet.

That meant there was only one day left to squeeze the tips hard.

But unlike usual, Sheila’s heart felt heavy as she went toward the generous foreign young lady.

“Miss Sylvia isn’t just a young lady from abroad, she’s also your friend, Young Count….”

“Friend…?”

At the tone of voice that sounded incredulous, Sheila couldn’t finish her sentence.

‘Well, she isn’t just a friend.’

Even if she didn’t want to, Sheila already had a rough sense of his relationship with Sylvia.

On the day Sylvia first arrived, Sheila understood that Sylvia called Cedric ‘Honey.’

With only about three months of Lotas from picking up bits and pieces during Judith’s lessons, Sheila’s vocabulary had no order to it.

Even if it was a basic word, if it never came up in lessons, she naturally didn’t know it. And even if it wasn’t basic, if it appeared in lessons, she naturally learned it.

Anyway, with those scraps she picked up, she’d had a vague idea of the relationship between the two of them, but this was the first time she’d directly confirmed Cedric’s reaction.

‘So what changes!’

Sheila questioned herself.

From the start, Sheila thought that whatever his relationship with Sylvia was, it had nothing to do with her. She was nothing but a whipping maid.

「Cedric.」

「Honey.」

Even so, the elegant Lotas pronunciation of the Lotas young lady, who called him so intimately, lingered in Sheila’s ears.

When she reached the room Sylvia was staying in, which, strictly speaking, was the room Cedric used before he went abroad, Sheila shook her head hard and threw off the stray thoughts.

And she vowed that she would leave this place as quickly as possible and look for somewhere else.

While attending Sylvia, Sheila realized something.

Not every noble young lady was like Judith.

And if that came from national character, Sheila was willing to leave Beloica and go to Lotas. If she studied Lotas just a little more, it looked possible to work as a maid there.

Pronouncing Lotas was still difficult, but the word order was basically the same as Beloica’s, so understanding it wasn’t a big problem.

And what else did a maid need to say besides “Yes, miss.”

If it was kind Miss Sylvia, she would probably write a letter of recommendation without hesitation.

Of course, to do that, Sheila needed to make a clear impression now….

But today, for some reason, Sylvia didn’t look like she was in a good mood.

‘Did something happen between the two of them?’

Up until yesterday, they seemed to be on good terms, and now both of them were like that, so there was no choice but to guess that way.

As Sheila suspected, Sylvia, who was firmly rejected by Cedric, wasn’t in a good mood.

“Sheila.”

Sylvia, who was usually much livelier, quietly called out to Sheila and then asked, “Do you know what domination and submission are?”

“Yes…?”

Caught off guard by the sudden talk of domination and submission, Sheila wore a blank expression.

Why are both of them like this today?

“And what about sadistic and masochistic tendencies?”

Sylvia’s questions continued.

“I… I’m not sure what you mean….”

“Hah, this is ridiculous.”

Sylvia let out a hollow laugh while staring into the air, then hurriedly spoke to Sheila.

“Oh, sorry. That wasn’t directed at you, Sheila. That was meant for Cedric, that bastard.”

“At our Young Count…?”

So they fought. Definitely fought.

Just as Sheila came to that conclusion at the vivid foreign expression of ‘that bastard,’ Sylvia snorted and asked, “Young Count? You don’t call him ‘master’?”

At the word ‘master’ coming from Sylvia’s mouth, Sheila’s body stiffened like a plaster statue.

‘What? Does she know about what’s between me and the Young Count?’

Sheila wondered if their relationship had been exposed.

No, to be precise, it wasn’t even something that could properly be called a ‘relationship.’ If one insisted, it was merely a contractual relationship formed by the whipping maid contract, but that kind of relationship and this kind of relationship were clearly different….

“N, no, I, that’s….”

As Sheila tried to make excuses without even knowing why, Sylvia spoke again.

“Quit right now, Sheila. Having that kind of relationship without consent is unacceptable. It goes beyond bad manners; it’s outright garbage behavior. No, this isn’t a matter of manners; it’s a crime. A crime.”

Sylvia continued, “Sheila, answer my question honestly. Are you a deviant?”

A deviant…?

It was the first time Sheila had ever heard such a word, but she could roughly guess what it meant.

There was a clear difference between the bed stories she’d heard from the other maids and what she did with Cedric.

And Sheila had never once thought of herself as a deviant.

“No, I’m not….”

The moment the denial left her mouth, Sylvia exclaimed as if she’d expected it.

“I knew it! Someone as vanilla as you…!”

Still agitated, Sylvia added while looking at Sheila, “Oh, people without any tendencies at all, like you, Sheila, we call them ‘vanilla.’”

We….

In the way Sylvia naturally grouped herself together with Cedric, Sheila’s lips pressed together on their own.

From the beginning, Sheila wasn’t even in a position to be between the two of them. Just because she’d shared a body with him didn’t mean she’d forgotten that.

In fact, Sheila had wondered why Cedric went so far as to set everything up like this.

But after seeing Sylvia at this appointment ceremony, she understood clearly.

That she herself was Sylvia’s substitute.

As the crown prince said, just by appearance alone, Sylvia did resemble her quite a bit. Not only their features, but their overall air.

Sheila could easily imagine what must have happened between the two of them. They likely separated when Cedric returned to his home country.

And honestly, even Sheila thought it would’ve been difficult for Cedric to maintain a relationship with Sylvia, the heir of a ducal house in Lotas. He had to wrap up his studies abroad and return to inherit the count’s title.

In any case, Sheila wanted to explain things to Sylvia.

That her relationship with Cedric was different from what the lady imagined. That there was no need for her to feel upset.

But Sylvia didn’t give Sheila the chance to speak.

“I can understand why Cedric would take an interest in you, Sheila. For a strong dominant like Cedric, it might be an unavoidable attraction.”

Sylvia continued her explanation.

If Sheila understood correctly, Cedric had dominant and sadistic tendencies, and ordinarily, it was considered proper to ‘play’ with someone who had the opposite tendencies.

But even a relationship that looked ideal on the surface wasn’t actually so, according to Sylvia.

Someone with sadistic tendencies like Cedric feels pleasure from watching their partner suffer, but masochists feel satisfaction from receiving pain, which means a sadist can’t feel complete satisfaction.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what Sylvia was saying at all, but at the same time, those words didn’t truly reach her.

No matter what, Sheila had signed a ‘contract’ that Sylvia didn’t know about.

And that contract period now had less than ten days left.

Even when the contract ended, it didn’t mean she could immediately quit her job as a maid, but Sheila had already changed her mind and decided to leave this estate as soon as possible.

That went against her original plan to stay at House Calley until she reached her target amount, and that was exactly why Sheila’s thoughts were in such turmoil.

There was no time to worry about ‘domination’ or ‘submission,’ about ‘deviants’ or ‘vanilla.’ For Sheila, who already found it exhausting just to live her life, those things were nothing but indulgent concerns.

***

To watch the match that would determine the winner of the joust, people flooded toward the arena, and after many twists and turns, Sheila returned alone to her room.

Feeling drained to the bone for no particular reason, Sheila nevertheless reached for the yarn and needles in her knitting basket as if by habit.

Watching someone else’s match and cheering wouldn’t make money fall from the sky or bread appear on the table.

When she had free time, it was better to knit a tablecloth, or at the very least a coaster.

And for Sheila, who had lived this kind of life for a long time, knitting was something she could do with her eyes closed….

“What is this?”

Sheila, who’d been moving her hands mechanically, looked down at the crochet hook that had nowhere to go.

She was sure she’d been counting the stitches the same way she always did, but one was missing.

When she traced back to find where it went wrong, she saw that the stitches had started slipping not long after she resumed knitting.

With no other choice, Sheila had to unravel the yarn she’d worked up.

As she felt upset over the ruined stitches, her eyes landed on the lace handkerchief she’d finished the day before yesterday.

Why had she even made that….

The handkerchief, made by crocheting lace around the edge of a square of plain cotton, was something she’d made because she heard there would be a mounted lance match during the banquet period.

‘It’s not like I can even give it to him….’

She knew that. Even so, she’d forced herself to finish it, thinking, ‘If I can’t give it to him, I can always take it to the market and sell it.’

And now it really looked like she’d be selling that first thing the next time she went to the market.

Just imagining herself congratulating Cedric on his victory and handing him the handkerchief made her feel embarrassed.

That was why people said affection was frightening.

To repeat exactly what the older maids, who talked about lewd things every night, used to say, ‘Of all affections, physical affection is the strongest.’ No matter how terrifying the Young Count was, after fitting their bodies together like that, there was no way affection wouldn’t form.

But what the older maids said didn’t end there. They also said that ‘the shortest-lasting affection is physical affection.’

So she shouldn’t dwell on it too much.

Sheila decided to think lightly.

And with that, she set down the unraveled yarn and needles and rose from her seat.

‘Right, people need to rest a bit to be efficient, too.’

Making excuses to herself even though no one was criticizing her, Sheila headed toward the arena where everyone had gathered.

In Sheila’s hand as she left the room was the handkerchief.

The lace handkerchief she’d crocheted while praying that no one would get hurt.