The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 96

Instead of shouting to ask who it was, Cedric walked over and opened the door.

Alfonso stood there, his face twisted with anger.

“Are you drunk?”

“Yeah, I had a few. Let’s talk for a minute, Brother.”

Cedric’s gaze drifted back toward the bed without him realizing it.

He didn’t want to leave a woman alone in an empty room.

“If it’s a long talk, let’s do it tomorrow. I’m tired.”

Alfonso glared spitefully at Cedric’s face, which didn’t look tired at all, then shoved past him and entered the room.

“It’ll be short.”

Judging that Alfonso would kick up a fuss if he refused, Cedric let him into the room.

“What is it?”

At Cedric’s tone, which clearly meant say it fast and get out, Alfonso opened his mouth as if demanding an explanation.

“Was it fun?”

“What?”

“Was it fun watching me get the wrong idea?!”

After just a few words, Cedric understood. Marquis must have said something.

“So you’re taking out your own misunderstanding on me?”

Just as Cedric guessed, the day before, Marquis had secretly summoned Alfonso to clear up the misunderstanding.

“After you left, I thought it over carefully, and I realized I might’ve left room for misunderstanding.”

“….”

“About your brother. You didn’t imagine something strange, did you? Cedric is simply my ideal type. Someone who rejected me despite knowing my status perfectly well.”

“You knew too, didn’t you? At least, what kind of person the Crown Prince is. And knowing that, you still sent me to the palace?”

“You make it sound like I sent you into a den of contagion.”

“Not much different.”

Alfonso recalled more of his conversation with the Crown Prince.

“Of course, I also have a human curiosity about you, the younger brother of my ideal type.”

“I, I….”

“Naturally, you probably believe yourself to be straight. But think about it. When one person likes another, how much weight does gender really carry? Some might say that the bodies of men and women are designed to share love. But that’s knowing one thing and missing two. There are plenty of ways for men to love men, and women to love women as well. What do you think? Aren’t you curious too? If you want, I can easily satisfy that curiosity….”

He’d been told there was something to say about Cedric, so he changed locations, only for the talk about Cedric to amount to nothing more than the claim that Cedric was straight. The rest was an explanation of pansexuality and an attempt to coax Alfonso in that direction.

Because it was the Crown Prince, Alfonso hinted at refusal ten, twenty times, circling around it, and only after his ears rang from being called “you” over and over did he finally manage to get away.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. That was why he planned to win the joust and wipe the smirk off Cedric’s face.

And the glory of victory…!

But before that empty fantasy could take shape, Alfonso lost in the semifinals, then lost again in the match for third and fourth place.

Unaware of his brother’s thoughts and having no desire to know them, Cedric spoke, failing to hide the fatigue washing over him.

“So, didn’t I give you sufficient compensation?”

At Cedric’s point, Alfonso closed his mouth.

Even to him, it was excessive compensation for simply delivering an invitation.

Even considering the compensation for being harassed by the crown prince, it was more than enough.

Seeing that they’d roughly found common ground, Cedric said, “You look drunk. If you’re done saying what you came to say, go rest.”

But Alfonso, who’d calmed down for a moment, flared up again.

“I’m not done.”

“What now?”

“Why are you like that with Miss Eloise, anyway?”

When Eloise’s name came out of Alfonso’s mouth, the fatigue weighing on Cedric deepened even further.

Now that he thought about it, to Cedric’s eyes, Alfonso and Eloise somehow gave off similar vibes.

“I’m talking about the victory ceremony. Didn’t it occur to you that Miss Eloise would be waiting?”

And for some reason, Alfonso had come barging in at this late hour to argue on Eloise’s behalf.

“What does that have to do with you?”

“How does it not? Who do you think prepared this whole event? Making a fool of myself at it is like smearing mud on my own face. It’s the same if the guests leave dissatisfied.”

While Alfonso piled on this and that justification, Cedric stuck to the attitude that none of it was a problem.

“Is that all?”

“No? Oh, right. There was that maid, too!”

The moment the word “maid” came out, Cedric’s bored eyes sharpened. His gaze flicked briefly toward the bed where she slept, but the drunken, agitated Alfonso didn’t notice and kept talking.

“Sheila. I heard she’s been reassigned as your personal maid now?”

Back when Alfonso misunderstood Cedric as being homosexual, he’d arbitrarily assumed Cedric was using her as a smokescreen to hide it. But Cedric wasn’t homosexual to begin with. Which meant Cedric’s interest in Sheila, something completely unlike him, wasn’t a smokescreen at all.

Cedric didn’t feel any need to explain that to Alfonso.

No, to begin with, Cedric couldn’t understand Alfonso’s psychology of wanting to pry into other people’s affairs in such detail.

Alfonso, his thoughts sluggish under the influence of alcohol, opened his mouth as if even he found his own idea absurd.

“Don’t tell me you were actually interested in her? A maid, of all people…?”

Judging by his tone, it sounded even more ridiculous to him than the idea of Cedric being homosexual.

“Then that thing too… that time, too…? No, back then, that maid was…. Anyway…!”

Alfonso rifled through a few scattered memories on his own, drawing conclusions as he went.

“You sent a letter from abroad once, remember? What did it say…? To keep a particularly close eye on Judith’s maids, wasn’t it? Don’t tell me that was because of Sheila too? Then, from back then…? Ha, that’s ridiculous.”

Even without any response from Cedric, the alcohol-fueled Alfonso rambled on, repeatedly shocking himself with his own conclusions.

However, Alfonso’s deductions were spot on.

That was exactly when Cedric decided to give in to his desire for Sheila.

With about two years left before returning home, Cedric first drafted an employment contract and sent it to the estate, ordering that all servants sign it and that a roster be compiled.

Seeing Sheila’s name on that list wasn’t particularly surprising.

Because before leaving to study abroad, there was something he’d overheard by chance.

“At the very least, I plan to endure five or six years in this estate.”

It was the day Judith caused a major scene with the maids. Cedric heard Sheila say it to a fellow maid as she answered her on the way out after the situation was settled.

In any case, once the roster was made, Cedric had monthly reports sent to him on new hires and resignations and managed the list himself.

And through the regular letters he exchanged with his family, he’d given Alfonso instructions.

To strictly police any immoral behavior among the servants, and especially to make sure no one approached Judith’s maids.

He had no intention of interfering with Sheila’s private romances, but at the very least, he wanted to prevent insignificant men with petty titles from using their authority to touch her.

After all, there’d been a similar incident before.

“Honestly, back then, I didn’t think much of it. Since there’d already been trouble with one of Judith’s maids before that, I just assumed it was something like that again. After that, I’ll be honest, I forgot about it. Things tightened up after that incident, so it stayed quiet for a while.”

Alfonso brought up the very incident Cedric had been thinking of.

In a way, it was nothing special. Just a maid and a butler getting involved with each other.

But the two of them carried on all over the estate, turning the place into a den of impropriety.

The bigger problem was the butler’s character. He’d already been the sort to swagger around on the strength of a worthless position. Then it came out that he’d hidden the fact that he was married and gone as far as harassing a maid.

At the time, it was Cedric who stepped in and restored discipline in the estate in place of the indecisive Bernard.

He fired the butler to make an example of him and banned romantic relationships among the servants. Ebony, the maid at the center of the incident, wasn’t fired, but she couldn’t endure the stares and whispers and quit of her own accord.

Anyway, Alfonso had simply assumed that was the reason.

Especially since a scandal involving Judith’s personal maid would be inappropriate. Explaining something like that to a young Judith would be difficult in itself.

And if a maid who had finally adapted to Judith’s temper suddenly quit over something like that, that would be a problem in its own way.

‘Judith’s condition is bad enough as it is….’

Come to think of it, the reason Alfonso recalled the contents of Cedric’s letter again was because of Allen, whose condition was hardly any better than Judith’s.

With Cedric’s return from studying abroad throwing the estate into turmoil, Alfonso happened to see Allen trying to woo Sheila, and Cedric’s words suddenly surfaced in his mind.

‘Well, I guess she is pretty.’ Thinking that, Alfonso stepped in and rescued Sheila from the situation.

Alfonso had grown up bickering constantly with Cedric, but when it came to things Cedric ordered him to do, he carried them out precisely.

Because that was the only way the second son could survive in this household.

“Yeah, she’s pretty. I remembered what you said, so I kept an eye on her too, I know that much. But she’s still just a maid. It makes no sense. And not just anyone, but you?”

Alfonso rambled on, working himself up all over again. But Cedric wasn’t ignorant of what Alfonso was trying to say.

Even for Cedric, who’d grown up receiving the same education as Alfonso, having personal feelings for a maid was something that made no sense.

“Answer me. What are you planning to do? Are you thinking of making her your mistress or something?”

“Mistress? You think I’d do something like that?”

Only after the word “mistress” came out did Cedric reply coldly.

It was phrased as a question, but it was a clear answer. Something like that would never happen.

Only then did Alfonso finally stop his tirade.

And he added one last thing.

“Anyway, if you make Miss Eloise cry, I won’t let it slide. Got it?”

After finishing his one-sided warning, Alfonso slammed the door and left.

‘Alfonso and Eloise….’

“Fuck.”

Cedric spat the curse out low, disgusted by the image that crossed his mind.