I Despise You So Much

Mrs. Etman paused for a moment, gazing at Leila, then slowly approached and sat in the seat opposite her. She settled into a rigid posture and set her removed hat on the chair beside her. After all the years Leila had known her, the woman suddenly felt like a stranger, and Leila tensed without meaning to.

"You've just come from the police station, I suppose. What did they say?"

Fortunately, Mrs. Etman was the first to open the conversation.

"They said they still haven't found any particular leads. But it isn't over, so I don't intend to give up."

"Well, Leila. In my opinion, that doesn't seem like a very good choice."

"Pardon?"

In the startled instant Leila echoed the question, the tea she had ordered arrived. An awkward silence stretched between them until the waiter had set the cups down roughly and withdrawn. It was Leila who broke it first.

"May I ask what you mean by that?"

"I have that money."

Gazing absently down at the steaming teacup, Mrs. Etman spoke with deliberate clarity. The words were far too plain to mishear, yet Leila went blank as if she had imagined them.

"The person who took your tuition money—it was me."

Lifting her eyes to meet Leila's directly, Mrs. Etman repeated it with fresh force.

"That can't be. How could you, Mrs. Etman, do such a—"

Leila tried to laugh, but her lips refused to obey. She could not understand Mrs. Etman making so cruel a joke, yet the woman merely stared at her without the slightest movement.

"I hid it. Knowing full well it was wrong, I did it because I wanted to stop you from going to university with Kyle."

"That can't be true…"

"It is theft. A pathetic, cruel theft. And still I did it. Because I wanted to tear you away from Kyle's side."

Her mind had gone pure white, yet Leila could no longer deny reality. Mrs. Etman was speaking the truth. It was a fact so clear it was almost chilling.

"Leila, I despise you so much."

Looking at Leila, her brown eyes were thick with disgust and weariness.

"I would rather become this wretched a person than accept you as Kyle's match—that is how much I despise you."

"M-Mrs. Etman."

"I still believed you were a good child who knew her place. I never dreamed you would cling to such absurd ambition and try to use Kyle in the end."

"Use him? No. I'm not—it's nothing like that. How could I ever use Kyle? No."

Leila shook her head frantically. The hand resting on the edge of the table had begun to tremble, and soon her whole body shook with it, though she no longer had the presence of mind to notice.

"Is that why you stayed at Kyle's side? To use him to go to university, to become his wife and change your pitiful life?"

Knowing the accusation was forced, Mrs. Etman pressed even more viciously.

She knew. Leila's feelings for Kyle never strayed far from the bounds of affection or friendship. It was always her own son, Kyle, who clung and yearned. If not for that foolish boy, Leila would never have harbored such presumptuous hopes. The knowledge had always wounded Mrs. Etman's pride, and now it became yet another reason to hate Leila more.

"My hatred of you made me a thief, Leila. I despise you enough to commit something like this. That fact will never change. Do you really think the likes of us could ever become family?"

"What… exactly are you trying to say to me?"

Even her voice had begun to shake, yet Leila did not look away from the woman's gaze.

"You already know. You're a clever child."

Mrs. Etman's eyes, surveying both the untouched cheap teacup and Leila herself, were cold as sheets of ice.

"If you want to speak, go ahead and speak."

Sunlight fell across Leila's face, drained of all color. Her large, moisture-filled eyes glittered in the light. That face now filled Mrs. Etman with a revulsion that made her skin crawl.

"Tell Kyle—no, tell the whole world—that I stooped to this to stop the two of you from marrying."

You will never do it. Knowing that so thoroughly, Mrs. Etman could speak with perfect confidence.

"If you tell Kyle, he will be bitterly disappointed in me. Our relationship will fracture, and perhaps even our once-harmonious home will be destroyed."

Looking at the frozen Leila, Mrs. Etman's expression grew colder still.

"But now that this has happened, you and Kyle will never be able to marry. Whether you hide this or tell Kyle everything, nothing will change. That is enough for me."

"Do you… do you despise me enough that you had to do this?"

"Did I not already say it, Leila? I despise you."

Leaving Leila behind, Mrs. Etman rose from her seat first.

"Yes. Enough to make this extreme choice. Enough to cast aside even the least scrap of dignity in front of you—that is how much I despise you."

The contempt she no longer bothered to hide made her gaze sharp as frost.

"I will return the money I am holding once the registration date has passed."

So instead of uselessly poking around everywhere, you would do well to find a clever way to make Kyle give up.

The words she most wanted to say, she simply swallowed in silence. By now Leila would have understood everything.

"Today I find myself truly resenting Mr. Remmer."

As she turned to leave, she sighed and lowered her eyes.

"Why did he keep you in Arvis and create this tragedy?"

That final remark struck the hardest blow of all; Leila's eyes, frozen like glass, made it plain.

Leaving behind the stubborn child who still refused to cry to the end, Mrs. Etman walked out of the tea room at her leisure. A mingled sense of self-loathing and relief trailed after her like a shadow clinging to her heels.

He saw Leila.

At the edge of the road that led to the manor, she was crouched small beneath a great plane tree, her body curled tightly in on itself.

Matthias, who had been staring idly out the carriage window, recognized her at once. Even though he could see only her back for the moment, there was no mistaking that it was Leila.

"The child under that tree… she looks like Mr. Remmer's Leila, doesn't she?"

The coachman, having recognized her as well, spoke carefully.

"Do you think she might be unwell?"

His attendant, Mark Evers, added a worried word of his own. In that short time the carriage had drawn a little closer to the crouching Leila. Sensing their approach, she staggered to her feet and stood properly upright. Her head was bowed so deeply that her face could not be seen clearly, yet it was plain she was not well.

The attendant, who kept glancing out the window, turned his head toward the rear seat. He could not quite bring himself to ask outright, but his eyes were full of the wish that they might stop the carriage and help her. The coachman seemed of the same mind; the carriage's speed gradually slowed.

Matthias cast his gaze over the slowly passing scenery beyond the glass. Leila, standing pressed against the tree, kept her head stubbornly lowered.

She is crying.

He knew it by instinct and felt not the slightest doubt. In all the world, he might well be the one who knew the tears of Leila Lewellin best.

Without a word, Matthias answered by simply looking away from the window. The attendant could only wear a pitying expression; he said nothing more. The coachman increased their speed again, obedient to his master's will.

Leila's tears always delighted Matthias, yet that delight was meant to be his alone. For anyone else to intervene—well. That was not a prospect he found particularly welcome.

Leaving Leila to walk on alone in tears, the carriage soon passed through the manor gates. By the time he stepped down from it, Matthias felt considerably more at ease.

Has Linda Etman made her move?

There was probably only one thing that could make Leila weep so hard she could scarcely keep her feet. That the guess was correct was proven by the troubled face of Hessen as he approached.

"I have something to report, sir."

Matching his pace to Matthias's, the butler spoke in a voice lowered to the utmost secrecy.

"It is a story so hard to believe that I hardly know how to put it into words…"

At the faint tremor in the voice of a butler who almost never lost his composure, Matthias was certain. Mrs. Etman had lived up to his expectations.

"To the study, then."

Matthias's answering voice was low and smooth, perfectly unruffled.

"A cold in the middle of summer? It's all because of that damned thief. She's fretted herself sick over it."

Bill paced helplessly beside Leila's bed, not knowing what to do.

He had felt uneasy ever since she went to bed early the night before, claiming she felt unwell, and sure enough Leila had fallen properly ill. She insisted it was only a cold, that a little rest would put her right, but to Bill's eyes it did not look like a sickness that would improve so easily.

"This won't do. I'll fetch Dr. Etman—"

"No."

As Bill turned to leave, Leila forced herself upright with difficulty. Though the weather was already quite hot so early in the morning, she shivered violently even in her thick nightclothes. Overnight she had become the very picture of an invalid.

"No, Uncle. Please don't."

"I'm only saying I'll call a doctor because you're sick. Why? Did you have a fight with that Kyle boy?"

"No."

"Even if you fought with Kyle, Dr. Etman is still—"

"Please."

Leila's hand, damp with cold sweat, clutched at Bill's sleeve.

"I just… want to rest. That's all I need. Please let me."

"Leila…"

"I think I'll get better then. All right?"

She begged with such desperate urgency that Bill could no longer insist. Something had clearly happened with Kyle, but this was no moment to press her about it.

When Bill reluctantly nodded, Leila at last looked relieved. The way she collapsed weakly back onto the bed made his heart sink all over again.

"You should have eaten properly! Slept properly! I would have handled everything. And still you fretted yourself like this!"

Even as he blustered, he drew the blanket up around her with a delicacy that did not match his great pot-lid hands, and laid a cool cloth on her fevered forehead.

"Don't you worry, child. Even if I can't catch that thief and tear him apart, I'll find some way to get your tuition—"

"Uncle."

Through the hot, labored breaths, Leila's thin voice slipped in.

"I want to stay here. Don't send me away."

"There you go again with that soft-hearted talk."

"I'm sorry, Uncle."

"What kind of nonsense is that now?"

"It's because of me."

"If you keep saying things like that, I really will get angry."

"I promise I'll come back and find it."

Watching Leila ramble without any clear thread, Bill let out a long, quiet sigh.

"Rest for now, Leila. I'll be back soon."

Bill closed the window of Leila's room and drew the curtains as well. Yet even while she shivered with cold in the height of summer, Leila asked him to open the window again.

"It's stifling… just open it a little, please."

Even half-dead, Leila would not easily yield her stubbornness.

Once again Bill could not win against her. When he reopened the window halfway and drew the curtains back a little, Leila finally closed her eyes without protest.

"If the fever hasn't gone down by afternoon, I'm calling Dr. Etman no matter what you say. Understood?"

He issued the warning, but Leila made no reply; she seemed not to have heard him at all.

Leaving Leila sleeping as if she had lost consciousness, Bill reluctantly left the cabin.

His steps quickened of their own accord, eager to finish the morning's work as soon as possible.