The Count and the Maid

Walking along the roadside where motorcars roared past in endless procession, Cecilia let out a long sigh.

Arkan had been right. She had the medicine, and she'd tucked a little money into her handbag as well, so the worst was behind her. The only problem now was finding somewhere to stay…

Arkan shuffled himself over to the outer edge of the pavement and said, "Don't worry too much about money — if it comes to that, I'll scrape some together. You'll only make yourself sicker fretting over it."

When he flashed a wide grin showing his white front teeth, Cecilia snorted. This man — he couldn't even walk properly without his crutches, yet confidence simply poured out of him.

"Are you an idiot? How do you plan to earn money when you can't even walk without limping?"

"Keeping a wife fed is a husband's job, isn't it? I have my ways."

With that, he gave her a sly wink, clearly trying to lift her spirits. Cecilia made a face as if she were chewing on gravel, fiddled with her left ear, and finally shook her head.

"No. I've decided to stand on my own two feet, so I ought to experience this sort of thing too. Until my bag turns up, I'll try to find some short-term work."

So how much did she have left in hand, exactly? Counting the money on her fingers, she slowed her steps at the mouth of an alley, in front of a shabby old bookshop.

It was the place she used to stop by without fail, back when she would venture into town alone on the occasional errand. When Cecilia could hardly tear her eyes away from the shopfront, Arkan — reading her mind like a ghost — made the offer first.

"We've still got plenty of time before lunch. Shall we go in?"

Color bloomed in Cecilia's cheeks. "May we, really?"

"Of course. Being on the run is no reason we can't enjoy a little leisure."

Slinging her handbag over his shoulder, Arkan held the shop door open for her.

A tinkling bell announced their entrance, and the smell of aged paper greeted them at once. It was a bookshop every bit as cramped and cluttered as Aida's pharmacy.

The owner lay fast asleep behind the counter, ankles crossed, a magazine draped over his face. At his feet sat a black cat, spine curled, blinking slowly at Cecilia.

While Arkan browsed the shop, Cecilia picked up a book at random and pretended to read it, then cleared her throat and slipped discreetly toward the back.

The truth was, her reason for entering this bookshop was obvious.

There it is!

Just as she'd hoped — a new volume had come out while she'd been gone.

Cecilia had been hopelessly hooked on a certain adult romance series for years. She was flipping through the pages in a frenzy, devouring the story, when a voice thick with disbelief dropped right behind her.

"Good heavens. To think the country openly sells filth like this…"

Yikes!

The moment Cecilia shrieked, Arkan startled too and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Shh. This is a bookshop!"

Her heart was pounding. He kept a finger pressed to her lips for a long moment, and only when she seemed to have calmed down did he let her face go.

"Wh-when exactly did you…"

He bent down to glance at the title of the book in her hands. Then, furrowing his brow as though he'd witnessed something utterly depraved, he whispered, "The Count's Secret Meeting with the Maid? No matter how far commoners have climbed, a marriage across ranks is nothing short of taboo… do you seriously believe a count and a maid could ever end up together in real life?"

"What did you just say? Are you doing this on purpose, right now?!"

"I beg your pardon?"

When Cecilia flared up out of nowhere, Arkan blinked at her in fresh surprise.

Oh no. Realizing her slip too late, Cecilia straightened her back and cleared her throat.

"It's a novel, I mean. It's a series I happen to love, so don't you dare badmouth it. If there's one series I want to see through to the end before I die, it's this one."

"What dreadful taste you have."

Cecilia shut the book so he couldn't sneak a look at the contents and said nothing. After a silence in which Arkan seemed to be mulling something over, he finally shrugged and spoke.

"Well, come to think of it, it's not entirely impossible. It's only gossip, but I hear the Countess of Winterhall who died recently was a maid from that very household."

As Cecilia silently slid the book back into its place on the shelf, he raised his voice. "You're not buying the book?"

"I have to watch my money until I get my bag back. And that's not just a rumor, by the way."

"Pardon?"

"Count Davion Cisldown Winterhall. He really did marry his maid."

The moment she spoke that name aloud for the first time in so long, it felt like a thorn sprouting on the tip of her tongue. Trembling despite herself, Cecilia added, "The Duchess of Cisldown was merely worried her son's honor would be tarnished, so she spun the truth into a rumor. Anyone born and raised in this city knows perfectly well that the Countess of Winterhall was once a maid in that very house."

Had she just sighed? Cecilia's shoulders rose faintly. Then, slipping out between the cramped shelves, she turned to Arkan, who stood there dumbstruck, and added with a smile,

"And if that weren't true, why else would the two of them have run off to the countryside to get married?"

A month had already passed since Cecilia's disappearance — no, her "resurrection."

Davion's days ran like clockwork. Unless something special demanded his attention, he poured every waking hour into the search for Cecilia. At the crack of dawn he would telephone the checkpoints and ask whether any woman of similar description had been spotted; if the answer was yes, he would take Liam and drive straight there.

The answer made little difference, in truth. Either way, he spent a minimum of three hours a day behind the wheel, hunting for her. Yet for all his tireless effort, he hadn't so much as found a single strand of Cecilia's hair.

It was as if his wife had simply evaporated somewhere inside this city.

His cigarettes multiplied in proportion to his anxiety. These days, it was no exaggeration to say that Davion was surviving on smoke instead of food.

That day, too, Davion stood with an unlit cigarette between his lips, waiting for Liam to come up from the mansion's cellar. While he waited, a cat with gray markings passed along the top of a nearby wall.

"Hey."

He called to the cat in a low voice, so the officers guarding the cellar couldn't hear.

"Where's Cecilia?"

The cat stopped dead in its tracks, turned its head, and stared quietly at Davion. Perhaps it was the thick winter coat, but Davion thought the creature looked remarkably large and fierce.

"Cecilia. A pretty woman with white hair and blue eyes."

The cat blinked at him. The thick brows above Davion's eyes drew together, and he slowly ground out the cigarette's ember against the wall.

…Don't tell me it actually understands?

"About this tall, has dimples right here when she smiles, and sings beautifully, especially—"

"My lord."

Hm. Davion cleared his throat and turned around.

The instant Liam appeared, the cat vanished under the wall in a flash. Liam, his sleeves shoved roughly up to his elbows, looked as though he'd just gone several rounds with a bull.

"He talks, but he's not in his right mind — the withdrawal has broken him. He doesn't even understand what we're asking him."

The thug they'd arrested in Easthollow was, predictably, a Lampi addict. Lampi was notorious not only for its vicious addictiveness but for withdrawal symptoms every bit as infamous.

Wiping the sweat from the back of his neck, Liam belatedly went ah and smoothed down his disheveled hair. Davion noticed a streak of blood on his shirt. Undoing his wristwatch, he asked quietly,

"Did he hurt himself?"

"No, nothing like that. It's just…"

Liam wrinkled his nose and whispered, suppressing a laugh. "He couldn't hold his water. The smell is absolutely vile."

"Hardly surprising. When I go in, make sure no one comes anywhere near this area."

"Yes, my lord."

Liam replied, taking Davion's watch from him.

Davion rolled up both sleeves firmly, as though preparing for some solemn ritual, and locked the cellar door behind him the moment he stepped inside.

Even though the reek of filth rolled over him in waves, not one of his eyebrows so much as twitched. It was the same stench he'd known all too well in the trenches of the battlefield. If anything, it stirred an odd sense of relief, as though he'd come home at last.

The thug was bound to an iron chair, all four limbs strapped down.