That's Stealing, Eileen

Eileen’s eyes had gone round, and she stared and stared at the bracelet. Dong-hui smiled brightly at her.

“What? Is it pretty?”

The tone was as innocent as a child’s.

“…Yes. Oh? No, it isn’t that. It just suits you so well.”

Eileen made a show of not minding, but for a good while she could not take her eyes off the bracelet and the necklace.

Dong-hui had enough of them that she could have handed a thing like this over without a thought, but she had no wish to give those two so much as a single lump of Dural out of the Grace estate.

“Thank you.”

Dong-hui shook Eileen’s hand off her arm and answered as though it were nothing at all.

For a moment Eileen felt she had been bested by Chloe. It had never once happened before.

Bewilderment flickered across her face, but she was soon back to her usual easy, affectionate expression. She worked at keeping her eyes off the jewels Chloe was wearing. Soft as Chloe was by nature, she was a child who would hand over whatever she happened to have on if Eileen coaxed her properly.

Just like the ring on Eileen’s own finger now.

Eileen was fiddling with that ring, trying to bring back a sense of victory that had gone dim, when Dong-hui’s gaze followed the movement and came naturally to rest on her hand. There she found a ring she knew. It was beyond doubt the ring the woman in the portrait had been wearing.

“That ring…”
“Oh, this? You lent it to me, didn’t you. To wear at my birthday party.”

Eileen had been thirsting for a taste of victory anyway, and she spread her fingers out to show it off, answering in high triumph.

Look at that.
You’re the idiot who crawled when I said crawl and laughed when I said laugh.

A ring set with a blue stone sat on Eileen’s long, slender finger. Sunlight coming into the drawing room caught the stone and threw it back in a brilliant blaze. And in that instant Chloe’s memory, drifting in the air like dust, came shoving its way into her head.

“Chloe, that ring is really pretty. Can I try it on, just once?”
“Oh? Ah… it’s just, this is a keepsake of my mama’s.”

Chloe hesitated, and without meaning to she closed her hand over the ring. At that Eileen flopped down onto the bed with a bitterly disappointed face and hung her head low.

“Really? I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was a keepsake of your mother’s.”

Chloe was relieved. Eileen seemed to be giving up.

But,

“If it’s a keepsake of your mother’s, wouldn’t it mean all the more for you to lend it to me? Anyone who saw it would think we were the closest cousins in the whole world.”
“But…”

Stupid Chloe did not even know how to refuse properly, and only kept her hand closed over the ring. In that moment Eileen sprang up, strode over and seized Chloe’s ringed hand roughly.

“I only want to try it on once. I’ll give it straight back. Hm?”

Eileen’s tone was pleading, but her eyes had already lit up with a victor’s gleam.

“You have to give it straight back.”

Chloe hid her uneasiness and pressed it on her again.

“All right. Have you ever seen me not keep a promise? I give you plenty of presents too, don’t I.”

Chloe did not want to, but Eileen had said she would give it straight back, so she carefully slipped the ring off her finger. Set with a finely worked blue diamond, it was her mother’s keepsake and the ring that marked the mistress of House Grace.

It was on Eileen’s finger in no time.

“Oh my, it fits me perfectly! And doesn’t it go beautifully with the dress I’m wearing today?”

Eileen looked at her reflection in the mirror, delighted. She was right. Against the blue dress she had on that day, the ring might have been made to match. Chloe’s uneasiness grew and grew.

“Will you give it back now?”

It was the first time Chloe had ever given her something and then asked for it back. Which only made Eileen want it more. She looked down at the ring with a prim little face, then broke into a smile and hid the ringed hand behind her back.

“I’ll keep it on just until dinner.”

But after dinner it was tomorrow morning, and the next morning it was after lunch, and so she put it off. In the end, on an evening when Chloe had fallen asleep, Eileen left nothing behind but a note saying she would borrow it until the birthday party, and went off with the ring still on her finger.

That evening Chloe let herself be seen crying for the first time, and though Delma asked her again and again what the matter was, Chloe only shook her head and would not answer. If she told the truth, it seemed to her, Eileen would never come to see her again.

The hot tears Chloe had wept alone in an empty room, stifling the sound of them, were as vivid to Dong-hui as if they had been her own.

The stupid thing could not even bring herself to ask for it back properly, and after all her fretting she lay ill for three days. And even so, she was overjoyed at a letter saying Eileen would come to see her again, and spent what little money she had on a present for her.

Chloe had truly done her very best to win one small corner of Eileen’s and Patrasche’s affection.

Because to her, Eileen and Patrasche were family too.

Dong-hui looked at the two of them, decked out from head to foot in expensive things, and worked to swallow down the anger boiling up in her.

First of all she had to get back the ring that was a keepsake of Chloe’s mother’s. That much she wanted to do for her.

“Give it here.”

Dong-hui held out her palm.

“What?”
“The ring. Give it to me, now.”
“You said you’d lend it to me until my birthday?”

Eileen said it as though she had been wronged, but Dong-hui did not wait for a reply. She seized Eileen’s hand and, as though there were nothing left to wait for, wrenched the ring roughly off her finger.

“Ow!”
“Chloe! What is the meaning of this?”

Eileen had fought to keep the ring and scraped her finger in the struggle, and the Viscount, startled at the sight, sprang up and looked at his daughter’s wound.

Blood ran in a line down Eileen’s slender finger. The diamond must have caught it.

“It’s mine. And you took it as you pleased. I never gave permission.”
“What are you talking about? I clearly—!”
“You wrote a note as you pleased and left. And while I was asleep, at that. That’s stealing, Eileen.”
“What? Stealing? You’re really going there?”

Eileen could not believe it.

That Chloe Grace should dare defy me — and not content with that, corner me and call me a thief.
And in front of the underlings, at that.

She could not hold down the anger rising in her. But she knew that letting her temper have its way meant a scolding from her father the moment they were back at their own estate, so she settled herself quickly.

Eileen’s face at once took on a pitiful, guilty look.

“I had no idea you thought of it that way. I’ll apologize. It was my oversight. It must have been especially precious to you, being a keepsake of your mother’s. I was thoughtless.”

Dong-hui had not expected Eileen to come at her like this, and she narrowed her eyes. She needed to know what that sly fox was after.

Surely her own father must know exactly what his daughter really is.

Watching Eileen closely, Dong-hui noticed that every time she squeezed a tear out by force, she checked on the household staff standing about the drawing room.

Well, well. She even cares about her reputation with the servants?

She was more of a fox than expected, and a far more meticulous child than Dong-hui had guessed. That also meant she was not an opponent to be taken lightly. Dong-hui shut her mouth tight and waited to see what would come next.

Seeing Chloe say nothing at all and only blink, Eileen sighed and went on.

“You are truly precious to me. Which is why I could give you anything of mine, however precious. And so I thought that you… felt the same about me. I really am sorry.”

In the end Eileen went so far as to let out a small choked sound and weep.

Eileen’s maid saw it, hurried over in alarm and looked at her mistress’s face. Nor did she forget to turn a resentful look on Chloe. The look was a reproach in itself: how could anyone torment a person as good as this?

Birds of a feather.

Dong-hui ran an irritated look over the two of them, no, over the three of them, and decided to see how far it would go.

In that case I had better play along, up to a point.

“No, Eileen. I was too sharp with you. It isn’t that I don’t know how you feel. You are truly precious to me as well.”

Blech!

Forcing down the nausea rising inside her, she gave the performance of her life. Happily it seemed to have worked, for Eileen wiped the sorrowful look clean away, broke into a broad smile and took both of Chloe’s hands tight in her own.

“Then we’ve made up?”
“Hahaha, that’s right. As if we ever quarreled at all, hahaha! All the same, I can’t lend you the ring.”
“Oh my, of course not. I have plenty of rings of my own.”

The corners of Eileen’s mouth trembled faintly with the effort of the smile.

“Is that so? Then why did you do it. Hahaha.”

The status window had come out of nowhere to grade her acting, and Dong-hui’s eyes flew wide. She would have liked nothing better than to tell it to get lost that instant, but she could not say it out loud, so she shouted it only inside her head.

Get lost. Get lost, I said.
Who asked you to grade my acting?

But the window, as though to needle her, ran the figure up and down several times between the high teens and the middle teens, then put up the letters ‘average 16.5’ and vanished clean away.

She was just thinking what a thoroughly useless creature it was.

I’ve only got thirty points left. Can I actually buy anything with that?

A loan? You’re telling me to go into debt?

But Dong-hui was so sick to death of debt that the word alone could have brought her bolt upright out of a dead sleep.

Forget it.
I’m turning it down.

She was, admittedly, a little tempted.

Shall I at least hear it out?
What percent?

If I could just get my hands on that thing, I’d tear it into twenty-five pieces and boil them along with the Dural.

As though it had actually heard the thought, the status window said Oops! and then, right in front of her, split neatly into twenty-five pieces just to needle her and scattered in every direction.

And it did not forget to engrave ‘Low credit rating! 25%’ on every last broken shard.