Perfect For Kindling

“I can’t use the guest room?”

Eileen stood in front of the firmly shut door and raised her voice. That was the room she had used on every visit to Grace Castle, fitted out to her own taste down to the furniture and the bedding.

In a place I don’t care for to begin with, that room was the one thing worth looking at — and now I can’t use it?

“Why on earth not? You know perfectly well that room is the one I always use!”

She said it lightly, with the assurance of someone asking no more than her due.

“I am sorry. The room is under repair at present and cannot be used. A room has been made ready for you on the third floor instead.”

A young servant with a slow, hapless look answered politely, watching Eileen’s face for her mood.

“Under repair? Why?”

For a brief moment she wondered whether Chloe might be having the room done up for her.

“I am told the room is to be put to another use.”
“Another use? Who — Chloe?”
“Yes. Her ladyship’s own order.”

At the sharpness that had come into Eileen’s voice the servant hunched their shoulders and bowed very low. Eileen rattled the door once more. It was not just shut fast but locked, and it did not budge.

No wonder I’ve been out of sorts since the moment I arrived.

And now it had come to this. She wanted to leave this beggarly place that very instant, but her father expected too much of her for that, and she wanted badly to live up to it. So she pressed down the anger rising in her and set her jaw hard.

“Lady Eileen, if you will follow me.”

Before she knew it a woman had come to stand behind her, and at the voice Eileen’s face went harder still. It belonged to that impertinent maid who always stood at stupid Chloe’s side and looked at her with disapproval.

“Where is Father?”
“He is speaking with her ladyship.”
“Then take me there as well. Is it the library?”

Ever since he had taken away the desk that had come down through the generations of the Grace marquessate, her father had made a point of going to the library whenever he called here, a kind of rite, a chewing-over of his own victory.

Eileen did not so much as wait for Delma’s answer and set off ahead. The older maid did not follow. A few paces on, feeling no one behind her, she whipped round in irritation.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you following?”
“Her ladyship said she had something to say to the Viscount alone.”
“Chloe did?”

Eileen’s face said she understood it less than ever. The Chloe she knew had nowhere near the nerve to sit and talk with her father alone; she was fond of Viscount Patrasche and frightened of him at the same time. Her father must have been the one to ask for the talk, she decided, and the stupid woman had misunderstood it.

“Yes. Those were her ladyship’s own words.”
“If that’s all it is, then it’s fine. Chloe’ll be happier if I come, actually.”
“But—”

Delma tried to tell her she must not, but Eileen did not wait for the rest of it and strode off toward the library.

Every time he looked at the bare, empty library with no desk in it, Viscount Patrasche felt like a man who had won.

“That place is still standing empty, I see.”

Dong-hui could not tell what answer she was supposed to make, and only smiled and took a mouthful of tea.

“Are you still put out with me?”

What is this supposed to mean now?
There must be a dozen things to be hurt about — why bring it up all of a sudden?

To make out what he was after, Dong-hui set her cup down with a composed face and looked steadily at him. On any other day this was a niece who could not govern her feelings, who would be in tears at the lightest touch; to have her gazing calmly back at him now threw Patrasche a little.

Has her frame of mind changed along with her dress?

“What could I possibly have to be hurt about with you, Uncle? I am nothing but grateful that you have always looked after me.”

Dong-hui swallowed the urge to let fly with a string of filthy curses and smiled demurely. Playing the sweet girl was something she could keep up all day long.

“Grateful, indeed. We are hardly strangers — are we not family, of one blood? Looking after you is no more than natural.”

Patrasche smiled at his leisure and watched his meek, biddable niece.

“It must be very hard, running the estate by your own strength?”
“You help me so much, Uncle, that I am managing well enough.”
“I hear you handed out grain to the estate’s residents.”
“The drought went on for such a very long time.”
“And what interest did you settle on?”
“I simply gave it out. It wasn’t a loan.”

He had asked half expecting otherwise, and Chloe’s childish answer cut a deep furrow between his brows. Nobody had a better grasp of Grace’s finances than he did.

The castle’s grain storehouse must be showing bare floor by now, and she handed it out?
And for nothing in return, at that?

Patrasche looked at Chloe with displeasure for a moment, and then a smile spread slowly over his face again. Chloe was walking the road to her own ruin, and he saw no reason to step in and stop her.

“The estate’s residents must have been delighted.”
“Yes. They were overjoyed.”

Dong-hui made every effort to answer as brightly and innocently as she could. Patrasche nodded slowly, as though he understood, and laid a sheet of paper he had brought with him on the table.

“What is this, Uncle?”
“A deed of sale for the Morta district.”
“I beg your pardon?”

Dong-hui had never once said she would sell the village of Morta, and her voice rose before she could stop it. Taking the change in his niece’s voice for gladness at news she had been waiting for, Patrasche went on with a satisfied smile.

“It borders the Black Forest, so I could not price it as high as the Opak land. The greater part of it is useless ground in any case, but for your sake I will pay handsomely. Are we not family?”

He brought out the word ‘family’, the word Chloe loved, and smiled, perfectly at ease. Dong-hui stared blankly at the contract he had held out.

“Put out the fires that are burning now with that money. Buy a few things you need, too. And you will have to marry, will you not. Ray, was it? The young man you are to marry?”

Patrasche poured out one thing after another in a flood, and not a word of it reached Dong-hui’s ears.

Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands… Three thousand gold?
He means to buy the village of Morta for a mere three thousand gold?

Even by a rough reckoning it came to something like three billion won. Once that would have been money enough to set her hands shaking. Not now.

And the village of Morta was not so wretched a place as to change hands for three thousand gold, either. Beyond the village itself the undeveloped land spread wide on every side, and the Black Forest’s many resources, still undiscovered, were not something three thousand gold could buy.

Seeing the look on his niece’s face, her eyes gone wide, Patrasche nodded and smiled in satisfaction.

“You are startled, I see, that worthless land should be bought at such a high price. But what am I to do. I am your uncle. If not I, who is to help you in your difficulty?”

Dong-hui was so dumbfounded she could hardly get a word out. If he could come at her this barefaced, the land he had nibbled away from Chloe all this time must have been beaten down to prices worse still.

Have you ever seen such a motherf— such a fine box of eighteen crayons.¹

“Oh my, Father! Were you writing up the contract already? And without calling me, too. Chloe finds that sort of thing difficult, you know. I’m the one who has to help her!”

Eileen came bustling into the library then, all in a fuss, and sat down beside Dong-hui.

Dong-hui was already hot enough that the lid of her head was ready to blow off, and hearing that sly fox’s voice on top of everything else sent her irritation surging up until she thought she would lose her mind.

“Chloe, you just sign your name here. You’ve done it a few times, so you know how, don’t you? And Father, three thousand gold, honestly! Do put another five hundred gold on top of it. Our Chloe has any number of dresses to buy.”

Eileen whined and wheedled at Viscount Patrasche, then gave Chloe a small wink, as though to say, I did well, didn’t I?

Dong-hui went on staring blankly at the pair of them, wondering how far this father-and-daughter swindling outfit meant to take it.

Eileen, who had been beaming away at Chloe, changed her expression all at once, as though something had just come back to her.

“Oh, that reminds me. Chloe, why is my room suddenly under repair? I was quite happy with it the way it was. The furniture and the bedding, you bought every bit of it for me.”

Ah — so the fine new furniture in that room was all laid on by soft-touch Chloe too.

“I have to sleep there tonight, so tell them to put it back the way it was, quickly. You know I can’t sleep in another room.”

Eileen gave Dong-hui no chance to answer and simply reeled off everything she had come to say.

“What are you doing? Sign it, quickly.”

Eileen pressed her and pushed the contract out in front of Chloe.

— Knock, knock, knock!

An urgent knocking came at the door.

“Come in.”

At Dong-hui’s voice Scrooge came stumbling into the library in a rush, his face flushed red.

“What is it?”

The voice, dripping with annoyance, was Eileen’s.

Scrooge must have run the whole way, for he was out of breath even standing still. Then he caught sight of the contract on the table and his eyes went wide.

“M-my lady!”

Even as he told himself that surely the lord would not be selling the estate off to Viscount Patrasche all over again, Scrooge could find no way to hide his unease.

“Come here, Treasurer.”

Dong-hui had deliberately called Scrooge by his post and not by his name.

“Pfft! ‘Treasurer’, she says.”

Eileen’s sneer was audible, but Dong-hui paid it no mind. Scrooge strode up in front of her, his face redder than before.

“Take this.”

Dong-hui held out the contract Patrasche had given her. Scrooge took it before he knew what he was doing, checked the figure written inside, and his face screwed up hard without his meaning it to.

“Why are you giving this to me?”

Scrooge asked, puzzled. Patrasche and Eileen found it every bit as strange, and stared blankly, wondering why Chloe was doing something she had never done before.

“Take this and give it to Anna.”
“I beg your pardon? Why to Anna…?”

“It’s paper with a good soak of oil in it. It’ll be perfect for kindling.”

Dong-hui broke into a grin.