Envy And Fear

— Thud!

“Aaargh!”

“Oh my?”

Pai dusted off her hands and looked down at the enormous insect squirming on the floor.

“Nnngh…”

“Oh my, my.”

Though seeing as the insect was in fact Luigi Husslix, she had no desire to grant it the standing of a person at all.

“I’m so sorry. I took you for an assassin, and I’m afraid I…”

Still, one cannot go calling a man an insect to his face, so she promoted Luigi to human and answered him accordingly.

She had been on her way to the study to draw up the contract. Even if she and the Regent Duke were seeing each other, an employment contract as nanny still had to be written, did it not? Had she known that pausing a moment to enjoy the sunlight spilling through the long window would prove the root of all the trouble, she would have gone straight into the room.

At any rate, she had in fact slammed Luigi Husslix flat to the floor like a snapped-down card, so she put on a show of gentleness and asked,

“Are you all right, old man? Can you get up? Shall I help you?”

When she handled him the way one handles the elderly, Luigi’s face went red and purple by turns. He shot to his feet and the veins stood out on his neck.

“A lowborn thing dares lay hands on my person?!”

“I am sorry for slamming you down… but do you find yourself forgetting things rather often these days?”

“Wh-what?”

“It may be simple absent-mindedness, but if the symptoms worsen it would be as well to have yourself examined, which is why I mention it. You are getting on in years, after all.”

“What in blazes is this nonsense you are prattling at me!”

Pai’s eyes went round as though she had been startled by his raised voice, and her mouth worked open and shut. At a glance she had the bearing of an innocent woman fresh up from the countryside, but every word loaded beneath that red tongue was as sharp and as hard as a chisel splitting a wall.

“It was the old man who laid hands on me first, wasn’t it. You did it just now, and since you cannot remember it, I can hardly help worrying.”

“Wh-wh-why, you…!”

Only a fool would have missed that he was being mocked. That a mere maid, of all people, should insult him set Luigi’s mind reeling. A servant is a shard of mirror reflecting the master; that a lowly maid made light of him meant Keith had shown him this very attitude.

“This pair of wretches are climbing clean over my head!”

Luigi raised his elbow high to strike her.

“What is this commotion?”

At that very instant, as though it had been waiting for nothing but his hand rising against a maid, the study door flew open and Keith stepped out. A frigid gaze swept over Pai and then Luigi in turn. For all that it was nothing but a look, Luigi shuddered from head to foot as though an icicle had been drawn across the nape of his neck. His arm dropped, all strength gone from it. He knew that if he had not lowered it himself, it would have been seized by force and he left looking ridiculous.

“What is all this.”

Even in the early morning Keith Paragon was flawless. His jet-black hair was set without a single strand astray, and his features could not have been more sharply cut. The red eyes, far from drunk with languor, were honed to a keen edge. Only, it was closer to the raw-edged wakefulness of the small hours than to the brisk brightness of noon.

“…”

Luigi, beaten from the outset by sheer presence, curled his fists, his pride smarting.

Pai bent her knees slightly and straightened them again, for all the world to see.

“Good morning, Your Grace.”

The movements were courtesy itself, but Luigi took the manner for mockery. For the wench knew perfectly well that he harbored discontent over Elrod Paragon’s will.

This was no delusion of grandeur on his part. Pai truly was provoking him. She turned her head so that only Luigi could see, tilted one corner of her mouth up in a crooked line, and nailed his suspicion down.

Short of actually foaming at the mouth, Luigi was ready to faint where he stood at the maid’s lunatic nerve.

Has the creature truly lost her mind?

He raised his arm again, meaning to seize a fistful of the hair of this wench whose nerve had outrun all sense.

“You dare make sport of a noble?”

— Thwack!

But Keith caught the brutish hand.

“Ngh…!”

The wrist caught in that powerful grip ached as though it would break. The physical pain would have been enough on its own, but under that suffocating flood of hostility his teeth chattered.

When had anyone last turned hostility on him this nakedly? And laid hands on him, no less? He had grown into an arrogant pig and forgotten how to answer violence. Not that remembering would have helped; he could have done nothing but flare his nostrils.

“Do mind your dignity, Uncle.”

His tone hung precariously between counsel and command. Luigi barely managed a dry swallow before begging abjectly.

“A-all right, I understand, so l-let go of this. Let go and let us talk, I beg you.”

“…”

With the face of a man bestowing a favor, Keith let the strength drain from his grip. Luigi gasped like a chicken with its neck wrung, a bluish bruise rising on the skin.

Keith cast a cold look at him as he clutched his wrist and groaned.

“I cannot bear the sight of a woman being handled roughly. I lost my mother in an ugly way.”

“…”

“So imagine how it is where my own woman is concerned.”

“Your… woman?”

Luigi’s eyeballs rolled uneasily. The maid’s face was calm and unabashed, as though she had heard nothing out of the ordinary. Now that he looked, she was not even wearing a maid’s uniform. Blast… He grasped that he had blundered, and understood in the same breath why she had been able to run so rampant.

So she had a backer, did she.

Put another way, it meant Keith had consented to be that backer for her.

The insolent wretch…!

Even the way Keith Paragon had abandoned the house and gone wandering the North came to feel like a long-laid scheme to cheat him. Here was a fellow who, had he clung to the castle, would have won a viscountcy at the very most; and yet had he not come home in glory as the Mercenary King?

Luigi had raised private soldiers of his own, but whether they could stand against a pack of mercenaries who counted for something in the lawless territories was more than he could say.

The underhanded wretch.

His teeth ground together and his fists closed. A hostility he had not the least will to hide set the very morning sunlight seething and boiling.

Keith looked down with utter indifference at his uncle, who was pouring out hatred with such ferocity.

“You really are exactly as you were seven years ago, Uncle.”

“And what is that supposed to mean.”

“I remember it vividly. When I came to be entered in the Paragon register by my father’s order, you despised me. You refused even to take a meal at the same table, and when I paid my respects you flew into a temper.”

“Then was I to have thrown both arms wide and welcomed a filthy bastard? It is all long past. And in the end, did I not accept you as a member of the family?”

“Yes. Granted my father was at death’s door and might be written off as senile, but Elrod Paragon, who was to succeed to the ducal title, was very fond of me.”

“So, you wish to accuse me of turning my attitude over as easily as one turns a hand, of being opportunistic and contemptible with it?”

“No. Frankly, I have no interest in your attitude either way.”

“Wha—”

“Because the feeling you hold toward me, at least, has never changed.”

When Keith closed the distance by a single step, Luigi had to tip his head back, oppressed as though he were craning up at a sheer cliff.

“Despising me, hating me. Envying me and fearing me.”

“…”

“Uncle.”

The low voice wrung his guts.

“Do you fear me?”

“Wh-why, you insolent…!”

Luigi Husslix raised his hand for the third time. But as though barred by an invisible wall, it only trembled, nailed fast in midair.

And fearing me…

Caught in those red eyes, he felt as though he himself had been soaked through with blood. To be drenched in blood. Was that his own wretched future?

Sour bile flooded back up and wet his tongue. Clutching at his chest with the hand he had stretched out, Luigi retched.

“Urgh…”

Keith gave a cold sidelong look at Luigi, who was panting with his face gone scarlet. When he knocked at the half-open study door, a servant who had been waiting inside hurried out.

“See him properly to his room.”

“Understood.”

The servant moved to support the swaying body, but Luigi swung his elbow at him savagely.

“Get off!”

“B-but, my lord…”

“I will lay every last scrap of your hypocrisy bare!”

Keith hung a courteous smile at the corner of his mouth, like a man accepting an invitation.

“How very much I look forward to it.”