The Beauty’s Secret: 22

“…… This is.”

Julius saw a familiar ceiling when he regained consciousness.

He turned his head sideways and looked around the room. He saw his own room at the Rosenberg House residence in the Royal Capital.

“Ow?!”

Julius tried to get up, but a pan shot through his left shoulder and he couldn’t support his body. His body fell onto the bed again and his head hit the pillow.

He turned to look at the source of the pain, his left shoulder, and saw a bandage under his shirt.

“What the heck happened to me……?”

Julius had just woken up  and his mind was still a bit jumbled but he tried to recall the last thing he remembered.

“That’s right, I went on a horse-ride with Lady Emilinne and we were attacked by suspicious men at the lake.”

Julius only remembered that he fought the men in black and that his shoulder had been slashed but he had managed to defeat the third man.

He remembered hearing Emilinne’s voice calling his name in the distance in the darkness.

“I’ve managed to narrowly escape death…… Oh yeah, what about Lady Emilinne?!”

I defeated everyone at the late, so there shouldn’t be anyone who poses a danger to her but I’m still worried. Considering I’m still alive, she should be safe as well but—–.

He thought and then a knock came from the door.

“Ah, come in.” Julius responded to the knock and called out.

“?!”

He felt an aura of surprise come from the other side of the door.

“Ex-excuse me!”

The door was opened a little bit hastier than usual and the head maid, Parla appeared from the other side of the door.

“You have awoken, Julius-sama.”

“I have.”

“Please wait for a little.” Parla turned towards Julius and informed him, before leaving the room. She instructed the maid, waiting outside, to inform Earl Rosenberg and Elizabeth that Julius had awoken.

She returned to the room, bowed, and then approached the bed where Julius was lying with his bandage.

“I’ll change your bandage.”

“Okay, I’ll leave it to you. Also, could you tell me what happened after I lost consciousness?”

“Certainly.”

Parla took off the bandage wrapped around Julius’ shoulder.

“You lost consciousness because of the assassin’s attack and Lady Emilinne brought you back to the Royal Capital by horse.”

“Lady Emilinne did?!”

Emilinne was certainly the only one left at the lake when Julius lost consciousness and that would be the only conclusion he would come to if he thought about the situation. Still, he couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for her to carry him back to the Royal Capital because she was so petite.

“Yes. Then you arrived here and we sent for a doctor and got you treatment. Poison had entered your body and you were in a dangerous condition. But, you could survive because Lady Verjus’ first-aid treatment was good.”

“Poison…… So I was poisoned? I can’t thank Lady Emilinne enough.”

Julius recalled that his wound had been deep but not deep enough to make him lose consciousness right away. He had wondered why he had fainted so fast, but if the knife had been poisoned then he could see why he did.

Parla had said that if Emilinne hadn’t treated him then he would have died; he sighed in gratitude and regret at causing trouble for Emilinne.

Julius was troubled and ashamed because he had wanted to ask for her hand in marriage; but instead, she was caught up in a dangerous situation and even saved his life.

“By the way, how much time has passed since I was attacked?”

“Three days have already passed since then.”

“Three days?! I see……” Parla said as she placed the old bandages onto the table and and wrapped new ones around his shoulder. Julius showed surprised for a second, but he immediately accepted the truth.

It wasn’t strange for someone to take that long to wake up if they were infected by poison or had deep wounds.

“Okay, I’ve finished changing your bandages.”

“Oh, thanks. By the way, do you know the identity of the men who attacked me?”

“I don’t know any information regarding that…… I’ve sent word to the Master and Madam about you waking up, so they should be here soon. The Master should have the answers.”

“Alright. I’ll ask my father about it when he gets here.”

◊♦◊♦◊♦◊

“I’m glad that you seem alright, Julius.” Earl Rosenberg said to break the ice, as he tried to calm Elizabeth as she frantically checked Julius’s condition. Earl Rosenberg and Elizabeth had rushed here when they heard that Julius had awoken.

“I’m sorry for troubling you, father.”

“So father, do you know the identities of the men who attacked me?”

“Unfortunately not. A lot of things happened, so I wasn’t able to get much information regarding that…… However, there was nothing on the assassin’s bodies that could identify who they were.”

“Is that so?”

If they were planning to take someone’s life then they would avoid carrying anything that could identify them.

Julius guessed that they usually did this kind of shady work from how coordinated their attacks were.

It was inevitable that they wouldn’t be able to identify them based on their belongings.

“Well, we do have an idea of who’s behind the attack.”

“Someone from the Kingdom of Lakshurusu?”

“We can’t mention it because there’s no evidence. It’s highly likely that they targeted you because of your actions in the last war.”

“That’s…… true.”

War could also be said to be a competition of life, so of course, you would kill the enemy.

If you didn’t, then you would lose your own life. So the victim had turned into the assailant and they were barking up the wrong tree if they held a grudge for that. ── Which was the official stance, but emotions are complicated.

People who have had their family members murdered, those who’s Houses were ruined from the defeat of war and those who felt the disgrace of defeat; it wasn’t hard to imagine that those people would hold grudges against the other party. It was understandable that they would attack Julius because he had been the decisive factor in Aullène Kingdom’s victory.

However, like Earl Rosenberg had said, the reality was that they couldn’t blame the Kingdom of Lakshurusu without evidence. It was a different story if they were able to get the person who was pulling the strings to confess by capturing the assassins alive. But it was impossible to desire something like that in this type of situation.  

“We’re heading towards peace talks with the Kingdom of Lakshurusu. Both sides don’t want to cause more discord. Unfortunately, this case will probably be buried.”

“It’s unavoidable.”

There were issues he wasn’t satisfied with but he could understand that when it came to kingdom to kingdom relations it would be detrimental to bring in an individual’s motives. Still, he wasn’t happy that the case would be buried due to lack of evidence.

“And we’ve got another problem.” Earl Rosenberg raised another issue and Julius tilted his head in confusion.

“Another problem?”

Julius didn’t think that there would be any other problems except for the one they had just talked about.

However, he knew from Earl Rosenberg’s expression that a big problem had arisen. He listened attentively and urged Earl Rosenberg to continue.

“The fact that you were attacked and lost consciousness has already spread throughout the whole kingdom. We’ve received a flood of requests asking to visit you.”

“…… What?” Julius shouted in amazement. He was prepared to hear about the big problem but it had turned out to be something incredibly stupid.

“Don’t ‘what’ me. I refused all direct visitations and only received presents because you wouldn’t wake up.”

“They keep coming one after the other and two rooms have already filled up with goods.”

“…… Really?”

The situation was far beyond his imagination, and he turned pale.

The rooms of the estate were as wide as one would normally expect of an Earl’s mansion. Therefore, his head hurt when he thought about how many presents it would take to fill up one of those rooms. Moreover, two rooms had been filled with presents.

“Both Elizabeth and I have been writing thank you letters, but we can’t finish them. You write your own reply now that you’ve woken up.”

“B-but my shoulders are wounded……”

“It’s only your left shoulder, you can still write.”

“You should have been the one to write all the replies, Julius.”

“…… I’ll do it.”

Julius, who had just woken up, had a penance imposed on him. He hung his head without thinking.

After that, Julius was passed the list of people and was at his wits end over the sheer amount of them. He didn’t notice it straight away.

── The names of Maxián, Lillyshia, Dudrick and Dearnet were all listed on the sheet. But the name of his fiancée, Emilinne was nowhere to be found.