17.
She hadn’t even reached the truly shocking part yet. If he knew what she intended to say to his father, Asil Delaporte, he wouldn’t be sitting there so peacefully.
Perhaps she would even get to watch Auguste suffer a nervous breakdown every time he looked at her.
Amused by the thought, Freya dismissed Auguste’s skepticism.
“Mathilde mentioned it once before. Monsieur Delaporte refused to leave the Jockey Club, staying there for a whole week, so Madam Delaporte had to stand her ground and wait until he finally emerged.”
“Ah, I see….”
This time, Auguste’s face flushed for an entirely different reason. Clearing his throat softly to mask his embarrassment, he raised a voice of protest, still tinged with dissatisfaction.
“But women aren’t allowed in that place.”
“For ordinary women, that would be true. But I am a Blanc.”
Other women couldn’t, but she could. Seeing Freya show absolutely no intention of hiding her sense of entitlement, Auguste gave a hollow laugh. Eventually, he shrugged and stepped back.
“Well, if you say so.”
“Max, if you’re that uneasy, why don’t you come with me?”
At Freya’s suggestion, Max pondered for a moment before nodding.
“Let me know the date, and I’ll adjust my schedule.”
“Alright.”
As Freya stood up, the two men’s gazes naturally followed her. Glancing between them, Freya bid them farewell as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Then I’ll be going now.”
Both men’s eyes darted to the desk clock simultaneously. It had been barely two hours since Freya had arrived at the office.
“…Didn’t you ask for a management lesson?”
“Wasn’t what we just did a management lesson?”
Well, could you really call that a lesson? As they stood speechless at her nonchalant attitude, Freya spoke again.
“Besides, you wouldn’t want to leave work with me, would you? I thought you’d prefer that I leave first. Am I wrong?”
“…No, you’re right.”
Max spoke as if entranced.
“I thought so. Then, Max, Delaporte, this uninvited guest will take her leave.”
With a playful smile, Freya gathered her dress with both hands, curtsied slightly, and before they could stop her, she opened the office door and left.
Auguste stared at the empty space where she had been, muttering in a daze.
“…That was the Freya Blanc I know, right?”
She said she’d leave first because she figured Max wouldn’t want to be seen with her? Did those words really come out of Freya Blanc’s mouth? That Freya Blanc?
Max, wearing an expression not much different from Auguste’s, glared at the door and asked instead of answering.
“Auguste, what about the communication between Freya and the Duke?”
Auguste, who had been investigating Freya’s surroundings with everything he had since the talk of a divorce contract began, frowned and shook his head.
“There’s nothing, at least through any route I can verify. Ever since the scandal broke last winter, the Duke has been treating his own daughter like she doesn’t exist; well, that’s to be expected.”
While answering Max, Auguste suddenly remembered something and added,
“Come to think of it, she said something bothersome earlier.”
“What was it?”
“‘Think about what it would mean to submit a marriage proposal to the Blanc family’… or something like that.”
Recalling the conversation with Freya outside the office, Auguste’s mouth hung open.
“That woman, she definitely said it earlier… She said, ‘If you wanted to avoid my father.’”
“What does that mean?”
As Max asked with a frown, Auguste turned to him, answering with a serious face.
“Freya Blanc said to me, ‘If you wanted to avoid my father, you should have dragged the Delaporte family into it instead.’”
It seemed Auguste had finally realized the discrepancy Max had sensed the moment he heard the surveillance report.
“Max, did you, by any chance, tell your wife about your dealings with the Duke?”
Auguste started to ask, but before Max could even answer, he reached his own conclusion.
“No, that can’t be right. You wouldn’t tell her, of all people. No, you couldn’t.”
Telling that princess something like that. Watching Auguste add that bitter remark, Max opened his mouth.
“…Could it be the Duke?”
“Who knows.”
The only people who knew about what had transpired between Max and the Duke were Auguste himself, or perhaps Max’s father, Benoît Russell.
Excluding the fugitive Benoît Russell, and since neither he nor Max had said anything, the Duke was the most likely candidate.
“Is there any reason for the Duke, who has kept it a secret until now, to suddenly open up to his daughter?”
Freya was, no matter what anyone said, a woman obsessed with Max. If such a Freya knew about the connection between Duke Blanc and Max, nine times out of ten, she would end up at odds with Duke Blanc.
Unless she intended to use it in some other way, revealing the truth didn’t offer the Duke any particular advantage.
“That issue aside for now.”
Worrying about an unsolvable problem was just a waste of time. Max shifted his focus to something that might yield an answer.
“Look into the ‘marriage proposal.’”
But this time, too, Auguste’s response was not very positive.
“Well, that might be difficult. It seems to have been handled in secret, and in the end, it fell through…. Still, I’ll look into it.”
Auguste hesitated for a moment before adding,
“And… if something does come up, that’s a problem in itself, isn’t it?”
Tristan had been deeply involved in Max’s business since last winter. If it were revealed that Tristan had any connection to the Blancs, it was obvious that several troublesome issues would arise.
“Still, it’s better than being blindsided by something we know nothing about.”
“That… is true.”
Auguste held his head, feeling a headache coming on, and sighed while slumping at his desk.
“Max, honestly, I still think your wife is the most suspicious one of all.”
That was true. This time, Max rubbed his eyes, looking exhausted, and leaned back.
He had certainly thought he understood women better than anyone. Even better than they understood themselves.
But lately, whenever he looked at Freya, he kept asking himself the same question: Is she really the woman I thought I knew?
Perhaps because of that, it felt like the contract with her was gradually spiraling in an unexpected direction.
Max asked his wife, who could not hear him, quietly.
…Freya, what on earth are you thinking?
✦ ✦ ✦
One day. Defying her expectations that it would take several days, the expected letter arrived in just one.
Freya, having just finished breakfast, was informed by the butler that a messenger had arrived, and now held a thin letter in her hand.
A crimson seal was pressed onto the stark white envelope. The emblem on the seal was a lily. It was the crest of the Blanc family.
Freya, gauging the contents while fingering the letter, removed the seal with a paper knife.
The message was only a single line.
I wish for us to face each other and talk after all this time.
In his timeline, it had been half a year. That was all the letter to his daughter contained.
With a blank expression, Freya confirmed the contents, wrote a reply stating she would visit the Jockey Club to see him, and handed it to the butler standing nearby.
“Lorenzo, please deliver this letter to the messenger waiting downstairs.”
The butler, who she expected would leave immediately, stood still and spoke up.
“The Grand Madam intends to summon Madam to her salon.”
At the unexpected words, Freya looked up.
Like all the other servants in the mansion, the butler was someone hired by Mathilde.
During the past five years, while Mathilde had been driving Freya into a psychological corner, the servants had participated in Mathilde’s actions, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
If Mathilde created an atmosphere to mock Freya, they would follow suit, pretend not to hear Freya’s words, or subtly torment Milla, Freya’s personal maid.
The butler, Lorenzo, had not particularly sided with Mathilde, but he hadn’t helped Freya either. From Freya’s perspective, he wasn’t a good person, but he wasn’t a hostile one, either.
“Did Mathilde tell you to pass that on to me?”
“No. I am saying this based on my own personal judgment.”
“…When is the salon being held?”
“The second Saturday of June.”
Freya had let slip a remark to Mathilde, hoping to create the illusion that someone in this mansion was feeding her information, and someone had actually appeared. Freya curved the corners of her lips and asked again.
“Knowing full well who holds the real power in this mansion, are you sure it’s safe for you to tell me this?”
“The mistress of this mansion was originally you, Madam. I am merely speaking for the convenience of my employer.”
She still wasn’t sure if he was good or evil, but it was clear that Lorenzo was a man who knew how to look out for his own skin. However, Freya had no intention of letting him off that easily.
“Are you asking me to provide you with some convenience now that you’re going to treat me like the mistress?”
The man, in his mid-40s with a gentle impression, replied without any sign of panic at her provocation.
“To be honest, the Grand Madam has ordered all the staff to be replaced. The reason was that she couldn’t find the person who leaked information to you. Since I, too, may have to leave this mansion before long, I am simply doing what I can.”
Seeing him reveal his motives without pretense was far better than dealing with people who smiled and shook her hand while stabbing her in the back.
Moreover, if he was the butler, it was a position where he could provide practical help. She had no reason to refuse his offer. Though, the terms would have to be set properly.
“I cannot promise that I won’t fire you, Lorenzo. But if you listen to me, I believe I can provide you with a recommendation letter under the name of the Blanc family and compensation to match.”
As if he had already anticipated Freya’s answer, the butler replied without a moment’s hesitation.
“Please, tell me anything. I will do my utmost to satisfy you, Madam, as far as my reach allows.”