My Husband Never Dies - Chapter 81

Evelia stopped where she was and narrowed her eyes.

The structure looked ancient. The map had called it a manor, but in reality it resembled a fortress more than a house. Guard towers rose above towering stone walls. Dense stands of evergreen trees ringed the estate like a black curtain.

Though it was still early, almost no lights shone within. The place was so silent that she could scarcely believe anyone lived there at all.

‘The Duke really lives out in a backwater like this? Shouldn’t he be in Ailern instead?’

According to the information Ivan had given her, the duke had not left the estate in recent days. That was precisely what made her suspicious.

Even so, she had to proceed according to plan. Evelia began scouting for a sniper’s position.

There was an old mill beside the river beneath the outer wall, its machinery seemingly abandoned long ago. It sat roughly three hundred yards south of the estate. There was no reason for the guards to patrol a derelict building, making it an ideal place to hide.

Evelia easily picked the lock, slipped inside, and climbed onto the roof. Old construction materials, left exactly where they’d been abandoned, were scattered everywhere — perfect cover. With her rifle only half assembled, she pressed her eye to the scope.

The grounds inside the wall came into view, faint but visible. There was definitely light in one of the windows. Someone was inside. Good. So the intelligence wasn’t wrong.

Finishing the assembly of her rifle, Evelia lay flat and waited for a tall man with black hair to appear.

There was no point firing at the indistinct figure visible through the window. She had no way of knowing who it was. Besides, making a careless move now would only put the estate on guard.

Instead, Evelia trained her sights on the front gate. Whether he came out by carriage, on horseback, or simply for a walk — it didn’t matter. All he had to do was step outside.

She wouldn’t let that opportunity slip away. All she needed was a single moment.

But.

“…What the hell?”

She hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of the target all day.

The lights behind the windows blinked on and off with the passing hours, but that was all.

To make matters worse, the mist shrouding the estate kept swallowing her line of sight, only to release it again moments later.

The fog’s this bad? She hadn’t anticipated that.

Unlike the warm air of Pallici Island, the cold, damp atmosphere seeped into her body, and Evelia could feel her muscles gradually stiffening.

Fortunately, she was used to the cold. Honestly, it was still better than the northern front of Karentz. That place had been hell.

Even so, she endured.

“…What?” The fxck?”

By the afternoon of the third day, Evelia let out a curse and rested her forehead against the rifle’s stock. The muzzle remained trained on the estate’s front gate. Not once had she been given a chance to pull the trigger.

For three straight days, not only had the duke failed to appear, but no one had entered or left the estate at all.

There might have been someone slipping in and out like a ghost while she’d briefly let her guard down and fallen asleep, but regardless, not once had the manor’s gates opened during the hours when ordinary people were active.

“…Is there really no one there, or does he just never come out?”

Was it because the situation was so absurd? The quiet mutter escaped her before she realized it, dissipating into the empty air.

Of course, the file Ivan had sent included the duke’s record of leaving the estate. Over the past six months, the Duke of Brumfield had gone out exactly five times.

That came to, what, ten times a year? In other words, the bastard was practically a recluse who didn’t even leave the house once a month.

Which also meant she had to time her ambush to the rare occasion when the target actually ventured outside.

Even stranger was the complete absence of guards. Normally, sentries rotated shifts around the clock, yet not a single person came or went anywhere near the manor.

Impossible as it sounded, it looked as though there wasn’t even any staff working at the estate. There was no way someone lived alone in a manor that large, so what the hell was going on?