chapter 147
“It was the alcohol.”
He spoke in a calm, reminiscing tone.
So he got drunk with his sister-in-law and caused a scandal. Is that it?
To think my origin story was this much of a soap opera…
The old butler’s wrinkled eyes twitched, clearly in turmoil himself.
“Your Grace. Such an act, running counter to ethics and morality, that would be… the sin of adultery? No, wait…”
“I did nothing wrong.”
Uncle said shamelessly, then picked up the wine bottle and poured the remaining contents onto the floor in a slow stream.
“One night when I briefly returned to the capital, someone slipped a sedative into my drink. I got a wonderful night’s sleep out of it. That’s all.”
“You’re saying the Countess snuck into your chambers?”
“The next morning, I found sandalwood lingering on the bedding and figured someone had come and gone. I thought the Countess simply wore a popular perfume when I noticed the same scent on her, but after observing this child closely, I came to realize something. That glass I just finished will be my last… I need to quit drinking.”
I had no idea why that was his takeaway, but for someone who’d just uncovered an enormous secret, he seemed remarkably unruffled.
“Your Grace, then you’re acknowledging this child as your own? The Empire is strict about adultery. If it becomes known that the child was conceived with your brother’s wife, your honor and reputation will be destroyed.”
The butler, still visibly rattled, spoke with open worry. Uncle answered with complete disinterest.
“I couldn’t care less about my reputation. They told me the child would be dead in three days. As both an uncle and a father, it’s only right that I at least see her off at the end.”
That was his reason?
I let out a sigh and gazed at the infant.
Baby Kido looked as precarious as a guttering candle flame.
Uncle Claude left behind the detached instruction ‘Call me when she’s about to stop breathing’ and went about his business. Miraculously, baby Kido survived past the three-day mark.
“Heavens, I’m due to be deployed soon. I can’t wait forever.”
He tutted at the sight of the infant wheezing harshly.
After staring down at the baby in silence, he poked her soft cheek with one finger.
His perpetually impassive expression finally cracked the moment the baby grabbed his finger and broke into a beaming grin.
“…Why is she smiling?”
“Baba.”
He gazed at the infant for a long time, an inscrutable look on his face.
“Not a rat after all. A baby bunny.”
Watching the babbling infant, he rubbed his chin and muttered:
“Should I just kill him and take her? A nursemaid can raise her well enough without me.”
Then he shook his head.
“No, children should grow up in a proper home.”
After a long stretch lost in thought, he summoned the butler. Eventually my mother came to the manor and took the baby home.
Afterward, Uncle, a naval admiral, set out to sea once more for his campaign.
The scenes fast-forwarded, seasons cycling several times until winter returned.
Marquis Claude, back in the snow-covered capital, furrowed his brow as he listened to a subordinate’s report.
“More than desperation, it’s closer to fanaticism.”
He picked up a document, scanned it, and added, tilting his teacup:
“This is just another form of giving up.”
I sneaked a peek at the report he was reading.
It was a lab analysis of the substances my mother had been feeding me under the guise of medicine.
Arsenic, puffer fish venom, centipede venom, snake venom, hornet venom, poisonous mushrooms. It was a parade of every conceivable toxin. None of it appeared to have been used therapeutically.
The dosages exceeded the median lethal dose, reaching outright lethal levels.
Had she simply gotten folk remedies wrong and misused them?
“It’s remarkable the child is still alive.”
The subordinate delivering the report added with a grim expression.
Uncle pressed his lips shut and let out a thin sigh.
“I’d better bring her home.”
I checked the calendar on his desk, and the timing coincided with the period when Count and Countess Beatrice had perished in a shipwreck.
Was this memory being shown to me because I’d been curious about whether Uncle had really killed my parents?
Through his eyes, they must have looked like a pair of lunatics so obsessed with their child’s health that they’d been poisoning her with every toxin imaginable.
That, too, had been a form of familial love and Uncle’s choice, perhaps, had been another.
I couldn’t point the finger at anyone and call it wrong.
‘I’m just grateful that our little one came to us.’
My mother’s desperate love had led to ruinous choices, and I couldn’t bring myself to condemn that.
Because after all, I was the one who’d been born from all of it.
“Find everyone who knows the rumors that Count Beatrice is infertile, or that the Countess used a cuckoo’s egg.”
Uncle looked at his subordinate and continued, his face frigid:
“Kill them all.”
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