Byletta glanced over at her husband as a maid showed them to their rooms, but his expressionless face was as unreadable as ever. He didn’t look at all troubled. Incidentally, they’d spent the journey to the estate in the carriage, so he hadn’t made any more outrageous advances. Instead, he’d just opted to hold Byletta’s hand. That was unsurprising, given his father had been with them.
“Oh, but won’t you be happy to get a good night’s rest?” Byletta murmured back to her husband.
She was exhausted after being stuck inside a swaying carriage with barely any breaks all the way from the capital. All she wanted was her bed.
“I absolutely will…but I can no longer sleep a wink without you. I’m addicted to your warmth.”
“Oh? Perhaps you should find yourself a stuffed toy to snuggle with instead.”
Arnald’s phrasing was so ambiguous that Byletta wasn’t sure what he meant. What is he actually feeling? she wondered. Was he trying to say he didn’t feel at ease unless she was there? Or perhaps he was just trying to start an argument…
Incensed, Byletta continued on toward her allotted room with heavy footsteps.
And yet, as soon as night fell, there was Arnald, even though his room was next door.
Byletta had been reading through some documents on the sofa in her room after dinner when she’d glanced up and found her husband standing in the doorway. He still wore an apathetic expression, and she didn’t sense the lust of a man who would have snuck into his wife’s room in the middle of the night for one express purpose.
“Yes, my lord?”
“Have you really come here often?”
There was a curious note in Arnald’s voice. Likely, he’d heard something from the servants. This would be a good opportunity to tell him everything, Byletta thought, nodding at him. She sat up straight and stared at her husband. So the question was: Why exactly had she been to the manor house so regularly despite not being the wife of its lord?
Even if Arnald hadn’t asked, she found the situation a bit strange, herself.
But there were reasons.
“Well, your father always whines about having to come, so he drags me along with him. And everyone is always very grateful.”
“Huh?”
“It’s all your father’s fault.”
Byletta brought Arnald up to speed on everything that had happened.
Count Swangan had only ever really shown his face at the estate when he’d first inherited his title. Arnald’s mother, meanwhile, had remained there and jumped headlong into having and rearing a child, which was how Arnald had come to spend time at the estate after his birth. Being a military man, Count Swangan was often away, but he’d at the very least made sporadic visits back then.
Once his first wife had died, however, the count had stopped coming altogether, and that was more than twenty years ago. It was very unusual for a lord to act in such a manner; Byletta had been rendered speechless when she’d first found out.
The death of the count’s wife had apparently happened around the same time he’d retired from the military due to his lung problems. That was also when his drinking had started.
As time went on, the requests he received to visit his estate—which the count had gotten regularly at the beginning of his tenure—began to come fewer and farther between, as had the petitions from the people there. He’d continued to send a tax inspector twice a year, but when the reports showed no issues, he’d apparently been led to believe that everything was going just fine under Bardu’s leadership. If any problems did arise, he dealt with them by simply sending money or goods, just as he had recently. In the end, he’d gotten to the point where he approved all requests he received without so much as a second glance. He couldn’t have been more neglectful if he’d tried.
As such, it was obvious why the tax inspector hadn’t even bothered to hide anything on the reports he’d brought—given Count Swangan’s attitude and disinclination to check the numbers, the culprit just stopped bothering to fudge them.
That said, the region had still passed government inspections year after year, so the blame couldn’t entirely be left at the count’s door. Byletta had an endless list of questions about why it hadn’t failed, but right then, the estate itself had to be prioritized.
Byletta believed that the count had become even more dependent on alcohol once he’d found that things could run just fine without him.
When she’d first entered the picture and made him give up drinking, she’d also hauled him right out to the estate when she’d discovered that he’d been neglecting his work there. Bardu and the other servants had been astonished. It was like they’d seen a ghost. It turned out that the count hadn’t even bothered to inform the estate of their imminent arrival. He’d deflected and said he hadn’t bothered, thinking that they wouldn’t actually get that far. Byletta had gone so far as to try to beat some sense back into him through sword practice.
That was how both the servants and those who lived on the estate had come to admire her. It’d actually made her a little uncomfortable—after she’d become aware of it, Byletta had started to visit less often and send her father-in-law on his own instead. Perhaps that had been the wrong move.
And then there was the discovery of all the grain going missing.
Frankly, it wasn’t Byletta’s job to deal with it. The count’s carelessness was what had started all this. That was why she’d promised herself she would investigate the mess and make him rue the consequences of his inaction.
“…And that’s why I would appreciate your assistance. I need you to persuade your father to take his job more seriously.”
“I see. So that’s why they meant by ‘sympathizers.’”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, I was just talking to myself. So what’s that you were reading?”
“The estate’s tax revenue ledger. It includes reports on disasters like flooding around the property, and some repair logs as well. Your father just dumped it on me, but it’s all right. I’ll get him back for this.”
Byletta smiled daringly, causing Arnald’s eyes to widen and his lips to curl into the faintest of smiles before his face quickly returned to its apathetic expression.
“I look forward to seeing what you can do. What are your plans for tomorrow?”
“There are a few places I intend to visit, but you don’t need to accompany me.”