“Wow! What a cute monkey!” she squealed.
Hearing Margaret’s delighted voice, the monkey put on a cute face and wagged his tail.
“What are you saying this little guy did?” Margaret asked.
“Guh?!” Elliott couldn’t very well tell her the monkey was mocking her breasts. Instead he answered, “Various things not fit to be mentioned...”
“Your Highness, just how did you learn to understand that monkey in the short time we’ve been here?” asked one of Elliott’s hangers-on.
Even Elliott’s cronies were looking at him dubiously.
“No, listen...” Elliott started.
As Elliott grasped for some way to explain it, Rachel decided to kick him while he was down.
“He doesn’t speak Monkey, so he couldn’t possibly know the details. You must subconsciously think these things, so you’re reading them into what the monkey does.”
“Urgh!” Elliott gnashed his teeth, misunderstood by all.
The monkey smiled another nasty smile and thrust his thumb in and out of his fist.
“Did you do her yet? Well? Did you?”
“Damn youuu!” Elliott wailed. “I won’t let this pass! All that’s going to be left of you is a speck of rust on my saber!”
Unable to get to the monkey, Elliott whaled away at the prison’s iron bars.
“What’s wrong, Your Highness?!” asked a hanger-on.
“Pull yourself together! Calm down! Calm down, okay?!” urged another.
Yet another lamented, “If only Sykes were here now...”
Elliott’s entourage started making a big fuss, trying to figure out how to calm Elliott down now that he’d drawn his blade.
“Please, Elliott, calm down!” Margaret pleaded. She clung to Elliott as he panted. Finally, the prince managed to settle down a little. “What’s gotten into you?!”
“That filthy little ape! That filthy little ape disrespected me!” Elliott insisted.
“The monkey’s just lying there. He hasn’t really done anything.”
“He’s a tricky little rascal! He does it when you’re not looking!” Elliott looked back to Rachel, who was staring at him dubiously. The monkey was no longer on top of her. “Hm? Where did the little monkey go?!”
Elliott looked around, searching despite himself, and saw that the monkey had come over to his side of the bars. He was on the floor, squatting as he gingerly lifted up Margaret’s dress to peek underneath. When he noticed that Elliott’s eyes were on him, he pointed to a nearby piece of white cloth.
“They’re white, y’know?”
“They’re white?!” Elliott exclaimed.
“What are white?” Margaret asked.
“Huh?! No, um...”
Margaret hadn’t noticed the monkey, so Elliott struggled to answer her. How was he supposed to explain that the monkey had just told him the color of her panties?
The incredibly dodgy way Elliott was acting was hard to watch, and not just for Rachel, but for his associates as well. He could try to explain, but no one was going to believe that the monkey could express itself like a human.
Elliott was biting his lip, agonizing over what to say, when he noticed that the monkey was leaning his elbow against his lower leg.
The monkey shrugged and shook his head. “You’ve got it rough, huh?”
“And whose fault do you think that is?! You filthy little ape!”
“Eeeek?!”
As Elliott swung like mad at his own feet, Margaret screamed, and his hangers-on ran around trying to get away.
“Calm down, Your Highness!” begged a hanger-on.
“A doctor! Call for a doctor!” instructed another.
The monkey nimbly dodged Elliott’s blade. It darted back into the prison and leapt onto Rachel’s breast.
“Haley, are you okay?!” Rachel asked.
“Ook... Ook, ook, ook-ook... Ook? Ook, ook...”
The monkey’s cute little eyes filled with tears, and he clung to Rachel’s breast as he gestured at length at just how scary Elliott was.
“Oh, Haley, you poor thing,” Rachel cooed. “You’re so frightened. He was scary, wasn’t he?”
“Ook...”
“Your Highness! Taking out your frustrations on a poor, simple monkey? You’re the worst!” Rachel chided him.
“M-Me?! That filthy little ape was messing with me!” Elliott asserted.
“What can a monkey even do to you? Pull on your clothes, maybe steal your things? That’s all, right? For you to draw your saber over that sort of thing is just awful!”
“She’s right, Elliott! I’m with Rachel on this one,” Margaret declared.
“Margaret, I—”
“Your Highness, how about you settle down?” suggested one of the hangers-on. “Come now, we’ll all go back to your office for a spot of tea.”
“You guys?!” Elliott whined. No one believed him.
“Ook-ook...”
“There, there, Haley,” Rachel said to comfort the monkey. “You went through a terrible fright, didn’t you? Do you need to cry? It’s okay. I’m with you now.”
“Elliott, bullying the monkey is wrong, okay? Stop it!” Margaret demanded.
“Your Highness, your saber is a wreck,” a hanger-on pointed out. “How should we explain this to your instructor?”
Even his followers were criticizing him.
Elliott met eyes with the monkey in Rachel’s arms. Haley, the filthy little ape, triumphantly flashed him a villainous smile, but at an angle where no one else would see.
“I’m the one who wants to cry heeeeeere!” Elliott screamed in anguish.
When Elliott and the others returned to Elliott’s office, the grand duke happened to be walking by. He stopped and asked, “Well? Did you question Miss Rachel about her monkey?”
“About that...” one of Elliott’s associates started, trailing off.
The grand duke followed the man’s line of sight to where an indignant Elliott was shouting, “It’s not fair!”
“We never got that far...” the associate explained.
“So it would appear...” the grand duke muttered.
Rachel was feeding Haley a rare tropical banana that she’d gotten along with the monkey when they delivered her supplies yesterday.
“Here, Haley, your reward. You did well.”
“Ook!”
As his mistress, Rachel knew all about Haley’s true nature.
Some days later, a number of crab apples appeared on the grand duke’s desk.
“Is this Your Grace’s share, perhaps?” the prime minister asked. “I never would have expected an ape to pay taxes...”
“I didn’t particularly want a share for myself...” the grand duke replied.