To The Traitor in My Bed - Chapter 58

Her smile seemed a bit faint, and Dorian’s face quickly darkened with concern for his sister. He hadn’t realized it, but their friends, who knew the siblings well, often joked that Dorian couldn’t marry because he adored his sister so much. It wasn’t a completely baseless thought.

He hurriedly asked.

“What’s wrong, Deirdre? Did that Fairchild guy make your life miserable?”

Looking at Deirdre’s shiny brown hair, sparkling blue eyes like stars, rosy cheeks, and the clear, fair skin that accentuated them, no one would think she had any worries troubling her.

However, Deirdre had been his princess for over twenty years. He could always tell whether she was troubled just by looking at her complexion.

Dorian took his sister’s hand.

“If you’re going to stay in Swinton, how about you stay here? I have plenty of rooms. I’ll decorate the biggest one with Farslan furniture and fabric. It’ll be more lavish than the Emperor of Farslan’s room.”

“Fredrick treats me well, Dorian. So don’t even think about giving me a room. Just find yourself a lady to propose to.”

Dorian never imagined he’d hear his younger sister, eight years younger than him, constantly urging him to get married. The siblings chatted for a while, and Deirdre was pleased to hear that he was selling horses to Sir Mark Hartley at a good price.

The butler from the Havisham family brought out a rum raisin cake, which Lady Havisham particularly liked. Dorian wasn’t fond of sweets, but he always kept whatever his sister enjoyed ready for her.

Deirdre quickly ate a slice of the cake, and Dorian said.

“I’ll pack some for you to take.”

“This is enough for me… actually, Fredrick can’t eat raisins. So, we don’t keep any at home. It’s a big problem if they accidentally get into the food.”

Dorian barely held back a remark about how ridiculous that was. Can’t ride a horse, can’t use a sword, can’t even hunt… and now can’t even eat raisins? What on earth could that useless guy do?

The conversation, which began with well-wishes, quickly shifted to news from Swinton. Dorian’s dinner parties were always attended by a mix of popular nobles, up-and-coming artists, and wealthy merchants and lawyers from the capital, so there was always a lot to talk about.

The events surrounding Count Holborn came up, naturally. Deirdre’s expression darkened.

“If… if there’s no evidence, do you think Lord and Lady Holborn will ever be freed?”

“Probably. Count Holborn just happened to get on Christian’s bad side and caught a bad break. But it seems like his daughters managed to escape safely.”

“Daughters…?”

Count Glenwell didn’t leave Holborn often. However, Dorian knew about that family because the eldest daughter of the Count, Eleanor, was married to Viscount Danley, who had attended Dorian’s dinner parties a couple of times.

“They have four daughters. I heard the eldest, Viscountess Danley, disappeared recently. The second daughter works as a lady-in-waiting at the royal palace, and I heard she hasn’t been seen for weeks. The other two, who were living with Count Holborn, haven’t been mentioned as being arrested, so I suspect the sisters might have escaped from the soldiers.”

“The second daughter, the one working as a lady-in-waiting at the palace, what was her name?”

Dorian tried to recall.

“Hayley? Heather…? I think it started with H.”

“Was the lady-in-waiting not taken by the soldiers?”

“Maybe. But since the second daughter disappeared first, there’s speculation that she might have set up a hideout somewhere and secretly helped her sisters escape.”

Deirdre seemed to be thinking about something.

“…Do you agree, brother?”

He shrugged.

To be honest, he had become so disillusioned with what Christian was doing that he hadn’t taken much of an interest or formed strong opinions on worldly matters for a while. The reason he hosted dinner parties wasn’t so much to catch the latest news, but rather as an unconscious way of creating a space for those who weren’t royalists to gather and mingle.

“Even if she was a lady-in-waiting, a single unmarried woman wouldn’t be able to set up a hideout and help her three sisters escape. If the Count’s daughters really did flee, don’t you think someone must have helped them?”

He pointed to the cream-colored roses in the vase in the hall.

“Perhaps they were helped by… that ‘White Rose’ brigade…?”

Among the nobles who despised royalists, there were quite a few who took an interest in the actions of the White Rose Brigade and secretly supported them.

Dorian wasn’t an exception. He had privately investigated to see if that group had any connections to Froiden, but he found no leads. It was dangerous to investigate an anti-government organization in Antwerp, and he wasn’t even a military police.

“I don’t know what they’re up to, but if they could just get a good hit on Christian, I’d be happy to lend my support.”

He sighed.

The name seemed to have left a deep impression on his sister as well. Deirdre’s gaze lingered on the flower for a while.

After a long pause, she murmured quietly.

“…I really hope that’s true.”