Surviving as a Terminally Ill Heiress - Chapter 25

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 25

Philip wore a smile as carefully crafted as a mask.
“That was quite the clever trick. Estimating our guests’ movements using sparkling powder, no less.”
“If I’d known there was someone it wouldn’t work on, I’d have saved myself the trouble.”
He was the one doing the manipulating, after all.
I eyed him sharply. He must have known all along that I created the Sparkling Flower and that I’d obtain and read the Snare Page.
Philip shrugged.
“At the very least, I know everything that happens within Ambrose Manor. That’s what I’m for.”
Tool. He spoke of himself as though he were nothing but a tool.
His expressionless face seemed to be asking whether that helpfulness hadn’t proven useful to me.
I couldn’t deny it. I really couldn’t.
“You look unconvinced.”
“It doesn’t make sense. The great Ambrose could simply seal off every problem before it starts. Why go to the trouble of laying out the board and moving pieces around like chess?”
I couldn’t fathom why they’d orchestrate such a spectacle.
“Is that what you think?”
Philip smiled thinly.
“Problems arise whenever and wherever they will. Prevent one problem, and you simply invite another—or worse, create one by trying to prevent the first.”
He made a noise like a meowing cat.
“As the saying goes, even a mouse will bite a cat when cornered. No matter how insignificant a human may be, once they’re driven to desperation, they’ll resort to anything. It becomes remarkably troublesome.”
“So…?”
“So the source of the problem must be kept in the palm of one’s hand, then dealt with at the opportune moment. Swift and precise. Before they even realize they’ve been cornered. Clean.”
Philip drew a finger across his throat.
The gesture was almost cheerful.
For a moment, Susan’s pale neck crossed my mind—but I quickly forgot it.
It was a matter of keeping a problem small enough to solve, yet keeping it balanced on one’s palm while eliminating all variables.
If that was the Ambrose Method…
“You’re Ambrose’s eye.”
The eye that must watch everything from a third party’s vantage point.
Philip finally removed his glasses and laughed.
Those eyes, which had mimicked madness, were deeper and more serene than I’d expected.
“And his ears and mouth as well.”
I nodded. I understood well enough.
Ambrose was vast.
It was impossible to know every detail of the Manor, and one couldn’t screen out servants like True completely.
If they were to contact someone genuinely hostile to Ambrose, it would be dangerous.
So the approach was to open an easily accessible path first, collecting and managing information while allowing some strategic leakage.
What was needed in that process was something Ambrose—yet not quite Ambrose. A small deviation.
The man standing before me, Philip Ridley, was perfect for the role.
But wait.
If Philip was Ambrose’s person…
“You can’t mean the Snare Page itself is also Ambrose?”
Philip smiled broadly.
It was answer enough.
I gaped for a moment, then asked with genuine bewilderment.
“That means Ambrose is selling his own gossip.”
“So?”
“What?”
“Ambrose sells anything that’s saleable.”
…
“And if it’s going to sell anyway, why let someone else profit from it? It was mine to begin with.”
That… was true? Now that he said it, it almost made sense.
I stood there, dumbfounded, my head bobbing slightly.
At first it had seemed absurd, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to follow the logic.
Letting out a breath, I glanced back toward the Duke’s distant chambers.
“What about Susan?”
“She’ll be handled by the Ambrose Method.”
And there it was—the very thing I’d been trying to understand.
I stared at Philip with narrowed eyes.
Despicable.
He was truly odious—no wonder he was that old man’s instrument.
“Puh, ha ha!”
Suddenly Philip burst into loud, genuine laughter.
It felt as though a piece of the mask he’d been wearing all this time had slipped clean off.
Was he mad? I narrowed my eyes further, watching as his shoulders shook as if he might weep.
“Goodness, how you look exactly like the young master.”
“Pardon?”
“When the young master first discovered my nature, he looked at me with that exact same expression. That insufferable look.”
Hmm.
I looked away, feeling somewhat embarrassed.
Philip chuckled for a long while before straightening up.
“It’s getting late. I’ll take my leave. Until next time.”
The man bowed to me and vanished like a shadow.
And the next day, I saw an article in the Snare Page.
An article about the Hawk Count Family—how they’d been ruined by gambling addiction and disappeared without a trace.

* * *

‘But what about Howard, then?’
Between the shocking revelations and the tunnel I’d dug, I couldn’t sleep to save my life.
When I finally gave up and sprawled across the sofa all morning, unable to rest,
I felt a faint stirring and glanced back.
It was them again.
Hugh and Dido kept hovering around me for no clear reason.
No particular purpose or aim. They were just… there.
The two of them were so busy darting about Ambrose Manor every day it was hard to keep track of them.
Yet every time I looked, they’d reappeared at my side.
They’d race madly through the spacious Garden, lose themselves in admiration of beautiful ornaments, then return to me as if drawn by a magnet.
Why?
The question I was about to voice aloud was asked instead by True.
“Do you like big sister so much?”
“Hee hee, yes!”
“Mm…”
The two of them answered without hesitation and went scrambling off again.
I watched their retreating figures for a long moment.
True tilted her head at me.
“What’s wrong, miss?”
“I think… I’ve been overthinking things.”
Though I’d felt it all along.
That’s why my instinct had kicked in before I gave the Duke my answer.
My reasoning had been clouded by prejudice, making everything more complicated than it needed to be.
When things are simple, the solutions are simple too.
“I think I’ll go out.”
“Really?”
True looked delighted at the prospect.
“Your first outing since arriving! Where are you going? What will you do?”
“Oh, just going to… blackmail someone.”
After all, a lie’s best answered with a lie.

* * *

The man ran.
A maidservant had delivered a letter to him; he’d read it, and then…
After that, his memory grew hazy.
He’d simply moved without thinking.
Out of a room where bottles lay scattered, down a quiet corridor where few servants walked, and finally to the Stables, where he’d seized the first horse he could find.
He burst through the Main Gate, only to find a carriage blocking his path.
The horse whinnied in alarm, rearing up.
On the carriage window, a crest so familiar it made his breath catch.
And through it,
“Where are you going?”
A small, pale face appeared.
Though her features were entirely different, she had the eyes of the person he loved.
“You…”
“Get in. The weather’s cold.”
“Move. I don’t have time for…”
“The carriage fare is going to be about five Pages by now. Would you just get in?”
Her voice carried an odd melancholy.
He had no mind to protest.
He turned the horse to push past her when—
“There’s nothing there anyway.”
…
“Really, get in. You’ll catch cold.”
Ravine clicked her tongue and opened the carriage door herself.
The breathless man descended from his horse as if in a trance.
A premonition seized him that stepping into that carriage might somehow mend his shattered heart.
He climbed in unsteadily. Ravine watched him from across the way.
A lie crushed by truth, and all the sincerity she’d been unable to hide came pouring out.
The pallid man’s trembling lips opened.
“Th-then, is our brother… is he…?”
“He’s fine.”
Ravine shrugged.
He was so fine he probably didn’t even know what was happening and was hard at work at the company right now.
The strength drained from the man, and he dropped the letter he’d been holding.
As it fluttered toward her, Ravine picked it up and read the crudely written message.
“Howard Nelson: If you wish to save your brother’s life, tell no one and come here alone…”
It was written in her own left-handed, spidery script.
Below it was a crude map drawn at random.
Ravine let out a short laugh.
Wow. Looking at it again, really.
“And you fell for this?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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