The Countess's Body Has Disappeared - Chapter 41

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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 41
It was past ten o’clock at night. Not once, in all the time she had been coming here, had anyone ventured to the Cabin at such a late hour.
Nature’s grandeur existed for moments precisely like this. Cecilia shed her clothes without hesitation, wrapped her arms around her torso, and stepped into the Stream.
The oppressive heat had warmed the water to exactly the right temperature. Perfect. She rinsed away the sweat quickly, then released a weary sigh and gazed up at the crescent moon hanging in the sky.
The song of crickets rolled in like gentle waves. The breeze that touched her skin was cool and refreshing.
This isn’t so bad at all. Cecilia swept her damp hair back from her face, closed her eyes, and let the pale moonlight wash over her bare skin. Her lips began to tingle, and a contented laugh spilled from her.
Then, all at once, a voice like thunder split the silence.
“You’ll catch cold doing that, you know.”
Eek!
Cecilia shrieked and covered her chest.
She spun around to find Davion standing in the ditch, smoking a cigarette. Each time he drew in a breath, the red ember flared bright, then faded to darkness.
“How long have you been—”
“I got here a little while ago. It’s dark anyway; I can barely see your outline.”
“Don’t you sleep?”
“What? Who goes to bed at just ten o’clock?”
Cecilia’s eyes darted frantically around her.
“The water tap at the house broke. My clothes—where did I put my clothes?”
“Here.”
The sound of dry grass crunching beneath his feet grew closer, and then Davion extended her negligee, folded neatly. The moment she took it, her shoulders flushed crimson, and she let out a sharp cry.
“You said it was too dark to see!”
“Sorry. I’ll be honest—my eyes are pretty good.”
Cecilia glared at him with murderous intensity, then yanked the clothes over her head and scrambled up the bank. As she hurried toward the Cabin, Davion called after her, holding up her shoes.
“Cecilia! Aren’t you forgetting your shoes?”
She stopped midway, turned back with sharp, quick steps, and snatched them from his hands roughly. Davion stubbed out his cigarette and chuckled mischievously.
“You know, you don’t need to be embarrassed about this. Even a seventeen-year-old in the throes of puberty wouldn’t react the way you do.”
But his attempt to soothe her mortification backfired spectacularly. The moment the words left his mouth, she began breathing hard like an enraged bull, and her voice came out sharp and vicious.
“So what you’re saying is, I’m being oversensitive? That I should just laugh this off?”
“No, that’s not what I—”
It wasn’t what he meant at all.
But Davion couldn’t say another word. Cecilia’s eyes had grown red at the rims, her jaw clenched tight.
“Go away. I don’t want to argue with someone like you.”
She shoved him roughly in the chest, then walked away barefoot, shoes in hand, disappearing into the darkness. Davion stood silent for a long moment, watching her go, before running a rough hand across his ashen face.
‘I said something stupid.’
The moment he realized it, a chill of regret washed over him.
* * *
That sick, roiling sensation in his stomach did not fade by the following morning.
The moment his eyes opened at seven o’clock, the image of Cecilia’s angry face lingered on the ceiling above him. For the first time since returning from deployment, he didn’t crave a cigarette first thing in the morning.
As the hours wore on, Davion’s self-recrimination deepened.
And with good reason. There had been better things he could have said. ‘I’m sorry—I came out for a cigarette and missed my chance to slip away,’ or, ‘I’ll forget what I just saw right now,’ or any number of other options.
Even a simple ‘Sorry, I’ll go’ would have been fine. Perhaps it would have been better to have said nothing at all.
Fool!
He was running his fingers through his hair, mussing the neat arrangement, and lowering his fountain pen into an inkwell when Aileen, who had been watering a potted plant behind him, gave a startled cry.
“Sir!”
“Hmm?”
Davion’s attention snapped back to the present, and he realized with horror that he had just dunked his fountain pen not into the inkwell, but into his coffee.
Hell. Panicking, he quickly withdrew the pen and dabbed the nib with a handkerchief. Blake had given it to him as a graduation gift from the Military Academy; he couldn’t afford to have it ruined.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Cecilia’s face appeared again, a persistent afterimage beneath his eyelids.
Foolishly, he was beginning to feel the desire to see her in person. Not that she would agree to see him anyway…
“Aileen, that girl who lives in the Cabin.”
“Miss Cecilia, sir? You really do have trouble remembering her name.”
“What about her parents? Why does she live alone like that?”
“She was abandoned when she was ten, and Betty took her in. Her mother threw her out onto the street with her own hands, I’ve heard. Because of that, she’s still afraid to go near that street. It’s a sad thing.”
Before Aileen, Davion made an effort to keep his expression composed. He leaned forward slightly in his chair as he asked.
“What about school? Don’t tell me she never went to school either.”
“I didn’t go to school either, sir. Instead, I went to work at the Factory at that age to earn money. There are quite a few people here who never made it to school.”
As Aileen spoke with a smile, Davion’s head dropped low.
Have I spent too long around soldiers? He couldn’t understand why he kept making tactless remarks since yesterday.
“I’m sorry. I think I’ve said something thoughtless.”
“No, sir.”
And then silence settled between them for a while.
But that, too, did not last. As Davion methodically disassembled his fountain pen, a sudden thought struck him—a way to lift Cecilia’s spirits.
“Say, Aileen. I’m sorry to keep bothering you, but what sort of gift would appeal to a young woman my own age?”
Aileen paused mid-arrangement and glanced at him sideways.
“My goodness, have you taken a sweetheart already? You’ve barely been back from Kalita. My, you are quick.”
A proud smile crossed her lips—the kind a mother wears when admiring her grown son—and Davion felt his throat tighten. Unable to bring himself to confirm her assumption, his leg began to shake violently beneath the table.
“I’m just a woman who raised boys, so I’m not much help. Wouldn’t she like shoes? Or perhaps clothing? A handbag, maybe?”
Shoes? A handbag?
Such gifts didn’t seem like Cecilia at all. Her heels were soft and pliant—testimony to feet that had never worn high heels in her life. Offering her shoes would be like handing her an instrument of torture.
But a sudden, violent crash cut his thoughts short.
Bang!
A large dark shape struck the window and fell silent to the ground below. Aileen cried out in alarm. Davion rushed to the windowsill to examine the fallen object.
“Goodness, it must be a bird that’s collided with the glass!”
He flung the window open and peered down at the flower bed below, but the thick foliage obscured his view. Muttering that he would check on it, he bolted from the office and hurried down the stairs.
Sure enough, a goshawk lay sprawled in the flower bed, just as Aileen had suggested.
Davion looked up to examine the office window. The strong sunlight reflected from the pane, clearly causing the bird to mistake the sky’s reflection for open air.
It was uncommon but not unheard of. Normally, he would simply have someone clean it up, yet for some inexplicable reason, his feet would not move.
He soon understood why.
It was because of Cecilia.
Now that he thought about it, Cecilia kept a crow, didn’t she? Then surely she would know something of hawks as well?
Seized by a strong conviction that he must show her the injured hawk, Davion quickly removed his shirt and carefully cradled the trembling bird within it.
“Cecilia!”
He crossed the vast field in great strides and knocked upon the Cabin door.

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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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