DTLD 11

Chapter 11

Hold Still

A girl with curly red-blonde hair pulls her bicycle down the hill. Instead of a basket of apples, a basket full of new paints hangs from the handlebars. Wobble. The bicycle, its weight skewed to one side, looks ready to topple but doesn’t fall. Rather, as if performing a trick, she lifts one foot and hops along, skip by skip.

Mr. Robert—or rather, the Duke of Guînes, who has unintentionally ended up posing as the caretaker of a country manor—hid behind the curtains of the Hawthorn Manor and watched her.

To say he was hiding was a bit misleading. This was a manor he had paid for and purchased. Sacha Vinoc’h simply happened to be in a spot visible from where he stood at the second-floor study window.

But if one were to be that particular, why had he bought a house in Manoli when he had no business here? When he announced he would build a summer villa here, no one had been unsurprised. In Laurant’s social circles, rumors had even circulated that the Duke of Guînes had contracted an incurable disease and was secretly searching for a place to die. Of course, they were baseless nonsense. Still, it was true that some uncontrollable impulse had been governing him lately.

Meanwhile, the small, slender, lively girl of Manoli had already pushed her bicycle over the hill and out of sight. Only after she had completely vanished from view did an inexplicable sense of relief wash over him.

Mr. Robert had given her permission to come and go from the garden and atelier whenever she liked. But there was an unexpected obstacle blocking Sacha’s access to the Hawthorn Manor. It was Mr. Vinoc’h.

“Sacha. I’d rather you didn’t go in and out of that manor. It’s not a house with good memories, either.”

Mr. Vinoc’h thought it inappropriate for Sacha, still young, to be visiting the house of such a conspicuously handsome man. Moreover, Mr. Robert was a rather suspicious man—he had not a single letter of introduction from anyone trustworthy, and the only known fact about him was that he had graduated from a military academy. So one evening, he sat Sacha down and warned her.

“I hear Mr. Robert was once a soldier. He must surely keep a gun in the house. He might suddenly turn on you and shoot you.”

He had meant to frighten her seriously, but it had no effect on Sacha.

Mr. Robert was simply not the kind of person who would suddenly pick up a gun one day and shoot Sacha in the head. Not because he was a kind man who gave her paints, but because he was someone who knew how to cultivate such a beautiful garden.

“Then why doesn’t he bother to explain himself even when all sorts of strange rumors are going around? He must not be able to refute them because the rumors are clearly true.”

Sacha thought that argument was unconvincing as well. It was because Mr. Robert had little interest in Manoli’s affairs. Truly, he had a startling lack of intention to mingle with the people here. It was enough to make one wonder why he had even come.

Could it be that Mr. Robert’s master had forced him to come to Manoli? That the man was expressing his protest by refusing to mix with the villagers and keeping himself apart because he was displeased with the situation? And if so, would he one day, at the first opportunity, turn his back and return to Laurant without a second glance? Curious about that, Sacha tilted her head. Whenever she thought of Mr. Robert, questions were all that came to mind.

‘If he would just say it wasn’t true, at least a few people would believe him.’

For whatever reason, the man made no particular attempt to explain, and the people of Manoli came to believe the ominous rumors as they were. The shopkeepers united and decided not to sell him bread or meat. Everyone wished Mr. Robert would hurry up and leave Manoli. A suspicious stranger was always an unwelcome presence.

Sacha, unbothered by the rumors, became the sole visitor to the Hawthorn Manor. She would lie to her family that she was going to the Manoli woods and run to the Hawthorn Manor every morning.

Sacha loved everything about the place. The delicately tended garden, the vast collection of books, the atelier full of new paints and brushes. And she loved Mr. Robert, with whom she could talk about painting.

But Sacha’s little escapade did not last long. It was because of Mr. Vinoc’h, who noticed Sacha’s whereabouts about halfway through summer vacation.

It began the day after Mr. Vinoc’h, having learned that Sacha was going in and out of the Hawthorn Manor, went to protest in person. Mr. Robert, having heard the strange rumors from Mr. Vinoc’h, firmly locked the manor’s doors from the next day on.

Sacha, who had run to the Hawthorn Manor as usual right after finishing breakfast, was flustered to find the door locked.

‘Did he forget to leave it open?’

She calmly pressed the doorbell, but there was no answer. Knocking on the door yielded the same result. It was quiet, as if no one were inside. Yet the lights were clearly on.

Surely the village wasn’t refusing to give Mr. Robert food? So had he starved too long and collapsed? Suddenly frightened, Sacha tried to climb over the wall to check on Mr. Robert’s safety—and tumbled down.

The Hawthorn Manor’s wall was high, and it hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes. From inside the manor, she faintly heard someone running down the stairs. It was Mr. Robert.

“Are you out of your mind?”

He scolded her in a voice caught between exasperation and worry, not knowing what to do. When she was found at the foot of the wall, Sacha was a mess. Her palms were all scraped, and the knee of her skirt was stained blood-red.

“Then why didn’t you open the door when you were inside? Do you know how many times I rang the bell? You said I could come anytime as long as it wasn’t too late. You never canceled that, either.”

“If the door is locked, you should have taken the hint and gone home.”

“I thought you’d collapsed inside because you’d starved too long. How could I just go home and leave a sick person?”

Once she confirmed Mr. Robert was safe, Sacha’s tension dissolved all at once and a sense of grievance surged up. The man, eyes tightly shut, rubbed his face roughly. He could hardly scold a little girl sitting right in front of him, sobbing her heart out.

“Get on my back.”

“Me? Why?”

“Sacha. And have you walk in like that?”

Sacha entered the Hawthorn Manor on Mr. Robert’s back. He set her down on the soft brown leather sofa and brought out a first-aid kit. The man, kneeling on one knee, deftly opened the cork of a brown bottle and tilted it to soak a cotton ball. A sharp alcohol smell stung her nose. Do they teach you this in the army too?

Sacha, who had been peering about curiously, let out a shriek at the unfamiliar pain and jerked. Her bottom bounced about half a span into the air. Mr. Robert, who had been disinfecting the wound with the alcohol-soaked cotton, looked at her with an expression of utter disbelief.

Fortunately, Sacha adapted to the pain quickly and, unable to resist her surging curiosity, looked around. It was the first time she had been inside Mr. Robert’s room.

“Hold still. Unless you want a scar.”

He warned in a low voice. From then on, Sacha tried her best to stay still. She didn’t mind a scar, but she didn’t want to make Mr. Robert any angrier. He already looked as though he were exercising considerable patience. When he treated her hands—scraped all over from catching herself on the ground when she fell—his expression twisted with guilt, as if he had committed some great sin.

The touch of Mr. Robert’s breath as he treated her wounds tickled her palms. At first she tried to endure it, but she couldn’t manage it. The sensation, which she had never felt before, gave her a chill that made the hairs on her arms stand on end.

The man raised his head and, finding Sacha flushed bright red as if about to burst, paused.

“I’m sorry. It was because it tickled. It doesn’t hurt.”

At that, he held his breath. Once, he turned his head away and let out a long sigh. Even so, Sacha’s strange feeling did not clear away completely. It seemed the ticklish sensation still lingered. Sacha heard her own breathing, soft and faint. That sound seemed unusually loud.

Breaking the silence, her stomach growled. How embarrassing. The one who had actually not eaten properly was surely Mr. Robert, and yet such a sound came from me, who had even eaten breakfast. Mortified, Sacha sat deep in the chair and pretended not to notice, swinging her feet.

Mr. Robert took a handful of chocolates from a drawer and gave them to her. They gave off a sweet scent, wrapped in colorful papers like Christmas ornaments. Sacha cupped both hands and received the chocolates as they poured out. It was an unexpected fact. She had thought he was not the kind of man to keep snacks in his drawer.

“Eat.”

“All of them?”

Mr. Robert, looking slightly annoyed, started to say something and then stopped. She didn’t know what he had been about to say, but perhaps he meant something like, figure that much out for yourself. Pleased, Sacha unwrapped one chocolate—wrapped in blue paper with gold stripes—and offered it to him first. He did not eat it.

Sacha put the chocolate Mr. Robert had refused into her mouth and let it melt slowly and long. The brown chocolate, dissolving softly away on the tip of her tongue, was sweet enough to make her forget the pain. She did not throw away the gold-stamped blue wrapper but smoothed it out neatly and tucked it into her pocket.

Her ankle, once treated, was faintly swollen. There was pain, but not so much that she couldn’t walk at all. Still, riding the bicycle she had left in front of the manor would be too much.

In the end, Mr. Robert, with a sigh, carried Sacha on his back.

“What should I do about my bicycle? Could I leave it in front of the gate until my leg heals and I come back for it?”

“Do as you like.”

It’s strange. Mr. Robert’s “do as you like” sounds strange. It sounds like, whatever you do, it’s no concern of mine. You can have no effect on me. His silence feels like a soundless declaration. Is it overthinking? But every time, the invisible line Mr. Robert has drawn seems to lie at her feet.

To cross or not to cross. Sacha agonized, then retreated. People want the other person to stay only within the lines they have drawn. And Sacha was a child who kept to that well. She did not want to cross the line Mr. Robert had set and be hated by him.

Mr. Robert walked stably even with Sacha on his back. It seemed he could run like this. His hair brushed Sacha’s forehead. A pretty color. Sacha whispered soundlessly. This color is deep like the summer night sky, yet soft as the chocolate Mr. Robert gave me. Sacha thought she wanted to have this color. Quietly, so he wouldn’t notice, she stroked the ends of his hair.

She heard a quiet sigh. The sound was buried in the noise of the wind stirring the dense leaves, leaving Sacha uncertain whether she had really heard it.

“Don’t touch.”

He warned her to hold still. Sacha obediently obeyed. Before she knew it, they had arrived in front of the lemon-colored gate.