CH 53.2

“Um, so… to sum up the complicated story briefly, I was on my way from Sumerville to Polarville at the time. One night, I was lost due to a carriage accident. I happened to stumble across Irvan’s cabin.” She didn’t share personal details about her nanny and butler. After all, no matter how much she accepted Jenna as her personal maid, she belonged to Berne. She didn’t want to pour her heart out and regret it later, afraid that her secrets would spill to the Berne family, and worse, to other people.

“Mr. Irvan happened to be in the cabin. He took me in. Soon after that, a wolf and a werewolf appeared and Mr. Irvan defeated them. If it were not for him I would have been in big trouble. He’s a lifesaver. After that, so and so…”

“…So that’s what happened.” Jenna listened to the story with interest, then looked down for a moment and thought.

‘Did I leave out too many things from the story?’ Emma thought nervously. Unlike the interest she displayed in the beginning, Jenna’s expression was strange. Emma was slightly puzzled by her lukewarm reaction. When she glanced at Jenna, she seemed to be in deep thought. For a while, only the sound and vibration of the carriage wheels rolling on the road filled the air. Jenna, who had spent a considerable amount of time agonizing over it, finally lifted her head. She faced Emma and opened her mouth cautiously with a look of great determination.

“I’m a little conflicted about whether I should tell you this,” she began.

Emma’s heart thudded faintly against her chest. “What do you mean?”

“It’s about Mr. Irvan… But I thought you should know.”

Curious, Emma waited silently for Jenna to speak.

“First, I don’t know most of the details. So I’ll tell you about Mr. Irvan, from the perspective of other people,” Jenna said. “You first met him in the mountains, right?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get in there?”

“Mr. Irvan let me in after thinking about it.”

“No, that’s not it.” Jenna shook her head slowly. Then, with determination in her eyes, she looked at Emma.

“Try remembering how you went inside the cabin.”

Emma looked into the air and frowned slightly. ‘How did I get into the mansion?’ she pondered. The question weighed on her mind, so she thought about it carefully. In fact, Irvan didn’t open the door himself. He told her to bring a key.

“The key.” After a brief flashback, Emma found the answer and said, “I opened the door with the key and went in.”

“Right?” Jenna sighed.

“Yes, but what of it?”

“Mr. Irvan was locked up in the mansion at the time.”

“What?” Emma blinked in surprise. Locking up someone was an act of force. But who would dare lock Irvan up? Wasn’t he in there for treatment?

‘I was told that it was a quarantine treatment but…’ That meant leaving the city and getting treatment at the cabin for a while, not being locked up. Quarantine and confinement. They were completely different. She was confused when she suddenly heard a different story from what she knew.

Jenna, watching Emma’s eyes shake, cautiously said, “Last month, Mr. Irvan cut two apprentice knights… The estate was in an uproar.”

“Knights?”

“Yes.”

Irvan is the leader of the Knights of the Black Awl. If he injured the apprentice knights, it mustn’t have been a normal situation.

“What happened to the knights?”

“They were very unfortunate…” Jenna said in a round-about way, but seeing her gloomy expression, Emma assumed that they were dead. Yes, with Irvan’s skills, it would be merciless had he left them alive.

“I see…” Emma’s mouth was opened slightly. She stared blankly at Jenna, waiting for the next words.

“They held an emergency meeting, and decided to lock up Mr. Irvan in the mountains.”

“I heard that the reason he was there was for treatment. That’s not it?”

Jenna thought hard and slowly said, “It’s similar but a little different. Mr. Irvan is said to be suffering from lunacy. Sometimes, he’s driven by violent impulses. Sometimes, it’s to the point that he hurts himself.”

Hurts himself… the words resonated with Emma, and she faintly remembered that his hands were messed up when she first encountered him. She thought he was seriously injured, but hearing this revelation now made it likely to be a sign of self-harm. He had been locked up in the mansion for nearly a month, so no one could have harmed him. Only now did she understand the situation.

However, she had to react to Jenna’s story carefully. No matter what anyone said, Irvan was her lifesaver and the first man that mattered to Emma. And as the old saying goes, ‘Near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin’. For a person like Emma who had no one to rely on, and for someone who was in a similar boat as hers, Emma wanted to stand by Irvan’s side.

“I have heard of that. From Secretary Laute.” Emma, who controlled her expression, nodded her head indifferently.

Jenna then lowered her voice and whispered with an anxious face. “Yes, that’s why he was locked up. You might have been in danger that day. Because of Mr. Irvan’s madness. I heard that he swings a sword blindly when his madness flares up. I’m saying this because I think it’s important and you should know it.”

“Yes… it’s new information. I didn’t know that,” Emma said. “Thank you for letting me know.” For now, Emma expressed her gratitude, keeping her real feelings hidden.