Chapter 264: The Daughter of the Navy Barony 4

For Annie, the name Eckhart possessed enough force to effortlessly blow away the sheer terror of facing the crown prince and high nobility. Her face, pale just moments ago, flushed bright red as she lunged forward from the sofa. Angus hastily caught her before she could tumble to the floor. Seemingly oblivious even to that, Annie desperately questioned Clyde.

"Do you know my brother?! Do you know where he is?!" she cried out.

Her sheer intensity caused not only Clyde, but Riley and Liliana as well, to widen their eyes. The two had merely been told by Clyde beforehand that he intended to meet the family of a servant named Eckhart who had previously worked at the Clark ducal manor. They had not heard the finer details. Consequently, they could not hide their surprise at a reaction reminiscent of someone learning that a long-lost sibling was still alive.

"Annie, please calm down!" Emilia pleaded.

Seeing Annie looking ready to cling to Clyde at any moment, Emilia raised her voice, realizing things were getting out of hand. Embraced from the side by Emilia, Annie finally came to her senses.

"I... I—" Annie gasped.

Gasping for breath, she bowed deeply to Clyde, apologizing profusely. Yet her cheeks remained flushed, and tears welled in her eyes. The calloused, hardworking hands clutching her humble skirt trembled faintly.

Angus also gazed at Annie with a hint of surprise before turning an inquiring look toward Clyde. Clyde had regained his composure relatively quickly, but he was waiting for Annie's agitation to subside.

When Annie timidly lifted her face and directed a pleading gaze at Clyde, he finally spoke.

"I am Clyde Benito, current head of House Clark. Is Eckhart, who was previously employed at my manor, indeed your brother?" Clyde asked.

"Yes, Eckhart is my older brother," Annie answered.

Though she was likely far from completely composed, Annie took a deep breath and answered clearly. Clyde gave a single nod and offered a brief explanation of the circumstances.

"The previous duke—that is to say, my late father—employed Eckhart. Since our ducal territory contains several estates, I never met him personally... However, it appears he left our service several years ago, leaving a bracelet behind in the care of a certain craftsman," Clyde explained.

With those words, Clyde produced the very bracelet that had been left behind with the craftsman whom Clyde had visited while tracing Eckhart's footsteps after his departure from the Clark estate.

One of the guards accepted the bracelet from Clyde and handed it to Annie. Reaching out with trembling hands almost subconsciously, Annie took the bracelet, her face contorting as if on the verge of tears.

The craftsman had meticulously repaired the bracelet entrusted to him by Eckhart. Not only that, he had polished every scuffed and tarnished spot, restoring it to a pristine luster like new.

"This... my brother left this?" she whispered.

"Yes, indeed," Clyde replied.

Clyde said no more. The craftsman had remembered Eckhart referring to it as a "precious bracelet received from my little sister." Yet Clyde had not gone out of his way to meet Annie out of sympathy for her feelings, nor was his purpose merely to deliver what was likely Eckhart's final keepsake in person.

To uncover Eckhart's whereabouts—that was his primary objective.

"—Thank you so very much," Annie choked out.

"Think nothing of it. It belongs in your hands," Clyde replied.

This time, Annie did not break down in tears. Her round eyes brimming with moisture, she clutched the bracelet tightly in both hands.

Pausing for a moment, Clyde asked gently:

"Did you give that bracelet to Eckhart?"

"Yes, I did. When my brother left home—our family was living in Senf at the time—I gave it to him as a farewell gift. He told me, 'I'm going to make something of myself and strike it rich,'" she recalled.

"And so he went to the royal capital?" Clyde asked.

"Yes," Annie nodded.

Annie and Eckhart's family had lived in the town of Senf. Their father was frequently ill, leaving their mother to support the household. As a result, both Annie and Eckhart had worked from an early age to help make ends meet. While Senf had been developing back then and work was plentiful, employers took advantage of their youth, making decent-paying jobs hard to come by.

It was around that time that Eckhart heard a certain proposition from an acquaintance.

“I heard that if I manage to land a job at a noble's house in the royal capital, the pay is fantastic!”

The boy, dreaming of a brighter future, had told Annie with shining eyes. Annie had hated the idea. The thought of her beloved brother leaving for somewhere far away had felt unbearable. She believed that no matter how poor they were, as long as their family was together, she could endure anything. But Eckhart had brushed off his sister's pleas with a rueful smile.

“But Mom's already reached her limit. If I earn good money, Dad can finally get proper treatment, and Mom won't have to suffer anymore.”

And so Eckhart had departed for the royal capital. He was a responsible, earnest young man. Though written on cheap, coarse paper through scribes or proxies, he regularly sent letters to keep Annie and the family updated on his life.

"At first, I believe it was a baron's estate. He told us he even learned a bit of reading and writing there. The handwriting on his letters changed midway through, so I'm sure it was true," Annie explained.

Neither Annie nor her parents could read or write, forcing them to rely on literate acquaintances, yet she had still treasured and kept every single letter Eckhart had ever sent.

"After that, we got word that his hard work was recognized, and he was moving to another manor with much better pay... and after that, nothing at all," Annie trailed off.

Clyde knitted his brows, careful not to let Annie or the others notice.

Cross-referencing the timeline, the letters had ceased around the exact period Eckhart began working at the Clark ducal estate. He had then vanished after serving only a few years. While the ducal house's records indicated he had formally resigned, considering that he had left the bracelet from his sister in the middle of repairs and given the portrait of Eckhart that Annie described, it was difficult to believe he had voluntarily quit such a well-paying job. By any reasonable assessment, it was far more natural to conclude he had become embroiled in some dark affair and disappeared.

Annie had left the town of Senf upon getting married, and her parents had already passed away. Even so, she had asked acquaintances to pass along word so that if Eckhart ever returned to Senf, he would know to come straight to the Navy Barony.

"I meet with that friend regularly, but they told me no letter or messenger has ever come... S-So maybe... he's already... d-dead... I just thought..." she choked out.

Unable to hold back any longer, Annie broke into sobs. Wearing a pained expression, Emilia gently rubbed her shoulder.

"I see," Clyde murmured in a heavy, somber voice.

Clyde nodded with a somber tone, sinking into deep contemplation.

—There is no way Philip doesn't know about Eckhart's disappearance.

Which meant the likelihood that Philip was involved in some way was exceedingly high.

Lifting his head, Clyde turned his gaze toward his sister. Seated beside Riley, Liliana noticed Clyde's gaze and looked toward him. Offering a faint smile to his ever-impassive sister, Clyde turned back to Annie once more.

"I apologize for opening old wounds. However, I believed it was right that this bracelet be returned to you," Clyde said.

"Yes... Thank you so much," Annie replied, managing to swallow down her tears.

Managing to swallow back her tears, Annie bowed deeply.

Having Eckhart's bracelet returned to her hands may have provided some small measure of closure for her helpless, wandering grief.

＊＊＊＊＊

After Annie took her leave and the inspection of the Navy Barony concluded, the retinue returned to their inn in the town of Senf. Though the hour was somewhat late, they gathered in the inn's dining hall for dinner. Normally, the guards would have dined at separate tables, but given the late hour, Riley decreed that they should share the evening meal together. Even so, rank among the guards still mattered; the only one who could truly sit at the same table as Riley, Liliana, and Clyde was Austin, as a royal knight.

Inevitably, the group's conversation turned to Annie and Eckhart.

"Indeed, I suppose that is how someone who has lost a beloved family member would react. It was careless of me... I ended up reopening her old wounds," Clyde confessed with a self-deprecating smile.

Liliana, having no intention of speaking, silently brought food to her mouth at a measured pace. As a result, the dialogue centered primarily around Clyde and Riley, but Riley found himself unable to respond to Clyde's confession.

Neither Riley nor Clyde had been blessed with loving families.

Clyde's father had been a man driven to control everything and bend it to his will. Though he had educated Clyde as his heir, whenever Clyde failed to produce the exact results he expected, his father would glare at him with cold, ruthless eyes, berating him as a hopeless, witless fool. In the end, he had even gone so far as to cast doubt on his wife's fidelity. Reading his father's moods constantly, Clyde had desperately strained to become the son his father desired.

Though Riley's domestic circumstances differed from Clyde's, his upbringing was by no means fortunate. His mother had passed away before he was old enough to remember, and his father, utterly consumed by grief for his deceased wife, had never paid heed to his son. The conversations Riley had shared with his father could be counted on one hand. Consequently, even now when speaking with his father, conversations flowed more smoothly if he simply treated the man as his king.

If anything, Riley had maintained a deeper relationship with his grandfather than with his father. Looking back now, however, his grandfather had simply taken comfort in having an innocent boy around who affirmed him and looked up to him with pure admiration. His grandfather had never truly listened to what Riley had to say, and on the rare whim that he did, he would invariably shoot Riley down. Even if Riley expressed the exact same opinion as him, his grandfather would first dismiss Riley's words before expounding on his own thoughts at length.

In his early childhood, Riley had blindly believed his grandfather's every word. Because his wet nurse and tutors had all harbored unquestioning faith in his grandfather, the young Riley had possessed neither reason nor opportunity to doubt him. As he grew older, however, he began to perceive an unsettling disconnect.

Doubting the words of a grandfather he had held in reverence akin to the word of God was excruciatingly painful. Nevertheless, he had come to realize that nearly everything his grandfather taught him had been excessively extreme. Overwriting those deeply ingrained values had demanded immense, agonizing effort.

And the insidious aftermath of that upbringing still reared its head in unexpected moments. Today had undeniably been one of them.

Neither Clyde nor Riley would be shaken if a relative died or went missing. Even if perturbed, they had mastered the art of suppressing such emotions entirely. That was why they had been utterly incapable of imagining that Annie would become so distraught upon hearing the name of the brother with whom she had lost contact.

"Use it as a lesson for next time, Clyde. Humans are creatures who learn and grow," Riley offered.

"—Understood," Clyde replied.

The words of encouragement Riley managed to squeeze out offered little true comfort. Still, Clyde was the heir of one of the Three Great Ducal Houses. As long as a misstep was not fatal, all one could do was strive to make amends for the mistake.

Even so... Riley pursed his lips.

Precisely because Clyde was the heir to a great ducal house, the margin of error permitted to him was comparatively wider.

Yet for Riley, the crown prince, failure was not an option. Any mistake made by the one destined to rule the nation would inevitably drag the common people into its fallout. The throne existed only under the crushing weight of that supreme responsibility.

Taking a quiet breath so no one would notice, Riley brought a piece of pheasant meat to his mouth. Though the dish was supposed to be reasonably delicious, he could hardly taste a thing.

—-

Toc