Chapter 4 - I Read With My Eyes

The fact that Dylan couldn’t do anything but watch Carol from behind despite her feeble and lonely countenance inflicted Dylan with a fervent pain incomparable to the headache his hangover gave him. She looked like she would fall over at any moment. If he could’ve, he would’ve immediately embraced her tight in his arms, but she was his older brother’s wife, his sister-in-law. His older brother, David, was a man Dylan respected and looked up to. 

Dylan didn’t have the right to hold her in his arms. Not in this lifetime.

Thud. 

Carol was walking down the hallway when she stopped for a moment. Then, she turned her head to the side, facing the open window on the wall. Dylan’s gaze followed hers out the window as well.

In the middle of the yard was David, walking around. Walking beside him was a woman wearing a white apron.

Dylan’s eyebrows furrowed.

The two people walked across the yard as if they didn’t care about being seen by anyone else, chatting with each other in warm and friendly tones. When Dylan turned back toward Carol, he found her heading to her room, stepping through the wooden door with an indifferent expression plastered upon her face.

***

Anna headed downstairs into the underground level of the house in a hurry. Thankfully, the rest of the employees were still lined up and waiting for Samantha’s orders, as if preparations for dinner had only just begun. Anna joined them at the end of the line and stood with her back straight. Everyone who had already been waiting in line prior to her arrival shot her an intense glare for arriving late, but she pretended not to notice.

The firstborn son of the house, David, was late because he didn’t realize how much time had passed while he was having a chat. Although Anna definitely deserved to be chastised for getting paid without doing her job properly, Samantha didn’t say anything about Anna’s mistake this time, either.

“You–place the cutlery on the table. And you–help out Chef Hans,” Samantha demanded, proficiently laying out orders and clapping her hands as if to guide the workers like sheep to their destinations. “You can go pick up the tools dropped on the kitchen floor, and the rest of you should start serving the food as soon as it starts coming out.”

“Oh dear!”

However, no matter how frequently Samantha clapped the employees in the back and encouraged them to do their work, it was a difficult thing to rely on sheep to work as hard as she wanted them to. Anna had tripped over the carpet onto the floor while holding a pitcher filled with water, and upon seeing the sight of her, fallen, Samantha shut her eyes tight in annoyance.

The Kilner family had been sitting at the table and waiting for their meals, but now they were watching Anna. Madam Jane had furrowed her brows. She opened her mouth to start criticizing the clumsy worker before her, but a quiet yelp rang out from one end of the dinner table before she could speak.

“Oh no!”

David had mistakenly spilled their aperitif, some white wine, onto the floor. Noticing it, Madam Jane swallowed back what she was originally going to say and quickly switched her focus onto the new mess.

“What are you all doing?” she asked. “Clean that up right away.”

Since David had spilled his wine, Anna managed to avoid getting punished for her blunder. With a new pitcher of water in hand, she began to fill the empty cups on the table one by one.

Dylan kept his gaze fixed on her as she did so, eventually realizing that she was the woman who had dropped his clothes back in his room. She had porcelain skin and black pupils on a small face accompanied by delicate features. She struck him as rather beautiful.

“That should be enough,” Carol told Anna. She spoke quietly, and upon hearing her, Anna stopped pouring water into her glass, giving her a small nod of courtesy.

Righting the pitcher once more, Anna moved on to fill David’s glass. He hadn’t glanced at Anna even once as he continued his conversation with Sir Crane, which Anna didn’t mind at all.