Volume 4 - CH 2

P. 51

*

When she came to, she was sitting in a dark room that was only lit by one candle.

From behind the chair she was sitting on, there was a woman standing and had set her hands on her shoulders. 

The reason she was able to guess that it was a woman was because she felt the hands to be slender and soft. 

“My lady Teresa, how are you feeling?” someone asked her.

Teresa, could that be her name, she thought in confusion.

However, immediately, she began to think that it was so.

“You were just reborn right now. You have returned to your loving family once more in the world of the living.”

When she turned her head around just a bit, she finally was able to see the face of the woman behind her. She was a beautiful person with silky white skin. 

P. 57

But the one who was talking to her was the old woman beside her. The beautiful woman just nodded to the old woman’s words. 

Reborn?

Now that she thought about it, she had the feeling like she was in another place that wasn’t here. It wasn’t this dark, a place that was bright and warm.

She had the lingering thought that being reborn wasn’t that good of an experience. 

She tried to lift up her right hand. The slender young woman’s hand was smoothly covered in the candle light.

It was the hand of someone who didn’t have to work. She had that dazed thought about it. 

“Ohh, Teresa!”

There was a voice that erupted from the corner of the room that was cast in the shadows and a plump woman came dashing over to her like she couldn’t bear to wait any longer. 

“Finally, finally you came back to me. It’s your mother dear, can you tell?”

P. 68

“You’re Teresa?”

She fought against the tears that was welding up in her eyes and lifted her head to see that there was a young man around fifteen or sixteen years old standing in the doorway.

“And you are?”

“Oscar, your cousin. My school starts from fall and so I came along to my aunt’s trip in place of uncle who couldn’t leave Manchester because of work.”

His faint blond hair that was cut evenly around his neck, waved in adjacent to his movements. When he sat down near the table, he made a grin like a little prankster boy. 

“But, I never imagined that I would really be able to meet Teresa. I still can’t believe that a ghost can be revived though.”

His height was the same as an adult, but his facial features looked like that of a young boy. He appeared friendly and quick to open to others but once he talked, he was a boy that talked like he was pushing people away. 

“Do you think that I’m not Teresa?”

“How do you think?”

“……I don’t remember anything.”

“There is the possibility that you’re just acting in order to get your hands on the family fortune. You say that you don’t remember anything, but for that, you sure remember the manners for tea.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She panicked if she had acted like her usual self too much. 

P. 69

This man claimed that he didn’t believe in ghosts, might not also believe in the spiritualist as well, but she was hooked on the part of how he acted like he was testing her. She wasn’t sure if he would join her side if she was to open up about being kidnapped. 

More like if she was found out not to be Teresa, then they would think of her as a common con-artist.

During the time her caution over-won her and made her keep silent, Oscar said fine, then and stood up.

“Hey, do you have a lover?”

“Huh?”

“It’s fine to become the daughter of this family, but if you were to do that, then you’ll end up having to marry a different man.”

He grinned at her and walked off. 

Lydia was remembering the article about how a wealthy married woman had called back the ghost of her deceased daughter and was looking for a marriage partner. Could that be about Mrs. Collins, she wondered. If that were so.

Edgar…..

If that article was true, then could there be the possibility that he would come here as one of the candidates?

Then she thought he might help her, but if Edgar was interested in the ghost daughter, then she became worried that he would actually end up going onto the side of the spiritualist. 

She wondered how much of an extent did she not believe in Edgar. 

Even if she couldn’t believe in the flirtatious advances he made towards her, she believed that he wasn’t the kind of person who would abandon her when she was in a dangerous situation. 

P. 70

But that was because he had use in Lydia’s ability as a fairy doctor. 

She wondered if the girl named Lydia had any worth in being rescued to him.

However, her hope about Edgar was destroyed in a matter of time. 

Because the man who called himself Earl Ashenbert and arrived to the estate in the evening was not Edgar.

Lydiawas looking down from the window of Teresa’s room over to the entrance porch and hunched her shoulders in disappointment when she saw the unfamiliar young man get out of his carriage. 

I should have known that what’s written in the tabloids are all lies.

He must have used the famous name of Earl Ashenbert because it allowed him to get smoother access to the wealthy middle-class people who he wasn’t acquainted with.

Lydiat thought it was so stupid of her to be seriously thinking if it was safe for her to be honestly ask for help when Edgar arrived and then laid down on her back on the bed.

Clouds spread out to cover the sky and hid the faint light of the sun that was leaning over to the west.

Once the gray-colored sky started to soak up around the sky and ocean and this estate, Lydia was suddenly hit with a strong doziness.

*

P. 71

Hastings, which was a town that was located on the southern shoreof England, was known as a popular ocean resort.

Taking a dip in the sea, which was popularized by the reason that it was good for one’s health had already become established as one of the entertainments of the people of England, and during the summer times, all of the towns on the southern shores which had beautiful white sandy beaches were overflowing with tourists.

Mrs. Collins had her estate in a quiet place, located several miles away from the nearest town that had those kinds of beaches.

This estate was built on a place which only could be entered by going across a long, narrow road that stuck out to the ocean and located on an island-like piece of land that was at the end of the road. This island-like place was only connected to the mainland with just one road, but apparently this road would disappear under the waves that rose up at high tide, so it could practically be called a separated island. 

If one of Prince’s subordinates was plotting something by staging it at an isolated, closed-off estate like this, then how knows what kind of danger was waiting for those who entered its grounds. However, Edgar was accompanied with Raven and was heading to that place.

Because, Lydia was supposedly there.

The Collins family husband and wife built that estate some time around the time their daughter was born. However, the two of them had not paid a visit to it ever since their daughter passed away.

Because, their daughter, who was just only five years old, had died in the ocean near that estate.

The only thing that was found by the shores washed up by the waves was their daughter’s little shoe. Since her body could still be somewhere in the dark, depths of the ocean, the Collins husband and wife was still couldn’t decide about selling the estate.

P. 72

That was the information that the ‘Scarlet Moon’ had researched about the Collins family husband and wife. 

Edgar was organizing the information that he had with him in his head as he sat in his carriage as it swayed him down the road for a little over an hour from the Hastings Station.

Nico told him that Lydiahad disappeared, and after using all of his servants of the earl house to find her, they found a hackney driver that had picked up Lydia and a woman who was crouching in an alleyway. 

He found out that the woman who Lydia helped out was Mrs. Collins at the hotel that they were driven to. 

They had already checked out of the hotel and so he determined that Mrs. Colllins had departed to Hastings along with the spiritualist, which made Edgar become overwhelmed with defeat of being out-done by his enemy.

There was no mistake that Lydia was taken by them.

But, he couldn’t allow himself to continue to lose.

Making his silent resolve, he jumped onto the train that left first thing in the morning.

When he looked outside from his carriage, he saw that the blue sea was so bright that it was reflecting the sunlight which didn’t seem