Bambi and the Duke

”Mr Vlass, what do you know about Rory?” asked Vivian to the battered looking man who was tied to the chair with ropes, his bruised face looking relieved after Leonard had moved a little away from him to lean his back against the wall.

”Answer all of them truthful or you’ll have your head snapped like a carrot before you even know it,” the Duke warned him.

Leonard had given her five minutes and she knew five minutes wasn’t enough to get anything out of the man but it was enough to prove if he was innocent or not.

With respect, she had addressed him which made the man look at her in awe for a second before he started to speak. It was because no women of the high society had given him the respect he or any lower being for the matter had been given. Women of the elite society, human or vampire, they treated the lower men and women as people who belonged below their feet, ”Rory is my neighbour. I have known him since a young age, Lady...”

Feeling as if the man was fishing for her name, Leonard completed the man’s words, ”Lady Carmichael,” Vlass’ eyes widened at the realization that she was Duke Carmichael’s woman. At the same point, Vivian felt her heart shudder by the way Leonard had introduced her in the room.

All this while she had been only Vivian as she had no name she knew of. She was the human girl and now Leonard had not only elevated her status before she had come to know about herself being a pureblooded vampire but also had shared his name without any hesitation.

”Lady Carmichael, Rory has been missing since the vampiress died. I am only here to search for him. If I were really someone with an ill intention of what happened to Lady Charlotte, I wouldn’t have come to offer my neck to be butchered for free.”

”If you knew Lady Charlotte was dead why to bring up her name and ask for her?” interjected Leonard.

”Duke Carmichael, I doubt one would know if I said if Rory was here. The day before the tragic death was witnessed, Rory had come to my door. Though I cannot say the time of when he arrived, I can tell you this much that it was late in the midnight when not even owls hooted.”

”What did he come for?” asked Vivian, wondering what Rory might have had to tell his neighbour.

Vlass didn’t have to remember as to what Rory had come for as he had played the scene in his head several times already, ”He wanted me to look after his parents for six days,” Leonard stared at the man, still yet to be convinced that he had nothing to do with the death of his cousin Charlotte.

”Six days?” inquired Leonard to get the man nodding his head over it, ”Isn’t that a specific number. It could be a week,” he suggested.

”It was six,” Vlass confirmed. With the number of theories he had come up with what could have happened, the line between the truth and proposition of theories had come to mesh together, ”I am sure of it. He seemed to be a little rattled or worried and when I asked him where he was going in the middle of the night when the whole village was asleep, he...he said he had to run away with the vampiress as they were going to get her married to another man.”

”What else did he say?” Vivian asked, taking the turn to question the man, ”You said he was worried, was that all that he spoke of when it came to Lady Charlotte?”

”Hmm. I believe that is all it was.”

Moving to the next question as time ticked, she asked him, ”How would you describe the nature of their relationship, Mr. Vlass? Was Rory kind to her?”

”Of course, he was! He adored the woman, he even made her meet me.”

”What about his parents?”

”That I am unsure of. Ah- no. His father knew about it! Yes, his father knew about it. I remember this one occasion where I overheard his father speak to him, asking him to hurry to get the girl. The last time before he left he had been worried as he couldn’t contact the girl,” Vlass looked at the housekeeper for a mere two seconds, as the words of him wanting to kill him came into the picture, ”Rory has been missing and I don’t know where he is now. I don’t know if he has been killed, or has been taken as a hostage by one the lurking witches.”

”What else?” demanded Leonard who was still unsatisfied with the explanation Vlass game him.

”Ah, he said something about going to Bonelake. To come here which was why I made my way here,” the man answered feeling nervous as the interrogation proceeded. Vivian frowned thinking about what he said. He said he had left Mythweald the day he had found Charlotte’s body and travelling here to Bonelake didn’t take a month time and a half time. While her mind was still processing it, Leonard was quick to ask him on the same.

”From where did you receive the bruises?”

Vlass glared at the housekeeper who stood in the corner with a stoic face, ”Your housekeeper! Where is the politeness in seeing a guest? This land is nothing but shame, your-”

”Careful. Don’t forget that you’re in our land where we are the ones who take care of things here. You should be careful of what you speak. The lady in the room won’t stop me snap your head in a flick if you don’t behave,” Leonard warned, his threat being genuinely true as he would execute without another thought, ”I was asking about the other bruises. They appear to be old,” he noted, Leo’s eyes scanning over the man and even though it wasn’t a bright room where light couldn’t slip in from outside, he could see them quite clearly.

Vivian who had let Leonard take the lead in questioning the man saw his head hung in defeat before he opened his mouth to speak, ”I-I only wanted to look for Rory. I have known him for years now and I do value the man as he, well his family have supported mine when our farms had been infected with the insects which almost ate and destroyed the crops. I owed it to them, and also because he was a friend. Before I decided my journey to come here, I was robbed and kidnapped by the black witches. There is a lot of the disgusting lot of them you will find between Mythweald and Bonelake...” Vlass went on to continue what happened to him, making Vivian sympathize the man’s condition for going through it before he came here.

”I am sorry to hear that, Mr Vlass,” she apologized looking at his long face. Vivian who had been standing there took a step close to the man and sat down to see the man give her a startled look at what she was doing.

”Pardon me,” she said softly while lifting both her hands and touching his hand which hung at the end of the armrests. She could already feel the curious eyes of the housekeeper who was wondering what happened while the glare the man in front of her must have been getting by Leonard as she touched him now.

Her fingertips held his hand and she tried to read, to see if she could get anything but she found nothing. It was empty. She didn’t if she had to feel disappointed or worried now. With nothing to look at, there was no way to see if this man who sat here was telling the truth. He could be a fraud who was trying to get their trust. Letting go of his hand after two minutes, she stood up to meet Leo’s eyes before shaking her head to tell she found nothing.

”I thought maybe he could have come here to aid. Rory, I mean as Lady Charlotte had proposed to come here hoping you would keep her here until her parents agreed to her marriage to him,” Vivian knew that could be a possible thought of Charlotte. The man further went on to explain, ”I don’t know what happened the next morning. With the villagers out in the open and then some of the guards, there wasn’t I could inquire about what could have happened.”

”Rory killed Charlotte,” stated Leonard, his voice hard which held bitterness in it.

”What?” Vlass looked with a shocked expression, ”That can’t be true.”

”Did you know that your father and your neighbours were involved in killing her?” before the man could deny the accusations which were put across him, Leo continued to speak, ”Have you heard something called as the corruption of heart?”

”What does that have to do with Rory or the lady. The lady died in a bizarre way-” Vivian and the others flinched in the room when they heard a bang against the wall.

”Doesn’t have anything to do?” asked Leonard grudgingly, with the closed room his voice thundered, ”My sister fell in love with the man whom she trusted would protect her and love her. The same man who you call your friend and came looking for at my doorstep. You said you saw her, Charlotte, would have told it has nothing to do when she clearly came to meet him but only she died while he has gone missing. Her chest was torn apart, her the core of her heart torn from its place. For a man who belongs to the same flock, give me a reason,” he turned to look at Vivian, anger already spilling from his eyes, ”Sometimes people decide to ignore when the truth is right in front of them. Tell me he won’t come to hurt you if he found the truth.”

Vivian didn’t understand what Leo was speaking of, what did he mean by hurt her?

Leonard turned his gaze to the human who was bound to the chair, ”Every pureblooded vampire has a core which sets them apart from other vampires. Your family and his have been planning to kill the pureblooded vampires one by one by using a potion that is being passed around in the lands. This potion is used to kill pureblooded vampires. How would you feel if your family was butchered and was hung on the tree in such a state. What would you do?”

Vivian’s eyes quickly snapped at Leo. As if knowing where this conversation was going to go and what he meant by Vlass hurting her, her hands and mind froze.

”Despite your false accusation, my family is innocent, Duke Carmichael. They haven’t harmed anyone and if someone did hurt them in such a way,” paused the man with brows scrunched, he said, ”I will make sure to pay back in the same way,” with this the man had signed his death sentence.

”That’s what I expected,” Leo smiled calmly and in a flash, he was next to the man where he had snapped his head with his bare hands, leaving the man dead in the chair. Vivian who stood there, looked at him as if she saw a ghost. The man named Vlass looked lifeless, his neck tilted to the side with his eyes open. Though Leonard had committed murders in the past, she had never seen him kill someone in front of her.

”Why did you kill him?!” she asked him not able to believe what he had done, ”He could have been innocent!”

Leo glared at her but she kept her stand as he said, ”He could be a liar too. I gave you more than five minutes, Vivian but there was no solid proof to prove that he wasn’t involved. Men will come and go with intentions you will fail to realize at first. This is the way the council works and if it’s hard to understand then I would ask you to step down from the exam. There’s no place there if you’re going to be soft-hearted.”