Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 221: Payment_Part 1

While Rohan was deeply worried about his wife and focused on taking the medicine to her, he did not realize that the servants had twisted the reason for him being in the study with the maid. The two maids who had seen him there could not keep their mouths shut, and the moment they stepped out to take the laundry, they began to spread the news among the other maids in the house—talking among themselves and whispering about how Dayna had slept with the master.

It wasn’t an uncommon thing in noble households for beautiful maids to be taken by their masters. What made this particular case shocking was that Dayna had always bragged about how different she was from the other girls. She had claimed more than once that she would rather be thrown out than give herself to any man who wasn’t Ben.

"Oh my, she gave herself to the master?! Ben isn’t going to like this," were the words murmured by many of the maids who heard what had supposedly happened.

As the servants gathered in the kitchen, whispering gossip and plotting how to find Ben and tell him about his cheating woman, though none of them knew where he had been assigned within the manor, they were still discussing how to locate him when Rav strode into the kitchen. He found six out of the eight maids employed in the manor huddled together, gossiping.

"What’s going on in here?" he demanded, his sudden entrance startling them. They all pulled back from their circle in surprise, not expecting Rav to appear, especially since he had been outside moments ago, clearing snow from the front porch.

They quickly bowed. "N-nothing, sire."

Rav’s brows furrowed in displeasure. "You left your duties to come and gossip after I’ve already warned that anyone caught doing so will lose their job? It seems none of you take warnings seriously until consequences are enforced," he chided, his sharp gaze moving from one frightened maid to another as they kept their heads bowed in shame.

Had this been Nightbrook, the human maids there would not have dared to gossip after receiving such a warning. They knew disobedience could cost them their lives. But these humans here were stubborn, quick to break rules without fear or respect. Rav had warned them the very day he took charge that gossiping would not be tolerated, yet they never listened.

"We—we weren’t gossiping, sire," the maid named Katie stammered. "We were only talking about the weather and getting the laundry done with hot water." She then nudged the girl beside her, urging her to back up the lie. Right on cue, the others all nodded.

"Yes, sire."

Rav wasn’t so easily fooled. He had heard the subject of their gossip well before reaching the kitchen door—his hearing was not that of a human, after all, but a vampire’s. They had been talking about the master and that maid, Dayna, who, as he’d just learned, was the woman of that talkative Ben.

If such gossip reached that blonde, irritating fool, Rav couldn’t predict what rash thing Ben might do to attract unwanted attention to them all.

That was why he decided to wipe the rumors clean before they could leave the room and spread beyond the walls, all the way to the stables. However, one of the maids who had witnessed the scene of Rohan leaving the study with Dayna was not among them at that moment, as she had left to attend to other duties. Unfortunately, Rav was unaware of this and proceeded to compel only the ones present.

He stepped toward each servant one by one. "Look up," he ordered the first.

The moment she obeyed, her gaze met his light red eyes. She gasped and nearly screamed at the change in his eyes, but he compelled her before she could open her mouth to alert the others, who still had their heads bowed.

"You saw nothing. The master did not leave the study with Dayna. Forget everything that happened today," he instructed.

The maid nodded, her pupils dilating. Then she turned and walked away in a daze.

Rav repeated the same process with the remaining five maids.

When he was finished, he let out a sigh of relief. "I never thought humans outside Nightbrook could be this exhausting," he muttered to himself. He had never encountered such a problem before when it came to servants. If only they knew how his master dealt with gossipers in Nightbrook, how he would kill a servant without a second thought for speaking behind his back, they wouldn’t be so bold or careless here.

---

After Belle took the medicine Rohan had brought, the pain disappeared completely, and she felt that bolt of energy consume her again. She was finally able to stand straight and walk. She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of medicine it was for it to work this quickly.

Rohan forced her into taking a nap that afternoon, even though she told him she wasn’t sleepy. Nonetheless, the moment her head hit the soft pillow, she was fast asleep in minutes without even struggling.

That day, Rohan did not bother her about his payment, not even at night when he held her to sleep. It was two days later, after their dinner, that he told her that since she seemed to no longer suffer any pain as she was constantly taking the medicine every hour of the day, it was time he got his payment so he could begin to prepare for their future painting sessions. He said without payment, he wouldn’t have the motivation to work on it and that she had to motivate him.

And though Belle had pretended not to hear him, when she went back to the parlor room where she had been knitting a little sweater for her unborn child, she contemplated whether to pretend to go to sleep as he was in the study with Rav, discussing private matters that did not seem to involve her.

She knew little to nothing about pregnancy and what one was not supposed to do, and unfortunately, the library in this house had no book that talked about it. She feared that if they did anything like what her husband was requesting, they might hurt the baby unknowingly, which was why she had been avoiding her wifely duty to her husband at night. But it seemed there was no escaping it tonight.

It was in such a condition that many women confided in their mothers and talked to them through letters about their circumstances. And recalling how she had never received any letter or words from her own mother ever since she was married, a painful string tugged tightly at her heart, and she went to sit before the fireplace in the second parlor room that was on the same hall as their chamber.

If her mother had been a mother to her, she wouldn’t be here lost at what to do now, and all she would have done was write words to her.

She remained sitting on the wingback chair, her legs pressed together, her hands holding the wool of the sweater she had been knitting that afternoon until evening on her lap, her eyes holding a lost look—until she felt his presence in the room and her back stiffened.

Rohan came into the parlor in his shirtsleeves, a silhouette against the light from the hall. The coals in the fireplace gave just enough illumination to pick out the shape of his face and the pale fall of the lace on his shirt front. He leaned against the doorframe, watching her silently.

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