Chapter 535 - Family Secrets - Exposed! (1)
"Spill it." Yvonne chided, tired of his antics which were getting on his nerves.
Ever since they had entered her room, Jax was only stuttering and stammering but until now he had not yet revealed the reason he had asked to speak in private.
From his earlier behavior, she had assessed that he had obtained certain information which could not be said in the presence of others and hence had come all the way to her room.
Yet he continued to glance around, acting sneaky without giving her any valuable information.
He had just revealed that the information he had acquired was in connection to her grandfather but other than that, she was ignorant of the rest.
Therefore, she did not hesitate to narrow her eyes and leer at him, displaying that she was mad now and needed to know everything at the earliest.
Jax realized that he would get in trouble if he kept pushing this matter any further and thus prepared himself to spill everything before her just as she had asked him to do.
"The previous Earl, your paternal grandfather…" He mumbled while lowering his head.
These words uncovered one part of the confusion which Yvonne had until now.
'So he found something about Papa's father?' She nodded, waiting to hear more from him.
Jax raised his head and there was a dull expression on his face which made her wonder if he had found something disturbing about her paternal grandfather.
"The Previous Earl died a year after Boss's father wedded his wife." He disclosed the information he had heard.
However, unlike what he had been expecting, his Boss blinked her wide amethyst eyes at him without many reactions.
"I already know that!" She scowled, ridicule dripping from her voice and disdain apparent on her face.
'This fool dragged me all the way here to tell me something that is common knowledge to everyone in this family and mansion?' She scoffed and rolled her eyes as she was immensely dissatisfied with his way of dealing with things.
She had been under the impression that he had found something secret which no one else here knew about and something she would be surprised to learn.
However, everyone in the Capital and the St. Claire fief was also aware of the Previous Earl's death soon after the marriage between Rutherford and Raylene.
The poor old man wasn't even able to witness the birth of his grandchildren as he had collapsed due to old age and succumbed to it.
This was known to everyone so she did not understand what Jax had been trying to do by behaving as though this was a well-preserved secret that no one had knowledge about.
"Boss! You are not understanding it!" Jax groaned with a tinge of frustration echoing in his voice.
Scratching his neck, he tried to form his sentence better so that he might not cause such a misunderstanding once again.
"Boss's grandfather died of a chronic illness he was hiding from everyone." He whispered this time, grateful that he had changed his way of addressing this topic as the look on his Boss's face had finally changed.
Yvonne's eyes widened in surprise as this was new to her.
According to what she had heard both from her tutor, Marquess Samed, and her parents, her grandfather had collapsed due to old age and there was nothing wrong with his health.
However, now, her butler was speaking of matters that she had not heard ever before.
Finding his Boss lost in her thoughts, Jax could not stop himself from adding another crucial piece of information to what he had just revealed.
"Even Earl was kept in the dark about his father's illness." He bowed his head once he was done.
If Yvonne was surprised earlier, now she was thoroughly shocked by this revelation.
Her grandfather whom she had thought to have died due to old age and with nothing else wrong with his health was now being said to have suffered and died after enduring a chronic illness.
To make matters worse, her father was also kept in the dark about this illness.
Now curious to know everything about events of the past, Yvonne stared at her Butler who could fill her in on everything that he had learned.
The young boy was quick to grasp her thoughts and began speaking without waiting for her to even utter another word.
"I first heard about this from the old chef around a week ago." Jax began his narration in a solemn tone.
While the St. Claire family members were worried about the health and whereabouts of the young boy of the Jorbin family, the rest of the staff in the mansion continued to do their duties as usual.
Jax had already been accepted by everyone in this estate and he even had a good relationship with those around him.
Being the youngest servant of the St. Claire family, he was loved and cherished by them.
It could also be said that his good looks and sly way of acting according to the situation he was in, caused him to be on good terms with everyone.
The maids pampered him and the male servants looked out for him with the exception of his two mentors, the Old Butler and Butler Limo who continued to be stern with him but were never cold as he had won their favor as well.
Therefore, when he had found a few of the older servants talking about how the Earl would spend time in the Mansion in the past, the conversation even touched the times when they served the Old Master, Rutherford's father.
The old chef had let it slip that he would often try his best to cook healthy and light meals for the old man who could not digest and keep his food down most of the time.
At first, Jax had assigned this to the old age of the man and had shrugged it off.
However, just yesterday, he had accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation that helped him understand more of what had taken place in the past.
This conversation had been between the Old Butler and another servant who had been serving the family from the time of the previous Earl.
"There, I heard that the Old Master was often ill to the extent that he could not get out of bed for days." Jax sighed and shook his head while recalling that conversation he had spied on.
Based on what he had heard, the servants were aware of the ill health of their Master, but due to his orders, never let this matter reach the ears of their Young Master, Rutherford, who had been in the Capital at that time.
"Boss, if we try to guess the time when the Old Master had first fallen ill…" Jax rubbed his chin while giving it some thought.
Yvonne had no speculation about this and could only wait for him to make an estimate by assessing everything he had heard.
"It should be around the time that the Earl was still in the Royal Academy." He finally revealed his answer after analyzing the information he had heard.
The servants were asked to keep it a secret from the Young Master who was still in the Academy and rarely came back to the St. Claire fief due to the heavy workload in the Academy.
'Classes get harder every year.' Yvonne nodded as she had heard about this from her brother and Taylor too.
As the boys got older, their capacity would increase and so did the workload to keep things balanced lest they lag and laze around.
Raising her hand, the child gestured to her butler that he continue with his narration.
As the conversation had been brief between the Old butler and that other servant, he could only find this much from them.
However, he was curious to know more since he could not come empty-handed to his Boss if he wished to disclose this truth to her.
Hence he dug around while being sneaky and tried to fetch more information about the Old Master from the other older servants by slipping in his questions in the craftiest of ways.
Unbeknownst to them, they were leaking information which they should have taken to their grave as that had been the wish of their Old Master.
'He has a knack for gathering intel.' Yvonne realized something important from what she was observing today.
However, Jax was too busy relaying everything he knew that he had failed to notice the spark that had just flashed across his Boss's amethyst eyes.
Yvonne then put that thought in the back of her mind and continued to focus on what was being said.
Her grandfather was said to have contracted an illness a few years before Rutherford could graduate from the Academy.
Despite suffering constantly from the sickness, he pretended to be fine each time his son returned home from the Academy.
Clueless about what his father and the rest of the servants were hiding from him, Rutherford spent a few days at home before leaving once again.
Things were going fine until the Young Master one day brought over a young man and stated that this would be his Butler in the future and needed to be taught everything.
'That must be when Butler Limo entered the mansion.' Yvonne surmised as she had heard about this part before.
"So how did they manage to hide the Earl's sickness from Butler Limo?" She tossed out the first question that popped into her head.
In response, Jax chuckled as his eyes flashed with irony.
"Just like how they had trained me until I could not think about anything else…" He scoffed at the two butlers who were his mentors.
The Old butler tossed cumbersome tasks to the then young man, Butler Limo hence he rarely got a chance to meet the Old Master who rested in his room most of the time.
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