A Butterfly Through the Mist - Special Side Story 5

When Ilex returned from the Bartletts, he didn’t go to the villa where Tilia had summoned the physician, as he had originally planned.

Instead of going there to apologize to Tilia, who had just received confirmation of her pregnancy, and then discussing what to do next, he shut himself inside his office and focused on only one subject.

The evidence of his struggle remained scattered across the wide desk in the form of disordered documents.

He shouldn’t have given all of it to her as a wedding gift.

For the first time, Ilex regretted the real estate and territorial holdings he’d handed over to her.

Instead of pushing forward when she balked, saying it was too overwhelming, he should have held back a little. If he had, he could use them now as far better leverage in negotiation.

But regretting it was pointless. It was already too late. Brushing aside his useless regret, Ilex reviewed the remaining assets.

Fortunately, because Tilia had refused to accept everything, several buildings within the capital still remained. There were also the eastern winery and mining rights, multiple estates that produced considerable tax revenue, and several railway construction rights.

He then checked the various valuables he had inherited and the bonds he had kept because they were troublesome to gift. After confirming everything, Ilex began selecting only the most profitable assets. He first separated the portion that needed to be retained for raising a child.

The reason he summoned not only the estate manager but also his personal attorney to organize the list of assets was because of the once-in-a-lifetime contract he planned to attempt today.

Is it still not enough?

With an anxious expression, Ilex pushed a government bond he had held in reserve toward the list he intended to present to Tilia.

No. On second thought, it might be better to pretend it was something he had reluctantly conceded, so he pulled the document back to the middle.

But the same kind of push and pull continued. When conducting business, he had always acted with clear principles and cool judgment, but now that the other party was his wife, he couldn’t determine where the proper negotiating point was.

Especially when the negotiation was about Tilia and their child.

All the assets Ilex painstakingly selected were things he intended to offer to Tilia as conditional gifts. They were his best possible terms for securing her permission for the birth.

Yet no matter how much he gathered, the list on the desk still looked pitiful. Even more so when he considered the unavoidable physical and mental toll the mother would have to endure.

After agonizing over it, Ilex summoned the estate manager again and ordered him to retrieve the items from the Bardin royal family that were stored in the bank vault. Then he took out a sheet of fresh paper.

He would eventually need to revise it in legal language with the help of his attorneys who were hurrying over, but for now, he needed a draft to organize his thoughts. With tense hands, Ilex dipped the pen in ink.

What he was drafting now was a written contract pledging that he would personally take full responsibility for childcare, including education.

Even if he verbally promised to raise the child himself and shoulder everything, Tilia would never believe it. And he didn’t want to persuade his wife with such unreliable sweet talk.

So instead, Ilex had called his legal team. He planned to include a clause stating that if he violated any conditions of the contract, he would transfer the entire family estate to his wife.

It was the kind of contract that would send generations of Davenport ancestors thrashing in their graves.

But Ilex had absolutely no intention of ever allowing that clause to come true.

He wasn’t doing it because he cared about the family estate. It was because he was determined to fulfill every condition of the contract. Because he was prepared to grind himself down if necessary to raise the child well.

He was truly ready to devote himself entirely.

If only he were given the chance.

Ilex looked over the carefully written conditions, and a faintly anxious expression crossed his face.

If Tilia wasn’t too strongly opposed to giving birth, he planned to ask whether she might be willing to have at least one meal together with the child once a week.

Of course, it wasn’t something he intended to force. If Tilia turned out to be far more adamant than he expected, he wouldn’t even consider bringing it up.

But if, by some small chance, Tilia were to say it was all right…

Thinking of the featherlight weight of the small baby that still seemed to linger on his arm, Ilex slowly closed and opened his eyes.

If Tilia turned out to be more materialistic than he thought, or thankfully softhearted, and said she would truly give birth to the baby…

Then he could leave behind in the world proof that Tilia and he had loved each other.

A self-mocking sigh escaped him. He hadn’t realized until now that he was the kind of person who clung to such old-fashioned ideas.

But ignorance didn’t change the truth. He was that kind of person. Someone who wasn’t satisfied with love alone and wanted to leave behind evidence of it.

If a child who called Tilia mother and him father were to grow and step into the world, he thought he would feel joy so overwhelming he couldn’t breathe. If the thread woven between them remained in this world and continued on as another life, he felt he would know the happiness of living forever.

No, in truth, those were secondary matters. It was possible that Ilex simply wanted to see a baby who resembled Tilia.

He was unbelievably curious. How adorable the baby born between her and him would be. How that presence, which would make their bond as a family even stronger, would cry and laugh.

He had absolute confidence he could raise the child well. He was prepared to sacrifice. He was ready to abandon the comfort and peace he had lived with until now and to be born anew as the father of the child she gave birth to.

So please, if only Tilia would give her permission.

Maybe Tilia wasn’t as negative as he feared.

The moment Ilex recalled the baby’s cheek, softer than a kitten’s fur, he began inflating baseless hope inside his chest.

Just then, like a needle stabbing into his swollen fantasy, a brisk, businesslike knock sounded.

“The duchess has arrived.”

And following that, news came that the greatest counterpart he had ever negotiated with had arrived.

***

During the entire journey from the villa on the outskirts, which Ilex had gifted her as a wedding present, back to Essentine Mansion, Tilia was deep in thought.

It wasn’t that she believed what the physician had said. There was no way he had impregnated another woman.

Not anything else but physically impossible. If he had been meeting another woman during the time he was lusting after her, he would have needed to change professions.

From a duke to a stud horse. With stamina like that, he could impregnate anything.

Even without that, she trusted him to some degree. Ilex Davenport wasn’t the type to stray. It wasn’t merely trust; it was a conviction about who he was as a person.

After all, she herself had survived because of his obsessive devotion. No matter how she tried to treat him with cynicism, his self-sacrificing love was something she could never doubt.

So the person whose symptoms Ilex had secretly asked the physician about was surely her. As she had suspected, he must have been wondering if she was pregnant.

But even so, it did nothing to improve Tilia’s sinking mood. Even knowing the physician’s words weren’t entirely true, unpleasant things were still unpleasant.

He had made the family physician worry about something so absurd. And Ilex had done something to make such a misunderstanding possible in the first place.

Why?

Her thoughts circled back to the question she had set aside earlier in order to deal with a different problem.

Why had he tried to hide my pregnancy from me?

Even as time passed, the issue didn’t reveal a single clue. Instead of unraveling, her confusion only deepened. Ilex had been at least halfway certain she was pregnant, yet he had deliberately tried to conceal it from her.

She couldn’t imagine any reason for it. If it had been any man other than her own husband, Tilia would have reached a conclusion immediately.

He doesn’t want to take responsibility. He was trying to ignore it for as long as possible and avoid dealing with it.

When a man pretended not to know about the pregnancy of a woman he had slept with, the explanation usually ended there. There could be more complicated stories behind it, but most cases returned to that reason.

Had someone else come to her for advice with such a situation, Tilia would have gently told them exactly that.

But when she found herself in that position, the conclusion wasn’t nearly so simple.

This was Ilex Davenport.

She had suspected him more than once in the past, and she absolutely didn’t want to repeat the same mistake again.

Any other man might behave that way, but not Ilex.

No one else’s past, only her own miserable past, had proven his devotion.

She knew that. She believed it. But…

Tilia began to question whether she was someone who could judge other people’s situations with perfect clarity yet become blind when it came to her own.

She couldn’t be certain she wasn’t. Love blinds people. And the fact that she loved Ilex Davenport was something she could no longer deny, no matter how much she wanted to.

Was it really because he didn’t want a baby that he hid my pregnancy from me?

Feeling the carriage seat, which she had thought was comfortable, suddenly turn stiff beneath her, Tilia quietly swallowed a sigh.