Grace in Wonderland - Chapter 141

141. Side Story X

“Please, tell me now. Where does it hurt? What can I do to help? I don’t want to lose someone I love again without even being able to try and help.”

Holding Grace’s hand, Richard pleaded earnestly.

“Young Master, the physician has arrived.”

Sebastian’s words cut through Richard’s heartfelt appeal.

“P-please leave, Richard.”

Grace carefully pulled her hand away from Richard’s grasp, interrupting his plea. Although her examination came a little earlier than planned, Graham Harold’s words, reminiscent of a prophecy from the Archangel Gabriel, had brought her a sudden sense of calm.

“Grace.”

Richard’s expression filled with disbelief. Sebastian escorted him out of the bedroom.

The door closed with a heavy thud, the sound echoing like a falling heart.

***

“Young Earl, I’ll be taking my leave now.”

The physician, carrying his medical bag, spoke with a strange expression after completing an examination that had lasted for what felt like hours.

“What are the results?”

“It would be best to hear it directly from the Young Countess.”

Hearing the physician’s evasive and playful response, Richard’s energy drained entirely. At this point, he felt like the only sane person in a world gone mad. The physician, Sebastian, Graham Harold, and even Grace—they all seemed unaffected, as if nothing was wrong.

How could that be, when Grace was unwell?

“Ri-Richard.”

From within the bedroom came Grace’s faint, fragile voice. Richard rushed to fling the door open at the sound.

What lies behind a closed door can only be seen by those brave enough to open it.

And there, in that hidden scene, was Grace. Richard Spencer looked at his wife, seated on the edge of the bed, wiping away her tears. The sturdy walls of the Spencer mansion, said to be as impenetrable as a royal palace, seemed to crumble all at once.

Once the physician had thoroughly examined Grace and confidently assessed her condition, he offered his congratulations with a bright smile. He added that both the mother and child were healthy.

Finally, Grace Spencer could wholeheartedly embrace the recent changes in her body. As a sense of fulfillment washed over her, tears streamed down her face. It felt like the overwhelming emotion she had experienced when she accepted Richard’s second proposal.

Grace stood and, with sorrowful eyes, took one step, then another, toward her husband. Richard, standing by the door, held his breath.

Richard Spencer brushed Grace’s hair with trembling fingers, concealing his anguish and feigning composure. He vowed again and again to do whatever it took to protect her. His green eyes glimmered with resolve.

Is Grace smiling to reassure me, just as my aunt once did?

When Grace smiled, Richard’s face contorted painfully. Tears poured from his eyes, and his shoulders shook. The beast-like groans he had held back reverberated faintly through the room.

Grace was startled by her husband’s tears. Her own eyes filled with shimmering droplets once more, but unlike Richard’s, her tears were filled with hope for the future.

Rising onto her tiptoes, Grace whispered into Richard’s ear.

“Ri-Richard, congratulations.”

Her face flushed a peony pink. Her rounded cheeks puffed like bread rising in an oven, and her warm breath quickened. Her fidgeting fingers brushed against Richard’s chest.

“W-we’re going to be parents.”

Richard stood there blankly, unable to comprehend her words. He repeated them to himself over and over until, at last, the chime of truth—carried from Italine across the Doven Strait—resounded within him.

“Then, you weren’t sick?”

“I-it’s because of the baby, Richard.”

“……”

Baby. Baby. Baby.

Richard repeated the word several times.

The chime of truth fell silent. Overcome with joy, Richard Spencer let out a resounding roar like a lion. He lifted Grace into his arms and spun her around in circles.

***

Grace gave birth to her child in early summer, before the harvest began that year. As both Grace and Richard had hoped, the baby was big and healthy. The doorframe of the nursery was already marked with several pencil lines, tracking growth.

“Sebastian.”

“Yes, Young Master.”

Sebastian beamed, his smile as wide as a fully bloomed pumpkin flower, as he looked at Richard, who now held the status of a proud father. Though his posture as he held the baby was clumsy, his expression showed a maturity that belied his usual demeanor.

The baby was dressed in flowing light green lace. It was a gift sent by Eleanor d’Estrée, now living in Gallia with Lancelot and their adorable daughter, a leader of the latest fashion trends. The gift included a hastily scrawled card:

‘Since the baby’s eyes are green, clover should be the theme.’

“Tell the gardener to plant a lot of clover in the garden once the violets have withered.”

“Clover?”

Sebastian leaned forward curiously. First, it was violets, and now clover—what could possibly be the Young Earl’s reasoning this time?

This spring, Richard Spencer had ordered the entire garden of the Spencer mansion to be overhauled. Even the daffodils, planted by the insistence of the former Countess over the past twenty years, were replaced with an expanse of violets.

Thanks to this transformation, passersby along Westminster could marvel at the vast purple fields stretching beyond the gates of the Spencer mansion. Even the beggars outside the gate craned their necks to admire the unique garden.

“Clover? Is it because of the baby’s eye color?”

Richard and Grace’s child resembled Richard Spencer in an overwhelming 95.8% proportion. Even as a newborn, with its swollen features, the baby’s thick, red hair was striking. Upon seeing this, Richard chuckled in disbelief.

When the baby finally opened its tightly shut eyes, everyone present gasped in awe. There was no denying it; this child was Richard Spencer’s. The light green, clover-colored eyes sparkled, like sunlight passing through a dew-covered windowpane.

“That’s part of it,” Richard said, gazing tenderly at the baby in his arms.

“And the other part?”

Clover, truthfully, wasn’t the most suitable plant for the garden of a grand noble’s estate. Neither were violets, for that matter.

Violets and clover were common sights across Ingrint this time of year. At least violets had the charm of being flowers, but clover? Clover was nothing more than a weed. Its rampant growth devoured lawns, making it the bane of gardeners everywhere.

“It’s Lewis’ birth flower, Sebastian.”

Robert Boyle, Johannes Kepler, Leonhard Euler, Antoine Lavoisier, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Émile Benoît Paul Clapeyron, August Möbius, Augustus De Morgan, Arthur Cayley…

Richard had rejected every name Grace had suggested and named their son Lewis. The name was chosen in honor of his beloved wife’s father, who had endured many hardships to bring his child—Grace—into the world.

Lewis Gurton, like Annabel Gurton, remained a constant topic of discussion in high society. Thus, naming Spencer’s firstborn son after him carried immense significance.

Richard Spencer wasn’t one to care about others’ opinions or pick up on subtle cues. The fact that he could name his heir “Lewis” was precisely because he was that kind of man.From now on, “Lewis” would be remembered not as a refrain whispered in society, but as the name of someone who stood at its pinnacle.

“Birth flower…”

Love is blind and selfless. Reasons that might sound laughable to others become perfectly justified when rooted in love.

There was a time when Richard Spencer disliked the notion of categorizing people born on the same day under a single flower. However, his deep affection for Grace and Lewis had completely changed his perspective.

Richard Spencer was a man with a flexible mind!

“And summon Edmund Beaufort.”

“Why him?”

“To paint Lewis’ portrait.”

Previously, Richard despised having portraits painted. Every time he sat for a portrait intended for Eleanor d’Estrée, he did so begrudgingly, wearing a sullen expression. He never even looked at Eleanor’s portraits afterward.

But portraits of loved ones were different. Richard now wanted to commission dozens, even hundreds, of portraits by the continent’s best painters and display them proudly. He longed to replace the countless ancestors’ portraits filling the parlor walls, which offended his aesthetic sense, with portraits of his beloved family.

Sebastian wiped away tears as he watched Richard, whom he had served since the age of five, cradle his baby. Gone was the child who longed for love, the boy who pushed it away. In their place stood a man who gave and received love freely.

Just then, Lewis Spencer let out a loud wail. It was time for the baby to be fed.

“I’ll leave it to you.”

Richard stood, entrusting the baby to Sebastian. The attendant cradled Lewis gently and watched as the Young Earl walked down the hallway.

Through his tear-filled eyes, Sebastian saw a kaleidoscope of rainbows. Richard Spencer was continuing down the path toward the end of that rainbow.

—The ‘end of the rainbow’—