Why the Northern Duke Wanders the Snowfields - Chapter 13

When he said that with blood-soaked hands, Aubrianna felt a chill run down her spine.

Perhaps he’d just handled the animal he caught, because the man’s body reeked of blood.

“My eyes are beautiful?”

“Ruby? No, it’s like a clear diamond dyed with red.”

Ruby? Diamond?

Her face flushed hot.

Had she ever received such a compliment before?

She must have heard it when she was young and living with her mother. Her nanny, Gardenia, always doted on her, calling her a lovely young lady.

But after her mother passed away and she went to the orphanage, her beautiful appearance didn’t bring good results.

The older children bullied her, and those her age ostracized her. That was why, even at a young age, she ended up taking care of children even younger than herself.

A child with red eyes.

Thinking about it now, it seemed they avoided her more because such eyes were rare in the Kingdom of Trilan.

An ominous, unlucky color.

Miss Francis used to criticize her, saying it was because of her stiff attitude.

Even so, she pretended not to care and carried herself with pride, keeping strength in her posture.

In case her noble father ever came to the orphanage to find her, she always tried to maintain a noble demeanor.

When she didn’t know what to do, she thought of her mother.

The sight of her singing while brushing her long red hair looked like a princess from a fairy tale.

A velvet chair and delicate white lace. The luxurious scent from crystal cosmetics and perfume bottles.

She tried not to forget her mother’s refined way of speaking, her graceful posture.

‘Though it only made me more isolated.’

Before falling asleep in loneliness, she always recalled the tea etiquette her mother taught her.

It was because she didn’t want to embarrass her father when they would one day have tea together.

‘…I believed he would come someday.’

She thought he would recognize her by her unusual eye color.

Siena, who was a year younger than her, spat behind her back.

“You were abandoned because of those ominous eyes of yours. You know that, right?”

Those words Siena muttered lowly followed her all her life without her even realizing it.

The memory of being mistaken for a spy and tortured harshly because of these eyes came back to her.

She frowned and spoke in a blunt voice, “I used to wish they were a common color like black or brown.”

“Even then, you would’ve been beautiful.”

As if he understood a woman’s heart, Kay gave the perfect answer and walked toward the stream beside the cabin.

He pushed aside the still-piled snow, lifted a rock, and slammed it down onto the ice.

Bang! Bang!

Before long, with a cracking sound, the ice broke apart.

“Spring will come soon.”

If the ice that had been frozen solid all winter broke like this after just a few strikes, it meant the weather had grown quite warm.

The man washed his hands in the cold stream and lifted his head.

With a shaggy fox fur hat and burning eyes beneath it, he stared at her as if he might swallow her whole.

“When spring comes. Won’t you leave with me?”

Aubrianna tightly gripped the old railing of the cabin’s porch. Perhaps spring really was coming, because the railing felt warm.

“With you? Me?”

“Yeah. The baby too.”

Her pale red eyes wavered.

“W-where would we go?”

“Well.”

The man shook the water from his hands and, shielding his eyes from the snow, looked far beyond the snowfield.

“The forest, maybe? If we’re going to hunt animals….”

“Animals.”

“Ah! Still, not somewhere as remote as here. If we’re going to raise a child, it’d be better near a village.”

Aubrianna raised her warmly heated hand and pressed it firmly against her chest.

Was he really the kind of person who could speak so gently?

Then why had he treated her so coldly?

Why had he forced her into pregnancy and then tried to marry another woman?

Because Kaeloc Tennant, the Duke of the North, was a different person from the hunter Kay?

Beneath his thick brows, those deep blue, lapis-like eyes shone as he waited for her answer.

When Aubrianna only stared at him in silence, she saw his face stiffen with tension.

“You mean… you’d take me and the baby with you?”

That was all she managed to say.

When she and the baby belonged to Kaeloc, she suffered being ignored, but Kay, who had lost his memory, wanted to be with her, who had lost her way.

Even though he didn’t even know whose blood the baby carried.

“The baby’s eyes are sky blue, so they’re somewhat like mine. So wouldn’t anyone think he’s my child?”

He said that with a shy smile.

The man who panicked and handed Theo back to Aubrianna whenever the baby drooled after being held now said he would become Theo’s father.

“Why are you suddenly crying?”

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and the man who had been smiling approached her with a flustered expression.

‘To be moved by something like that….’

A cold hand touched her cheek.

“Don’t cry.”

Aubrianna quietly closed her eyes and accepted his touch.

The man stroked her cheek, traced her chin, and ran his hand down her slender nape.

Soon, following that touch, his lips pressed against her. He licked the salty cheek still wet with tears, his lips tracing the soft line beneath her ear, moving down to her nape, then back to her chin and lips.

“Kay.”

The man swallowed the soft breath that slipped out between her slightly parted lips and carefully tasted inside her mouth with his tongue.

“Every time I see you, my heart pounds.” The man, leaving a deep kiss, murmured, “To the point I don’t care about my past anymore. You’ve become important to me.”

Then, before Aubrianna could say anything, he pulled her along to the back of the cabin.

Ah.

Aubrianna’s eyes widened.

“All of this….”

She knew he mostly hunted large animals, but an astonishing amount of pelts had piled up over just a few days.

“With this much, we should be able to get a small house, right?”

The man crossed his arms, his voice filled with pride.

“When did you catch all of this?”

Thinking about how he went out from dawn, battling the cold to hunt, Aubrianna’s hands curled on their own.

As her gaze moved over the processed meat laid out to dry, the man explained.

“You can sell them in the first village you reach from here, or keep drying them and use them as food.”

“All of this….”

Looking at the amount that seemed too much to even load onto a cart, the question ‘How are you going to carry all of this?’ rose to the tip of her throat, but she barely swallowed it down.

The man looked at her with anticipation, as if waiting for praise.

A shadow of worry began to fall over Aubrianna’s face.

The sole heir of the Tennant family. Kaeloc Tennant.

By now, the north must be in chaos searching for this man.

As the weather began to warm, they were probably sending people to other regions to search as well.

If, at a time like this, the missing duke were found in another region, not in the snowfields, having lost his memory, together with her.

What would the people of the ducal house think?

‘They’d frame me again like in my previous life and try to kill me no matter what.’

This was a problem.

She didn’t want to be used like that anymore.

Aubrianna steadied her wavering heart at Kay’s words about leaving together.

‘You falling into some naive game of love is what I wanted, but I can’t allow things to go differently from my plan.’

In this life, I’m going to use you thoroughly.

“…I think the baby woke up.”

The expectation in the man’s eyes slowly hardened.

Kay’s face froze stiff as he watched the woman’s back as she turned away, using the baby as an excuse.

***

The man set down his fork with a clatter.

“You’re not eating more?”

Even at Aubrianna’s question, the man didn’t answer and got up. Carrying his dishes to the kitchen, he clattered as he washed them, his face clearly showing he was angry.

It seemed he was upset by her saying she wouldn’t go somewhere else.

She could’ve just said she’d stay with him even if they didn’t go elsewhere, but Aubrianna kept her mouth shut for no reason.

Watching the man skillfully take care of the baby and make the bed, getting ready to sleep, she realized quite a bit of time had passed since they’d been here.

‘A month? Or longer?’

By now, Cedric Coville would be strutting around as acting head, controlling the ducal house.

Cedric was greedy but foolish, and he liked women too much.

But the duchess had no other choice.

Aubrianna’s baby, who carried the legitimate blood of the duke, was illegitimate and too young.

“Besides, the mother’s status is far too low.”

People whispered that her status as an orphan and a maid was the problem.

They thought the Tennant family would soon disappear and the Coville marquessate would become the ducal house of the north.

‘What was I doing then?’

She had just given birth and was in a very weakened state.

On top of that, while the duchess was digging into her past, she heard rumors about her. The duchess would glare at her with a look of disgust, as if she loathed her for being a maid from a foreign land.

“There’s a rumor she’s the daughter of a noble from the Kingdom of Blanc….”

“If that were true, she would’ve attended a boarding girls’ school instead of an orphanage. There’s no way she’d have become a maid.”

“That’s true.”

She couldn’t even refute it. She had been too young in the Kingdom of Blanc to remember anything clearly.

She vaguely remembered the mansion where she lived in exile with her mother not being bad.

Gardenia, the housekeeper and nanny who took care of her, sometimes called her mother a countess.

‘But that could’ve been my misunderstanding.’

There was no way to prove it. It was true she hadn’t lived in want, but after her mother died, she was immediately sent to an orphanage.

The director told her she was just an orphan with no relatives who came from abroad. He even said the house she lived in with her mother had been a charity from a kind gentleman.

‘The daughter of a high-class prostitute.’