Winter Bud - Chapter 50

If there was someone in this world who would embrace someone as lacking and incomplete as her, wouldn’t it be Paul? Paul was gentle and kind. It seemed like it might be all right to become a family. If she could have a baby again, she even thought she wanted to have Paul’s baby. They were absurd thoughts.

She knew those thoughts had all come rushing in just from the single sight of him flushing and tugging at his lips. Even so, Nanna flailed helplessly, steeped in a kind of excitement. They were thoughts she had never had even in front of the Duke, of course, or before the Emperor she had secretly harbored feelings for.

Even if she liked him, she had never once dared to think of becoming his woman…. Lately, even that feeling seemed to have faded. Even her secret love for Thea’s fiancé had lost its strength.

“We see each other at least once a day these days.”

“Y-yeah.”

“I came to see the foal.”

“Huh? Oh. Really? Then should I show her to you now?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“No reason…. I, I think what I wanted to see was you.”

With a somewhat dreamy look on her face, Nanna moved her lips without realizing it. It was her first time saying something so embarrassing, so she felt dazed too. Her face, sunk in heat, seemed flushed and buoyant. But Nanna, watching Paul flounder in embarrassment, dropped her gaze.

“…So you don’t feel that way?”

Nanna lifted her head. Her gaze met Paul’s. The bridge of his freckled nose was flushed red like a raspberry. Even that looked a little cute. Then she worried about how she might look in his eyes and her shoulders hunched again.

“I should, I should go back.”

“Hey. Nanna!”

Paul grabbed her. Nanna quickly turned back. With his head lowered, he fumbled for words, then finally opened his mouth.

“Um, do you, do you want to go out with me for a bit?”

“Where?”

“T-to look at the stars.”

“Stars?”

“I, I know a place where you can see the stars well.”

Nanna gazed at him blankly. Paul muttered quietly, ‘I-if you don’t want to, forget it.’ The way he jerked his head away really made him look like a twelve-year-old kid. Nanna watched the man pacing by her side like a dog that needed to pee, unable to hide his fear of rejection, and said, ‘Okay.’

***

“Nanna has been away for a long time, hasn’t she?”

Chewing a tender piece of duck breast, Thea parted her lips as she looked at her father’s sharpened expression. At those words, Orestes also lifted his gaze to stare at the empty wall. Thea stared at her monotonous-faced fiancé, then lifted her glass.

“Her habits don’t seem very good.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“That woman.”

“Nanna?” Thea asked.

Seeing Orestes give no reply, Thea gave a crooked smile. Without answering, he swallowed a little of his drink.

“Don’t bother thinking such things,” “Don’t scare Nanna.” Even saying those things now felt a little tiresome.

Orestes had originally disliked Nanna. He didn’t seem to like anything that offended his eye. For someone with an indifferent personality who supposedly had no particular likes or dislikes, it was unexpected. He would quite often send his gaze toward Nanna.

He would stare fixedly at the woman who stood against the wall waiting for their orders or hurriedly ran off saying she had chores to do, then ask Thea when she was going to get rid of that.

His reason was that Nanna’s gaze was gloomy and unpleasant.

Thea, whenever her fiancé got that sensitive, insisted that Nanna was nothing more than a young maid. Nanna was not the sort of girl who would do something bad. Of course, for someone with such a pretty face, her excessive shyness was somewhat frustrating.

She could understand what he meant when he called her gloomy. Because Nanna liked him. In other words, she liked Orestes. Since she was his fiancée’s maid, and since he was a man so far above her that she couldn’t even dare to look up at him, she couldn’t even bring herself to think of coveting him….

And yet Nanna was the sort of person who couldn’t act out a lie. There were times when her cheeks flushed whenever Orestes’s gaze fell on her. Of course, more often she would flinch, flinch again, and grow excessively afraid of him.

“Her backside is far too light as well.” [t/n: Korean idiom; a derogatory way to say someone can’t sit still, flits around easily, or shows interest in men too readily]

“Nanna’s?”

His low voice stuck out like a thorn. Thea quietly looked at her frowning fiancé, then recalled the way Nanna had brightened the other day toward the stable hand.

In face and in status, the apothecary’s son seemed better by far, yet Nanna seemed to like that stable hand and often spent time with him. She didn’t show it outwardly, but every so often a smell clung to Nanna that she couldn’t tell was from fodder or manure in the stables.

“It was about time, really. Nanna had to get married too now. The apothecary’s son seemed better to me, but she seemed to like the stable hand more.”

Thea glanced sideways at her father, then averted her gaze and muttered. She already knew that her father kept Nanna as his bed companion. Nanna probably thought she knew nothing, but unless she was an idiot, wasn’t it strange to think that Thea, who had in effect ruled as mistress of the house in a ducal residence without a duchess, knew nothing?

Even so, Thea had no intention whatsoever of letting it show to Nanna. Because she pitied the girl. She already seemed to be carrying more than enough guilt. Even though there was no need for any of that. Thea found it strange that Nanna felt some kind of debt toward her. Her father would probably think the same.

In any case, Thea thought she couldn’t just leave Nanna as she was. No matter what became of her relationship with her father… Nanna was of an age to have a husband as well. Having a household of her own seemed to be the girl’s long-held wish.

“Isn’t that right?”

“What is?”

“I mean Nanna.”

Thea questioned Orestes, who gave no reply. No matter how she looked at it, the apothecary’s son had the upper hand in both status and looks, yet Nanna had chosen that short, unattractive stable hand instead. She couldn’t understand it. Still, neither man seemed to share her opinion, as neither spoke a word. Thea glanced back and forth between the two men.

“So both of you think differently from me?”

Thea’s voice rang through the large dining room. Orestes never answered in the end. Her father was the same. Orestes only seemed unable to step out of his own world, as if lost in some thought.

Suddenly, her father, having emptied his glass, rose from his seat. Thea looked down at the food still left on her plate, then stood to follow her father as he left the dining room. She trotted after him on quick steps.

“Father.”

There was no need to ask what he intended to do. She knew what filled her father’s head. He would order them to search for Nanna. But was there any need for that? Nanna would be somewhere out there, and the manor was safe. Nanna was of lowly status, but thanks to her, she lived being treated with a certain measure of respect.

Yes, she originally had been someone who could never have become the duke’s daughter’s lady in waiting, but Thea doted on her. From the very first moment she saw her, she’d wanted to keep her close. If she had been a man, she might have cherished Nanna in an even more intimate way.

Of course, that intimate favor was something Nanna was already receiving from her father. At any rate, Nanna would be fine. She would be spending a pleasant time somewhere in the manor. Whether it was with the apothecary’s son or the stable hand….

Of late, the girl had been so busy that she hardly tried to stay by Thea’s side at all. She found it difficult even to meet Thea’s eyes, and even when she opened her mouth, she watched Thea’s expression.

Thea thought all of it was because of “that incident.” The pregnancy, that is. Ever since she’d become pregnant, Nanna had found Thea particularly uncomfortable to be around. After the child was removed, it seemed even more so.

“Father.”

Thea furrowed her brow as she closely followed behind her father, who gave no reply.

“What are you going to do?”

“You don’t even know where your own lady-in-waiting is.”

“What….”

“You drag that girl around with you all the time. And you don’t even know where she is or what she is doing?”

“Nanna is fine. The manor is safe.”

With a cold face, Thea bit her lip. It felt like her blood was slowly cooling. She had the strange feeling that he was putting Nanna before her. Over something as trivial as his mistress being out of sight for a little while….

Was he so taken with a young girl who could be his daughter that he couldn’t come to his senses? She wondered if he had no sense at all of what was proper. She had never imagined he would be this deeply lost in Nanna.

Thea didn’t care whom her father shared a bed with. Even if he fathered a bastard, she thought that would be his business to handle. Of course, she had been quite surprised the first time she learned that Nanna was the one indulging her father’s whims.