Winter Bud - Chapter 69

Cold sweat broke out along with chills. It felt like dizziness was slowly rising too. Nanna steadied her breathing, trying not to let her face twist. The duke cautiously reached out his hand, but Nanna only reflexively stepped back.

He stiffened his expression slightly and called, “Nanna.” It was a very earnest voice. His expression was as well. There was no sharp air as if threatening her, but she couldn’t put her mind at ease. In truth, Nanna didn’t want to be in the same place as him even for a moment.

“It’ll only be a moment.”

The duke closed the distance. Nanna rolled her eyes and looked around. It seemed there were quite a few gazes fixed on them. It would be nice if he would back off like this, but he showed no sign of moving away at all. In the end, Nanna nodded.

“P-please say it briefly.”

“How’s your body?”

“I’m fine.”

“I heard your insomnia is bad.”

Nanna lifted her gaze. She was curious how the man knew that. The duke acted as if it was nothing. Nanna bit her lip, then turned her gaze away. She wondered if anything about Nanna became fodder for people’s gossip.

“If you need it, I can also send medicinal herbs that are good for sleep.”

“…I’m fine.”

Nanna shook her head. The duke had brought her to a pavilion built in the style of the Old Empire. In the middle of the broad garden, it was a place prepared so you could rest and then go on. Nanna stared at the man across from her, then bit her lip hard.

He probably wanted to talk about her leaving the palace. It was obvious what he would say. But Nanna didn’t want to return to the ducal residence in any way. What would she even do there, living that way? Now there wasn’t even a master left for her to serve….

“…If you’re going to tell me to return to the ducal residence, I’d rather you didn’t.”

Without meaning to, her lips parted first. Nanna squeezed her clasped hands tightly. It felt like it was needlessly stimulating her sweat glands. She wanted to look at his face and speak plainly, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I want to take responsibility for you and the child.”

“…I don’t know what you mean. Your Grace, you have nothing about me that you need to take responsibility for.”

“Nanna.”

“…I really mean it.”

After stammering for a long time, Nanna finally managed to speak. Thinking of Alexis, it felt like her vision was a little dizzy. The Emperor wanted to bury the matter of Alexis like this. So as long as it wasn’t the duke, Alexis could remain like this. It wasn’t right, but Nanna couldn’t help thinking selfishly about the child.

“If it’s about what happened before, I’ll apologize.”

“Apologize?”

At the word “apologize,” Nanna lifted her gaze. The sharp face, as if he’d deliberately blunted the pointed edge, strangely looked sincere. But Nanna couldn’t grasp what he was apologizing for. The duke lifted a gloved hand and swept his hair back.

“I regret it.”

“….”

“But Alexis is my son. I want to get that child back from my son-in-law.”

“….”

“And you too were mine to begin with.”

Lips as beautiful as if a sculptor had exquisitely shaped them moved softly. Nanna stared at the man, dazed. Her ears rang. As if a current had surged all the way up to her eardrums. It felt like the duke’s murmur was vibrating as it rode that current. Nanna trembled in tiny shakes at that unfamiliar sensation. Sermione, noticing her strained panting, closed his lips and quietly watched her.

“Nanna.”

Her previously clear face was stiff, pale. It seemed like she might have a fever, or like she’d gone pale with anger. Sermione grabbed the woman. Nanna wore a face that couldn’t take anything in. Even so, he couldn’t give up. If it had been possible, he wouldn’t have come this far.

He thought it would end if he shoved it far away to a place he couldn’t reach with his hands. He thought if he left it where he couldn’t touch it, rolling around stained and filthy, this shallow, paltry feeling would quickly disappear. The only person who had ever made him have such soft emotions was Thea’s mother.

A dead person. After more than twenty years, she was a woman who had grown faint even in his memories. In truth, the time they’d lived with their bodies pressed together wasn’t long either. From the start, he was never meant to be bound to her as husband and wife. She was his dead older brother’s wife, and it was a marriage arranged after weighing calculations as much as possible. It was hard now to go back and pick through each of those calculations one by one, so he took his brother’s woman.

“Please take good care of Thea.”

Even if Sermione couldn’t remember his wife’s face, the last words she left still remained vivid in his mind. In that brief time, had there been love? Was the feeling, as faint as his memories of his wife, truly love, or was it only pity? He couldn’t distinguish it either.

At that young age, she’d lost her husband, and she was a woman who lay in bed all day. It seemed the young Sermione had felt sorry for his sister-in-law in his own way. Perhaps pity for his beloved older brother had continued in a straight line and reached her.

He married her on his father’s orders, and to carry on the family line, he had Thea. He wanted to become a good husband, and a good father. That was in the same vein as becoming a good warrior. But….

“…That’s not true.”

The woman with the pained face blinked quickly. He could see her eyelids trembling weakly as she grew paler and paler. He stared steadily at the woman shaking her head.

It was the first woman he wanted to have. Even he found that desire unfamiliar. In his life, he had never lacked anything to possess. This was the first time he felt the sense of being dried out at the bottom because he couldn’t have something.

The woman before him was two or three years older than his daughter. In other words, he was desiring a woman around the same age as the daughter he cherished so dearly.

“Nanna is a good girl. I think she might be able to become my friend.”

The face of his daughter, who’d personally saved Nanna when she was about to be sold to a brothel, was not much different from the face she had at eight years old when she saved a stray cat on a rainy day and took care of it. His daughter had ordered a maid to scrub the girl, who was wearing rags, then fed her good food.

Then she brought her before him and asked that Nanna be allowed to stay in the ducal residence. Seeing that bold look, he recalled her childhood when she said she truly wanted to bring home a stray cat and raise it. The reason he’d allowed Nanna wasn’t anything special.

He didn’t know where she had gone or what she had done for his daughter to take a liking to her, but if his daughter wanted it, there was no reason he couldn’t allow it. At the time, to him, Nanna was nothing more than a pretty doll his daughter cared for. Unlike Thea, her prim face really did resemble a young cat. And the background of being a homeless orphan girl made that small Nanna look like a stray cat as well.

But….

“I’m not going back to the ducal residence.”

Nanna forced her lips apart with effort. Since he’d expected the refusal, he only stared silently at the slender woman. The sky-blue eyes tinged with moisture were beautiful like jewels. He chewed over the ticklish sensation he felt near the pit of his stomach.

It was nothing special. If he left it alone without paying attention, that would be all. But the sensation that wouldn’t settle no matter what was now classified as pain. Because it wouldn’t fade in the slightest. He thought it would be over if he removed it from in front of his eyes. He thought it would end if time passed like that.

His expectation was wrong. It was hard for him to look at Nanna, who had borne another man’s child. It was dreadful to see her swollen belly, pregnant with a child that wasn’t his. A cold excitement, harder to endure than the dull ache in the pit of his stomach, gnawed at him.

So…. Though he hadn’t realized it for years, he’d been jealous of Orestes. That clear, distinct emotion was, ridiculously, jealousy.

So what if Nanna had borne his child? What if that child had seen the light of the world? Sermione sometimes wondered. Whether the child he killed with his own hands would have been a daughter or a son. What color their hair would have been, and what color their eyes would have been.

Suddenly, a large hand grabbed Nanna’s wrist. Before the woman could lift her head, he gently pulled her and embraced her as if imprisoning her with both arms. The startled woman pushed at his chest, but Sermione held the struggling woman tighter. Now he wanted to get Nanna back. It felt like it was time to get her back. He stroked the woman’s slender back.

“N-no!”

The woman who’d been groaning shoved him hard and lifted her head. Even the distortion on her stubborn face looked fragile, as if it might shatter at any moment. Her eyes, clear and transparent like aquamarine, were brimming and drenched.