Chapter 102
Sasha looked up at Isaac, who stood facing her with the sunlight at his back. Against the light, his complexion looked especially dark, but even so, she could easily picture the features twisted as if in embarrassment. Without realizing it, Sasha took the hand he had been compulsively rubbing his chin with, lowered it, and tugged him so that he would turn slightly.
Isaac, who was much taller than Sasha, obediently turned in the direction she led him.
Ah, now I can see him properly. Just as I expected, his face is redder than a tomato.
It was only a simple invitation, so why was this man so embarrassed and shy? Of course, that side of him was lovable. Thinking that, Sasha smiled gently at him.
“Thank you for saying that.”
“I am not saying it out of courtesy.”
“……I know. Captain, you’re far from that sort of formality. Everything you say is sincere.”
“…….”
“That makes it all the more moving. When we hadn’t known each other long, you disliked me very much.”
“I did not dislike you. I was simply a little…… uninterested.”
In truth, because the way you spoke was strangely suspicious, I even wondered if you were a swindler. Isaac somehow managed not to frankly confess what he had been thinking back then. Rather than hide things or lie, his way of dealing with people had always been to say things outright, but recently, in front of her, he found himself doing the opposite.
Even to himself, this side of him felt terribly awkward and uncomfortable.
“Oh. Is that so? Then does that mean, conversely, that you’ve become quite interested in me lately?”
“…….”
Isaac did not answer, his face flushed red. As though he were affirming it.
That alone was already answer enough. Sasha looked up at him with a faint smile and calmly changed the subject.
“By the way, have things been all right with the Count lately?”
It was an abrupt, willful change of topic, unnatural if one wanted to call it that, but Isaac did not particularly mind. Simply being this close to her and conversing with her was already a little overwhelming for him.
And thankfully, the changed topic cooled Isaac’s head a little. He raised one hand and rubbed the back of his neck.
“……Yes. It is all right. And, um……. I received an apology. He admitted that he had shown favoritism, and he apologized. And…… he also confirmed that it was not because he hated me. I simply wanted to confirm that.”
“…….”
“I wondered whether it had been because I was truly hateful when I was young…….”
Isaac trailed off. He looked at her face as she gazed up at him with an indescribably strange expression.
‘She’s pitying me.’
Unless he was the greatest fool under heaven, he could not fail to notice. To Isaac, pity was the same as contempt. No matter who it came from, he hated being pitied to death.
And yet, from her, it was fine.
That was the problem.
“At any rate, I was relieved it did not turn out the way I feared it might. I had worried that he might pretend nothing had happened and try to get along with me now, or that, like other adults, he might instead grow angry at me…….”
“Did you accept his apology?”
“……No. I simply did not answer. He did not seem to have expected that either, and just…….”
He had said that was enough for him as well. Isaac ended the story somewhat clumsily and hastily.
Sasha’s green eyes were still fixed on him. He liked the way she lifted her head like that and looked only at him.
Sasha felt sorry for him. He did not know exactly since when, but in any case, when she pitied him, she became kinder and softer than usual. In other words, she became vulnerable.
Isaac unconsciously began analyzing that as though it were a tactical advantage, then stopped.
When she pities me, she becomes gentler. So? Am I supposed to deliberately look more pitiful from now on?
……Why?
“At any rate, I wanted to tell you that you do not need to worry so much anymore. I am all right now…….”
Isaac stared down at her somewhat blankly, then quickly turned away.
“That was what I wanted to say. Then, um……. I remembered something I must do, so I should go.”
It was, to anyone’s eyes, a hastily improvised lie, and Isaac himself knew how poor it was, but he had no room to care. Whether she answered or not, he fled the study as if escaping.
＊＊＊
The gravestone of Isaac’s mother, Diane Pinscher, stood in one corner of the count family’s mausoleum. White flowers bloomed around it, and it was, in its own way, a sunny spot. Isaac sat down before Diane’s gravestone and set down the bouquet he had brought.
He could already see another bouquet someone had left there. Sasha and Caroline had probably come by the previous day and left it.
Isaac sat in front of the gravestone for a long while, staring blankly at Diane’s name. He lifted his palm and tried rubbing the gravestone clean. It had already been polished smooth. Isaac could easily imagine Sasha, like him, carefully wiping and rubbing the gravestone.
Isaac was far from sentimental. Since he had always kept his distance from religion, there was no point muttering prayers inwardly, so he simply sat there, staring at Diane’s gravestone for a long while. Then, after stroking the gravestone one last time and plucking and trampling the weeds around it, he rose from his seat.
Isaac left the count family’s graveyard and walked toward the mansion. The day was now openly muggy, the sort of weather where one sweated just by walking. Thankfully, the wind was cool. As he walked, Isaac looked over the broad estate that would now be wholly inherited by him, and then at the count’s residence that had finally become a “home” where he could rest in comfort. Then he took in at a glance even the canyon that lay there as though embracing the count’s residence.
The strange sentiment vanished quickly. Isaac hurried his steps again. It was nearly time to meet Sasha. From today on, he had to properly keep his promise to her. He had to teach her how to care for the gun he had gifted her, and also teach her shooting.
What time was the meeting place again? She had said to meet around three or four. Isaac raised his wristwatch and checked the time. The hour hand was only just positioned between one and two.
“Good afternoon, Captain. The weather is nice today.”
As he approached, Charles, who had been feeding the horses nearby, greeted him. Isaac nodded.
Isaac took a livestock brush from Charles and began brushing a horse’s mane, then froze. A familiar voice was coming from nearby.
“The two ladies have been taking a walk over there since earlier.”
Charles explained calmly. Sasha and Caroline had been walking over there for some time.
Lately, Sasha had been spending more time with Caroline. In a way, it was a natural and expected picture. Caroline was the eldest woman of the household, so it was desirable that Sasha, now the new mistress, stay close to her.
After Caroline’s voice, Sasha’s chattering voice followed, and Isaac flinched without realizing it, hiding behind the horse. Of course, there was no way his massive frame could be hidden, but he concealed himself anyway, even pulling on the horse’s reins to force it to turn toward him.
Charles did not look at Isaac as if he found him particularly strange. As though he had grown used to it.
“……I see.”
“How about joining them?”
“No. I can’t intrude on their private time and disturb them.”
At Charles’s meddling, Isaac replied with a sulky face, then belatedly realized that at some point, this coachman had begun treating him quite familiarly. He reminded him of his adjutant, Felix.
Soon, without any particular reaction, Isaac began brushing the horse’s sleek, glossy coat again. Sasha’s laughter sounded once more.
As if the effort he had made to hide himself was for nothing, that sound made him lift his head and look toward her again.
……Isaac liked her.
With an expression not particularly surprised even himself, he muttered inwardly.
‘I like her.’
Isaac also knew that this was not simple fondness between people, nor even something like friendship. Isaac liked Sasha. In a terribly different sense, he truly liked her.
Since their last conversation, Isaac had found himself thinking of Sasha whenever he had a spare moment. For no reason, he would dwell on when he first met her, recall the times when he had had something like a proper conversation with her, and remember in order the moment when she seemed to have smiled sincerely at him for the first time.
Was that all? Now, he was even adding futile suppositions. If he had received the sort of education Edmund had received since childhood and grown into a more presentable man than he was now, and if he had attended her party not as some rough soldier, but as the proper heir of a respectable count’s family.
If that had been the case, then truly, perhaps he might have been among those four men she had danced with at her birthday party. Then they might have exchanged talk of marriage in a more courteous and gradual way, and perhaps.
……Perhaps.
He had been repeating such thoughts, thoughts utterly devoid of productivity.
That was irrefutable proof. Proof that made it impossible for him to deny himself. Isaac liked her. He truly liked her. Since it was his first time, he did not know what level this feeling had reached, but in any case, never in his life had there been someone he had cared about this much or wanted so badly to look good in front of.
Prrr—.
Seeming uncomfortable with the continued brushing, the horse blew air from its nose over Isaac’s forehead. As if belatedly coming to his senses, Isaac brushed the hair on the other side.
“Then does that mean, conversely, that you’ve become quite interested in me lately?”
Just as she had said, Isaac was curious about her. Even if he wanted to look good to her, he knew nothing about what she liked, and, in the first place, he had only now realized that he did not know much about her at all.
He truly knew nothing about her. It was partly because he had not asked, but she also never seemed to tell him stories about herself.
He was not asking her to lay everything bare as much as he had, but there were many things Isaac wanted to ask her. He wanted to ask small questions that one would normally ask at a first meeting, like what her hobbies were, and he simply wanted to hear anything she had to say about herself.
He wanted to know about her.
“……So what am I supposed to do now?”
Isaac muttered. Charles, who had been standing nearby, turned to look at him, but realizing it was a monologue, walked away and pretended not to notice. Isaac did not even glance toward the departing Charles. With a grave expression, he rubbed his face dry.
Once she divorced him, what would she plan to do? Since she had spent her whole life confined in a mansion, perhaps she longed for freedom more than anything else. Would she suddenly leave for somewhere far away? It was possible she would return with a nonchalant expression after several years had passed. It was possible she would return arm in arm with a lover she had met abroad.
And then she might calmly greet him, saying it had been a long time. That foreign bastard would smile detestably at him while linking arms with her. Isaac already hated that nameless son of a bitch so much.
His thoughts advanced endlessly. He could not control them. Because it was his first time.
Because this sort of thing was simply his first time.
“……Letters……. Should I first ask if we can keep exchanging letters?”
Isaac muttered to himself with all seriousness, working hard in his own way to devise a countermeasure.