Episode 113
What sort of expression had the duchess worn when she was told that the woman she had kept by her side all this time like real family was a fake pretending to be Sasha? As always, she seemed to have come merely intending to humor the nonsense her son was spouting, but when he presented one plausible piece of evidence after another—including documents from an orphanage reeking of age—she gradually fell silent.
For a while, the duchess only stared into empty space, as though overcome by many different emotions. Then she laughed aloud, and that laugh seemed, in a way, less one of disbelief than of relief. It was also the laughter of someone who had finally resolved a question that had long troubled her. Something Geoffrey could not even begin to guess at.
Yes. That was the problem.
“Do not tell anyone for the time being.”
That was the first instruction the duchess gave Geoffrey after long contemplation. Do not tell anyone.
After standing there blankly for a moment, Geoffrey followed after her as she turned away and left emptily. He asked her why, and the duchess said, as always, “I cannot tell you now, Geoffrey.” Repeatedly urging him to endure because this was for the sake of the house, she fixed him once more with the same stern, warning gaze as before, driving the point home, and only then turned away again and left.
A soft, humid summer breeze ruffled Geoffrey’s bangs. With an expressionless face, Geoffrey looked at the fake before him wearing the shell of Sasha Grayson.
As always, neither his father nor his mother ever properly explained anything to him. Especially not those exceedingly important “matters of the house.” He was the young duke. Though he had not yet formally gone through the succession procedure, everyone already treated him as the young duke, and so he was the young duke. He had the right to know everything that happened within the family.
Geoffrey recalled his mother, who had looked at him with distrustful eyes as though dealing with a troublesome child. At some point, she had become that way. She never brought up serious matters to her son. ……Yes. And the duke was even worse.
Since he himself had hated rules more than anyone and lived causing trouble, he knew it was only natural, even taking into account that they were his parents. Even so, he could not hide the resentment that surged up within him.
“I asked you.”
He loathed taking responsibility for anything, but he also hated being ignored. That, in short, was Geoffrey’s pathetic, immature attitude.
“……No.”
When Geoffrey growled and asked again, Sasha looked up at him with an expressionless face and answered calmly.
It was a truly dry, impassive face. A face that expected nothing. And Geoffrey found that displeasing.
That fake had been like that for some time now. Certainly, when she was younger, there must have been a time when she had been somewhat intimidated by him, but before he knew it, she was looking at him the same way his parents did, as though looking at something pathetic.
Geoffrey found her absurd. As soon as we marry, I’ll make her live begging me. I’ll slowly dry her out until she dies. Just as he had been plotting such things, he had now gotten his hands on that woman’s fatal weakness.
“It isn’t because of you, Geoffrey.”
It was a shame that he could not reveal that weakness to her at once and plunge her into despair, but in any case, it was not half bad.
Sasha, who had no way of knowing Geoffrey’s pitch-black thoughts, looked at her cousin with a dry gaze that did not even show a trace of contempt and repeated herself. As though she found the attitude of that self-absorbed man utterly pathetic.
“This was simply one of my long-held wishes.”
“A wish? Marriage?”
“Yes. I wanted to have a family.”
Since it was not, in a sense, a lie, Sasha said it that way.
Geoffrey went quiet for a moment. A fake, and yet she said she wanted a family. Was that her true purpose? If she had not been exposed, had she intended to live on for the rest of her life playing the role of his cousin?
“Hearing that makes me feel even more hurt, Sasha. It sounds as if it wouldn’t have mattered who the other person was. Your husband would be disappointed.”
It was a sneer not worth responding to. Sasha looked at Geoffrey without saying anything.
“Geoffrey.”
“Yes?”
“I’m the one who’s hurt. You treated me as if I were not merely beneath your notice, but a boring woman, and now you’re acting as though you had affection for me. I don’t understand it.”
Sasha did not mock Geoffrey. At least, nothing of the sort was visible.
Far from mocking him, she gazed at him coldly, as if even giving him her attention was a waste.
“I still haven’t forgotten that you had your friend paint a picture resembling me, Geoffrey.”
Geoffrey now knew that this woman was of such lowly status she was not even in a position to dare speak to him. Listening to her prattle on so arrogantly, not even knowing that he knew her secret, was truly beyond insolent. If it had been like before, he would not have endured it and would have slapped her across the face immediately. But Geoffrey merely stood still and listened to Sasha speak.
Because his parents had ordered him to “strictly keep” the secret?
……No.
“Get to the point, Sasha.”
“I mean, don’t do that to my husband. Don’t treat him the way you treat me.”
Geoffrey simply found this absurd conversation so enjoyable he could hardly stand it. Watching her chatter away, knowing nothing, was even lovable. To Sasha herself, it was terribly horrifying.
No matter how he thought about it, it was a waste. If he had been the one to marry her without knowing anything, it would have been much more entertaining. Holding over her the weakness of her lowly status and the fact that she was a fraud, subtly pressuring her while pretending not to know—truly.
……It would have been truly entertaining.
“Geoffrey.”
Geoffrey looked down at Sasha in front of him as though coming to his senses belatedly.
“Step back.”
At some point, it seemed he had approached her without realizing it. Geoffrey stared intently into her green eyes, which now revealed her displeasure more openly than before.
“……And if I refuse?”
Once the secret was exposed, she would be left with no one to rely on anyway.
What was this marriage supposed to amount to?
But before he could so much as cup half her cheek, his opposite shoulder was seized and he was forcibly turned around.
“……Ah!”
With an unsightly groan, Geoffrey turned back with a displeased expression. Then his eyes met those of the man gripping his shoulder with a terrifyingly hardened face.
When Isaac’s eyes met Geoffrey’s deeply scowling face, he quickly looked away and checked on Sasha.
“Madam, are you all right?”
“……You fucking—what sort of rude behavior is this? Let go.”
Whether Geoffrey glared at him and spat out the words or not, Isaac kept hold of his shoulder to the end, turning him toward himself and holding him there. So that he absolutely could not even look in Sasha’s direction.
At the humiliation he was experiencing for the first time in his life, Geoffrey’s eyes rolled with rage. It was different in nature from being slapped by Sasha. He had never been treated with such crushing contempt by a man his own age.
“I said let go!”
“Isaac, it’s all right. Please let him go.”
Only after Sasha, unable to watch any longer, spoke to stop him did Isaac release his painful grip on Geoffrey’s shoulder.
Grinding his teeth in humiliation, Geoffrey rubbed the shoulder that had been seized. As expected of a bastard who was nothing but a big, brute body, his strength was brutish too. Were they not, in a sense, a well-matched pair? Just as Geoffrey was about to open his mouth to sneer at that thought—
“Even if he is your cousin, there is no exception. Do not cross the line with my wife.”
“……Are you daring to lecture me right now?”
Blue eyes flashed right before him. The man instinctively knew very well how to use his physique against an opponent. Moreover, his eyes were so full of murderous intent that any other man would likely have quietly looked down at the floor just from meeting them.
Isaac looked coldly down at Geoffrey, who laughed in disbelief while staring back at him as though he had nothing to be ashamed of.
He had heard somewhat about this young duke through Sasha, and through stories he had gathered on his own. But after looking him in the eye and speaking with him directly, Isaac found him far more arrogant and ill-bred than he had expected.
“If you are an adult, act like one.”
Isaac spat out the rest through clenched teeth. Their first impressions of each other had already ended in disaster, and neither of them regretted it.
“……You would do well not to act insolently toward me, Captain. Don’t behave so disgracefully under the excuse of overprotectiveness.”
Geoffrey spoke to Isaac’s back as he turned away, his eyes raised with a chilling glare.
At those words, which showed not the slightest sign of reflection, Isaac was just about to turn back toward Geoffrey.
“Isaac!”
Sasha’s voice stopped him in place. Thanks to that, he restrained himself from grabbing that damned bastard by the collar, but his anger had not subsided, and Isaac breathed roughly, his face flushed red.
“It’s all right. Calm down.”
The sight of her soothing a man who was nothing but stupidly large, like soothing a child, was ridiculous. With an expressionless face, Geoffrey looked on in disbelief as Sasha calmed the man.
A crude soldier from some rural border noble family, without a trace of proper noble etiquette.
His impression had not changed much from when he had first seen him at Sasha’s birthday party. Geoffrey found it rather regrettable that Sasha was stopping Isaac. If he had provoked him just a little more, he would have crossed the line again.
……If he had.
“Are you all right, my lady?”
“I need to go inside and rest with my husband for a moment. If any other guests ask for me, let me know.”
Without even glancing at Geoffrey, Sasha took Isaac and went off to the other side.
Jason, the butler left alone, looked at Geoffrey with an awkward expression, then soon cleared his throat conspicuously, bowed his head to him, and likewise went inside the building.
Geoffrey stood rooted to the spot, unconsciously clenching his fist, then belatedly turned his head toward the open space on the other side. A crowd had gathered, having recognized with ghostlike precision from the raised voices that it was a fight. As soon as the guests’ eyes met Geoffrey’s, they scattered in all directions as if nothing had happened.
Geoffrey was left alone amid the murmuring voices.
“……Those damned bastards…….”
Geoffrey muttered darkly.
Recalling Sasha, who had cared for that man not merely intimately, but tenderly—far more than the rumors had suggested.
Recalling how she had unhesitatingly patted that shabby man’s shoulders and arms, even looking at him with eyes brimming with worry and affection.
Before long, he grew strangely quiet.
And even after everyone had left him behind, he continued standing there, staring in the direction where Sasha had disappeared.