Episode 120
It was early morning, before even the sun had risen. Though she was naturally an early riser, today her eyes had opened earlier than usual. Having talked with Isaac all night and only barely fallen asleep, she was terribly tired. Sasha roughly pushed herself up and rubbed her gritty eyes.
Since it was such an early hour, Isaac was still asleep. Sasha turned her dazed gaze to the side for a moment. He was always gone from bed before she woke, so seeing him asleep felt strange. Still only half-awake, Sasha stared at his sleeping face through half-lidded eyes.
His hair, trimmed short the day before for their audience with Her Majesty the Queen, was tousled over the pillow. His sleeping face looked quite peaceful. Between the shape of his features and the expression he usually wore, he was by no means a gentle-looking man. But seeing his face like this in sleep, he looked not merely mild, but even somewhat cute.
After looking a while longer at his sleeping face, Sasha finally rose and went to the window. When she opened it slightly, moderately cool morning air flowed in.
Sasha watched the servants below the window, moving diligently to prepare the manor for morning. Belatedly, memories of the previous day came back to her. They had welcomed her and Isaac as though they had heard no news at all.
Watching that peaceful, trustworthy-looking scene made a sigh rise of its own accord. Sasha gazed at them with dry eyes and rubbed her brow bone. There was a mountain of things to deal with, starting with them.
With a composed face, Sasha recalled the schedule that had originally been planned for today. There was a gathering of the ladies’ society that Lady Rosaline regularly attended. To be precise, a charity event hosted by that ladies’ society was scheduled.
Today, Sasha was supposed to take the violin, one of Lady Rosaline’s keepsakes, and attend the charity event. Since the women in the society were acquaintances of Lady Rosaline, they were not people on the Duchess’s side. Fortunately.
Sasha sat on the windowsill, taking in the cool morning air as she continued thinking about those matters. The special report had broken just yesterday, and it would not be strange if reporters swarmed the manor today. If she did not go to the ladies’ society event, rumors would spread in their own way, and she might have to spend the entire day at the manor dealing with reporters.
‘Then I have no choice but to face it head-on.’
In the end, the only method was to break through from the front. Though the situation was terribly bleak, she did not feel the dizzying sensation from yesterday, as if her mind had gone blank and was spinning in circles. Rather, she had become very calm.
Sasha turned her head toward the bed while sitting on the windowsill. Isaac was still sound asleep.
She climbed down from the windowsill and went back to the bed. Lowering her head, she kissed his forehead.
After looking down at his sleeping face, she kissed his cheek again. Then she lay down beside him and wriggled into his arms.
It was warm. Was it because his body was so large that he had more heat than others? Thinking such foolish thoughts, Sasha surrendered herself to that comforting warmth. She buried her forehead in the hollow where his neck met his shoulder.
Isaac had listened patiently to everything Sasha had to say. Since she had never laid bare her true feelings to others to begin with, her story was even more guarded than usual, unconsciously adding lies and then correcting them again and again, but Isaac listened without showing much displeasure.
Now he knew everything about her.
Just as she had come to know everything about him, he had also come to know everything about her.
He knew that she had deceived him. Though he had not shown it much, Sasha knew that Isaac felt quite hurt by it.
Through their bodies pressed together, the thump, thump of Isaac’s heartbeat was transmitted to her in full. The steady breaths he exhaled also touched the area near her forehead. With her face buried in the nape of his neck, Sasha felt his warmth, his scent, and the sound of his breathing as if she were cramming them all into herself.
And then, like an immature child, she felt as though she might cry again, so with her face still buried against his neck, she even rubbed at her nose as it tried to sting and heat up.
‘He’s mine.’
For the first time, it was something other than money that she had wanted, something she had coveted. And, far beyond what she deserved, he had truly become hers.
Without realizing it, she embraced him, her hands roaming over his back with a possessiveness that was more than obvious. Then, with a calmer expression, as if the swelling feeling in her chest had somewhat settled, she gazed at his sleeping face.
‘So I’ll cherish him.’
With a face that looked not merely solemn but cold, Sasha murmured inwardly.
＊＊＊
“Good morning, Captain.”
Knock, knock. With the sound of a knock, Felix entered the office and spoke. Isaac, sitting at his office desk and drinking coffee with a more dazed face than usual, looked at him and furrowed his brows.
Whether or not his superior was openly showing that he was unwelcome, Felix came the rest of the way into the room with lively steps.
“While you were away, I took care of everything I could at my level. All that remains is this, awaiting your approval, Captain.”
“Leave it there.”
At Isaac’s dry instruction, Felix obediently set the documents down on one side of the desk.
“Getting up at the crack of dawn to commute from the capital to Lance Field. If it were me, I wouldn’t even dare. Why not prepare a separate private residence here in Lance Field? Madam seemed to like this place as well.”
“It seems you’ve forgotten what I told you while I was gone.”
The moment Sasha came up, Isaac’s face hardened. With cold blue eyes, Isaac looked his adjutant over.
The special report had broken just yesterday. No matter how poorly news traveled to this remote countryside, the rumor would have spread in an instant. Moreover, the people here had been talking about everything concerning Sasha from the very first day she came here.
Isaac glared at his adjutant, who was smiling calmly as if he knew nothing.
“Did those layabouts tell you to sound me out?”
Isaac asked, recalling the unmarried officers who had once tried every possible way to get into Sasha’s good graces.
Among those who had made advances toward Sasha, there had been men like that. Men who had ruined their prospects after getting caught up in so-called military politics and choosing the wrong side, and men like that knew not only the inner workings of the army but outside gossip as well.
To begin with, the ones who had been talking about her since the very first day Sasha came here were those sorts of men. There was no way they did not know about that problematic special report.
Since they were men who liked to run their mouths out of turn, they had probably gone around blabbing to the other officers in the regiment as well. At that thought, Isaac’s hand, which had been resting on his knee, clenched of its own accord.
“No.”
Felix blinked calmly at Isaac’s sharp reaction. In the short span of a few months, he had grown accustomed to his superior’s exceptionally defensive and authoritarian-looking manner.
“I merely asked out of genuine concern for the two of you, but I’m hurt.”
When Felix abruptly said he was hurt, Isaac raised his brows as if dumbfounded.
You slippery bastard.
You acted like this when I first came, too.
“……Mind your own business.”
“……Yes. But what is that? Were you bitten by an insect?”
Felix asked, about to withdraw, then stopping as his gaze fixed on Isaac’s exposed wrist.
“……No, this is just because she said she was curious……”
Isaac answered naturally, then stopped speaking. Belatedly realizing it was a rather embarrassing topic, he glared at Felix.
“Shut up.”
He had said it himself, then told him to shut up.
Though it was absurd, Felix was accustomed to such behavior in many ways, so he answered, “Yes.”
After giving Isaac some time to gather himself from his embarrassment, Felix placed the letters on top of the pile of documents.
“The letters that arrived while you were away are here as well. As you instructed, I stored them with more care than usual.”
Isaac, who had been glaring into empty air as if pointlessly aggrieved, soon returned to his usual expression at the word “letters” and nodded.
“I’ll leave them here.”
“Good. You may go.”
“Yes.”
Felix bowed to him with an annoyingly proper show of courtesy, then left the office.
Isaac looked around his office, which remained as cluttered as it had been the last time he came. Then he picked up the letter lying on top of the others and checked the sender.
……It was his grandmother.
The envelope was cruder than usual. It was undoubtedly a letter sent in haste by express delivery. He could easily guess the contents without reading it. It would be a letter interrogating him about that matter related to Sasha.
At that thought, Isaac sighed with complicated feelings in many respects.
Only a few hours ago, when Isaac had been preparing to leave the manor because he had no choice but to go to work, Sasha had told him, with a face astonishingly calm, “Don’t worry.” She said it was not as if she had made no plans for the possibility of being exposed. She had thoughts of her own and had made up her mind, so it was all right.
However, even after hearing her words, Isaac could not easily put his worries aside. It was because, the moment his carriage passed beyond the walls of Dilton Manor, he had seen reporters stationed nearby.
……Disgusting people.
Isaac especially loathed people like that. Sasha knew that well and had felt terribly sorry toward him.
With a groan, Isaac buried his face in his palm.
And he recalled the warmth of her as she kissed him while he was asleep—more precisely, while he had already been awake but was pretending to be asleep. He remembered how bright she had looked when, unable to endure it in the end, he had made his eyelashes tremble, and she had burst into laughter, turning the tables and flustering him instead.
“I’m fine. Go on.”
He remembered her seeing him off just before he boarded the carriage, calmly kissing his cheek.
Isaac was about to tear open Caroline’s letter, which he had picked up, but set it back down. Then he took out the letter beneath it and checked the sender.
It was a letter from Sergeant York, his longtime comrade.
After a long time, when Isaac finally wrote back to him, this was the letter that had arrived again from him as if he had been waiting.