Episode 27
Isaac simply focused on rowing. Putting strength into his arms, he cut through the current and guided the ferryboat deeper into the lakeside. The water rippled outward in round waves. Within them shimmered the faces of two people wearing rather strange expressions.
“There’s one thing I’m curious about.”
After the silence, Sasha asked.
“Ask.”
Isaac answered calmly, in a tone that could be mistaken for somewhat arrogant.
“Was it perhaps because of me?”
“……What are you referring to?”
“The reason you hit Bloom and Osmund at the party that day. Was it perhaps because of…….”
“…….”
“Judging by your expression, it wasn’t. Yes. I understand. I’m sorry.”
Sasha apologized with an awkward look. Then again, it would have been strange for Isaac to have suddenly resorted to violence just because he had heard something like that about her, when the two of them had not even known each other to begin with.
Yes, in the first place, he had not even been acquainted with her.
“May I ask what Bloom said that offended you, Captain?”
“No.”
Isaac answered immediately. Sasha nodded obediently, her face saying she had expected as much. Isaac stared at Sasha’s face for a moment, then furrowed his brow in irritation. Then he continued.
“It’s a story you wouldn’t understand even if you heard it, Miss Grayson. I believe I said as much then. I said they were talking about my days as a military cadet.”
“Did something happen when you were a cadet?”
“I once got into trouble with some seniors. One of them became a cripple and had to leave the academy. He was the only one I properly paid back…….”
Isaac stopped speaking, as though he had said it without realizing. Then, belatedly, he looked toward Sasha as if gauging her reaction.
The person in question was merely blinking. He had not expected her to shriek or stare at him with horror-filled eyes like most people, but there was something oddly unbothered about her—so calm it was almost excessive.
Isaac pondered for a moment. Judging only by what he had said so far, he was practically using his whole body to assert to her that he was unsuitable even as a contractual marriage partner.
Perhaps that was what Isaac himself had wanted. But the more he thought about it, the less pleased he felt. He did not know why. Then what exactly do I want? I have no idea what this woman is thinking. I rejected that proposal because of that, and even now, I still feel the same way—I want that woman to hurry up and stop paying attention to me.
……Why on earth am I.
“When you say ‘the only one,’ that means you weren’t like that before, doesn’t it?”
Sasha, who had been blinking calmly, asked. Isaac froze for a moment. Then he wet his lower lip with his tongue and nodded.
“I suppose so.”
“Did you forgive the others?”
“I did not forgive them.”
Isaac replied with a cold, hardened face.
One of them was already dead, and one had climbed so high that he could no longer be touched. Muttering that inwardly, he glanced at her with a crooked expression.
“Then, when you took revenge that one time, did you feel relieved?”
It was a strangely profound question out of nowhere. At the same time, Isaac felt an unwelcome sensation and, without realizing it, looked at Sasha sitting across from him with sharp eyes. Then he flinched.
His eyes met hers as she stared at him with a bleak face even more expressionless than before. No, that was not so much bleak as it was……
“I’m curious. Do you feel relieved after taking revenge?”
Her eyes looked empty. Isaac was silent for a moment. Then he opened his mouth and answered slowly.
“At first, I felt relieved.”
“…….”
“In truth, I still feel relieved even now. But at the same time, I do not. Because I needlessly stained my hands with blood, and in the end, I feel as though I made myself into what I am now.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes. By myself.”
As Isaac answered, a thought suddenly occurred to him. Why am I obediently answering every one of this woman’s questions so readily?
“You asked me last time why it had to be marriage as a means, didn’t you?”
Sasha opened her mouth.
“I said it was because that was the method my late grandmother would have loathed the most. Thinking about it, I suppose I’m doing this half out of a desire for revenge as well.”
“Were you on bad terms with your grandmother?”
It was a question only Isaac could have asked. It was also a question that anyone who knew about her and Lady Rosaline would never have thought to ask.
After all, the story everyone knew was that Sasha Grayson had lost her parents in a carriage accident as a child and had been raised preciously under her grandmother’s overprotective care ever since.
“Is your grandmother the overprotective type, Captain?”
“Overprotective?”
Isaac openly snorted and sneered.
“There is no one in that family who would overprotect me.”
“Then what about your grandmother?”
“That person simply dislikes that I did not grow up docilely according to her wishes. She makes excuses and tries, even now, to meddle in my life however she can.”
“Meddle. It’s the same in my case.”
Sasha said calmly.
Isaac stopped rowing and stared intently at Sasha. Sasha Grayson, who had been sitting silently across from him, blinked those beautiful green eyes and looked around at the surrounding greenery, which gave off an atmosphere darker and gloomier than even the color of her eyes.
“It’s very dark here.”
Sasha said anew.
And she was right. The only light came from the sun up in the sky. Even that light was gradually narrowing as the trees stretched out their branches more and more, growing lushly.
After murmuring that, Sasha spoke to Isaac in a tone that seemed unconcerned.
“My grandmother was, how should I put it… She wanted my life to flow entirely according to her wishes. I think she wanted me to live in that mansion for the rest of my life, even after she died.”
“So you chose marriage as an act of rebellion? There must have been any number of ways to leave home.”
“I told you, didn’t I? I have my cousin, and in many ways, I’m not free to move as I please. While I was looking for a way to effectively drive my cousin away as well, this was the only thing I could think of.”
Half of it was the truth. And the other half was not exactly a lie, but rather an ambiguous half-truth.
“I can’t accept that you chose me for such a paltry reason.”
“Are you lacking in confidence in yourself?”
“Unless your late grandmother said something about giving you the inheritance in exchange for marriage.”
Sasha, who had been replying rather sharply, pressed her lips into a firm line. She looked at Isaac with an expressionless face.
She looked at him with eyes that seemed to say, You were babbling about this and that, and yet you got one thing right.
“You’re right to some extent. That’s why I needed a man who wouldn’t covet my fortune.”
Sasha acknowledged it calmly, looking at him with a bleak, hardened face.
“In truth, the greatest revenge would be to simply throw all of this away. She left me quite a lot of assignments. Quitting all of them and simply leaving that mansion would be the greatest revenge.”
“…….”
“You asked if we were on bad terms.”
Wasn’t that something that only applied to people on equal footing? She had lived all along, flattened beneath Lady Rosaline’s feet.
From the moment she had climbed onto the woman’s lap in the hope of being loved and was pushed away, she had never dared even to think of that. Yes, from that moment on, Sasha had always been bowing beneath her feet.
Sasha hesitated for a moment, then continued.
“Strictly speaking, she did dote on me. But for me to dare……”
“I have no interest in rumors, nor do I have anyone to pass them on to me, so I do not know much about your circumstances, Miss Grayson.”
Isaac cut her off and said.
“But I do know how harmful that kind of overprotection and one-sided affection can be. I also know that even for the one receiving it, it is not necessarily welcome.”
Isaac said that with a face that had hardened bleakly before he knew it.
“In any case, you intend to marry for revenge.”
“Yes. And while I’m at it, because I want to be free.”
With the money, if possible. Sasha was about to add that, but stopped.
“Why do you wish to marry, Captain Fincher?”
“Because I think I have the right to as well.”
Isaac answered smoothly, then widened his eyes for a moment as though surprised by himself. Soon after, he pressed irritably at the inner corners of his eyes and said again, as if admitting it.
“Because I deserve to receive that too.”
It was something she had heard from him before. But compared to last time, there seemed to be an even stranger compulsion contained in it. Sasha only nodded quietly.