Episode 39
It was several days later that Isaac and Sasha met again.
Sasha was the first to send him a letter.
She wrote that she was planning to go to Lance Field, and if their schedules aligned, she would like to have a conversation with him. If not, she would simply stay quietly at Major Wells’s residence and then leave.
For some reason, it felt strange.
Isaac immediately wrote back agreeing to it.
That had been the reason he had so readily accepted her proposal to “take the time to get to know each other” in the first place.
Like all the others who had approached him only to fall away, he had expected that woman, Sasha Grayson, to grow sick of him after seeing him a few more times and leave of her own accord. That was why he had agreed so readily.
In truth, Isaac Pinscher had never had any intention of setting aside his suspicions of her from the very beginning. Of course, he would not deny that she had piqued his interest a little, but that was all.
After being demoted to the 4th Infantry Regiment, Isaac’s distrust of people had reached its peak, and he no longer wished to become deeply involved with anyone. He had merely felt a little curiosity; he did not want to know anything about her.
He had hoped she would quickly see the parts of him that would disgust her and leave.
Even that ridiculous first date, which still came back to torment him whenever he lay in bed, and every awkward mannerism he had shown her—if he looked at it one way, they all contributed to making her sick of him. And so, though he had wanted to spring up and leave at once, he had not.
He forced himself to meet her, and met her again the next day.
……In other words.
The next day, while shaving more carefully than usual, Isaac looked into the mirror and realized anew, with a blank expression.
‘……In other words, I could have just rejected that absurd marriage proposal—and even that nonsense about taking time to get to know each other—right from the start.’
In any case, Isaac met Sasha again the following afternoon. And under Mrs. Wells’s curious gaze, they drank tea together at the major’s private residence.
The two of them talked about nothing in particular.
Unlike Isaac’s expectation that, as before, they would discuss the wedding procedures in a businesslike manner, Sasha brought up things he was not even curious about.
That Miss Hampshire had invited Sasha again under the pretext of wanting to hear her play the piano once more. And then other stories he likewise had no curiosity about, though they were not unpleasant to hear. She even went on to say that Miss Hampshire’s older brother, Derek Hampshire, would be leaving Lance Field for several months on business.
Isaac found himself listening attentively to the last story without realizing it, but he remained unaware of it himself. In any case, at the end of that conversation, Sasha looked at Isaac’s irritable expression and asked,
“Shall we go somewhere tomorrow where we can talk alone? What do you think?”
“Where do you mean?”
Isaac asked with a sullen face, and Sasha answered as if she had been waiting for him to ask.
“Mm. I don’t know this place as well as you do, Captain, but my new friends have introduced me to several places.”
Late the next afternoon, Isaac followed Sasha into a small café tucked away in a corner of Lance Field.
There was nothing but the green fields and red windmills he had seen to the point of weariness since being demoted here. Yet there was something slightly new about the way she looked at that obvious scenery.
Isaac stared at her as she gazed out the window with clear eyes. Though it was a scene he had surely seen until he was sick of it, the landscape reflected small in her green eyes somehow looked special.
“Good. Then, since there are no ears listening today, you may ask me anything you’ve been curious about.”
So, despite the fact that their marriage had already been decided, this “time to get to know each other” was apparently still valid.
Isaac understood that this was, in a way, one expression of Sasha’s trust.
Now that he thought about it, she had been like that from the beginning. She had wanted to prove to him that she was harmless.
I don’t want to know anything about you. I’m not curious.
Before, he would have said that.
Isaac muttered inwardly, then said this instead.
“I heard you lost your parents in a carriage accident when you were young.”
No matter how poor his social skills were, Isaac was not quite that insensitive. But because he was so terribly unaccustomed to familiar conversation, he could not stop himself from making the mistake of calmly blurting out a subject that should have been handled with care.
Sasha’s eyes, which had been shining as she admired the scenery beyond the small window, no longer sparkled. She nodded, wearing an exceedingly businesslike and dry smile, just as she had when she had first met him.
“Yes. Everyone but me passed away. My parents, of course, and the coachman as well—they all fell off the cliff together.”
“…….”
“It was a day when it rained heavily. They say the wind and rain were so strong that it must have been difficult to see ahead.”
Sasha spoke in a suitably calm tone, as if listing the events of that time. Back then, both the real girl and the fake that she was now had been terribly young. Even if she spoke of it as though repeating something she had heard from others, it would not seem especially unnatural.
After some calculation of her own, a voice of suitably mournful tone continued to flow from Sasha’s mouth.
“Mm. I know what you’re thinking. You seem to want to ask why they went out on such a dreadful day, and at dawn at that. I don’t know the reason either. It must have been adult circumstances.”
“Do you not miss your parents?”
Isaac, who had been quietly listening for some time, asked. As soon as he asked, he shut his mouth with a look of belated realization; the man who had seemed as if he were only half-listening the entire time asked Sasha that.
In other words, it was a question she had heard so often she had grown utterly sick of it. A question she had been asked countless times by guests visiting the mansion throughout the time she had lived there as a fake. Among them, the most common question of all.
Whenever they asked with pitying faces, Sasha would mechanically put on a sad expression and answer, “I miss them.” Then, with a brave expression, she would add, “But I’m all right. I have Grandmother.”
This time, too, she simply had to react the same way as before. Yet Sasha, even forgetting to manage her expression, found herself staring at Isaac with a strangely blank face.
Why was that? Because although it was the same sensitive question, that man was not watching her carefully with an openly sympathetic expression like the others? Had his indifferent expression spread to her as well?
“……I don’t know.”
After a long while, Sasha answered. Though she knew better than anyone that she must not appear suspicious, Sasha stared at him expressionlessly and answered that way.
“Too much time has passed. And I was too young then.”
Her real parents had abandoned her at an orphanage when she was still an infant, as though handing her off, so she did not even know their faces; from the moment she learned to speak, she had been busy struggling to survive among children as tiny as herself.
She had not even had the leisure to imagine her parents’ faces, much less resent them.
“I’m sorry. For answering so ‘strangely.’”
Sasha said, belatedly coming to her senses. Then, as if belatedly gauging his reaction, she looked at Isaac, but Isaac merely shook his head with a rather calm face.
“Not at all. Thank you for answering honestly.”
“Honestly”? Sasha froze, a little dumbfounded by his words. Ah, yes. In a sense, that had been an honest answer. That was precisely why it had been a strange one…….
The more she tried to explain, the stranger it would become. Sasha soon smiled as usual, deftly changed the subject, and began talking at will about her hobbies.
Sasha was smiling again. But her eyes no longer shone the way they had when she had looked at the scenery outside the window earlier.
For some reason, Isaac found that slightly unpleasant.
Yes. Unpleasant. More specifically, it felt something like regret.
I shouldn’t have brought it up. That kind of…….
No, this is what we were meeting for in the first place.
＊＊＊
The meetings for that shabby excuse continued persistently. Sasha Grayson, who had seemed every bit as desperate as Isaac, did not, contrary to expectation, urge him on or show any sign of impatience.
When apart, he and she exchanged letters as if it were only natural, and when she came to Lance Field, they naturally found even the smallest opening to spend time together, such as drinking tea.
And Isaac realized that Sasha did not like talking about herself. Matilda, of course, and even her husband, Major Wells, would have their eyes light up when they spoke of things related to their own tastes.
But Sasha Grayson was the complete opposite. Whenever she spoke of herself, the light in her eyes visibly died, and she mechanically scattered that distinctive, painted-on false smile.
It seemed like a habit. Like someone who had been educated and raised for a long time to be that way.
“What did you usually do when you lived alone with your grandmother?”
“The same as other children. I studied with the governess Grandmother hired for me, and in the evenings she checked my homework. And on holidays, I sometimes went with Grandmother to see plays, and in summer we went to the villa.”
It was an unremarkable story. The story of a woman who, having lost her parents and been raised under her grandmother, had grown up under her grandmother’s overprotection and devoted care—one with a suitably mournful aspect, yet still entirely plausible. There was nothing suspicious about it at all.
And yet, the more Isaac spoke with her, the more he could not shake a faintly uncomfortable feeling.
“Wasn’t it stifling, living only with your grandmother?”
Sasha did not answer his question for a moment. Wearing a painted-on smile, she shook her head.
“Not once. Grandmother was my world.”