Episode 7
An awkward silence settled over them. Sasha decided to return to their original topic.
“Come to think of it, that prior engagement you had today….”
“Is there nothing else to talk about besides that?”
The man replied sullenly, his face less flushed than before.
“Then shall we talk about my birthday party again?”
“…….”
You hate that even more, though.
Watching Isaac’s face twist so plainly with his true feelings, Sasha somehow couldn’t help but wear a teasing smile.
In truth, Sasha had little interest in how that man’s marriage meeting had gone. But in the current situation, it seemed the only topic that might fill this silence and be at least somewhat less boring, so she waited for the man to speak first.
“…The other party had also been forced to attend. It was never going to go well from the start.”
After a long while, Isaac spoke reluctantly.
“The other party was forced too?”
“The mayor owes my family a debt.”
“Ah. So that’s what you meant. Even at such an obligatory meeting, you must have observed some courtesy with each other. Or perhaps, once you actually met her, she turned out to be exactly to your taste, Captain….”
“No. Absolutely not.”
Sasha had been questioning him in a calm, gentle tone, but at Isaac’s fierce response, she closed her mouth for a moment.
‘Shut your mouth. Don’t be curious.’
The voice of her governess, Mrs. Mom, who had beaten and shouted at her whenever she showed unusual curiosity or tried to ask questions as a child, encroached upon Sasha’s mind.
Even the face of Lady Rosaline, who had stood beside the governess and stared fixedly at young Sasha with displeasure, rose before her.
Sasha pinched her own thigh harder than before.
It was a kind of compulsive habit. The governess had succeeded admirably in taming her according to the lady’s orders.
“…Why did you go, then, Captain, if you were forced?”
Feeling the sharper, stinging ache from earlier turn numb, Sasha asked Isaac with a composed expression.
Isaac’s eyebrows, which had been raised in a sullen line, sank deeply as if in distress.
The alcohol had easily softened him, who from the first day had been so wary of strangers that he had acted defensively.
“…Because that’s the only way I can receive what I’m supposed to receive.”
The man answered in a mutter, then tossed back the liquor that had been half pooled at the bottom of his glass.
“What you’re supposed to receive? Do you mean your inheritance?”
“The title, the inheritance. Everything. …Everything that originally would have gone to my brother.”
Isaac obediently and thoroughly satisfied Sasha’s curiosity.
Though the times had changed, the elderly nobles of Serman still insisted on the same strict customs as before.
Their antiquated notion that only a married child could inherit a title was no exception.
Only by marrying could one inherit a title or property.
Before she knew it, Sasha was looking at Isaac with a gaze of kinship, then said as if to cover it up,
“I’m sorry about your late brother. You must have been deeply grieved.”
Before coming to this Lance Field, Sasha had already investigated not only the man named Isaac Fincher but also his family in detail, and so she naturally offered words of consolation.
Edmund Fincher.
Originally, as the eldest son, he would have inherited everything, but a year ago he had lost his life in a carriage accident.
And so the second son, who had long been regarded as the troublemaker of the family, ended up inheriting that position intact.
Pushing aside all the other petty and insulting rumors attached to the man named Isaac Fincher, Sasha turned that information over in her mind.
“…….”
Sasha belatedly noticed that, instead of offering any particular reply to her consolation, Isaac was looking at her with chilling eyes. When their eyes met, Isaac let out a hollow laugh as if dumbfounded, then abruptly turned his head away.
‘Why is he reacting like that?’
But Sasha’s interest only went that far, and it was not enough to question him further, so she decided to change the subject appropriately.
“So, who is the elder in your family insisting on marriage? The count?”
“…Lady Caroline. My grandmother. She said if I don’t marry within a year, she’ll hand it over to the nephew’s side, so Rachel has already been….”
Isaac was grumbling on with his face flushed from drink when he suddenly looked at Sasha as if he had come to his senses.
The intoxication was fading, albeit slowly.
As he had done during their Monday meeting, Isaac drew his chin down and looked at her warily.
Meanwhile, Sasha gazed at him indifferently.
It was truly strange. Despite being so large, he would sometimes act as wary as a herbivore.
The more she conversed with him, the more different he felt from the rumors that called him “a good-for-nothing who caused a ruckus wherever he went, heedless of fire or water.” If anything, he felt the opposite.
“…You are needlessly curious.”
Isaac muttered darkly.
Sasha shrugged and smiled calmly.
“As you know, Captain, people my age talk about these things all the time. Who’s inheriting how much property, what their marriage partner is like….”
“…….”
“By any chance, did you come to my birthday party because your grandmother forced you to as well?”
She naturally recalled the words Rachel had spat at him in a mocking tone on the day of the party.
Isaac sighed irritably.
Why am I telling this woman these things? It was unpleasant, and yet watching that woman casually chew on grapes while tossing out questions as if they were nothing made him feel strangely at ease.
The lingering alcohol was softening the rigid wall he had built against others, and above all else—
That woman, Sasha Grayson, had no interest in him.
From the very beginning.
“…I wondered what the hell I was doing.”
“…….”
“Sitting in that damn… restaurant full of grotesque decorations… wearing clothes like this that don’t suit me at all…. I wondered why on earth I had to go this far….”
So even after hearing his sudden lament, this woman would soon forget it.
Just as she had not even tried to listen to his circumstances and had coolly said, Will you apologize? all on her own, she would probably only say, That’s quite unfortunate.
Suppressing the urge to tear off the dress shirt he was wearing at any moment, Isaac laid one cheek down on the table.
Above his masculine jawline, his blue eyes blinked, filled with deep disgust.
A lament possible only because they did not know each other at all, and would not know each other in the future either.
“…In any case, today’s meeting was successfully arranged, wasn’t it? That alone must have made your grandmother see you differently, Captain.”
Sasha said to him as if offering comfort.
“Of course, there was that incident at my birthday party before then. But that can be dealt with smoothly, as I suggested before.”
“I’m not apologizing. For that. Never.”
Just as Isaac thought, Sasha was merely offering him an appropriate word of comfort and remained indifferent to him.
At his stubborn attitude to the very end, Sasha gave a small laugh with an expression that said, Of course.
“Why did you come here?”
Isaac, who had been staring at her face as she smiled genuinely for the first time since arriving here, asked as if tossing the question out.
“I told you. To mediate the quarrel between you two….”
“For that, you haven’t been actively trying to persuade me. You just go out and amuse yourself with the major’s wife every day….”
“…….”
Her face seemed to say, How do you know that?
Isaac looked at that face of Sasha’s as if he found it absurd and said,
“Since you came here, everyone talks only about you. What you did where, who you were talking to, how kind you were when they spoke to you, how beautiful and fragrant you are….”
“Oh, hearing it like that makes me a little embarrassed.”
“…Not from me. From them.”
Sasha laughed again.
“Ah, of course. Naturally. You’ve found me displeasing all along, Captain. I know that much too.”
“…That’s… I simply am that way with everyone….”
Isaac began to refute her, then shut his mouth.
Sasha, who had been smiling softly, spoke again.
“In any case, what I want to say to you, Captain, is this.”
Isaac watched as the green eyes of the woman, who still seemed to have no interest in him, fixed on him.
The woman, Sasha Grayson, continued.
“I hope you won’t feel too much self-loathing over that. Of course, I don’t know much about dignity or pride as a soldier, but in the first place, anyone has to endure a little embarrassment at a meeting meant to make a good impression on the other party.”
“…….”
“Why not focus on the thing you’re ‘supposed to receive’ rather than the embarrassment of the moment? You can’t simply stand by and watch the family property that ought to come to you pass over to collateral relatives, can you, Captain?”
“It’s not as if I haven’t tried that sort of self-hypnosis.”
“You should receive it. Whether it’s the title or the property. What you’re supposed to receive, what is ‘rightfully’ yours, Captain.”
“…….”
For some reason, Isaac suddenly thought there seemed to be an unusual weight behind the word “rightfully.”
In that instant, Sasha, who could not possibly know he had thought such a thing, spoke firmly with the most honest expression she had worn since facing him.
“…Make sure you receive it.”