Chapter 97
The bathwater had already gone cold. Isaac paid it little mind and first tore open the stifling shirt.
The water was cold enough to make him shudder with just his feet dipped in, but Isaac folded his body into the tub and sat down as if it were nothing. He stared blankly into the air for a moment, then sighed and splashed the cold water over his face.
After finishing his bath, Isaac narrowed his brows at the robe laid nearby as though it had been prepared for him.
Isaac deliberated for several minutes before carefully putting on the robe and leaving the bathroom for the bedroom. Aside from the lamp on the bedside table, there was no light in the room, making it even darker than before.
Isaac cautiously approached the bed. Then he stood awkwardly, looking at her back as she lay with it turned toward him.
“……Miss Grayson.”
He knew now that he truly had to change how he addressed her, even if he had to do it consciously, but it would not come easily to his tongue. “Sasha,” of all things. Just imagining it made him feel ticklish, as if his stomach were twisting.
It felt especially that way. Yes. The problem was simply the name “Sasha” itself. Isaac decided to rationalize it like that.
When there was no answer from her, Isaac climbed onto the right edge of the bed as if relieved. Under his heavy weight, the right side of the bed sank deeply.
“Yes.”
An answer came from her side, though he had thought she was asleep. Isaac stopped midway through lying down comfortably and looked down at her awkwardly.
Between the long strands of hair spilled forward, he could see her small ear peeking out.
“If I woke you…….”
“No. I’m tired, but strangely, I can’t sleep. What is it? You’re not going to say you’ll sleep on the floor again, are you?”
“……No. It’s…….”
Isaac roughly dragged his hand from his ear down to his jaw, took a deep breath, and said,
“I’m sorry for troubling you. Even so…… there is something I want to tell you, Miss Grayson. It’s a slightly different story from earlier. This is, well…….”
He felt stifled, as if something were lodged inside him.
Isaac was not used to conversations like this. It had been an impossibly long time since he had revealed everything in his heart to someone and shown sincerity.
“……Are you very tired?”
How pathetic. Even as he said it, Isaac felt pathetic and rubbed his face dry with a look of dismay.
Though he felt guilty, knowing he should confess to her even now, he was afraid it would be obvious that he was stubbornly insisting on doing it now because he hoped she would be half-asleep and let some of his story pass by unheard.
“No. I’ll tell you another time. I’m sorry.”
Isaac quickly lay down with his back to her. He had just flung himself down like that and was awkwardly raising himself again to turn off the lamp on the bedside table when—
Poke, poke. She prodded him in the back.
“If it’s bothering you that much, I think I’d better hear it now. What is it?”
“It’s about my family. ……About me and Edmund.”
Sasha immediately regretted asking.
“You don’t have to force yourself to tell me. It’s all right.”
“No.”
“You don’t have to show me everything. We’re not a real married couple, after all.”
“No. Miss Grayson. No……!”
Isaac cut her off in haste.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I think it would be better to say it now, even at this point. As you said, we are not an ordinary couple, so I think I ought to say it all the more. That is…… we’re a kind of alliance. I’m informing you of a kind of weakness in advance. That’s strategically correct as well…….”
Isaac had no idea that each and every word of his was not merely scraping at Sasha’s innermost feelings, but clawing them raw.
Sasha was silent for a moment.
“I won’t tell you everything about myself the way you are.”
“That’s fine. And I’m not forcing you to. It’s simply because my own heart is uneasy.”
‘I should’ve just pretended to be asleep.’
It was too late to regret it now. That man had already resolved to tell her, and even if not now, he would try to tell her eventually.
Had she interfered too deeply in his personal affairs after all? Why had she done that? She should have minded her own business, no matter what that man heard behind his back.
‘No, that’s not it. How could I possibly have…… I should’ve just used a slightly different method. Yes. That’s right.’
“It isn’t such a grand story. Just what my relationship with Edmund was like…… That’s all.”
Isaac spoke cautiously, knowing nothing of what Sasha was thinking.
Sasha was silent for a moment, then turned her body, which had been lying down, toward him.
“While we’re here, whether you like it or not, Edmund’s story will keep coming up. In one way or another, from one person or another.”
“I understand. Please tell me.”
Perhaps worried Sasha would feel burdened, and perhaps because he himself did not think his story was all that grand, Isaac repeated, “It’s just a trivial family matter,” before he finally began.
“Lady Elizabeth. Father’s first wife passed away not long after giving birth to Edmund. You know that much, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“When Edmund was about four, Father remarried my mother, Diane. And about a year later, I was born.”
How was he supposed to explain the resentment young Edmund had directed at him from the moment he was born?
“Edmund did not like me very much from the beginning. He told me so himself. That he hated that I had been born. So…… in a way, isn’t it natural? For an eldest child to be jealous of a younger sibling who has just been born…….”
Strictly speaking, it was a more fundamental and primal kind of aversion than jealousy.
For the time being, Isaac named it jealousy.
＊＊＊
Edmund Fincher, born between the count and Elizabeth, had been born physically frail, taking after his mother.
In any case, people said the count’s eldest son was a gentle and affectionate child. They said that perhaps because he had endured an easy life in no sense of the word—falling ill with epidemics every season, and at times nearly dying from them—he possessed the humility to be grateful for small things.
It was the same when he suddenly gained a stepmother through his father’s remarriage.
Diane was a warmhearted person, and so Edmund had no reason not to love her as well.
Diane had neither the intention nor the need to shake the life of this pitiful child, and so Edmund’s peaceful paradise continued.
Everyone pitied Edmund, loved him, and cared for him. Each in their own way, they poured boundless attention and affection upon him.
That was, until Diane gave birth to Isaac.
It was only natural that people’s attention should gather around the tiny baby who could not even crawl, let alone walk.
However, as always, whenever Edmund coughed or collapsed with a fever, people would leave the baby they had been watching and run to him. During that time, Edmund suppressed “that thing” which had begun to gnaw at his heart, slowly, like an inflammation.
Influenced by Diane’s side of the family, Isaac was, unlike Edmund, born exceptionally sturdy and robust. By the time he was five, he had already caught up to Edmund in height, and he was also quite good at the rough physical activities Edmund could not even attempt.
Isaac was moderately restless and grew up as an ordinary boy his age, one who caused trouble from time to time.
Because he took after Diane and did not have a crooked temperament, people saw Isaac as nothing more than a boy exactly his age. Even when he made trouble, they would sigh for a moment, but soon forgave him and fondly doted on little Isaac as he mumbled his apologies.
“I’m sorry. Brother…….”
When young Isaac, unaware of his own size, pinned Edmund down while playing around, he burst into tears as soon as the nanny scolded him and apologized to Edmund.
Though unsteady, Edmund quickly sat up and accepted his younger brother’s apology, saying it was all right.
Then he blankly looked down at his own wrist, red and swollen as if it would bruise at any moment from Isaac’s grip.
Even so, up until then, it had still been all right. Edmund was still a good older brother to Isaac, and while suppressing “that thing” that was slowly eating away at him from within, he wanted himself to be that way.
Isaac could not guess exactly when Edmund had decided to hate him. In truth, Edmund himself probably could not have pinpointed it either.
With each passing year, Isaac grew more imposing, while Edmund, after barely overcoming a severe fever that truly almost killed him, entered adolescence.
People did not say outright that Edmund, who took after Elizabeth and had a weak body, might die before reaching adulthood.
They merely pointed to the second son, Isaac, who looked exceptionally sturdy, and obliquely suggested to the count that perhaps even now it would be better to focus things such as education on the second son.
Well. Perhaps it began then. The moment Edmund’s resentment toward Isaac began to surface.