Chapter 19
Once given the candy, Damian wore a beaming smile the entire way home from shopping. Rowina, taking off the child’s coat, instructed him gently.
“Go wash up first.”
“Okay! What about you, Mama?”
“I’ll come in too.”
Damian nodded and went into the bathroom first. Rowina also took off her coat and hung it up, when something fell from the pocket with a soft thud. With a puzzled look, she picked up the note. She saw hurried, scrawled handwriting.
To Mrs. Rebecca.
This is Philip McWood. I imagine this sudden note must have startled you.
I cannot say much, but someone is following you. It seems they are watching your surroundings.
Please be careful.
A chill ran down her spine.
She was being followed.
Rowina froze as if time had stopped, then let out a shallow breath. It was a situation she had dismissed only a few days ago as absurd.
Mr. Philip was not the sort of person who would tell such a lie, nor did he have any reason to.
Could it be him? Why on earth? After all this time……
Her thoughts tangled in every direction. At the same time, at the word “surroundings,” three faces came to mind.
Harriet. Lawrence. Rosalyn.
When she did not come in after some time, Damian opened the bathroom door.
“Mama?”
“Damian. Put your clothes back on. Right now.”
“Why?”
“It’s urgent. Please.”
When she repeated herself with a grave expression, Damian asked no more and immediately put his clothes back on. Holding the child’s hand tightly, Rowina knocked on the door next door. The neighbor, who happened to be home, opened it.
“Rebecca?”
“Philomena. I’m truly sorry, but I need to ask you a favor.”
“What favor?”
At Rowina’s sudden words, the neighbor’s eyes widened. Rowina looked as though she had seen a ghost.
“Did something happen?”
“Could you watch my son for just a little while? I’ll be right back……”
With desperate eyes, Rowina grabbed the neighbor’s shoulders. At the sight of her urgent face, as if she were being chased, so unlike her usual polite and shy demeanor, the neighbor nodded despite herself.
“Well… that’s not difficult.”
“Mama? Where are you going? Without me?”
“Damian. Stay here for just a little while. Be good and listen. All right?”
“Where are you going?”
Little Damian was just as confused. Tearful, he clutched the hem of Rowina’s skirt.
“I’m going to Aunt Harriet’s.”
“You have to come back soon, okay?”
“Of course. Don’t worry.”
Rowina kissed him lightly on the forehead and urged him again.
“You must stay here quietly. I’ll be back soon. All right?”
“…
All right.”
“Good boy. My son.”
Rowina looked at the son she had borne after a terrible, difficult labor with tender eyes.
Unlike before, when she had nothing to protect, now there were many things she had to protect by any means necessary. Among them, Damian was her treasure and her other self, something she could not trade for anything in the world.
* * *
“Harriet! Harriet!”
Because she could not wait for a hired carriage, Rowina ran like mad all the way to Harriet’s house. Her breath rose to her throat, and her legs trembled. Only after she knocked on the front door several times did Harriet open it.
“Rebecca?”
“Are you all right?”
“My goodness. Don’t tell me you ran all the way here from home? You’re sweating so much… And what do you mean, am I all right? What is this all of a sudden?”
“By any chance… by any chance, did someone.”
With anxious eyes, Rowina looked over Harriet’s shoulder. Everything was as usual.
“Did someone come looking for you or threaten you? Ask you to tell them where I am……”
“What? I don’t know what you mean. Nothing happened.”
“Ah……”
Relieved by the bewildered answer, Rowina sank down on the spot.
“Rebecca!”
Equally flustered by the sudden situation, Harriet grabbed Rowina by the elbow as she collapsed and helped her up.
“What on earth happened? Hm?”
“No, no. It’s nothing. If nothing happened… then it’s fine……”
Muttering as if to herself, Rowina put strength into her legs and stood properly.
“If a man you don’t know asks about me, you have to say you don’t know.”
Her face held a mixture of fear, anger, and an inexplicable sorrow.
“And I’m sorry, but… I don’t think I can accept your offer from before. Something came up, and I think I have to move.”
“What?”
Before Harriet could even demand what on earth was going on, Rowina turned around and quickly ran back home.
“Rebecca!”
Calling after her retreating back, Harriet slowly lowered the hand she had extended. Drawing in a heavy breath, Harriet turned around.
“Truly… nothing bad is going to happen to Rebe… no, to Rowina, is it?”
At her trembling question, someone emerged from the kitchen with slow steps.
“Of course not.”
It was a low, deep voice. With no rise or fall in it, his emotions were impossible to read.
Slowly lifting her gaze from the old carpet to the man’s face, Harriet wiped the sweat seeping into her palms on the hem of her skirt.
He was a man so overbearing that merely facing him in silence seemed to choke the breath from her.
When she glanced briefly to the side, an attendant approached her and held out a check. It was a blank check bearing the seal of the Devonshire family.
“You may write any amount you like. Consider it payment for looking after my woman all this time.”
My woman. At the words he uttered without the slightest hesitation, Harriet pressed her lips together.
“I suppose the price of my silence is included in this as well……?”
Instead of answering, Killian received his hat from the attendant and brushed past Harriet. Just as he was about to leave the house, Harriet urgently called him.
“Your Grace!”
Killian stopped, but instead of turning around, he only turned his head.
“I don’t need this money after all……”
Putting the blank check back into the attendant’s pocket, Harriet pleaded toward his back as if begging.
“I told you because you are someone Rowina needs. So please, do not ever make that child unhappy.”
Damian. And Killian Devonshire.
The shock that had struck her like lightning the moment she faced the man before her still had not faded.
A face exactly like Damian’s.
To think that the biological father of the son Rowina had vaguely claimed was dead was none other than the Duke of Rockford, whom she had only ever encountered in newspapers. She had never dreamed that such an extraordinary man would come to her house in person.
When he said they had been forced to part because of the difference in their status, and that he had come looking for her again, all sorts of thoughts filled her head.
There were several reasons she had told him where Rowina lived. Though she did not know the detailed circumstances, it seemed Rowina owed a great debt. In addition, for the sake of sickly Damian, she needed money. Had the man before her not even provided a house for Rowina through Harriet?
And more than anything……
That man loved Rowina. Therefore, he would not harm her. The love she recognized as if by instinct gave her certainty.
There was no answer. The door closed soundlessly.
As soon as he left Harriet Dickinson’s house, Killian climbed into the carriage waiting outside. Zenok, who had been waiting inside first, quietly opened his mouth.
“What shall we do? Even now, if we go to fetch her……”
“Let’s wait a little longer. There’s also the trap we laid. To the hotel.”
Cutting him off, Killian rubbed his throbbing temple. The carriage rattled as it sped over the rough, unpaved road.
“Haven’t you watched her enough all this time? Miss Philone seems to have noticed as well, so even one day sooner—”
“Be quiet.”
Cutting him off again, Killian rested his elbow on the window frame.
At the coldly settled air, Zenok tactfully closed his mouth. Closing his eyes at the headache that surged in again, Killian gripped his cane tightly with the hand not propping up his chin.
Harriet Dickinson.
He was grateful that she had become a friend to Rowina Philone, who had had nowhere to go, and had given her someone to rely on, but that was as far as it went.
Rowina. Rowina.
He wanted to tear out the tongue that so casually spoke her real name, a name he himself had not known until a few days ago. If she had accepted the blank check as though she had been waiting for it, he would have broken at least one part of her before leaving. She was a woman he disliked to the end.
Crushing the unpleasant feeling that crept up inside him, Killian changed the subject.
“Chloe Aberdeen.”
“After signing the divorce papers, she disappeared. According to the informant we planted, she seems to have gone down to the countryside to recuperate.”
“That would be best for her.”
Five years.
The time Chloe Aberdeen needed to gain a foothold in her father’s bank and become its largest shareholder. At the same time, it had been a period sufficient for Killian Devonshire to grow his power throughout the ports of Ethelwood.
Their interests had aligned, so they had joined hands, and since the period was over, parting was the natural course. But when the final year came, Chloe Aberdeen began to cross that firm line little by little.
—Since we have become husband and wife like this, I think it would not be bad to become a true married couple.
—I love you, Killian. I am your wife!
The beginning of it had been his dismissing her as ridiculous. Chloe Aberdeen, whom he had thought would be just as clean-cut as himself, was a rather persistent woman.
Whenever she found an opening, she came into his bedroom and tried to seduce him.
From his point of view, she was an utterly tiresome wife.
When her plan to gain his attention failed, she deliberately caused scandals for all to see. It fell to him to clean up afterward and silence the newspapers.
—Y-Your Grace! Her Grace the Duchess!
On the final day of their married life, she was found in a cold bathtub with her wrist cut. A doctor and nurse brought in secretly hurriedly examined the duchess’s condition. Fortunately, she had not lost much blood, and her condition was not critical.
On the day his wife opened her eyes, Killian held out two documents.