Chapter 37
“……”
“You must resent her. Don’t you hate her? Don’t you want to curse her?”
The voice whispering at her ear was the devil’s. Killian Devonshire—the man who had gone so far as to make her his mistress again—was a devil beckoning from the hottest depths of hell. Rowena knew that, and yet she could not shake her head. It felt as though the damp, sinister black mass that had been holding its breath deep in her chest was slowly creeping upward.
“All the torture implements have been prepared. You need only say the word. Someone else will carry it out.”
The temptation was persistent and unrestrained. The hand on her shoulder slowly slid down and covered hers.
“Or a clean death by gunshot would be fine, too.”
Her heart beat faster. It was still as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. The frustration and despair that had shaken her entire body. The days she had wandered from one cheap inn to another with nowhere to rely on, and then, when even that money ran out, had roamed the streets precariously on a night when snow poured down.
That was the night she had met this man. And then……
“Pay back the debt, Rowena.”
The moment she thought of Damian, who looked exactly like him, Rowena’s consciousness, which had been sinking into the deep sea, rose to the surface all at once.
“I refuse.”
“What?”
If she did as this man told her now, she would commit an act she could never take back. A powerful premonition wrapped around her—that in some sense, she would cross a road from which she could never return.
“It’s true that I hated her and cursed her. I resented her, again and again, thinking that if I ever met her, I would make sure to strike her. Because she used me and betrayed me.”
As if confessing, Rowena laid bare her heart and shook off his hand.
“But I won’t take revenge this way. This is a crime.”
“And what that woman did to you wasn’t a crime?”
A shallow anger was mixed into the low question. Rowena, not noticing it, squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again.
“If I do the same thing, then I’ll be no different from her. Revenge will only give birth to more revenge.”
It was a roundabout statement, but its meaning was clear. I am different from you. I won’t live like you, Killian Devonshire. No answer came to the words she had uttered so fearlessly. At the chill that swept over her from behind, cold enough to make the hairs on the backs of her hands stand on end, Rowena’s lips trembled. But instead of turning around, she approached the bound Carol. Surrounded by men with fearsome faces, Carol was on the verge of a fit.
“No! I don’t want to be tortured! Please, spare me!”
Standing before the screaming Carol, Rowena went around behind the chair and untied the cord binding her waist. She also untied the cords around both feet, then returned to the front and reached out to loosen the cord around her wrists.
Just as she was about to free the last hand, a short sigh escaped her, and a sharp tingling sensation spread through the nape of her neck. Before she could even understand what had happened, her eyelids fell shut.
“Rowena!”
Killian, who had been watching with his arms crossed as she freed Carol, gathered the unconscious Rowena into his arms. Carol, whose last hope had collapsed before her eyes, pleaded with bloodshot eyes.
“Please spare me! Please! I’ll do anything!”
Through her tear-blurred vision, she met the eyes quietly looking down at her. Those cold pupils, enough to freeze her entire body, emitted an eerily strange light. It felt as though she had come face-to-face with a wild animal that had no emotions at all. As the fine hairs all over her body stood on end and her lips trembled, an indifferent voice replied.
“I won’t kill you. Because she doesn’t want it.”
“Ah. God!”
She had been kidnapped by men who had burst in without explanation on the dawn wind, and she had thought she would die like this. As Carol let out a sigh of relief, Killian turned around with Rowena in his arms.
A man stepped in front of Carol as she frantically tried to untie the cord around her left hand.
“What is this……?”
The moment Carol saw the scissors in his hand, her heart dropped. She looked at Killian’s back as he slowly opened the door.
“Ah.”
“……”
Killian paused for a moment, as if he had forgotten something, then spoke as though offering advice.
“Watch your tongue.”
It was not a figure of speech, but a literal warning. Carol’s face turned ashen, like a corpse. Soon, a desperate scream rang through the old building.
* * *
When they returned to the townhouse, Bianca greeted her master. Seeing Rowena unconscious in the duke’s arms, Bianca’s eyes widened in shock.
“What happened, Your Grace?”
“Nothing of importance.”
His voice was the same as usual, but there was something cold about it. Killian passed Bianca, who had flinched, and went straight up the stairs. Entering the bedroom, he laid Rowena down on the wide bed.
Melissa, who had followed while holding even her breath, cautiously opened her mouth.
“Your Grace…… I will attend to Lady Rowena.”
“I will.”
“……”
“I believe I told you not to open your mouth carelessly in my presence.”
His tone was calm, yet cold as a blade of frost. Melissa, gone pale, prostrated herself behind him.
“I apologize, Your Grace. I forgot my place and……”
“Leave.”
There were no second chances. Melissa rose unsteadily and left the bedroom.
Sitting in the chair by the head of the bed, Killian searched his coat, took out a cigarette, and placed it between his lips. In the dark bedroom with its curtains drawn, a threadlike wisp of smoke rose white.
The beginning of today’s events had been Felix’s words.
—You were right. There really was a woman working as a courtesan under the name Rowena Philone. Since it was a backwater country town, she was quite popular as “the duke’s former mistress.”
The moment he heard those words, it felt as though his blood flowed backward.
—Miss…… no, Lady Rowena was framed…… What happened five years ago wasn’t true…… Sob……
The moment the assumption he had entertained because of the maid Melissa’s confession proved correct, the truth that flooded in with it began to slowly crush him. Suppressing the impulse to tear anything and everything to shreds was the best he could do.
Until he knew who stood at the core of that truth. Killing Benedict would be easy, but if he did, it would only be like cutting off a lizard’s tail. There was something more. A massive body. Coming up to the capital for the social season he did not even like was part of that.
“Rowena.”
Killian reached out and stroked Rowena’s blond hair. The sensation winding around his fingers was as soft as it had been five years ago. He lifted her hair to his lips and kissed it as if breathing in her scent.
When he had ordered Carol Vertimer kidnapped and taken to her old home, he had hoped Rowena would at least tell him to cut off a hand or a leg. He had waited for her to become just like him.
But his expectations had been wrong. Rowena Philone—his woman—was the kind of woman who gave up revenge even when a traitor was brought before her eyes. A kind, tenderhearted woman who chose forgiveness to the very end, even when her hands trembled with rage and her breath came short.
As he watched Rowena untie the ropes binding Carol Vertimer, a bitter sense of defeat rose within him at the realization that he could not drag her down into the same shadows—and at the same time, a single hope lifted its head.
“……
You forgave that woman, too.”
His gaze moved to the necklace hanging beneath her long, slender neck. It was the necklace he had fastened around her neck himself on the day they came up to the capital not long ago. Unlike the countless jewels he had placed in her hands until now, it held one clear meaning.
“You gave birth to my child and raised him.”
The night he heard the maid’s confession, he had been half in doubt at the absurd story. But then anger had surged in, and because of that slight possibility, he had secretly gone to the child’s room late at night when no one was watching.
And the moment he saw the sleeping child, he clutched his chest at the quickening of his breath. Gasping like a drowning man, he traced the small face sleeping peacefully with his eyes.
The child resembled him so much there was no room for denial. His child—one he had never once thought of or expected in his entire life.
Shock came over him, and with it, ecstasy. For Rowena, there had been only one man in her life: him.
—He is a very lively and clever young master. Though he does seem a little timid.
After that, he had listened to the nanny’s reports, which came up in secret every day. For the first time in his life, a warm energy had begun to fill the inside of his chest, little by little.
The reason he had set the child’s arrival in the capital for a fortnight later was a small act of spite born from the fact that he was no longer her priority.
“When everything becomes clear.”
“……”
“I will compensate you for it all. I will give you your rightful place. Both you and our child.”
His cold hand brushed over Rowena’s smooth forehead as she lay there, then tucked her disheveled side hair behind her ear.
“Wait until then. Obediently, as you are now.”
Whatever hidden intentions she might be concealing, he was satisfied with Rowena’s obedient attitude. Though now and then, even while smiling like a doll, she would show her claws like a she-cat, it was merely an endearing display.
As he gazed down at the sleeping woman for a long while, someone knocked outside the door.
“Your Grace.”
Bianca, who had called him cautiously, immediately continued.
“They say the young master has just arrived.”