Chapter 41
“I had no idea you were so interested in my affairs.”
“…….”
“Were you always this nosy five years ago? Or is it a new hobby?”
Instead of answering, Killian shot back coldly and set down his empty glass. He was a man who, even at the moment when she felt she almost understood everything, would capriciously turn away and behave like a riddle. Mortified and rising with anger, Rowena bit her lip and clutched at the hem of her innocent nightgown.
“It seems you’re in a bad mood today. Shall I sleep in the next room?”
There was no answer. Swallowing her anger, Rowena rose from her seat. Just as she was passing by to leave the bedroom, her wrist was caught.
“Rowena.”
“……
Yes.”
Startled for only a moment, Rowena looked down at the hand holding her wrist and stopped.
Something was definitely strange. He was someone who used to hold her skillfully, in a way that made it impossible to escape, yet never left a bruise. But the hand that held her wrist now was so weak that, if she wanted, she could shake it off at once.
Rowena wondered what would happen if she shook off this hand, opened the door, and ran out. Would Killian laugh at her feeble resistance and come to catch her again, or would he let her go just like that?
At the same time, she thought of the young lady of the Marquis of Talden, whose face she had never even seen. There were mountains of things she wanted to ask. There were even more things she did not want to know.
The thoughts filling her head tangled together in a hopeless mess, like a skein of knotted thread. Just as she tried to grasp one strand within it, a low question stopped her.
“For the past five years.”
Rowena doubted her own ears.
“How have you been?”
“Pardon?”
“After I left for a foreign country with my former wife, how did you live?”
Killian repeated it dryly and looked up at her. When she met those blue eyes that seemed to see through everything, her heart dropped. Rowena unconsciously placed a hand over the left side of her chest.
Her life for five years.
It was a question he had not asked even once during the past four months. After their reunion, if she so much as inadvertently brought up the years that had passed, Killian would react more sensitively than ever. He had behaved as though, if he could, he wanted to carve that period out of her mind.
Because she knew Damian—whom he must have thought was another man’s child—was within that time, she, too, had avoided the subject.
She wondered why he was suddenly asking such a question. Her mouth went dry, and sweat gathered in the hand he held. She slowly turned her head toward the man waiting for her answer.
“……
All of a sudden?”
“I simply became curious.”
Withdrawing his hand, Killian laced two fingers together and placed them over his stomach. It was a habit of his when he fell asleep in his study chair or on the couch. Looking at his long, lowered eyelashes, Rowena answered slowly.
“It was ordinary……
enough.”
“Ordinary?”
“As you put it, depending on how one looked at it, it might have seemed shabby.”
Killian’s words, from when he had marched into her home with his shoes on as though he were looking into a trash can, repeated themselves like a spike driven into her. Choked with emotion, Rowena closed her mouth in the middle, then calmly finished her sentence.
“But to me, they were ordinary and peaceful days.”
She tried to sound as composed as possible, but she could not hide the tremor at the end of her words. Thinking of the days when she had been left alone, heavily pregnant, and crying, her tears broke free.
To keep from making a sound, Rowena covered her lips with both hands. Not crying in front of him was the last shred of pride she wanted to preserve. Summoning all her strength, she held her breath and wiped away the hot tears streaming down her cheeks with her hands. During that time, a heavy silence continued.
He never opened his eyes. Either he had fallen asleep without realizing it, or he had already lost interest in the story. Relieved, Rowena strode to the door and turned the knob.
“Then I’ll be going—”
“How was the childbirth?”
As she tried to leave quietly, another question caught her.
“Difficult labor? Easy delivery?”
It felt as though someone had poured cold water over the crown of her head. Beyond surprise, a numbing shock made Rowena turn around. This man was asking about Damian. At an inexplicable sense of foreboding, she froze from the tips of her fingers, while at the same time all the blood in her body surged fiercely.
“Why are you curious about that?”
With trembling hands, Rowena rubbed her face dry and spoke in a rapid, biting voice.
“It was neither difficult nor easy. I was in labor for a few hours, and I gave birth. That’s all.”
It was a lie. On a cold winter night when the north wind rattled the windows of the old villa noisily, she had been in labor for more than ten hours and had only given birth to Damian after crossing the threshold of death. But even if she had to lie, she did not want to give this man even the smallest point of contact or connection with her son.
Though he had inherited Killian Devonshire’s blood, Damian was simply Damian. The son she had given birth to at the risk of her life, and the son she alone had to protect, even at the cost of her life.
The woman who, standing before him, had naturally shrunk back and become obedient disappeared, and in her place stood a mother armed with the desperation to protect her child. Fear tucked its tail and vanished, and only anger and a slight sorrow took hold of Rowena completely.
“In case you’re curious about anything else, I’ll tell you: there was nothing much after that either. I just worked like an ordinary person, ate well enough, and lived well enough. That’s all. I swear.”
She continued speaking so quickly that she was almost out of breath, but after a moment, the fierce hostility burning within her gradually died down at the sight of his back, which showed no reaction. Catching her overwhelming breath, Rowena soon let out a long sigh like someone exhausted, and finished speaking.
“If your curiosity has been satisfied, may I leave now?”
It was not a question asked in expectation of an answer. She turned away again from the man, who was so still he might already be asleep, and was just stepping out of the bedroom.
“I’m thinking of keeping a dog.”
“……
Pardon?”
At words that sounded less like an answer to the wrong question and more like a foreign language, Rowena frowned.
“Fox-hunting season will be here before long. A reasonably obedient hound should do. If I bring home a puppy and raise it, it will obey even when it’s grown.”
“What are you talking about right now……?”
He was saying something to her that he might have said to Mr. Zenok or Sir Benedict. She stood frozen, unable to understand what on earth he wanted, when a bolt from the blue fell.
“Let’s go look at dogs together tomorrow. Bring the child as well.”
“That’s—!”
“Of course, the nanny will hold the brat. At a distance, far enough that he won’t enter my sight.”
“Then why insist on taking Damian with us?”
Rowena asked, inwardly letting out a sigh of relief, and as though he had been waiting for it, an even more puzzling answer returned.
“Because animals are something children recognize better than adults.”
* * *
The department store on the weekend was booming with people. It was thanks to new ports opening one after another, and to the House of Lords lowering tariffs and standards on imported goods.
After lowering its threshold, the department store imported a wider range of foreign goods. Accordingly, the luxury goods market was more prosperous than ever. The upper and middle classes, one and all, devoted themselves to shopping with errand boys in tow to carry their purchases.
The pet shop was on the third floor, which was relatively more spacious than the others. When a nobleman entered with three servants trailing behind him in a row, an emergency light went on in the shop.
“This dog is the most popular breed these days. It has a pedigree, and it is very well trained. As befits a hunting dog, it is fierce enough to charge at an opponent more than ten times its own size. Her Majesty the Queen has taken one of its siblings as well. It is a dog even the chamberlain has acknowledged.”
The owner, who had brought out a puppy he had been keeping under special care, smiled and explained to Killian. He wore the kindest smile he could, full of expectation, but what came back was a question that struck him on the back of the head.
“If it charges at an opponent more than ten times its own size, isn’t that stupidity rather than ferocity?”
“No… well. If you look at it that way…… it could appear that way, but.”
He had prepared himself thoroughly, having heard that the other party was the Duke of Devonshire, but the man was an even more difficult customer than expected.
The previous three puppies had been rejected so mercilessly that tears had sprung to his eyes. On top of that, even the trump card he had saved until the end was refused, leaving him dizzy.
“Then… what exactly are you looking for……?”
As the owner mumbled in despair, his eyes fell on the woman standing beside him. The beauty, dressed as exquisitely as a doll and linking arms with the duke, was the famous Rowena Philone. If one counted the years, she was the mistress who had already occupied the place at the duke’s side for four years.
At the same time, a realization flashed through his mind. Suddenly certain of something, the owner brought over the complete opposite sort of puppy and asked,
“And what about the lady?”
“Yes?”
Startled by the abrupt question, Rowena blinked her large eyes.
“In the lady’s opinion, how is this puppy? Isn’t it terribly cute and lovely?”
The owner smoothly thrust forward the dog in his arms, his eyes shining with desperation. He was a fool to have realized it only now. They had said they were looking for a hunting dog, but this dog’s owner was not the Duke of Devonshire.
In this country, if a high-ranking noble had one or two mistresses, it was not considered a great flaw, but revealing that one had fallen deeply for a woman, be she a mistress or a wife, was regarded as a disgrace.
Therefore, in conclusion, the duke was not looking for a hunting dog. Was this not merely a pretext to hide the fact that he had come to buy a pet dog for his mistress?