Chapter 54
“I think it would be better if you made it a little bolder.”
“Pardon?”
“The lipstick should be red, and I’d like the eyelids emphasized somehow, more extravagantly.”
At the demands that followed, Melissa and Joanne looked at each other with wide eyes. Rowena was not someone who usually voiced much of an opinion about adorning herself. Even at the banquet that had been the climax of the fox-hunting gathering not long ago, she had left most of it in Joanne’s hands.
“Would that be difficult?”
“Ah, no. Of course we can.”
At the cautious question, Melissa shook her head and redid her makeup according to her request. A soft brush swept lightly over Rowena’s face. A little while later, when she opened her eyes at the words that it was finished, exclamations of admiration poured out.
“You were beautiful before, but now this splendor suits you as well.”
“Indeed. Well, since it’s a portrait being made with such care, it would be best for it to show you at your most beautiful.”
“You truly are beautiful! It must feel especially worthwhile to paint you.”
Rowena only smiled briefly at the string of compliments, then took the mirror from Joanne again. With the makeup much heavier than before, there was no trace of the girl who had just overlapped with her reflection.
“This should be fine.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Shall we begin, then?”
After returning the mirror to Joanne, Rowena asked the painter standing some distance away. The painter, his cheeks flushed, nodded with a face full of enthusiasm.
“Ah. Yes! You need only hold the pose as I instruct.”
* * *
The portrait took longer than expected. The sketching alone continued for a month, two hours a day. The background had already been painted, and the pose had been set, but the expression was the problem.
In the portrait, with its bright and warm natural background, elegant dress, and the equally elegant posture of the woman, only the face remained empty.
As Killian stared intently at the painting, Xenoc quietly explained.
“The painter has such strong pride as an artist that he’s stubborn as well, and he’s famous for not completing a work until it satisfies him. His reservations are booked for the next five years, so it was honestly difficult to secure him—we had to pull strings here and there…”
The problem was that this was the portrait that would be formally hung in the family gallery on the day of the engagement ceremony. There was no guarantee that such a fastidious and sensitive painter could finish the portrait in the mere three months remaining.
“He insists that he cannot get a smile he likes, and that if he sees that smile, he will paint it in immediately. We leave for the island tomorrow… Shall I apply pressure?”
“No.”
Killian shook his head and signaled to the servant standing beside him to remove the painting.
“Have him accompany us to the island.”
“Pardon?”
“If he sticks close and follows her around, he should manage to catch at least one satisfactory expression. More importantly, what about Benedict?”
“It seems he did indeed burn to death at the villa abroad. They say this was found.”
What Xenoc took from inside his coat was a pocket watch engraved with the name Benedict Sussex. It was a one-of-a-kind watch he had personally commissioned from a craftsman.
“He never took it off, even if he died… There is also testimony from the servant who straightened his bed that day, so it seems certain. He likely realized, after receiving the order to return, that Your Highness knew everything. All three investigators dispatched concluded it was suicide as well. The report is here.”
It was a miserable end for a man who had once wielded enormous power as the right hand of the Duke of Devonshire. But neither of the two felt any sympathy for Benedict Sussex. Because there had been a possibility, however slight, they had watched the queen a little longer, but she had not been the one either. Killian himself had settled that matter directly, along with obtaining permission to marry Rowena, so it was certain.
No sooner had Xenoc finished speaking than a heavy silence settled over the study. Killian, who had been staring at the pocket watch, threw it along with the report into the blazing fireplace. Like the butler, he had been a subordinate and mentor who had spent many long years with him, but he was someone who had crossed a line that must not be crossed. There was no mercy.
“The baron had followers. Arrest every last one of the remnants in hiding. Don’t let a single one escape.”
“Understood.”
Killian, having erased even the last grain of lingering feeling, rose from the leather chair and turned toward the window. In front of the castle’s entrance hall, workers were busily at work. They were filling five baggage wagons to the brim with foodstuffs and timber that could not be obtained on the island.
Looking down at the sight, he narrowed his eyes with an emotion he could not name.
There was no problem. Clearly, everything was proceeding according to his plan. Rowena, agitated by the sudden engagement announcement, had resisted, but in the end she had accepted it; as for Damian, he intended to announce his existence on the day of the engagement ceremony and register him as his legitimate child before the wedding, raising him as his heir.
The reason he had not announced the engagement and the existence of his child at the same time was out of consideration for her, since she would already be shocked enough.
Everything was moving as he wanted, yet something kept catching in one corner of his chest. An inexplicable unpleasantness pricked at him without warning, like a thorn beneath a fingernail.
After staring out the window for a long while, Killian turned around.
“Where is Rowena?”
“She must have been tired from overseeing the luggage until late last night; I’m told she retired to her bedroom around noon. The young master is currently in his lesson.”
“You ran a thorough background check on that fellow who calls himself a teacher, didn’t you?”
“Of course. Lord Felix vouched for that part himself.”
At the firm answer, Killian forced down the uncomfortable feeling and walked past Xenoc.
“Um… Your Highness.”
As he turned the doorknob, Xenoc stopped him with difficulty.
“Is your left arm all right?”
At his words, Killian looked down at his left arm.
It was the place where aftereffects had remained after he had been bitten by the dog while shielding Damian in the park last time. Thanks to the desperate treatment of his attending physician, the flesh had healed, and from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong, but at times his arm convulsed and dreadful pain came over him. Since the exact cause could not be determined, all he could do was take painkillers whenever the symptoms appeared.
“They say medicine is more advanced in the neighboring country. If you went there and underwent a more precise examination…”
“I don’t have that luxury.”
Cutting off his subordinate’s concerned advice, Killian opened the door the rest of the way.
Leaving the study, he passed the servants and maids who bowed deeply in greeting, went up the stairs, and threw open the bedroom door. At the same time, Melissa and Joanne, who had been carefully drawing the curtains, looked at him like startled rabbits.
“Y-Your Highness!”
“Shh.”
Killian silently gestured for the two, who were about to greet him properly, to leave, then approached the bed.
On the large mattress, with more than enough room for two people to lie down, Rowena was asleep like a princess in a fairy tale. Moving carefully so as not to wake her, Killian pulled a stool to the head of the bed and sat down.
His heated eyes observed every part of the sleeping woman.
The hair that draped over her shoulders as lightly as strands of gold thread, the long, lowered lashes. Her high, straight nose and lips of just the right fullness.
Though she had borne a child and suffered over the past five years, she was a woman on whom no trace of labor could be found. She looked not at all different from when they had first met.
—Mr. Killian, which fruit do you like best? I like raspberries best…
He recalled the woman on the train, embarrassed even to meet his eyes, fidgeting with both hands.
—I’ve never been out of the valley. So this is my first time going to the city, and I’m really looking forward to it, but I’m nervous too. I’m worried as well.
The shy blush that had dyed her smooth, porcelain-like cheeks red, and the pure smile that had almost, but not quite, shown her teeth.
“The portrait… I think that would do.”
He tried to recall when he had last seen that smile, but he could not remember at all. If only he could preserve a moment forever, he wanted to transfer the smile in his memory exactly as it was onto the portrait whose face alone remained empty.
“Mm…”
While he was lost in thought, Rowena frowned and stirred, as if she were having some nightmare. Killian turned her body, which was about to roll to the other side, back toward him, and as if out of habit, reached out and slowly stroked down with one hand from her forehead to her eyes.
Unlike him, whose hands were colder than others’, Rowena had a high body temperature, like a child. As he repeatedly stroked her forehead, eyes, and cheeks, her expression relaxed at the pleasant coolness. Watching her, Killian murmured as if to himself.
“What are you dreaming of?”
“…”
“What appears in it to make you wear such a face?”
There was no answer to his low question. Rowena took his hand in both of hers and brought it toward her warm neck.
“Am I not in that dream?”
There was no way she, deeply asleep, would answer, but he asked again.
“I must be nothing but a nightmare to you.”
Five years ago, the fact that he had cruelly abandoned her was a brutal mistake that could not be covered up by any excuse.
And yet, even after learning the whole truth, he had not given her any real apology. He had willingly chosen to bury it.