Chapter 82
The meal was delicious. Perhaps Killian had reserved the entire restaurant, for the only guests were the three of them. Killian was kind to the two women from beginning to end, and unlike Rowena, who mostly gave only short answers, Cecilia cheerfully kept the conversation with him going.
“Then you’re planning to stay here for about half a year?”
“Perhaps.”
Killian smiled gently and looked at Rowena, who was silently moving her cutlery. The moment Rowena, sensing his gaze, lifted her head, their eyes met. At the look in his eyes, as if it all depended on her, Rowena’s face stiffened and she wiped her mouth with her napkin.
“I’ll go to the powder room for a moment.”
Without waiting for a response, she sprang up from her seat and strode away. The moment she entered the powder room, her legs gave out. As she sank down onto a stool, she suddenly saw her own tense face in the mirror.
Even if she acted calm on the outside, every minute and every second spent with him was a continuous strain. Fortunately, the innocent Cecilia did not seem to have noticed, but his covert glances, his tone, every single look of his, all provoked her. It felt all the more blatant because it was the first such stimulus she had encountered since fleeing here.
“……
It’s just a whim anyway.”
Rowena comforted herself, telling herself that the maddened obsession she had felt the moment they were reunited must have been her imagination. Had he not come here not to find her, but for business purposes? They had happened to run into each other, but the man who, in the past, would have dragged her away without considering her thoughts at all had, for the first time, bent his own will and even yielded. It meant there had been a change of heart, so Rowena decided to interpret it however was convenient for her.
“It would be better if he took a liking to Cecilia instead.”
They were words she had said herself, yet somehow they made her feel uneasy. It must be guilt toward Cecilia. Forcing her thoughts away, Rowena rose and opened the door of the powder room. At the same time, she came face-to-face with Killian, who had been waiting, leaning against the wall beside the door. Startled, Rowena blinked.
“Why… are you here?”
“Miss Ludville said she wasn’t feeling well and would go back first.”
Pushing himself off the wall, Killian replied softly.
“It seems both you and I are done with our meals… Are we not?”
“That’s true.”
Rowena nodded despite herself, then cautiously added,
“But Miss Cecilia isn’t very ill, is she?”
Instead of answering, Killian gazed at her intently. Rowena unconsciously stepped back and gripped the doorknob of the powder room behind her. She had harbored the hope that he might let her go, but she did not trust him. If worst came to worst, she intended to slip back inside and lock the door. But contrary to her expectation that he would press her without hesitation, Killian did not move a single step and instead asked back,
“Are you afraid of me?”
Instead of answering, Rowena turned her head and avoided his gaze. Killian looked at her cold profile, doll-like, and reached out his hand. He had meant to touch her blond hair, but when she flinched and tried to avoid him, he withdrew the hand he had extended. Pressing down the bitterness in his heart, he provoked her in a whisper.
“I thought you had changed a great deal, but you are no different from before.”
“……”
“You’re still timid, and still so wary.”
At his tone, as though he were appraising her, Rowena bristled and finally turned her head back toward him.
“Don’t speak as if you know everything about me.”
Spitting the words out as though chewing them, she brushed past him and walked down the long corridor. Killian, watching her receding back, followed after her as well.
The carriage, which she had thought would return directly to the Ludville estate, made a wide detour and headed toward a high hill. It was a ruin where the walls of an old castle, collapsed long ago, still remained. Unlike the stiff Rowena, Killian got out of the carriage first with a composed expression and held out his hand to her.
“Get down.”
At the sight, Rowena furrowed her brow. There was no way she would obediently get out. Because the carriage had turned onto an unfamiliar road instead of a familiar one, her nerves had been on edge.
“What exactly are you plotting? I thought we were going straight back.”
“Rowena.”
“I’m going back immediately. Please turn the carriage around.”
Her wrist was seized. As she tried to shake him off, something soft touched the back of her hand. In Rowena’s eyes, frozen like ice, Killian was reflected, kissing the back of her hand.
“What are you doing!”
No sooner had she recoiled in horror than a large hand wrapped around her waist. Looking up at Rowena, who was awkwardly caught in his arms, Killian whispered,
“Struggle all you want. I won’t let go until you get down.”
“……”
His eyes seemed to say, Let’s see who wins. Their staring contest lasted only a moment; when her gaze reached the coachman, who was trying hard to pretend not to know what was happening, Rowena’s face flushed red.
“You still do whatever you want.”
“If I were truly doing whatever I wanted, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Fine, I understand, so let me go.”
At the voice that came through her clenched teeth, Killian released her as though he had never restrained her at all. Ignoring the hand he held out as if to help her, Rowena got down from the carriage on her own. The moment her feet touched the ground, she could not help but marvel at the sight before her.
The place where they stood was a hill from which the capital, with its various buildings huddled together, could be seen at a glance. In the darkness, gas lamps lit here and there shone like stars in the night sky. The vast capital felt like a small village. It was a place she had not known of, busy as she had been visiting Lauren in the day and hurrying about for Lauren’s medicine in the evening.
“A place like this…”
While she stood entranced, looking down below, Killian took her hand and led Rowena to the castle wall. She sat on a stone step worn down by long years of weathering.
He gazed at Rowena’s profile as she looked at the capital as if bewitched, as though engraving it into his eyes. Three years. Aside from after their reunion, she had been the woman he had kept closest to his side for three years. He had taken her to all sorts of resorts, villas, theaters, and restaurants, but he had never once brought her to a place like this, where lovers were said to go often. He was a duke, and he had neither reason nor time to go to such places.
And so he had been dissatisfied. With her, who from some point on no longer seemed pleased even when he adorned her in jewels and dresses other women could only dream of and took her to places everyone envied. If only he had known she would so easily delight in such a simple, unremarkable place. If only he had known she was a woman who preferred a view to a large diamond. If he had, perhaps the situation now might have been very different.
“Rowena.”
When he called her name tenderly, Rowena turned her head. Even that small movement made him feel as if the whole world were stirring. Killian finally put onto his tongue the words that had lingered only in his mouth all this time.
“I’m sorry. It’s late, but I apologize.”
“……”
It was the first apology she had ever heard. It was also the words she had so desperately wanted to hear. Rowena widened her eyes at the words she had never expected. But everything had changed, and there was nothing that could be undone. Without turning her head away, without even blinking, she asked back,
“For what?”
“For cruelly casting you aside in the past.”
“And?”
“For trying to control you as I pleased even after we met again. For not apologizing.”
He answered calmly, but his expression was dark and his voice low. He was sincere. At something that rose all the way to her throat, Rowena finally averted her gaze.
“I was in so much pain. I suffered for a long time, and at times I wanted to die.”
Ironically, the one who had kept her from doing so was this man’s son. That was what Damian was to her. He made her feel that she was not alone, and whenever she was about to collapse, he raised her up with his innocent eyes. Looking down at Rowena’s trembling hands, Killian slowly added,
“You must have resented me greatly.”
“……”
“And you still do.”
“If you’re truly sorry to me.”
Rowena abruptly turned her head and looked straight into the blue eyes she had been avoiding.
“Then let me go.”
Instead of answering, Killian shook his head. As if she had known he would, Rowena smiled and spoke coldly.
“See? In the end, it’s your selfishness. In the end, you are what matters most to you.”
In the end, they were parallel lines. As though the precarious narrowing of the distance between them, for a moment seeming as if they might touch, had been meaningless, Rowena lowered her eyes in resignation at the repeated conversation. Just then, an abrupt story pierced her ears.
“You asked me once, didn’t you? To tell you about my family.”
It was a request she had begged for so much, only to be ignored. Back when she had wanted to know everything about this man and be the closest to him. Toward Rowena, who pressed her lips tightly together, Killian continued in a low, slow voice.
“I don’t remember my parents’ faces. Only their portraits.”
It was something she had once heard from the butler. But this was the first time he had spoken of his childhood himself. Though she stubbornly kept looking away, Rowena listened to his words.
“When I became old enough to understand, there were only the butler and servants, and by my side were only relatives I didn’t even know, trying somehow to tear away the wealth of a young heir.”
“……”
It was the same as her. The only difference was that beside her, after she became an orphan, there had been her maternal uncle Jeremy.
“The first person to betray me was my nanny. She was the person closest to me, and in a way, in place of my birth mother, who abandoned me and went back to her parents’ home, she was like a mother to me.”
His tone was calm, yet in it she could feel a deep wound, long since scabbed over. As he gazed at Rowena’s profile, as if tracing it anew, Killian slowly continued.
“Then one day, on a night when the wind and rain were raging, my nanny handed me a cup of tea as I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. She said I would soon feel drowsy.”
“……
Don’t tell me.”
Rowena turned her head as though creaking and widened her eyes.