Chapter 33
Rose carried a hot teapot and teacup on a tray. Since the tea had just been steeped and the lemon had not yet had time to macerate, she had added honey to mask the sourness, but she was not confident it was truly in a drinkable state.
But for now, it was difficult to find a better excuse than this.
She had to make him drink lemon tea every night in order to hide the lemon scent that might have permeated her body. The tangy fragrance left on her hands from slicing lemons had not disappeared completely even after washing them several times.
She stood in front of the bedroom where he was and was just about to knock firmly on the door.
From inside, the door burst open first.
“Come in.”
It was Ezekiel.
“You knew it was me?”
“I can tell just by hearing your footsteps. Perhaps because your body is light, you walk almost without letting your heels touch the ground, so softly. Sometimes it sounds as if you are dancing.”
It was the first time she had ever heard such a thing. They were her own footsteps, yet she had never known. Rose hurriedly checked her posture.
He must be that sensitive, then, to be able to walk around the mansion as if he were not blind.
Just how many more of her habits had this man secretly grasped without her knowing?
She ended up paying unnecessary attention to her steps. Rose deliberately shifted her weight onto her heels. Like a toddler who had just learned to walk, her footsteps rang out irregularly. Pretending not to see Ezekiel, who let out a soft laugh, she entered the room and set down the teapot. The refreshing scent of lemon spread throughout the bedroom in an instant.
“What is this?”
“It is lemon tea. They say it is good for insomnia. Please drink it consistently every day.”
She had never heard that lemons had a sleep-inducing effect, and it did not seem to make sense by common sense either, but Rose rattled off the lie she had prepared and pressed the warm, freshly brewed lemon tea into Ezekiel’s hand.
“Wouldn’t drinking this clear my mind instead?”
“It might for a moment, but it will soon have a calming effect.”
“I should think it would have more of a stimulating effect than a calming one.”
“Try it, and if it does not work, I will prepare sleep tea for you again. Still, I made this lemon tea myself.”
He did not seem to believe much in the lemon tea’s efficacy, but without a word, he gulped it down in front of Rose. She had deliberately brewed it hot, thinking he would need time to steel himself, yet he drank it at the same speed as when he drank lukewarm sleep tea.
The teacup was empty in an instant. Startled, Rose scolded him.
“Drink it slowly. What if you burn yourself?”
“Surely you did not think I would have a leisurely teatime at this hour? Rose, you have a tendency to overestimate me.”
“…Does it taste alright?”
Having fed him an unexpectedly sour lemon tea that could make one’s eyes pop wide open, she belatedly worried about the taste. With a short laugh, Ezekiel pulled Rose toward him. With practiced familiarity, he groped for her face, cupped it, and sucked on her lips. Having kissed her many times in the bedroom and the bathroom, he could now find the right angle even with his eyes closed.
“How does it taste to you?”
The refreshing lemon scent was dizzying. Rose cautiously swept her tongue over her lips. From the soft inner side of his lips came a faintly tart, fruity taste. Though it was raw fruit closer to lemon juice than lemon tea, perhaps because it had passed through his lips, the sourness was diluted and a sweetness seeped out.
How strange.
It was not as if his lips were made of sugar; was the difference merely in her mood?
Rose pressed her own lips with her fingers.
“It is sweet.”
“Delicious.”
Ezekiel agreed.
Mixing one’s senses with another was a process of sharing the same taste, the same scent, the same touch. The lemon tea he inhaled again through her was fragrant and sweet.
He added in a calm voice.
“Just like you.”
He had waited all day for night to come. A time to be left alone with Rose, without others interfering.
Rose was busy during the day. To be precise, she had become busy. Everyone called for her incessantly, to the point that he wondered how they had been so quiet while he and Rose had been confined to one bedroom together day and night. When should they collect the laundry, please tell him that the meal was ready, was it alright to enter and tidy the bedroom—truly, to his ears, it was maddening to have to confirm such trivial errands one by one.
“Does no one here have any sense of tact?”
Unable to endure it any longer, Ezekiel, displeased by Rose being called away constantly, summoned Mrs. Serva. Mrs. Serva appeared with a bewildered expression but quickly grasped his complaint and began to explain.
“It seems everyone was confused because the existing rules suddenly vanished.”
“What rules?”
“Those who work below tend to move according to tacitly established rules. You, Master, have led a very monotonous daily life until now. However, since you decided to quit the medicine, we have not known how you spend your days.”
All the employees had done nothing but stare at the closed bedroom door, relying on Rose’s judgment and orders to divide the workload, as she had been confined inside with him, devoting herself to nursing him. Moreover, the man and woman isolated together in one room had quickly become attuned to each other. A variable named Rose had entered his regularly flowing daily life. That everyone came to Rose regarding Ezekiel’s every move was, in a way, an extremely natural sequence of events.
Mrs. Serva added.
“Order will be restored within a few days, so please do not worry. And if Rose becomes the mistress of the house, she will have to personally oversee all matters great and small and supervise the employees; now is a natural opportunity for her to learn the work, so please leave her be. Even if the estate’s scale diminishes, a mistress has many matters to attend to in every little thing.”
He understood. If he could not recover his sight, the center of this estate would have to become Rose. Rose’s busyness was, to some extent, a result of Mrs. Serva’s intentions.
But the night was different. After work ended and the day had sunk into evening, this night was a time when he could monopolize Rose entirely.
“Rose.”
Once traces of others had disappeared, the world finally became peaceful. He pressed his forehead against Rose’s and slowly sensed her. After their foreheads, their nasal bridges, and then the tips of their noses rubbed against each other in turn.
“You went through unnecessary trouble. My surefire cure for insomnia is right here.”
The effect of expending his long-accumulated energy was undeniable. It was stamina that, because he could not move about freely as usual, had only built up with no outlet for release. At first, he had acted relatively carefully and cautiously to adjust to Rose’s body, but after repeated lovemaking, once Rose, sufficiently wet, took him in while moaning, from then on he held her as if to sweep her off her feet and ran without limit.
Unable to endure his stamina, at some point Rose dropped her limbs like a doll with its strings cut and fell asleep. She did not even toss and turn.
By the utterly exhausted Rose’s side, Ezekiel also pressed half his face against her forehead and closed his eyes. Truly, it had been a long time since he had fallen asleep without relying on alcohol or medicine and greeted the morning with a clear mind.
“What I need is you, Rose.”
His low voice fell heavily.
The lingering sound brushing past her ear was long. Rose lowered her eyes without realizing it.
Rose. A name so common and utterly simple, yet he pronounced it with such elegance. On the day Akenaus had arbitrarily first called her Rose, she had felt nothing except that it was a hastily made alias, but when Ezekiel called her Rose, she felt a season resembling a flower. It was a voice that captured her with a myriad of emotions.
For a moment, the area near her heart ached.
…What if her real name had been Rose?
Her imagination began to branch out in every direction.
Then she would have been able to let her heart flutter freely at this moment.
What if she had actually possessed red hair and green eyes?
Then she would have been able to let him imagine and caress her face as much as he wanted, without any worry.
If she was not the one who had ruined his eyes, if she had come to him with a pure heart after falling in love at first sight with the officer who had protected the school from the enemy forces……
Then……
Then perhaps she could have dreamed of a slightly different future.
Suddenly, from deep inside her body, an unidentified throbbing rose along the path where the slice of lemon had passed. It had definitely only hurt when being inserted; after it was all the way in, there had been no feeling at all, and yet……
His hand moved with clear purpose. It slipped beneath Rose’s collar and swept long down her back. While one hand caressed her, the other untied the knots and stripped away her clothes. The falling fabric brushed her calves.
It was just two steps. In only two steps, Rose became completely naked, not wearing a single thread, and lay down on her side on the bed.
The man’s hair tickled her cheek. Though he was the type to keenly read his partner’s movements, perhaps because delicate distance adjustment was difficult, he always had a habit of keeping some part of his own body pressed firmly against Rose. Through the point of contact, he constantly gauged how close she was and in what posture she lay.
Even now, he was rubbing against the thick muscle on the inside of her thigh. The most tender skin and the strongest muscle met. She felt it every time, but the sensation was a contrast of extremes. Rose, too, sometimes cautiously traced the twitching fibers of the muscle, feeling a sense of wonder.
Ezekiel let out a low hum in his throat.
“Rose, tell me you need me, too.”