Chapter 76
If there were a being that could bewitch people, this is what it would look like. With every step the angel-faced devil took, his reason crumbled away bit by bit.
“No… I didn’t want it to be like this, not this way…”
I didn’t want to experience the first time like this.
After the words faded powerlessly, the same silence returned.
Hermia knew what would happen next. As she watched Walter slowly raise his head, a confident smile spread across his expectant face.
“There it is.”
She staggered yet steadily closed the distance between them, and just as she took the last step, she leapt into his arms.
He caught his wife, who had jumped into his arms on her own accord, and with a completely changed look in his eyes, he whispered against her deeply indented collarbone.
“…That’s why I told you to open the door. Hm? You brought this on yourself.”
“Hehe. The perverted Duke is here.”
“You’re never leaving now. I won’t let you go anywhere.”
“If you’re like this in front of other women, I’ll kill you. Hic. I’ll spend all your fortune and make you a beggar Duke.”
“Haa… I’ve always wanted to say it. You’re breathtakingly beautiful. I don’t want to show you to anyone.”
“I’ll take this house too. You can go live with the Count.”
“I can’t take it anymore, Hermia. I need to have you right now. You take me too.”
“Fine! Everything’s mine!”
When the two people, who had been chattering away, returned to the bed, their mismatched conversation roughly aligned. With the sensation of the bedding against her back as the last thing, Hermia’s mind faded away.
The bedroom, which had been noisy for quite some time afterward, barely managed to regain peace as dawn broke.
The drunk and the one driven mad by the drunk. The Duke and Duchess’s tumultuous first night was passing in that way.
* * *
When Hermia opened her eyes, the hand of the wall clock was pointing at the number ’11’. Judging by how bright it was outside, it was definitely eleven in the morning…
The place she blankly looked around was the Duchess’s room.
“……?”
The room, with the warm sunlight streaming in, was so bright it was almost blinding, making it feel unreal. Her last memory was definitely of the night.
That’s strange. I was definitely in the common bedroom, so why did I wake up here? When did I come back?
Amidst the confusion of time and space, she groaned at her throbbing head.
“What kind of hangover is this… Ah, why does my throat hurt so much?”
It hurts.
Aside from the headache and the parched voice that had dried up, she felt an ominous pain as she lowered her legs from the bed.
Hermia led her trembling legs into the powder room. The woman standing in front of the vanity mirror was wearing a different kind of nightgown than yesterday.
“Why the clothes, and why are my eyes…”
Are they swollen?
With a continuing festival of ‘whys,’ the ominous premonition quickly grew in volume. That feeling of dread turned into sheer despair when she noticed the stained marks on the chemise she was wearing.
“This is a damn mess…”
After a futile curse, Hermia let out a silent scream and collapsed to the floor.
Just when she was messing with her innocent hair, a scene that flashed through her mind made her just want to die. It was because she had faithfully followed Coco’s advice to clearly convey what she liked and disliked.
Her runaway mouth, once alcohol entered it, started blabbering as if it had been waiting for it. She had blabbered so diligently that Walter, who was also out of his mind, even blocked her mouth, telling her to stop talking.
Damn champagne! Damn mouth! Damned curse!
“…That’s right. The curse.”
A faint ray of hope flickered across Hermia’s face. Walter was definitely under a curse too.
He said he didn’t remember when it activated, right? So, doesn’t that mean he doesn’t know what happened last night?
It was the only and most desperate hope she had right now. She roused her aching body and rang the bell. As if they had been waiting outside the door, two maids came in right away and supported her.
Hermia asked, trying to appear calm.
“The Duke… Where’s Walter?”
“The master is in the opposite bedroom. He told us to bring you to him whenever you feel comfortable after you wake up, ma’am…”
The maid answered, pretending not to see the mark on her neck that was slightly revealed through her hair.
Feeling the fleeting gaze, Hermia raised her hand to cover it, then stopped. It would be better for the rumor to spread that the one-year wife had received vigorous love all night than for the rumor to spread that she had woken up alone the day after her wedding night.
She leaned slightly on the maids who were leading her to the bathroom and slumped her body.
Goodness, I can’t even stand up straight.
The breath she took in surprise clearly revealed such thoughts to anyone.
The maids’ touch was more delicate and careful than last night. After washing up, she put on a dress and wrapped a shawl around her neck to cover it.
An hour after waking up, she was able to regain the appearance of a dignified Duchess.
The unavoidable discomfort in her gait was revealed, but it was hidden by the voluminous skirt, allowing her to outwardly feign elegance. This was also the consideration of the maids who wanted to earn points with their mistress.
Following the guidance, Hermia walked for a while down a corridor with low-saturation pink wallpaper and a crimson carpet before stopping at one place.
After knocking, the door opened and she entered Walter’s private bedroom.
It seemed he had stayed in the annex instead of returning to the main building and spent the morning there. On the round tea table next to the terrace, teacups and several newspapers were neatly arranged.
Hermia was relieved that there were no ashtrays or liquor glasses on the table. Seeing her husband greeting her with the same neat attire and composed face as usual, it seemed her guess was right.
‘He doesn’t remember last night.’
He put down his report and, instead of the maid who followed her in, seated her on a chair with a cushion behind it. His ingrained manners were no different from usual.
Hermia pretended to be demure and only sipped the morning tea that the servants had newly prepared. Her trembling gaze remained fixed on the white porcelain cup.
A deep silence settled in the place where the servants had retreated, but it was not easy to open her mouth.
He may not know, but she remembered it in fragments. Even for someone as brazen as herself, looking straight at Walter’s face, which still held traces of last night, was not an easy task.
What should I say and how should I start…?
“Hermia.”
“Puhup! Oh, what should I do.”
She hurriedly got up and clutched the linen. The tea she had sprayed out in surprise had splashed all the way to the other side.
“…It’s alright.”
The hands that were patting her chest incessantly were barely stopped by Walter’s firm grasp. Meeting his flustered face, he was biting his lip as if trying to suppress a laugh.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just not myself right now…”
“Are you feeling alright?”
“W-Well… my body… feels a bit sore. It feels like muscle pain.”
Eventually, she confessed with a tearful face, and a low sigh was heard.
“I’ll call a doctor right away this afternoon. I’m sorry. I also, yesterday…”
“Don’t say it!”
Hermia shouted with her face already as red as a carrot.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, it was all because I was drunk!”
“Do you perhaps remember…”
“I wish I didn’t, but I remember a little bit! Ah, really!”
She plopped down on the chair and brought the linen in her hand to her face, and a soothing voice returned. Walter calmly comforted her.
“It’s fine. I don’t know anything about it.”
“…You don’t remember anything at all?”
He smoothly shook his head in agreement.
“Nothing at all.”
“Really? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Haa. That’s a relief. Otherwise, I would have died of embarrassment. I said so much nonsense.”
“……”
Walter didn’t answer to that and just listened quietly.
He actually remembered each and every detail of what she said, how she said it, and with what expression.
He granted some requests and ignored others, and when he came to his senses, Hermia had fallen asleep as if she had fainted.
While the maids he called, staggering as he opened the door, tried to hide their horrified faces and cleaned up, he downed an entire bottle of champagne and thought of the gun he had left in the main building.
The impulse to shoot himself once again came when he saw the collapsed back legs of the bed? Or was it because of the traces left by the beast that had lost its reason?
Seeing Hermia wrapped up in a shawl in the middle of summer, he felt a sense of self-disgust, but he didn’t show it and brazenly pretended not to know. Judging by her reaction, he had no choice but to do so.
The point at which he regained his reason was also extremely shameless, so he had to keep what happened on the first night a secret forever, until the day he died.
“You kept saying you were sorry. So, don’t worry about it. It’s fair, I’ll forget too. I’m good at forgetting things.”
“Let’s do that. Fair… enough.”
Walter answered with a slight pause, but Hermia didn’t notice and let out a long sigh of relief.
Knock knock.
During their conversation, a trolley carrying lunch entered. Plates began to be placed one by one where the teacups and newspapers had been cleared away.
The main dish that appeared with the simple sandwiches was Arua Nyon, a hangover soup made with plenty of onions and chicken. Hermia’s mood entered an upward curve with the smell tickling the tip of her nose.
While she was lost in the scene of the chef grating cheese on the plate, Walter handed her a piece of paper. It was a fresh report that had just arrived at the Duke’s residence this morning.
“They caught that doctor, I hear.”
“Doctor?”
Hermia, who turned her gaze, read the contents and pursed her lips into a circle. It said that Henry, who had left with Nora, had arrested Isaac.
“It doesn’t say why he ran away… Oh! They found a lot of poison in his luggage.”
