Chapter 16
“Ah!”
“Aaah!”
Thud.
Kyrie, who had nearly crashed to the ground, fell straight into the Grand Duke’s arms.
Even though he caught her, the height from which she’d fallen made a rather heavy sound upon impact. It was only natural that Kyrie, having hit him headfirst, lost consciousness.
The onlookers gasped in shock. Some screamed. Those who had missed the incident and arrived late voiced their confusion from the back.
“What happened?”
“I heard a mad dog…”
“Lady Elise and His Highness the Crown Prince were together, and then…”
The commotion grew noisier by the second, with the crowd frantically piling on their own words.
“They say the mad dog charged at them, hurling curses!”
“And not just that, apparently…”
“She pushed Lady Elise down the stairs too…”
It was clear that the assembly was now twisting and inflating the story however they pleased.
‘What absolute nonsense.’
Dominique dismissed the chattering voices lightly. He hadn’t known Kyrie Ehrenberg for long, but he could more or less picture the situation as it had unfolded. The woman beside Lexion was the same one he had seen just the day before.
The one who, with a strong scent of citrus, had clung to Lexion, flirting shamelessly.
A woman who could, by any reasonable measure, be called his mistress.
‘That fool probably got caught being with her. That much would be true.’
But Kyrie Ehrenberg pushing that woman down the stairs?
‘Unlikely.’
Knowing that mad dog’s temper, it was far more believable that she would have tried to push Lexion instead.
Yet Dominique made no move to correct the rumors, choosing instead to look down at Kyrie lying unconscious in his arms.
Her face was drained of color, her slight frame so delicate he wondered if she might have broken against him.
“…Dominique.”
From the top of the stairs, Lexion flinched and looked down at him. In that brief moment, Dominique read a tangled mess of emotions in Lexion’s eyes.
‘How amusing.’
To shove her away, only to watch the woman fall into another man’s arms, he must have found the sight unbearably absurd.
Lexion looked as if he were about to gnash his lips bloody, his gaze fixed on Dominique.
And with that expression, Dominique spoke on an impulse.
“As a gentleman, I’ll take care of this young lady. Lexion.”
“Dominique!”
“Shouldn’t you be tending to another young lady yourself?”
As if on cue, the red-haired woman clinging to Lexion glanced down at Dominique and Kyrie. The eyes that had been vacant moments before were now dark and sunken.
But when she turned her head back to Lexion, her gaze masked itself in fear once again.
“Your Highness, I’m frightened. What if something terrible happens to my sister…”
“There now, don’t be afraid, Elise.”
While the woman burrowed closer to Lexion, Dominique carefully lifted Kyrie into his arms and made his way through the parted crowd.
A few in the gathering seemed as though they wanted to speak up, but recalling that the man before them was none other than Grand Duke Haswell, they promptly shut their mouths.
Dominique found their discretion both amusing and to his liking.
‘Furniture ought to behave as furniture should.’
Those who merely stood silently in place, occupying the space without meddling, that was the proper conduct of such people.
Those who prattled mindlessly and sowed discord wherever they went had no worth as furniture.
Without so much as a flicker of a smile, Dominique carried Kyrie back to the carriage they’d arrived in. His attention was now entirely upon the small woman sleeping in his arms.
Though she had bristled with sharp glares and biting words while awake, now in sleep, her pale, still face seemed quietly subdued.
‘And here I thought I’d prefer her like this, calm and compliant.’
But as it turned out, he didn’t.
He realized he liked her better when she glared up at him and snapped back with fierce defiance.
“Lady Kyrie?”
No reply.
Her condition didn’t look good. Dominique made a swift decision, it would be best to move her to his estate for treatment. The thought of sending her back to the duke’s manor didn’t even cross his mind.
Fortunately, Kyrie wasn’t seriously injured. Aside from a light bruise from colliding with his solid chest, she was otherwise unharmed.
The estate physician, who had tended to Dominique alone for years, declared that with some rest, she would recover soon enough, and then excused himself.
Laid upon the bed, silver hair splayed across the sheets, the young woman tossed and turned, her face twisting in distress as if trapped in a nightmare.
Dominique didn’t leave the room. He sat at her bedside, observing her while leafing through papers.
During military campaigns, it wasn’t unusual for him to go without sleep. Yielding a bed was no hardship.
Whenever the sheets rustled, he would glance toward her, watching as the light seeping through the windowpane traced the lines of her face, slightly parted lips, a furrowed brow.
The heavy makeup wiped clean with a damp cloth, revealing a pale, bare face.
The mad dog, laid bare and unguarded, looked less like society’s notorious outlaw and more like any other young noblewoman her age.
A girl newly come of age, still too unknowing of what the adults around her did behind closed doors.
And recalling that it was this face that had once crept into Lexion’s bedchamber made Dominique let out a hollow laugh.
Time slipped by, sunlight fading into moonlight through the window.
“Ugh.”
A ragged gasp escaped her lips, turning them a sickly shade of blue.
Dominique clicked his tongue, her labored, rasping breaths made it clear she was struggling to breathe.
“So hot…”
The color drained further from Kyrie’s face. Her hand weakly fumbled around her waistline, an attempt, it seemed, to loosen her garments.
Her breathing grew increasingly shallow and frantic.
“Ugh, ugh…”
She began to gag, her skin paling to a waxy white, as if death itself might claim her at any moment.
Though the physician had already visited and pronounced her stable, she looked no better.
At that point, Dominique made a decision. There was no question of leaving a corpse in his estate.
“Pardon me.”
His hand slid up to the bodice of Kyrie’s dress.
In one motion, he pulled her garment down. The white skin he’d glimpsed in Lexion’s chambers once again filled Dominique’s vision.
His eyes leisurely roamed over her tightly cinched corset and the soft flesh of her ribcage that rose and fell with every desperate breath.
Even paler than before. Perhaps it was the illness, but her body looked almost translucent now.
“Ha… huh…”
Kyrie gasped again, her trembling hand reaching for her corset. The ragged sound of her breathing grated on his ears.
Dominique covered her hand with his own, resting it over the corset. He had no experience unfastening a woman’s corset, no idea where or how to undo the thing.
‘No choice, then.’
Rip.
Without hesitation, Dominique tore through the corset.
“Haah…”
Freed from the constricting garment, her chest and waist loosened, and at last she let out a long, easy breath.
Her breathing settled, and a faint flush returned to her lips. Dominique pulled at the final lace of the corset when it happened.
“More…”
A startlingly bold whisper slipped from Kyrie Ehrenberg’s lips, as though begging him to remove more, to touch her further.
“…Hold me.”
“Ha.”
And the next words were even more absurd.
Dominique quietly raised his gaze to the face of the woman whose corset he had just stripped away, watching her carefully as if to confirm whether she was truly asleep.
Her breathing was even.
The question left him on a whim.
“Were you like this elsewhere too, My lady?”
“…”
“With Lexion as well?”
A sudden, unwelcome curiosity.
If he hadn’t been in that bedchamber in Lexion’s place that night, would this woman have behaved the same before him?
The Lexion Dominique knew would not have turned down such an invitation, whether he desired Kyrie Ehrenberg or not.
‘He’s always been weak for a woman’s body.’
For a moment, Dominique pictured Lexion embracing Kyrie as though nothing had happened, and the thought left a sour taste in his mouth.
It was an image too unpleasant to ignore.
While he mulled over it, Kyrie’s lips, now regaining their color, murmured something faintly as her pale chest rose and fell.
A bead of cold sweat pooled at her collarbone and slowly slid down the valley between her breasts as the loosened corset gave way.
Without thinking, Dominique reached out and pressed a finger to her lips.
Soft, as he expected.
“Mmm…”
His thick fingertip slipped slightly between them, brushing neat teeth and a small, warm tongue.
“…”
Once again, curiosity surfaced, to see how Kyrie would react if her body were taken into his hands.
How that small brow might furrow, what kind of expression she would wear.
And how she would respond when she woke to find herself being touched.
