Chapter 29 – Are You Satisfied, Eloise?

Eloise knew that there were no coaches departing at night.

However, since this was the capital of the kingdom, she thought there might be exceptions. In other words, she wanted to believe that.

She couldn’t endure without clinging to even the tiniest hope.

But unfortunately, there were no exceptions.

In the end, Eloise decided to wait for dawn in the corner of the street where the carriage had dropped her off on the day she arrived in the capital.

The memory of her first arrival was still vivid.

The dark, gloomy streets and the crouching beggars had been terrifying.

But Eloise was no longer afraid.

Perhaps it was because she had passed through this place countless times since starting work, or maybe the most frightening thing she could experience had already happened.

What mattered was that at the very bottom of the deep night, Eloise was not much different from them.

With her disheveled hair, messy clothes, and a face stained with tears, she felt even more so.

She was simply exhausted.

As she moved under the bridge to rest her weary body, the smell of dampness filled the air.

The people who had already taken their places there glanced at Eloise warily for a while, but soon turned their eyes away, perhaps sensing no threat from her.

Biting her lip to keep from crying again, Eloise leaned against a damp pillar and slowly sat down.

Both her legs and feet throbbed as if they would burst.

It was only natural after running madly for such a long distance without resting.

She had forgotten she was suffering from a cold due to the sudden shock and had overexerted herself.

Her body trembled as if she would collapse at any moment, and Eloise hugged her knees tightly, letting out a deep sigh.

“Hah.”

Her mind was a mess, swirling with chaotic thoughts.

What had happened to Maybury by now? How devastated must her parents, who were as excited as the bride, be? And her sister…….

“How…… how did it come to this?”

As she muttered like a sigh, her eyelashes grew wet again. Everything felt like a lie.

It was true that she had loved him, but she had never wished for this.

Was it a sin to harbor feelings for someone she had no right to? Or was it something that was bound to happen eventually?

‘If I hadn’t come to the capital, this wouldn’t have happened.’

Her mother used to say that nothing was lighter than a man’s heart.

Despite losing all their wealth to fraud, Eloise knew that her mother’s love for her husband was due to his rare, unwavering affection and dedication.

So, if Ansel Blaine had safely married her sister and they had become a couple, even if only in name, he might have forgotten this and gradually come to love her sister.

No, it would have definitely happened. The eldest daughter of the Baileys was a woman even his proud family acknowledged.

So, even if it hadn’t been a particularly romantic beginning, they could have eventually found their own happiness in warm bonds and peace.

‘I ruined everything. Because of me…’

It felt as if her tear ducts were broken.

Her eyes were already stinging as if they had been bruised, yet there were still tears left to shed. Her knees, where she buried her face, were already soaked.

On a summer night in the capital, the wind was mercilessly cold.

Eloise whimpered miserably, curling up even smaller. The guilt weighed heavily on her entire body.

Even if she met her family right away, she couldn’t fathom how to explain this situation.

How could she comfort them? She was unbearably afraid of seeing her sister’s hurt face and the changed looks from her family.

She wondered if her sincerity would even reach them if she genuinely apologized.

Could I be forgiven?

While she was lost in such thoughts, he naturally came to mind.

The beautiful man who had come like the silent falling rain, and who had been even more terrible.

‘If I married her, I could continue to see you.’

How could he say such a thing? And today, appearing before me in person. Unless he wanted to give me hellish despair, this…….

‘I wanted to stay by your side, even if it meant doing that.’

That couldn’t be love. It might be selfish arrogance. He must have just wanted to feel comfortable.

So he had simply chosen the familiar and easy way.

She had come to the unfamiliar capital to protect their happiness.

To avoid causing them pain due to her own immaturity.

But how could he do this?

Family was everything to Eloise.

The one who had shattered her world in an instant felt more cruel than a devil.

She felt an overwhelming resentment that could not be expressed in words.

Yet, on the other hand, she worried about Ansel.

His words about abandoning everything after saying that family was everything. She wondered if he was still standing at the door, soaked in the rain…

“…Who’s worrying about whom?”

Eloise let out a hollow laugh, like a sigh.

She must have been too tired; her mind was clearly not right. Or perhaps her reason had been paralyzed by an unbearable situation.

The very fact that she had decided to wait for the morning sun in a place like this showed that she was not in her right mind.

‘But I don’t know when the first carriage will come… There’s no other way to get home the fastest.’

Though she still couldn’t think of what to say, she had to see her family’s faces. She needed to confess everything to her sister and beg for forgiveness.

The only fortunate thing was that it was summer now. The season with the shortest nights of the year. The season when the morning sun rises the earliest.

The summer that would be remembered as the night she ran as if her breath would stop and cried in torment.

Eloise hugged her trembling shoulders tightly and closed her eyes.

Repeating the futile thought that all this was just a midsummer night’s nightmare.

* * *

The journey to Longfield on the carriage that appeared at dawn was as uncomfortable as expected.

Due to the particularly rough driving, the carriage rattled incessantly, and a fellow passenger sneezed loudly every few minutes.

But there was no time to complain. Eloise had spent most of the time asleep.

Her extremely exhausted body easily fell into a deep sleep, even in an uncomfortable position.

Unfortunately, every time she dozed off, she inevitably dreamed. Dreams about her family.

As soon as Sarah saw Eloise, her eyes turned red, and she dropped tear-like beads.

She constantly cursed and blamed her. It was the first time Eloise had seen her sister’s face and heard her voice like that.

“Did you have fun? You deceived us completely, and now look where we are—are you satisfied, Eloise?”

“No! I never wanted this…”

“It’s all your fault. You ruined everything. I’ll never get married, and I’ll have to live in shame for the rest of my life. Because of you…”

Every time the carriage stopped and people got on and off, Eloise would wake up, her face soaked with tears.

Each time, her heart raced as if she had run a marathon.

There was no time for her handkerchief to dry from wiping her tears.

As she waited for the carriage to start again, looking out the window with blurred vision, Sarah from her dreams kept coming to mind.

No matter how angry she was, her kind sister had never raised her voice.

It was incredibly difficult to see her sister scolding her fiercely, even in a dream.

But she had to face the reality before her.

This was a completely different situation from when she had secretly read her sister’s letters or accidentally broken something her sister cherished.

Eloise had never wanted to ruin her sister’s marriage; in fact, she had taken a reckless journey to the capital to prevent such a thing from happening.

But… when he proposed to her sister, she couldn’t wholeheartedly bless it. She couldn’t genuinely be happy with her family.

It was always difficult for her to watch him devote himself to her sister, and she often avoided the situation, secretly sobbing at how beautiful they were together.

Even after that man became her sister’s fiancé, she couldn’t help but think of him.

It was all horrifyingly true.

So, even if she was harshly criticized by Sarah, who had been thrown into the misfortune of a broken engagement, Eloise had no words to say.

That’s why the fact that she was getting closer to home felt more frightening than anything else in the world.

‘But I can’t avoid it.’

No one had ever loved her as much as her sister did. She loved her sister so much that she couldn’t trade her for anything in the world. So, no matter how long it took, she had to ask for forgiveness.

Even if it took her whole life…

“Longfield, Longfield!”

The carriage finally arrived in Longfield late the next evening. Eloise stepped down with the help of the conductor.

“I’ll unload your luggage right away.”

“I have no luggage… Thank you.”

Only after the carriage that had dropped Eloise off quickly departed for its next destination did she take in her surroundings.

Even in the bluish darkness, the vibrant greenery felt strange.

The fresh scent of the forest carried by the wind was just unfamiliar.

It hadn’t even been a month since she left, but it felt like she had been away for a long time.

Perhaps it was because summer here had fully ripened in her absence.

Cutting through the humid summer night air, Eloise dashed toward Maybury.

She kept her gaze firmly fixed ahead, determined not to turn toward the Earl’s residence visible in the distance.

Even though she hadn’t brought a bag, her whole body felt as heavy as a rock.

Perhaps it was her heart that was heavy.