He pleaded. His gaunt face looked quite pitiful. Thinking of her soundly sleeping sons, she reached out her fingers. He closed his eyes as his lips slid across them. She brushed aside his disheveled black hair and stroked his dark, straight eyebrows. She knew.

Her husband always exploited her maternal love. A person who engaged in jealousy that wasn’t jealousy toward his young sons…. If she hadn’t cried and begged, he wouldn’t have even held those little ones once.

Sometimes she wondered. The fifteen-year-old emperor had truly been a good guardian. Naturally, it seemed he would be a good father when children came along.

But the emperor wasn’t a good father. She wondered what had happened during those eight years. Had the battlefield, filled with slaughter and violence, shaped him this way? Even when he held his eldest son, he had barely looked at him with a sullen face.

Jeanne stared at her husband, who was looking at her with the eyes of a young son.

“Your Majesty.”

“……Jeanne.”

It was a call stained with lust. He slyly bit her earlobe and caressed her lower abdomen. A dizzying sensation flowed up from her toes. Just as her knees were about to give way, thick arms lifted her up. Her head touched the pillow. His fingertips brushed her cleavage.

Her chest, white and transparent enough to show veins, was soft. The scent of milk mixed with elegant rose fragrance stimulated his lust. His woman was a mother. Though it was natural, he felt pushed aside.

“Aren’t six enough for you, Your Majesty?”

The woman who had been tracing his eyes asked, withdrawing her hand. There was nothing in her gaze as she looked up at him blankly. He recalled his wife’s childhood. How passionate was the affection that had sprouted in those amethyst-bright red eyes? He looked at his wife, recalling the flickering girl.

“Your Majesty has many concubines.”

“So?”

“I heard the Countess of Ortlen might be pregnant.”

“Who said that?”

He pulled at the corner of his lips. The crude smile was cold and gloomy. She gently bit her lip and looked at her husband. Sharp, straight shadows fell on his dignified face, tinged with orange lamplight. His flawless, beautiful face was cruelly beautiful.

* * *

It was a day with very warm spring sunshine. Having spent a tumultuous noon with her husband, she was now walking in the garden alongside her daughter. The meticulously arranged trees all had round or square tops. She was slowly walking through the garden with geometric patterns, spending time with her young daughter.

“Empress Consort.”

Suddenly, an unwelcome voice was heard. Jeanne, who had been smiling warmly at her daughter, stiffened her shoulders and turned around.

Her mother-in-law’s cousin. The Countess of Meteland. The woman with neatly pinned-up brown hair was looking at her with a smile very similar to the Empress Dowager’s.

The woman, dressed in a neat green dress that was by no means plain, approached with her usual gentle smile. Jeanne, who had been holding her young daughter’s hand as she had just started toddling under a parasol, handed her daughter and the parasol to a maid and folded her hands neatly.

“It’s been a while, Countess of Meteland. Have you been well?”

“Of course. I’ve been spending peaceful days thanks to His Majesty’s grace and favor. You’ve been well too, I presume?”

“Yes. As you can see……”

Jeanne instinctively hid her daughter behind her and smiled faintly. The corners of her mouth trembled slightly. Since the age of seventeen, Jeanne no longer lived in the Empress Dowager’s palace.

With her husband’s return, she no longer needed another guardian. Nevertheless, the fear that remained like a stain from that time constricted her breathing.

“I’m glad. You’ve been quite weak since giving birth to Her Highness the Princess.”

The woman spoke kindly with a concerned expression, but Jeanne didn’t trust it at all. A face covered with a layer of ‘courtesy’ could change at any moment. Despite this, Jeanne wasn’t in a position to assert authority over her.

The Countess of Meteland had been the Empress Dowager’s chief lady-in-waiting since she was a maiden. As such, her noble birth and prestigious position couldn’t be compared with Jeanne’s. At the very least, if she had been the legitimate daughter of her father, Count Spetunia, it might have been different…. But Jeanne was her father’s illegitimate daughter. One who couldn’t dare claim the status of a legitimate daughter.

‘It’s a meaningless supposition.’

Jeanne lowered her gaze. She had previously wondered what it would have been like if she had been her father’s legitimate eldest daughter. The reason she couldn’t become an empress was primarily because she was the count’s illegitimate daughter, not his legitimate one.

Her mother had been demoted to a slave, and her maternal family had collapsed due to involvement with a group of traitors, making her birth an uncomfortable matter for everyone.

In such a situation, the highest position she could be given was ‘Empress Consort’. That was it.

The status of Empress Consort of Triste, one of the numerous territories owned by Emperor Cesare, and ‘Consort’ of the imperial family. That was the limit. Of course, in the empire’s history, Triste was a very important region, and the title of ‘Empress Consort’ was also noble. The Riscaltheon family, the imperial family, was the ruling house of Triste, and the position of ‘Empress Consort’ was almost as noble as that of an empress.

However, it was different from the empress, the emperor’s primary wife. Empress Consort was one of the titles for concubines. Even that title, Jeanne had received only after giving birth to Giuseppe, her fourth son.

So in reality, even as the emperor’s only primary wife, her rank was no different from a concubine.

‘Perhaps it would have been fine if I knew nothing.’

Jeanne thought about what it would have been like if she had been as clean as a blank sheet. If she had been a woman without children, yearning for the emperor’s affection for just one night…. Then she would have thought everything was more than she deserved. But….

‘Stop being greedy, Jeanne. You’re nothing more than a surrogate.’

Jeanne suppressed the inferiority and anger that were creeping up and admonished herself. She ruminated on the word she had heard sickeningly often until the summer of her seventeenth year. ‘Surrogate’. Yes. She was just a surrogate. The emperor agreed with that too, which was why he had left her alone until she bore his children.

Then, with Giuseppe’s birth, her ambiguous status must have started to bother him. Only then did he make her an Empress Consort and incorporate her into the imperial family. Jeanne bit her lip firmly.

‘An emperor married to a slave….’

She recalled the Empress Dowager sneering with an icy face. What Jeanne’s status was. Why her maternal family had collapsed. Unlike the emperor, who didn’t care whether her mother was the count’s concubine or the countess’s maid, the Empress Dowager had always been ashamed and displeased with her status.

‘My chick is my chick, Mother.’

To his mother and her ladies-in-waiting who nitpicked using her status as an excuse, and to his mother who looked at his young wife with frost-covered eyes, he, then a boy, smiled softly and warned.

From the moment Jeanne was designated as his wife, her status didn’t matter to him at all. So no matter who tried to undermine her position with whatever words, it was advice of no value to him.

But even such a Cesare must have thought Jeanne’s status was inadequate. No matter how pretty she was, he couldn’t have appointed her as empress for that reason alone. And Jeanne understood such a husband.

Sometimes anger arose, but this rough emotion was just anger about her birth, not resentment toward him. Jeanne composed her emotions and extracted a fragment from the past.

‘I’m going to appoint you as Empress Consort.’

It was shortly after she had given birth to Giuseppe. Cesare whispered as he kissed her chin. Jeanne looked at him blankly. She couldn’t understand why.

He suddenly told her he would appoint her as Empress Consort. It made no sense. But when had her husband ever made sense to her?

‘You don’t need to do that. I’m content as I am.’

If the concubines had heard this, they would have sneered, thinking she didn’t mean it, but Jeanne was sincere. Perhaps she would have reacted differently in the past. After all, she had always loved her husband.

Since reuniting with her husband at seventeen, she had always been in that state. Although Jeanne’s memories of those few months spent with her husband were hazy, the husband she reunited with was beautiful and dignified like a young god. She couldn’t help but love him. When he returned to the palace, he embraced and kissed her as if he hadn’t forgotten her for a single moment.

So she thought she didn’t mind being called the emperor’s surrogate for a long time. She had many precious things. The villa was enough for her to tend and care for. There was no reason to cry and beg to be appointed as empress.

She could live contentedly. As the mother of her acorn-like small and lovely babies. So it was fine even if she wasn’t a wife.