She tried to rise from the bed and escape quickly.

However, Rupert immediately jumped on top of her, attacking even more violently than before.

“Rupert! Stop it, please!”

She struggled desperately to push him away, but the more she resisted, the more he tore at her clothes like a beast while shouting.

“You secretly laughed at me, didn’t you? For being incompetent and failing as a man, yet still being greedy!”

“I never did!”

“Stop pretending to be nice and noble! I know that beneath your facade, you’re looking down on me!”

“Rupert……!”

As another button was mercilessly torn from her dress, Rupert looked down at Yvonne with a small sneer.

“How did I know? Those eyes of yours. Every time I see those eyes silently judging me as pathetic, I feel like I’m going insane!”

Finally, Yvonne’s bodice was completely undone. Her hair lay disheveled across the bed, and her cheeks were soaked with tears.

Rupert quietly stared down at her for a while.

Soon, an eerily low voice escaped his lips.

“This is how you look best.”

One corner of Rupert’s mouth curved upward.

“Begging beneath your husband, looking up at him.”

“……!”

Once again shocked, Yvonne couldn’t even utter a single word.

After being frozen in shock momentarily, she finally regained her senses and reached out to close her bodice.

But Rupert bound her wrists with strong hands and snickered.

“I should apologize for not showing you sooner the pleasure a woman feels when looking up at her husband.”

Rupert restrained both her wrists with one hand while hastily unbuckling his pants with the other.

He felt confident after his recent encounter with Marianne.

Of course, he always failed to complete the act with Marianne too, but with her skilled techniques, he could at least briefly rise to the occasion.

So if he closed his eyes and recalled her touch, he would surely respond.

He squeezed his eyes shut and moved his hand frantically, trying to arouse himself while burying his face in Yvonne’s struggling neck, breathing heavily and recalling Marianne’s stimulation.

But all he felt was a soft, flaccid sensation.

Rupert slightly lowered his head to check himself.

As expected, he saw himself still hanging limply.

“……D*mn it.”

Cursing, Rupert quickly got off the bed and pulled up his pants.

His face was already flushed red.

Freed from his restraint, Yvonne hurriedly sat up and covered her exposed body with the blanket.

Her jaw trembled, overwhelmed by shock.

Rupert, seeing this, merely gritted his teeth in frustration while adjusting his clothes.

The couple remained silent, each consumed by their own shock.

After a long while, the silence was broken by Rupert’s deflated voice.

“This is all…… your fault for lacking charm.”

Rupert muttered, glaring at Yvonne resentfully.

She stared back at her husband with empty eyes.

She seemed to lack even the strength to sigh.

Rupert, growing more embarrassed and heated, mumbled curses to himself before gradually raising his voice.

“You probably think I’m a pathetic man. But you know what? That woman I met earlier, Marianne.”

“……”

“She might be less attractive than you, but she’s a true woman.”

“……”

“Marianne always makes me feel like a virile man.”

One corner of Rupert’s lips curved into a crooked smile.

“It means I have no problems—I’m perfectly normal.”

Rupert was trying to tear down his wife with the most vicious words he could muster to cover up his impotence and inadequacy.

But he couldn’t read any reaction from Yvonne.

Rupert’s face flushed red again.

“The problem is! It’s you, Miss High-and-Mighty, who tramples all over a man’s pride, not me. Understand?”

“……”

“D*mn it…… Yvonne, are you even listening to me!”

Yvonne knew this torturous time would continue unless she affirmed her husband’s words.

She finally pressed her lips firmly together and nodded slowly.

After glaring at her with displeasure for a moment, Rupert grabbed his shirt and immediately left the bedroom.

At last, true silence settled in the room where Yvonne remained alone.

She actually welcomed that solitude.

As she stared blankly at the bedroom door through which Rupert had departed, a tear fell down her cheek.

Yvonne weakly collapsed, burying her face in the bed. Then she began to sob silently.

Marriage—this prison. She didn’t know when she would ever escape from it.

Perhaps this unhappiness would gnaw at her life forever.

But even as she writhed in pain, Yvonne thought she must willingly endure this misfortune.

This unhappiness was the price for her sin.

And it was the only way she could atone for driving her beloved to death.

⁕⁕⁕

Early the next morning.

Yvonne hadn’t been able to sleep until dawn light streamed through the bedroom window.

She finally went out early, using the excuse of backed-up hotel work.

The carriage that left Upper Side Street entered the road alongside the Saint River.

As the carriage approached the Rosier Hotel, Yvonne tapped on the glass window connecting to the driver’s seat.

“Before heading to the hotel, there’s somewhere I need to stop briefly.”

Yvonne’s destination wasn’t far from the Rosier Hotel.

The carriage slowly changed direction, entering a tree-lined street near the hotel’s back entrance.

The rain from the previous night had cleared the air, and the plane trees along the street displayed an even more vibrant green.

After traveling down that road for quite some time, the carriage finally stopped in front of an iron gate of an abandoned hunting ground.

“Wait here for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

Yvonne said as she took her umbrella and stepped out of the carriage.

She left the bowing coachman behind and entered through the iron gate with familiar ease.

This was where the heads of her family, the Rosiers, had enjoyed hunting for generations.

But now it had long been abandoned without even a caretaker.

The scene of the deserted hunting ground was desolate and bleak.

With each step, withered grass beneath her feet was crushed in the rainwater, and the surrounding greenery that had once been brilliant had either grown tangled or lost its original color, turning into fallen leaves rolling on the ground.

The place, having lost its former vitality, resembled Yvonne’s desolate state of mind.

She deliberately suppressed her rising sentimentality.

Then she walked toward the cabin located deep within the abandoned hunting ground.

Upon reaching the cabin, Yvonne opened the moss-covered wooden door and entered, taking in the small interior at a glance.

It was a space that had always been cozy and warm.

But now there wasn’t the slightest trace of human warmth.

An old bed with cobwebs tangled at the headboard, faded curtains, a wooden table covered in dust, and a tobacco leaf box and an old book placed on top.

Yvonne carefully took in each of these unimpressive items as if they were treasures. And she recalled the man who had stayed there.

Theodore Denver.

The name of the last caretaker of this hunting ground and her first love.

Sitting on the old bed filled with memories of him, she quietly looked down at the dust-covered pillow.

Tears rolled down her cheeks.

The first and last man she had ever loved in her life. Someone so beautiful she couldn’t help but love. And……

The man she had cruelly abandoned.

She couldn’t forget Theodore’s final appearance as he watched her from afar on her wedding day with Rupert.

Although seven years had passed since then, those eyes that resented her became sharper daggers piercing her heart with each passing day.

After the wedding, she heard from her father that Theodore had resigned from his position as hunting ground caretaker and volunteered for the battlefield.

Yvonne prayed only for his safety.

Since they could never be together again, prayer was the only thing she could do for him.

But God was not on her side.

Among the soldiers who returned to the Empire after the war ended, Theodore was nowhere to be seen.

She had forgotten she was staying far from the welcoming crowd to avoid being noticed, and rushed into the center, searching frantically, but to no avail.

Theodore never returned from the battlefield.

That’s how she lost the only love of her life, and she suffered from that loss and guilt for a long time.

‘If Theodore hadn’t been abandoned by me… No, if he had never met me in the first place…… would he still be alive?’

Such hypotheticals always painfully constricted Yvonne’s heart.

Especially when marriage life became this unbearable, her longing for him intensified along with her guilt.

Yvonne believed all her misfortunes were punishment for cruelly abandoning her beloved. Thus, she died quietly while alive, like a bird trapped in an iron cage.