146. Tatiana and Oksana (2)
‘If Tatiana dies early like Yevgenia, that old woman won’t be able to control his third marriage either.’
She secretly hoped Yuri would say he would kill Tatiana to make her Grand Duchess.
But he wasn’t as reckless and cruel as she had thought.
Oksana realized then that the moment love fades comes.
She couldn’t find him attractive if he wasn’t the Grand Duke.
She conveyed her thoughts without hiding anything.
She believed adding flowery words to rejection was mere pretense.
Confirming his first love’s true feelings, Yuri ran out wrapped in betrayal and shock.
That day was when Tatiana gave birth to Nikolai in an unfamiliar palace without her husband.
***
Ten months later, Oksana also gave birth.
She had regular relations with her husband, and that day with Yuri was their first and last time making love, so she didn’t even think to doubt.
She naturally thought it would be her husband’s child.
Until she saw the white-haired son.
It looked somewhat silvery white.
Did silver hair mean he was Yuri’s son?
While she was confused, her husband innocently smiled holding the baby.
“Were you surprised? I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
“What?”
“Actually, children with albinism are occasionally born in our family. They’re special children.”
Those words shattered her hope of having the Grand Duke’s child.
Oksana desperately denied it.
No, that couldn’t be.
The Grand Duke’s family also sometimes had children with light silvery-white hair.
The probability was actually higher for that side.
Oksana roughly snatched the son from her husband’s arms and hugged him.
Though the baby cried loudly in surprise, she only held him tighter.
“This child is mine.”
“Yes, our child.”
“No! He’s His Highness the Grand Duke’s son!”
“……What?”
“Remember when His Highness stayed in the capital ten months ago? We had relations that day. His Highness and I were lovers before marriage.”
“Wait…… This is the first I’m hearing of this, it’s too confusing……”
“I know the timeline of the pregnancy best! He is His Highness’s child!”
This child had to be the Grand Duke’s son.
They couldn’t carelessly treat a woman who bore an illegitimate child of a neighboring country’s ruler.
Her husband’s family quietly proceeded with the divorce as Oksana wanted and she finally became free.
Yuri had always been a good father to his children.
He cherished even children born from women he didn’t love so much.
So he wouldn’t make a son born from his beloved woman illegitimate.
So this time, whether by framing and driving out that woman Tatiana, killing her, or changing the law, he would surely make her Grand Duchess.
Though his hurt face from when they parted kept coming to mind, he would forgive her once he saw her face.
Because she was the only woman he had loved his whole life.
“Mikhail. You are my hope, my dream, and my future.”
Oksana whispered those words while kissing her son on the ship’s deck heading to Hersen.
Land gradually began appearing in the distance.
My only happiness.
This child will become Grand Duke one day.
“That beautiful country will be yours.”
As soon as she arrived in Hersen, Oksana inquired about the Grand Duke’s recent activities.
He was currently away on vacation with his family.
‘Vacation?’
She thought he must have gone with the siblings Ruslan and Klavdia since he loved them so much, but that wasn’t it.
They said the siblings had schedules, so he went traveling with just Tatiana and their youngest son Nikolai.
She started feeling strange somehow.
Yuri had a personality that couldn’t stay long with people he was uncomfortable with.
For him to travel with Tatiana…
Oksana tried hard to erase her ominous premonition.
‘But there’s no way that person could come to love that woman instead of me? He’s just being nice because he adores his youngest son. Like with Yevgenia.’
She knew where Yuri spent family vacations.
He had often said they would go together after marriage.
Oksana headed there, planning to watch from afar and approach when Yuri was alone.
Though guard knights were stationed throughout, no one suspected a woman in shabby clothes holding a baby.
Everyone naturally lowered their guard for a baby’s mother.
No one stopped her, seemingly thinking she was a local resident out walking with her child.
Staying within the boundary of the Grand Ducal family’s private property, Oksana hid behind a tree in the spot with the best view of Yuri to steal glances at him to her heart’s content.
Sunlight shattered like grains of sand, embroidering the beautifully curved flowing river.
The Grand Ducal couple sat on a blanket by the river, and Tatiana was seen nodding off while rocking the baby bed, seemingly drowsy in the afternoon.
Yuri smiled slightly seeing the mother and child, then carefully laid his wife down using his lap as a pillow.
Tatiana fell into a deep sleep on her husband’s lap.
Though they were in the shade, worried she might be hot, Yuri quietly took out a fan and gently waved it over his wife’s face.
It was striking how such a large man sat straight and fanned so small to avoid waking his wife.
Seeing him like that, Oksana felt like her heart was being torn apart.
That was unmistakably the face of a man in love.
She hadn’t known.
Just as love can fade in an instant, ten months wasn’t too short a time to fall into a new love.
She who was rejected without even a word of refusal turned and left that place.
***
And several years passed.
Back then, Yuri didn’t know Oksana had divorced and returned to Hersen.
Not until Tatiana introduced him to a new lady’s maid she had become friends with at a party.
“I greet Your Highness the Grand Duke. I am Oksana.”
When their eyes met, Oksana smiled provocatively.
She waited until now for this very moment.
“We briefly greeted each other in Arsetia before, what a fate to meet like this. She’s divorced and living with her child, but her family won’t take her in so she’s struggling alone.”
Tatiana smiled brightly at her husband, knowing nothing of their relationship.
Almost no nobles knew about Yuri and Oksana’s romance.
“So I told her to come stay at the palace with her child. He’s around our Nikolai’s age.”
A boy with silvery-white hair peeked his head out from beside his mother’s skirt.
Finding the shy child adorable, Tatiana called her son.
Nikolai, who had always wanted a sibling, happily took Mikhail out to play.
“They say children with that hair color are rarely born in her ex-husband’s family. Such a special child, right?”
Tatiana said while watching the children playing outside the window.
Because she never took her eyes off the children, she didn’t read the atmosphere flowing between Yuri and Oksana.
Yuri glared at Oksana with an expression that’s a mix of anger and anxiety.
Just then, seeing the children fall while playing out front, Tatiana hurried outside with other maids.
Taking that chance, Oksana approached her former lover.
“Have you been well?”
“What are you doing right now?”
“Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be this surprised.”
“If you touch even a finger of that person, I won’t let it go.”
“My, how scary.”
“Do I look like I’m joking? Say you’ll stop on your own. Before I have to step in and do something about you.”
Despite his words full of killing intent, Oksana’s face showed no intimidation.
She had a very powerful weapon that could subdue even a ruler at once.
“Those two children look quite alike, don’t they?”
“What?”
“They must take after their father.”
Hearing those words, the shocked Yuri jumped up.
“Don’t play games.”
“Did you really believe that legend about white-haired children being born in Arsetia?”
“You……”
“Feel free to check with tests or whatever you want.”
Oksana was confident she would pass the test.
That day when she witnessed Yuri falling in love with another woman by the river, she hadn’t given up on him.
No, she had never given up for even a moment.
She went straight to her maiden family, House Borodin.
She knelt before her parents who refused entry to their daughter who was casted off.
She declared she would surely become Grand Duchess by claiming Mikhail was the Grand Duke’s son.
House Borodin, who wanted to push out Tatiana’s maiden family House Valuyev, joined hands with House Oblonsky to proceed with everything step by step.
There was no certainty about whose child Mikhail was.
However, if the Grand Duke conducted a paternity test, the results would definitely show him as the father.
Because they had bribed the palace doctors, the results would be the same no matter how many times they tested.
Not knowing this fact, Yuri ordered the test, and as soon as he learned Mikhail was his son, he quietly called Oksana.
Then he knelt before her.
Oksana couldn’t hide her bewilderment.
Though she knew he would take a submissive stance, this was beyond her expectations.
“I’ll take responsibility and raise the child. If you want to raise him yourself, I’ll provide all the support you need. I’ll do whatever you want……”
“……”
“Don’t tell Tatiana.”
For a ruler to kneel just to say that.
Uncomfortable emotions surged like waves inside Oksana.
It boiled like lava with jealousy.
But not wanting to show it, she pretended to be calm and smiled.
“Well. How hurt would that delicate person be to learn that the husband she searched so desperately for on the day she gave birth had betrayed her and gotten another woman pregnant?”
“Tell me what you want.”
She wanted him to say he loved her.
She wanted him to be happy about their first child together.
Oksana realized too late that she had truly loved Yuri.
