53

“I prepared something light and clean, just as you asked. How does it look?”

Lavian had begun preparing his meal the moment they returned home, and Klen had gone straight up to the study without showing himself.

Camilla gave her report from near the dining table, and Lavian looked over the spread and nodded.

“Good. Thank you, Camilla.”

“Shall I go fetch the master?”

“Please.”

Lavian watched Camilla head upstairs, then stepped through the door beside the dining room.

“Colin, the food looks wonderful today.”

“Thank you, my lady. I baked brownies as well. Shall I bring some out?”

Colin glanced toward the basket of freshly baked brownies as he offered.

But Lavian shook her head, as she always did.

“You made them less sweet this time?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then bring them out later as a snack for him. I’m fine.”

“……Yes. I’ll do that.”

Colin answered a beat slowly, his gaze briefly dropping to Lavian’s wrist where it showed below her sleeve.

Lavian didn’t notice his look and returned to the dining room.

“Oh?”

She reached her seat and lifted the lid of the teapot, catching an unfamiliar scent. Now that she looked, there was a small dish beside the teapot and cup that hadn’t been there before.

“Warm milk and honey……”

A small crease formed between her brows.

She barely had time to wonder why warm milk and honey had been prepared instead of tea before old memories came pressing in.

Klen came into the dining room in the meantime, but Lavian was too distracted to notice.

He looked at her standing there blankly and asked with a crooked tone.

“Still haven’t broken that habit?”

“Pardon?”

The blunt voice made Lavian lift her eyes.

“Which household do you belong to, exactly. Do you have any intention of becoming part of this one. Or did you never want to cross over into my world to begin with.”

“What’s this all of a……”

“Then again, with how often you’re running back to your family home, I suppose you couldn’t possibly feel like you belong here.”

He ignored the gaze that came to meet his, sat down, and said it with a sneer. Today’s situation had left him in a particularly poor mood, and there was nothing good left to say.

He was in a very bad mood right now. The sunken look on his wife’s face, especially.

Lavian stood still for a moment, then understood what he was getting at.

“It isn’t like that. I was just lost in thought for a moment. I belong to this household.”

“Sit down. How long are you going to stand there.”

His gaze finally reached her.

Lavian let out a quiet breath under the steady look and lowered herself into her seat.

“Lavian.”

“Yes.”

She had been sitting with her hands nowhere near the milk pitcher, and she looked up.

His voice carried no particular feeling, but the brow above the coffee cup he had just sipped from was faintly creased.

“Did someone put sugar in the coffee?”

“No. That can’t be right. I’ll have them bring a fresh cup. Don’t drink……”

“Leave it.”

Lavian started to rise, and Klen refused firmly and pushed the coffee away entirely.

He wasn’t sure if his appetite was ruined or not, but he reached for water.

Lavian’s gaze had been resting on him as he drank. It shifted with quiet seriousness to the white cup of coffee.

Last time I checked it was fine…… I’ll need to look at the coffee beans again tomorrow.

She mentally added it to tomorrow’s tasks and let her eyes drift to the dish of honey. Her gaze kept returning to it.

But it was only her eyes that went there. Lavian had no intention of pouring milk into her cup and adding honey. If anything, the sight of what had been prepared only brought her parents flooding back into her mind, unsettling her. Her stomach turned.

How much longer can I hold on. The debts, the living expenses, and now the matter of a child too…… Hah.

Her heart had sunk lower than it had even been at the count’s residence.

Having recognized her feelings for Klen, having understood that she felt something anyone might feel, she felt like a criminal.

The longer she stayed at his side, she thought, the more she would only be a burden.

Lavian fidgeted with her fingertips and forced herself to speak.

“I’m sorry about today. I’ll make sure you never have to hear things like that again.”

“It happens every time. No need to make a scene of it.”

“Every time?”

Lavian had been reaching for the pitcher as she spoke, and she paused with a puzzled look. Klen stared at her with an expression that said he couldn’t tell what she was after.

“Are you asking because you know, or because you genuinely don’t?”

“I’m asking because I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t bother asking.”

There was a faint tremor in Lavian’s voice.

Klen found the food, which had seemed perfectly fine moments ago, suddenly unappealing. He set down his fork and knife and tilted his head sideways.

“At most three times a month, at least once. Your father calls for me for one of two reasons: money or a child.”

Klen reached across the corner of the table, where she sat close beside him, and lifted her smooth chin with his fingertips, brushing his thumb across it. Lavian found herself looking at him whether she intended to or not, and kept her composure on the surface, but her mind was spinning.

A quiet lament rose inside her.

I trusted my father too much. He’s not someone who would only do this to me, and I believed in him completely.

Her pleas to her father, her desperate wishes, had apparently been useless from the very beginning.

Come to think of it, Father never once said he hadn’t been calling him too.

She had never heard anything like this from Klen, so she had assumed her father was only summoning her and pressing her alone. Or perhaps she had simply wanted to believe that.

Lavian blamed herself for thinking too well of her father. The devastation she couldn’t quite hide rose as heat to the corners of her eyes.

“Don’t worry. Until I can stand on my own in your world, I’ll play along well enough. That’s the contract. And I don’t particularly care. Your father can’t force a child into existence.”

Klen said it flatly and stood.

He had no desire to keep sitting across from her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make things difficult for you……”

Lavian’s voice caught him before he could leave.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s my business.”

Klen cut her off with complete indifference.

Lavian felt a small ache at that.

She couldn’t let her father keep troubling him indefinitely.

He said not to worry, but there was no telling how long her father’s behavior would continue.

Lavian couldn’t simply sit still.

Maybe it would be better to have a child. He’s a strong person. He might be able to protect the child from Father’s reach.

“A child…… would you want one?”

She started the sentence haltingly but saw it through to the end, and clasped her hands together to hide the trembling in her fingertips.

“Do you actually want a child?”

He had been on his way out of the dining room, but he turned fully and tilted his head slightly as he asked. His tone was quite serious.

“As I mentioned before, it does seem strange for just the two of us to go on like this indefinitely.”

Even with her hands folded together, she couldn’t fully control the trembling at her fingertips. Lavian bit down on the inside of her cheek and let her gaze drop slightly from his.

Lavian wanted a child, and at the same time she thoroughly did not want one.

She also knew that continuing as things were would be difficult in practice, and that simply holding firm to her wishes, or his, wasn’t going to be easy forever. There would be talk, inevitably.

“That’s why I’m asking. Do you want our child.”

“……”

Lavian couldn’t answer right away and pressed her lips together.

Her circumstances made her want no part of it, but where would the longing she had always carried go. And she had only just come to understand her feelings for him.

I want a child who looks like you. I want that so much. I do, but…… I don’t know if someone like me should have a child. I still don’t have the confidence to raise that child the way a child deserves to be raised.

The doubt she had carried even after saying they should have a child kept circling back to her.

Her heart swung back and forth without rest, searching for an answer to give.

Klen didn’t rush her. He simply watched.

But the longer her silence stretched, the more his already unreadable face hardened into something cold.

Which is it. Does she dislike the idea of a child with my blood, or is she feeling guilty because of her father’s intentions.

They faced each other for a moment, neither able to read the other’s thoughts.

Lavian turned something over and over in her mind and arrived at a single destination.

He’ll need an heir too. I’ll help him get firmly established until I give birth, and once the child is born…… I’ll leave.

The thought of leaving a child behind tore at her chest, but Lavian clenched her fist and steadied her thoughts.

If I’m the one who runs, the fault will be mine, so Father won’t be able to do anything either. For the child’s sake too, it would be better not to have a mother like me. And this way, I’ll have repaid what I owe him.

She had no idea how to run, no means to do it, and yet she thought it vaguely. She had thought it before, but now more than ever she had no desire to hold him back because of herself and her family.

Lavian let the circling thoughts settle and gathered her courage to break the silence.

“I want one. I’d like to have a child.”

Lavian said it with her eyes full of sincerity.