(17) Why Did You Spy on Me?
“Wealth that makes even the Emperor cautious. Even so……”
Asla trailed off.
She knew the world was changing rapidly.
With industrial development, technology gradually became more important, and it was an era where money could allow one to live more luxuriously than nobility.
Wealthy commoners were rising to the gentry class, beginning to break down the boundaries of class society.
Thus, Emperor Rosenberg Aurisch, upon ascending to the throne 20 years ago, immediately established a cabinet with awareness of public sentiment and created a parliament with commoners in the lower house.
Although the world was turbulently shifting toward one where money became increasingly important, Asla couldn’t understand how a duke could treat the supreme Emperor in such a manner.
Watching Asla blink in confusion, Enoch clicked his tongue briefly.
“I left you at the Ventus territory to keep you safe, but it seems I’ve made you quite ignorant of how the world works. I apologize.”
When Enoch extended his hand to her, Asla instinctively reached out with her hand that had been hidden under the table.
As her white hand was grasped by his warm one, her heart began to pound again.
After shaking her hand a few times as a gesture of apology, Enoch didn’t let go of her hand.
Asla frowned at the bridge of her nose, finding it awkward.
What should she do? Should she ask him to let go, or should she naturally slip her hand away?
But somehow, when he held her hand, the trembling stopped and her mind became calm.
It was a warmth she didn’t want to release.
Asla stared at her hand held by Enoch and asked plainly.
“Should I let go of your hand?”
“Let go if you want to. I don’t want to let go.”
Enoch responded nonchalantly to her direct question.
Asla recalled his words asking her to reconsider because he didn’t want to divorce.
Was that why he was acting this way?
She decided to continue their previous conversation.
“Wasn’t Emperor Rosenberg threatening you?”
“Let me say it clearly again. It was a ‘discussion’ or ‘negotiation.’ I am Duke Ventus and the wealthiest nobleman in a world where money was becoming the center of power. I’m among the most suitable candidates to check the temple’s power, and I accepted His Majesty’s proposal.”
“……There were more candidates?”
Could it be that Emperor Rosenberg hadn’t married her to Enoch to keep him in check as his fame and wealth grew daily?
Seeing Asla’s confusion, Enoch lightly stroked the back of her hand.
“Do you want to know who my competitors were?”
Enoch tilted his head slightly, narrowed his eyes languidly, and looked up at her from an angle.
“No.”
That look was so, how to describe it, seductive and erotic that Asla swallowed hard, moved her body backward, and pulled her hand away from his grasp.
Enoch clenched and unclenched his now empty hand as if disappointed.
“You don’t need to know anyway. They were incapable men who couldn’t protect you.”
Enoch spoke with a confident tone.
Asla felt somehow strange. He had repeatedly mentioned wanting to protect her.
There must be facts she didn’t know.
Were there mobs trying to harm her? That hypothesis was entirely possible.
People had whispered that the Princess was responsible for the Holy Kingdom’s land deteriorating since her birth.
‘So he protected me?’
A shadow fell across her face.
The time she spent at the Ventus mansion couldn’t be called “protection” as he claimed.
It was Enoch’s selfish arrogance.
The day Asla married him in the garden of the Ventus mansion.
When she first arrived at the Ventus mansion the day before the wedding, the maids initially found it difficult to approach her as a princess of the Holy Kingdom.
But after Enoch, their master, hastily left for the capital without even consummating their marriage and didn’t return for a long time, they began to rapidly disrespect Asla.
She thought it would be better to endure the harsh schedule at the Grand Temple than this.
Contempt, disregard, mockery.
And when Margo’s harassment began to be added, those days became overwhelming even for Asla, who had grown up with endurance as a basic virtue.
She smiled bitterly, recalling her most difficult day.
It was early winter.
Having grown up in the southern part of the continent, Asla found her first winter in the northern Ventus territory extremely difficult.
Though she kept telling herself she needed to adapt, she simply couldn’t get used to it.
Her fingers and toes were so frozen that she could barely move them as the temperature dropped day by day.
As expected, the maids showed no consideration for Asla. They gave her a thin coat, saying it was what northern ladies wore around this time.
But unable to withstand the bone-chilling cold of the north, Asla begged the maids for the first time.
Please, bring me slightly warmer clothes. Or if not, I would wear multiple layers of thin clothes.
The maid then made a troubled face.
She whispered that the Duchess representing the northern Ventus territory shouldn’t show such weakness to the cold, and suggested consulting with Grand Madam Margo.
She said the Grand Madam was currently walking near the lake in the mansion garden, and suggested Asla go see her.
Asla ran straight to the lake where Margo was, shivering, but Margo refused with a sympathetic smile.
She indirectly scolded her, saying how could she, who was beneath Margo, wear thicker clothes when Margo herself was wearing such a thin coat.
Beneath her.
Asla found it difficult to endure Margo’s coldness in calling her that.
Despite living a life of restraint, Asla was royalty and a princess.
Margo had touched the proud dignity of someone who had never been beneath anyone.
Asla quietly glared at Margo with a calm face, and that became the problem.
The angry Margo approached Asla.
Saying she would help her adapt to the northern Ventus territory’s climate and become a true Duchess of Ventus, Margo ordered several maids to push Asla into the freezing lake.
The lake was shallow, reaching only to her waist, so she didn’t die, but Asla was in such agony that she wished she had.
Her body submerged in the cold lake felt like it was being torn apart, but even colder and more despairing were the gazes of Margo and the maids looking at her shivering form as if she were a toy.
Barely crawling out of the lake, Asla naturally fell ill for several days, but the Ventus mansion’s personal doctor didn’t even provide her with proper medication.
“The Princess of the Holy Kingdom will surely be helped by God, so don’t carelessly touch the Princess’s pride.”
Asla, struggling with fever, heard Margo whisper to the personal doctor.
And after hearing the news of her nanny’s death, she cried for the first time in a long while.
That day, she writhed in despair, wondering how long she could endure in this place without light.
For the first time, she deeply resented Enoch, her long-time crush, who didn’t know her situation and didn’t return to the mansion.
“Asla.”
Yet now…… Asla looked at Enoch calling her name and was overwhelmed by various emotions.
I hate you. I hate you so much for abandoning me and making me so miserable.
Asla composed her emotions and asked calmly.
“When I was at the Grand Temple before our marriage. Why did you spy on me every week?”
Enoch’s eyes widened and his pupils shook violently.
But he soon regained his composure and stared directly at her.
“Why?”
Asla didn’t answer, and her whole body tingled under Enoch’s sharp gaze as he looked her up and down.
“Tell me clearly.”
“Tell you what?”
“Whether you already knew or if you heard that from Ian Herta too.”
Asla’s mint-colored eyes, resembling a clear sea, became clouded.
How could she have known? If she had, many things would have been different.
She slowly shook her head.
“I won’t answer. Because you didn’t answer my question either.”
“Asla.”
“You said you would answer anything.”
When Asla slightly narrowed her eyes and glared at Enoch, his sharp attitude softened.
He hesitated, then avoiding Asla’s gaze, stammered.
“Yes, I…… did that.”
“Why? Did you have a lot of business at the Grand Temple? Did you want to check out who your marriage partner would be while you were there?”
When Enoch readily admitted it, she became flustered and stretched out her words.
But Enoch found the rambling Asla quite adorable and let out a faint laugh.
“I’m not a priest, so what reason would I have to go to the Grand Temple so often? None at all. I went solely, truly, completely to see you.”
“Why.”
Asla couldn’t stop the repeated question.
Her husband in the past was completely incomprehensible.
It had been more convincing when she cursed him as a heartless person who had no interest in her and thus abandoned her.
Asla couldn’t take her eyes off Enoch’s face as he looked at her, blinking slowly.
“At first, I went to see you because His Majesty asked how I would feel about marrying you. I wondered how that young princess I had met in the Holy Kingdom’s rose garden long ago was doing.”
“Young princess?”
“You were young.”
Enoch emphasized again to Asla who was pointing out this minor detail.
For Asla, it had been the age when she began her first love, but to Enoch, she had been merely a young princess.
It seemed that Robert’s claim in her dream that Enoch had fallen for her was truly nonsense after all.
When Asla narrowed her eyes slightly and pouted her lips, Enoch tilted his head slightly as if he didn’t understand.
“What’s wrong?”
Asla became flustered and pulled her lips back into a straight line.
“Nothing. So, why did you keep coming after that?”
“Because I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Princess, far removed from the secular world, expressing God’s teachings through her body, looked so precarious to me. Watching you undertake the arduous schedule to pray for the purification of the Holy Kingdom…… I thought you were incredibly strong, but I also felt sorry for you.”
Asla smiled bitterly as she listened to his words. The sunset light grew deeper, making the inside of the train glow even more red.
‘You…… pitied me.’
A corner of her heart felt piercing pain.
