Chapter 2

She remained lying face down like that for a long time afterward. New scenes kept pouring through the cheek pressed to the sheet, and from the body left discarded in such a filthy state came a stinging pain. On top of that, her churning stomach, overturned by the sudden awakening and use of her supernatural ability, could no longer endure it.

“Ugh…… uweeek.”

Clutching at her disheveled hair and retching as though she might die just like this, she slowly went over what had happened a little while ago. From Chris’s behavior, treating her like livestock he had bought with money, her future married life was plain to see.

Because Scarlet was a woman, she had never expected much from life in the first place. Someday being sold off for the benefit of her family and living to bear the heir of another family was the fixed fate of every noblewoman. She had not been able to choose for herself whom she would marry, but because she had been raised without want, she had thought of it as the price of having enjoyed more than others and had been willing to endure it.

But this was a hell worse than any worst she had ever imagined. After wiping away the tears wetting her face, she straightened her robe and called for her nanny. The only person in this house who was allowed to be on her side until tonight.

When the nanny entered the room, she noticed that on the face of the newlywed bride, there was not the shyness or fluttering excitement of having spent her wedding night, but only pain and sorrow. She was the nanny who had raised Scarlet since infancy in place of the mother who had long ago abandoned her and left after her relationship with her husband had fallen apart.

The nanny’s rough, warm hand quickly clasped Scarlet’s and stroked it. While Scarlet’s hands, which she had not even realized had gone cold, slowly grew warm under the nanny’s efforts, the wrinkled face crying in her place was drenched.

“My Lady. Oh dear. What has happened to you.”

“Nanny. The chicken blood you said you brought just in case. Splash it and take it downstairs. And the written testimony regarding the invalidity of the marriage. Prepare that in advance.”

“What? Are you serious? Then why go through this……”

“Because I’m not going to use it today. You know that. I can’t just storm out however I please. But still, just in case.”

“Oh dear……. Yes. Understood. Will you be all right, My Lady?”

“No. I won’t be all right. But what can I do. The deal has already been concluded.”

She gave a bitter smile, treating herself as an object of transaction or a piece on a chessboard. It was better to think of herself as something less than human. Otherwise, there was no way for her to understand and accept the situation she was in now.

To her, who had not slept a wink all night and had spent the hours repeatedly retching, morning, which she had so wanted to put off, finally came. With the back of her nanny, constantly looking over her shoulder and wiping away tears, as the last thing she saw, Scarlet was left alone in the Galloway mansion. And up to the present, now that she was twenty-four, her life could be summed up in a single word. Gray.

Whether by misfortune or by luck, even after the wedding night Chris still could not properly perform with Scarlet, and after repeated failures he began avoiding her. In the end, despite both of them being in the prime of life, they had no child for five years. Because of that, even after Chris inherited the title and Scarlet became the Duchess, her place was always precarious.

In a world where a woman unable to bear a child was socially branded and sent to a convent, the only reason Scarlet had been able to keep her place as Duchess until now was the power of her natal family and a dowry on a scale that would be recorded in history.

But Gloria, it seemed, had no intention of simply standing by. When the second year passed without a child, fearing rumors might spread that there was something wrong with her son, she began openly smearing Scarlet’s reputation.

– Chris is only enduring that child out of a gentlemanly sense of responsibility toward his wife. He’s my son, but truly, his heart is soft and kind. In truth, if she cannot bear children, then no matter if she is the daughter of a Marquis house, what use is she to us? We are Galloways, higher than that.

– Oh my, then is the rumor true? That the Duchess of Galloway is infertile?

– Why wouldn’t it be? If two young people try for years and still no child comes, there must be a reason for that. I only try to think well of that child out of respect for Chris’s wishes, but at times I cannot help resenting Marquis Clifford, who married off a flawed daughter and pretended not to know.

– Tch. As for that gentleman, he is always saying he is busy with Intelligence Bureau work and never even shows his face in society, so of course he would not know what kind of daughter he has. As for the Marchioness, they may not be divorced, but haven’t they been living apart for more than ten years?

– That’s true. It is true that they took in a child who was little different from an orphan. She had so little education that I was terribly busy for quite some time teaching her everything from one to ten. As if she thought money could solve everything, she only brought a great deal with her, how vulgar. Tch.

– If I had known, I would have introduced our Isabel to you. The women of our Dunkin family have for generations had a healthy bloodline that bears five children each.

Only three times. That was all it took for the rumor Gloria spread to sweep through all of high society and become the main gossip at every tea party.

The shameless and pitiful Duchess of Galloway, holding on only through Chris’s sympathy. In an instant, Scarlet, turned by Gloria’s malicious rumor into both infertile and frigid, no longer took part in society at all and began living in seclusion.

It was not as though she particularly regretted it. Chris was a man who made excellent use of the law that ‘a husband may discipline his wife, even by beating her, if necessary.’ In any case, having to cover the injuries from his beatings with cosmetics and attend parties pretending they got along was the worst, no matter how many times she went through it.

Instead, Scarlet used the time she would have spent on social activities to study the law. The very first thing she looked into after pulling herself out of the despair that was eating away at her was cases in which the testimony regarding the invalidity of a marriage, prepared by her nanny, had been used. It was the testimony of those involved that the union between the two families had never been consummated in the first place, making the marriage itself invalid.

When she looked into it, there really had been a Grand Duchess Dehart fifty years ago, during the Third Continental War, who had succeeded in having her marriage declared invalid, reclaiming her dowry, and remarrying. At the time, the story had even become the material for a romance novel that swept through the capital.

But in truth, what had happened was that the Kingdom of Obern, defeated in the war, had been forced to hand over to Kalin, the victorious nation, the territory Grand Duchess Dehart had brought as her dowry at the time of her marriage, and Kalin’s allowing it to be decorated as the love story of the century instead of the humiliating appearance of having it taken away had merely been a small kindness.

In the end, that divorce had reflected none of the Grand Duchess’s wishes at all; rather, her current husband had simply chosen and passed her over to the future husband she would remarry. It amounted to nothing more than replacing a land transfer contract with human trafficking. For Scarlet, it was the worst possible case.

Moreover, because the marriage of Scarlet Clifford and Chris Galloway had in effect been arranged by the Emperor’s command, out of affection for his nephew, if she testified that it had not been consummated, it would amount to deceiving the Emperor, and depending on his will, he could choose to punish the entire Marquis house.

Shuddering at the horrifying possibility, Scarlet also looked into ways to take issue with Chris’s infidelity and violence. Surely, somewhere, there had to be a way to divorce while preserving her dowry in full and leaving not a single coin with the Dukedom.

In reality, however, a husband who had whipped his wife into a cripple merely because she had looked down on him before others received only a fine, and in a noble society where everyone openly kept mistresses, Chris’s infidelity and violence could not become grounds for divorce.

In truth, aside from the Empress, she herself was the highest-ranking woman in status. Yet when she thought even of Princess Elizabeth, who despite being the Emperor’s younger sister had endured filthy scandal during her divorce and met a suspicious death, Scarlet sometimes felt as though she were trapped alone in a space walled in on all sides, screaming by herself.

The unspoken agreement of the world, that a woman could not step forward unless the man cast her aside first. It had already been five years that she had endured like that.

Lost in thought, absently kneading her thick gloves out of habit as she walked down the corridor, she happened to see the physician come hurrying out. The face that usually showed nothing but a sullen expression looked so shocked and flustered that it was startling. He came rushing over in one stride, yet could not meet her eyes and fussed about restlessly; it was so unlike him that Scarlet tensed without realizing it.

“Madam. Th-the Duke has regained consciousness. But……. that is…….”

“Do not drag it out. A wife cannot be kept from knowing her husband’s condition.”

“That is……. we would have to observe a little longer to be certain, but……. it seems he may have been paralyzed.”