Chapter 25

‘It’s lucky that guy has a thick skull.’

While Erin quietly felt relieved, Viscount Talben squinted one eye and cursed in his ugly state.

“Ugh… d*mn it… Erin Leshamur!”

“Well, who told you to keep pestering me!”

“Your face is pretty enough, so I was going to make you my researcher!”

The way he said “researcher” sounded no different than “mistress.” Honestly, he probably meant it that way.

“I don’t need it! I have no use for a scammer like you who’s incompetent and makes up stories to ruin people’s reputations!”

“You…”

“And I hate you! You ugly jerk!”

“J-jerk…?”

Talben’s mouth hung open stupidly.

Seeing his face, Erin thought he’d recover soon, so she hurried away.

If he chased her and tried to grab her again, she’d really hit him properly next time.

‘Still, it’s a first.’

It was the first time she’d actually fought back against a man who tried to harass her, instead of just brushing it off.

‘Not only did I punch him…’

She’d cursed too.

Come to think of it, “jerk” was an insult Ash used. He’d called the applicants she was supposed to meet “filthy jerks.”

Her heart pounded. She didn’t feel completely guiltless for hitting someone, but still…

‘Maybe now I understand why Ash uses his fists?’

She felt a bit guilty for using Ash’s ring on someone like that, but Ash would probably approve of using it that way.

He might even have been the one to throw the punch himself. If he saw Erin using his insult, he might have been proud.

‘Even though I’m the boss.’

But strangely, Ash suited that kind of image.

He was just an assistant, but he stood on equal footing with Erin, never seeming out of place or intimidated. Around others, he naturally appeared like a master.

‘Doctor.’

He looked like a prince from somewhere, with his pretty ash-gray hair and red eyes that resembled the gemstone in the ring.

‘Ah.’

Thinking about Ash made Erin truly want to see him.

‘Should I go and talk to him?’

Honestly, Erin was confident. This report would be successful.

Then she could ask Ash to stay with her in the future. She could take care of at least him.

So…

“What?”

The next moment.

At the edge of her sight, she spotted familiar ash-gray hair. Erin, who had been walking briskly, stopped dead in her tracks.

“Ash?”

It was definitely Ash.

Erin found herself in the outer corridor lined with arch-shaped columns surrounding the building.

Between the columns, in the garden arranged like a courtyard, she saw him.

‘Speak of the devil and he appears.’

Her heart pounding, she started to approach—

“…ka?”

But it wasn’t Ash’s voice she heard.

“Gasp.”

Erin instinctively hid herself.

‘Why am I hiding?’

She didn’t know why, but somehow she felt she had to.

Peeking out from behind the column, she saw, at a risky angle, the person standing opposite Ash.

“That’s…?”

It was a woman she’d never seen before.

She wasn’t one of the ladies or patrons at the report meeting. The woman wore a luxurious uniform, the kind a servant of a noble might wear.

‘Like a servant employed by a noble…’

At that moment.

Flutter.

Ash offered something he was holding to the woman. Erin’s eyes widened in disbelief.

‘…That’s my new medicine and report.’

No matter how wide she opened her eyes, reality didn’t change.

A pile of documents, neatly stacked, and a pink medicine bottle sitting on top.

She couldn’t mistake it. That was the very contraceptive she had developed and drunk countless times with Ash.

“Is this it?”

The woman’s voice was clear. Erin instinctively covered her mouth and turned away.

“Wait.”

Maybe she was seeing things. Maybe she’d had too much champagne. Maybe she was drunk and hallucinating…

But that thought shattered with the woman’s next words.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

‘Thank you for your hard work.’

“It’s time for you to come back.”

‘Come back…’

Her mind went blank. The words the reporter had said flashed through her head like lightning.

‘Who knows? Maybe another noble sent a spy disguised as an assistant to steal your experiment.’

‘No way, Ash. No way, all this time, staying by my side… And being so good to me. Helping me and running the clinical trials—all of it…’

“I suppose so.”

Ash’s answer to the woman’s question rang out.

Gasp.

Erin involuntarily sucked in a breath.

She didn’t even have time to wonder at the strange situation where Ash was speaking informally and the woman was being formal. Her mind was completely blank.

‘So, I…’

Scattered in her mind were memories from the past three years.

Ash, caring for her, the only one who stayed by her side, always kind.

‘Doctor. You shouldn’t sleep here.’

‘This morning’s soup is cabbage to soothe your stomach. I didn’t put in carrots since you dislike them.’

‘Would you try wearing this? I think it’d suit you.’

‘You deserve better treatment than this.’

‘I know how hard you’ve worked.’

Ash, who never once got angry with her even when things were tough. Who drove away or scolded those who treated Erin badly.

‘If all of that.’

If all of that was for another reason.

She should have run up and demanded to know what he was doing, how he could betray her.

But when she looked back, Ash and the woman were already gone. They’d disappeared while she was stunned.

Erin missed her chance to confront him, and left, her mind in turmoil. She couldn’t think of anything else.

‘I wanted to see him so much.’

Now she didn’t even want to see Ash’s face.

Disappointment filled her heart.

* * *

Another problem found her just a few days later.

“U-ugh.”

The smell of cooking meat made Erin gag and quickly shut the window of her lodgings.

Unable to return to the rented room where Ash had stayed upstairs, or to the laboratory, or even to the Baron’s house she’d since rented out, Erin had hurriedly taken a room at an inn.

It was a cheap inn with a tavern on the first floor, where they grilled sausages and barbecue morning and night.

‘This is serious.’

Erin rubbed her stomach with a gloomy expression.

The day after she rushed out of the report meeting and got the inn room.

She woke up not feeling well.

No appetite, constant nausea, her body aching as if she had the flu. She was so tired she could barely get out of bed, and her stomach felt tight.

It was surely stress from being hit on the back of the head.

‘Am I going to get sick like this?’

It was bad enough to be betrayed by someone she liked—she couldn’t stand to get sick too.

So Erin quickly went to see a physician.

She needed to recover her health before thinking about revenge or exposing the truth.

The doctor she met was the young woman who had checked on her throughout the months she’d been with Ash. Realizing Ash had even introduced this doctor made Erin laugh bitterly, but she had no choice.

And as the doctor examined her…

‘…Doctor, please don’t be shocked and just listen to the end.’

‘Huh? What is it…’

‘Your symptoms are textbook pregnancy symptoms…’

Erin jumped up in horror after hearing just that much and ran out of the clinic.

She’d been holed up in her room at the inn, panicking, for three days now.

“Oh my god.”

She couldn’t believe there was a child in her flat stomach.

But she couldn’t just dismiss the doctor’s words.

She had run away without contacting Ash, and now had no intention of reaching out.

To be betrayed by a man and end up pregnant with his child—wasn’t that just too sad and miserable?

Erin’s mind swung between heaven and hell dozens of times a day.

Her potion recipe couldn’t have been wrong. No way. Did she really fail?

But if she failed, then what Ash stole was useless too. 

‘Serves him right. No, but still…’

Her feelings swung between sadness, depression, a strange sense of relief, and guilt for feeling relieved about being pregnant.

All Erin could do was sigh and sit at the desk in her room.

‘I have to write a letter first.’

She needed to confess everything to Duke Aston.

Everything that had happened, that Ash had stolen her new medicine, and that the test subject was now pregnant, meaning the experiment he sponsored had failed.

‘What about the heroine?’

Thinking of that made her depressed.

She hadn’t finished the contraceptive in time, so the heroine who would soon be caught by the Crown Prince had lost her lifeline.

But Erin’s own situation was just as dire. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up penniless on the street.