Chapter 9. Two Fools
“Mrs. Tara, is dinner ready? I’m starving.”
Lariella, who had gone down to the village at lunchtime, returned to the mansion when the sun was setting.
She had been reading storybooks to the village children like before. Now that the children could read fairly well, she was teaching them how to hold pens and write, which took several times longer than usual.
Moving her body busily with no room for stray thoughts had made her very hungry. She felt like she could devour two large pieces of lamb. As soon as she entered the front door, Lariella called out loudly for Mrs. Tara and walked toward the kitchen, making cheerful sounds with her shoes.
Just as she was passing by the reception room while walking briskly down the corridor, Ronais’s voice called her from inside.
“Larie, come over here.”
Lariella took a couple of steps backward from where she had already passed and peeked her head into the reception room entrance.
“Is something wrong, Brother?”
Instantly, the smile vanished from Lariella’s face. A man who shouldn’t be in this mansion was sitting in the reception room.
Lariella dropped the basket she was holding to the floor when her eyes met his. This caused the two apples she had received earlier from Cassie, the oil shop owner’s daughter, to bounce out of the basket and roll across the reception room floor.
The man sitting opposite Ronais stood up, bent over, and picked up the two apples from the floor. He took a few firm steps toward Lariella and held out the apples to her.
Lariella looked alternately at the apples on the man’s palm and his face. It wasn’t an apparition. It wasn’t an illusion. No matter how much she blinked her eyes, the man in front of her didn’t disappear but remained standing there.
Hair blacker than a lightless night and gray-blue eyes colder than a winter lake. A face she thought she had forgotten but in fact hadn’t forgotten at all. It was Duke Kais Elmano.
He seemed to have lost weight in the meantime. The darkness under his eyes and his complexion didn’t look very good either. He looked like someone who hadn’t eaten or slept properly for many days. Yet his appearance in a neat uniform with a red cape draped over it was breathtakingly handsome.
Lariella found this infuriating. The fact that he still looked handsome to her eyes.
Upon arriving at the Polar territory, she had been sick for three straight days. On the fourth day, she finally regained her senses, and by the fifth day, she was well enough to get up and move around. Whether her illness had also purged her feelings for the Duke of Elmano, by the seventh day, both her body and her heavy heart felt considerably better. So Lariella had convinced herself that at this rate, she would soon be able to forget him.
But that wasn’t true. The idea that she had gotten better was a ridiculous illusion. She wasn’t fine at all. Just his appearance made her heart race wildly, making her entire chest throb and ache.
She had barely managed to suppress it, and if she just let time pass, why did he suddenly appear to carelessly stir up her calmed heart? He was truly a selfish and self-centered man, consistently so whether they were together or apart.
“Why…… why is the Duke here?”
Lariella asked in a stiff voice. Then she belatedly remembered something she had asked Ronais to send a letter about recently.
Since they had decided to invalidate the marriage, it was only natural to return the box of gold coins received with the proposal letter. But the Polar territory had no knights’ order, so they couldn’t transport such a large box of gold coins. So she had requested that knights be sent from Elmano Castle to retrieve the gold box, and it seemed the Duke had brought them personally.
“Ah, you came to get the gold box.”
Lariella answered her own question. Even though she hadn’t expected anything, her heart felt strangely heavy.
“I’ve troubled you in many ways. You’ve come a long way, so I hope you return safely. Well then.”
Lariella bowed her head briefly and quickly turned around. She didn’t want him to see her complicated expression. But her body, which she had deliberately turned away, was pulled back to its original position by the large hand that grabbed her wrist.
“No, Lariella.”
Kais, who had turned her around, looked at Lariella with eyes flickering like blue flames.
“I didn’t come to get the gold box. The one I came to take back is you, Lariella.”
At those words, Lariella’s heart fell. Dropping to the floor and rolling around, like an apple from the basket earlier.
But Lariella quickly picked up her rolling heart and firmly put it back in place.
If he had done this earlier, it might have been different, but now she was no longer soft enough to flutter helplessly at his words. The time she spent at Elmano Castle had made her this way.
Lariella swung her arm widely and forcefully shook off the hand holding her wrist.
“Why me?”
What was the point if he wouldn’t properly look her in the eyes, tenderly hold her hand, or sweetly kiss her when she was beside him? What was the purpose if all he would do was turn his back to her, showing only his cold back day after day?
Lariella glared at Kais with her eyes narrowed sharply.
“Am I the easiest one to place in the position of a duchess in name only? Or did Your Grace, the Duke of Elmano, feel wounded in your pride after having your marriage nullified? How can someone be so insensitive and shameless to ask me to return there? Go. And make sure to take that burdensome gold box with you.”
“That’s not it. I’ll explain everything.”
When Kais replied urgently and tried to grab her wrist again, Lariella hid both hands behind her back.
“No. There’s no need. I no longer have any curiosity about you, Duke.”
“I’ll tell you everything, Lariella. If you listen to me, you’ll understand me too.”
Kais spoke desperately, but Lariella only snorted in response.
“Now you want to talk? Were you mute then? Did you suddenly grow a mouth that didn’t exist before? But what can I do? I no longer need that mouth.”
Lariella sharply retorted and then turned around and left the reception room.
Kais was extremely flustered by Lariella’s prickly attitude, like a hedgehog poked with a stick.
He hadn’t expected her to accept him readily, but he hadn’t known it would be this difficult to even speak with her. Yet knowing that her anger was entirely his fault made him feel only sorry and regretful.
“Lariella, can’t you please spare me some time?”
Kais followed behind Lariella, pleading almost desperately. There was no trace of his usual arrogant demeanor in him as he anxiously tried to get in even one more word.
“Just one hour, or even just during a meal, please listen to me, Lariella.”
“You want to have a meal here? We don’t have food worthy of serving the Duke of Elmano in our house.”
Lariella retorted sharply as she quickly climbed the stairs. Kais followed behind her, flustered.
“No, I don’t need to eat. Just let me sit beside you while you have your meal, Lariella.”
“I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. If I don’t eat, I don’t need to sit with you, right?”
By then, Lariella had climbed all the stairs and opened the door to her room on the left side of the hallway. She gave a brief nod saying, “Well then,” and closed the door with a bang in front of Kais’s bewildered face.
The sound of irritated footsteps and the door slamming shut echoed all the way to the reception room. When the sound of urgent knocking on the door and Kais calling Lariella’s name desperately followed, Ronais, sitting in the reception room, pressed his lower lip tightly while the corners of his mouth twitched.
“Why don’t you just laugh out loud, Ronais?”
At Murina’s words, Ronais burst into laughter that he had been forcibly holding back. Murina, who had been looking at Ronais laughing heartily with disbelief, eventually joined in his laughter.
The day they received Lariella’s letter detailing her difficult life at Elmano Castle and her pitiful situation of not even having consummated her marriage, the two couldn’t sleep a wink due to their resentment and distress.
Thinking about the humiliation Lariella must have endured in a strange place without a single familiar person made them furious to the point of their hair standing on end. If it weren’t for noble decorum and etiquette, they might have punched the Duke of Elmano in the face.
But now, seeing the Duke of Elmano so helpless and at Lariella’s mercy, they felt refreshed, as if a long-standing indigestion had cleared, and laughter naturally burst forth.
