The Pregnant Maid Runs Away - Chapter 9: When You Come To Love The Fragile Thing In Your Embrace (Part 2)
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- The Pregnant Maid Runs Away
- Chapter 9: When You Come To Love The Fragile Thing In Your Embrace (Part 2)
Chapter 9: When You Come To Love The Fragile Thing In Your Embrace (Part 2)
“Ha….”
As Bieren entered the cottage where Lizbeth supposedly stayed, a sigh escaped him. He couldn’t believe she was lying in such a dilapidated and worn-out place even more so than the maid quarters with her pregnant body. Despite all these unfavorable conditions, she seemed happier anywhere but by Bieren’s side. He heard the neat footsteps approaching the cottage. It was Lizbeth coming, and all his resentment and longing for her, all of it, was coming to him.
Thud-
As the rusty latch was pulled, and the door opened, Bieren sat on Lizbeth’s chair, gritting his teeth. The familiar face he had missed so much was before him. At that moment, he was overwhelmed by emotions pouring over him like a waterfall. Despite Lizbeth looking startled as if horrified to see him, her face was still beautiful. But when he saw her swollen belly, it felt like his reason was being torn apart. Surely, it didn’t seem to be his child. If it were his child, she wouldn’t have stiffened like this as soon as she entered her cottage. Bieren felt like he was being thrown into an endless abyss of hell.
“M-milord…”
When Bieren, who used to harshly scold her in his dreams, was standing in front of her, Lizbeth found herself surprisingly happy to see him even in her dreams. But seeing him sitting arrogantly on the shabby chair in the cottage of the almshouse, she could hardly believe it was real. She couldn’t help but be astonished by the battered face of the man who somehow found his way here. The man’s eyes were haggard as if he hadn’t slept much.
“You’ve been hiding in this sunless rat hole.”
Bieren scowled at Lizbeth as she opened the door. He gritted his teeth at the sight of the maid, who stiffened as if she were seeing something terrible. While relieved that she was safe, he felt a pang of regret. Lizbeth, who had withered away like a corpse when trapped in Bieren’s bedroom, was now back to her lively self, stalking around the place. It filled him with despair. It was as if she could only live if she left him. He thought he was the one who Lizbeth needed to survive, but her youthful face now seemed to tell him that she was dying being by his side.
“I kept my distance and left the horse far away when I came because I knew if news of my arrival reached you, you’d run away again.”
Bieren turned to Lizbeth and spoke. Instead of tethering the horse near the almshouse, he left it on the forest path. He didn’t even think about taking a carriage, which would have taken longer than the horse, and he didn’t remember how far he’d walked from where he’d dismounted; he was only concerned with making sure Lizbeth didn’t run away. He even threw away his noble clothes. He wore a shabby poet’s shirt to keep the almshouses off guard, but the nobleman could not disguise his demeanor, and he revealed his lowly heart to Lizbeth.
“You may wish me dead, but as long as I’m breathing, I’ll keep chasing after you.”
“How could I wish for your death?”
Lizbeth shook her head, her eyes watering. Even when he had her trapped and suppressed, she didn’t want to hurt him in the slightest. Because she loved him. As much as she loved him, she wanted to endure everything he threw at her. She wanted to give herself up completely as if she could be handled roughly. But she didn’t want to burden the woman who might become Bieren’s wife in the future with her, his maid, locked in his bedroom. If she stayed by his side, the child in her womb would become the duke’s illegitimate child, destined to be separated from her forever. It was something she couldn’t do to the child.
“Why is your face so battered?”
Lizbeth fretted as she looked at Bieren’s exhausted face. Despite knowing that she should leave this man behind and flee at once, she found herself reaching for him. His face was charred black from sleep deprivation. As the maid took a step towards him, Bieren’s chest tightened, pouring out the question with a bitter tone.
“You’re worrying about me, yet planning to run away?”
To Bieren, the maid’s tender gaze seemed like a lie. If she truly loved him so much, she wouldn’t have run away while he was gone. She wouldn’t have left him to suffer through those hellish days alone. He felt more despair than when Lizbeth was chained in his bedroom, looking at him with her dying eyes. When he saw the maid, the one thing he couldn’t have even if he locked her up, looked at him with pity, he spoke like a man who had come to his senses.
“How could you be so reckless as to think about running away with a child?”
The suppressed worry surged within him. Bieren wanted to question how she could come all the way here and still work with a full-term pregnancy. He couldn’t understand why she would go to such lengths. He didn’t know why she had hated it so much, why she had run away from all her fine bedchambers, why she had thrown off all her costly finery, why she had picked up rags and seemed so happy to mingle with the lowly, but here she was again, as vibrant as a flower that had found its place in the field. He, who had once thought to break her and put her in a vase, now felt like nothing but a foolish and petty human. Her life and his were so different.
“If you’re running away with a child, does that mean the child is someone else’s?”
Bieren painted countless dreadful conjectures as he rode here. He envisioned scenes where Lizbeth was in intimate moments with another man or nursing a newborn baby that bore no resemblance to him. He hoped none of them were true. He hoped Lizbeth would tell him that the child in her womb was his and even if she lied, he could live with that lie as the truth for the rest of his life.
“…It’s not your child, Duke.”
Lizbeth spoke, swallowing her fear in the face of Bieren’s questioning. She had anticipated such a nightmarish moment would come. She had a feeling that he would demand her to present the child to him. Bieren, faced with the audacious maid who finally admitted that the child wasn’t his, gnashed his teeth so hard it seemed his jaw might dislocate.
“You must have really enjoyed it, eagerly taking my cock day and night, yet still unsatisfied to the point where you even brought another man to take.”
The maid, whom Bieren had soothingly taught to lick and suck his cock, had taken another man’s cock and bore his offspring while he teetered between life and death. The faceless man had shamelessly indulged in the tender body that should be Bieren’s, impregnating her and cowardly fleeing. A decisive action needed to be taken. Bieren vowed to find that man and strip his skin off.
“…So please, let me and the child go.”
Lizbeth, trembling like a leaf before the cold gaze of the man, managed to finish her plea. She didn’t want to be dragged back to the ducal estate again, trapped in the bedroom without even seeing her child. Bieren’s heart felt shattered into pieces as he looked at the trembling maid pleading for freedom, but he ignored the pain and spoke.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Bieren didn’t care who the child’s father was. In Lizbeth’s absence, he’d long since finished fantasizing about her having a new man and a harmonious family, and her words were just one of the worst of a myriad of horrible fantasies. Bieren would accept her still, even though she bore another man’s seed.
“I don’t care if you’re pregnant with another man’s offspring. You’re mine and the child is mine.”