Chapter 9: When You Come To Love The Fragile Thing In Your Embrace (Part 8)

The jeweler summoned to the Duke’s mansion measured the fingers of the woman lying like a corpse and left. Bieren hoped that Lizbeth would wake up while the ring was being made. However, she did not wake up until Bieren’s arbitrarily crafted diamond ring was completed. Bieren, who had promised to propose if she woke up, now began to realize his mistake. The ring was just another product of his obsession.

Did Lizbeth really accept me that day in the field?

No. So if she woke up, she would surely leave him. Yet, he still wished for her to wake up. Even if he had to let her go, as long as she woke up, there was nothing left to hope for.

“How is the child doing?” 

The butler was surprised by Bieren’s inquiry about the child for the first time. He immediately ordered someone else to bring the child to him. Bieren had forgotten about the child in his preoccupation with the possibility of Lizbeth’s passing. No, he was afraid to face the fact that he was the one who drove her to death. He didn’t want to fulfill her last wish of raising the child. He didn’t want to admit that those might have been her final words. But as he held the child, he was captivated by the unbelievable warmth of the small being. 

“He has black hair like you, Your Grace.”

The butler said as he handed Lizbeth’s child to Bieren. It was then that Bieren realized that the child’s hair had grown. The child, whom he hadn’t seen since Lizbeth had fallen unconscious, had grown hair and his eyes had become a little clearer. Blinking his eyes like his mother, the child bore a striking resemblance to Lizbeth.

“Eyes as emerald as yours.”

Bieren was captivated by the child’s eyes, shining like tiny gems, and murmured to Lizbeth. He had a gut feeling that if he had seen this child even once, he would have no choice but to love her. It was impossible not to love Lizbeth’s child, who resembled her. It felt like an inevitable force. It was impossible to hate such a child. Even if the child had belonged to someone else, Bieren would have grown to love them. Because it was Lizbeth’s child.

“Look at this. This precious child you entrusted to me even on your brink of death.”

Bieren moved to Lizbeth’s side, who hadn’t awakened. He knew Lizbeth would open her eyes to see this beautiful child, even if she didn’t want to see him. He wanted to bring her back from the depths of her coma, to see her blinking her emerald eyes up at him, looking up at him.

“You have to wake up now. You can’t just leave your child with me. You can’t leave me with your child.”

Bieren remembered the affection Lizbeth had poured onto him when she was just a mere servant girl. He encountered her oasis-like affection in his desert-like life. He had doubted, tested, and treated her recklessly, wondering if her affection was an illusion. He had dammed the spring of her overflowing affection. Bieren only realized his mistakes after everything had turned into a barren wasteland. 

“I have given you nothing.”

Bieren felt ashamed of himself for trying to win her affection with dresses and jewels. While Lizbeth’s child filled him with such warmth, he offered her nothing but a chance to a life of extravagance, pretending that it was enough to possess her. But such trivial things couldn’t measure Lizbeth’s worth.

“Let me give something to you too.” 

Bieren murmured as he cradled Lizbeth’s child in his arms. In the embrace where Lizbeth, who had given nothing but love throughout her life, had once held, there remained only the fragile warmth. The man who hadn’t shed a tear even when his father died was now feeling the weight of death day by day. The fear of death stemmed from the realization that nothing could be done for the deceased. Neither forgiveness nor begging for affection. Nothing could be done. Yet, Bieren did not cry. To cry would be to acknowledge Lizbeth’s death, and in denial of it all, he held back even his tears.  

* * *

When Lizbeth opened her eyes, it was as if she had woken up from a very long dream. In that dream, she had loved and had a child with her beloved. The times she had loved him sometimes brought her pain. However, in the end, she closes her eyes in the arrogant embrace of him confessing his love. As Lizbeth’s heavy eyelids fluttered open, her blurry vision gradually sharpened until it fully captured the man before her. Bieren bore the countenance of a man who had just parted with his wife. The arrogance in his golden eyes had vanished, replaced only by loss. 

“Now it seems I’m seeing hallucinations again.”

Bieren muttered dully upon seeing Lizbeth awake. She couldn’t understand why he treated her like a hallucination. She tried to speak, but her body, still immersed in a deep slumber, didn’t respond properly. As she struggled with her lips, Bieren continued to speak dully.

“I’m grateful that I can see you, even if it’s in hallucinations.”

Bieren had finally accepted that Lizbeth’s hallucinations were real. He spoke to them countless times a day, receiving no response, but he was grateful to feel as if he were conversing with her. He placed the engagement ring he had made on her left hand onto her ring finger. Every time he sensed how emaciated her fingers were, to the point where they couldn’t even hold onto a man’s belongings, he felt a pang of guilt for treating such a fragile and delicate woman so callously.

“This is the engagement ring I made for you. If you don’t accept it, I’ll wear it forever.” 

Bieren murmured, fondling the ring on her finger out of habit. Lizbeth couldn’t imagine what loss had driven him to cling to a possession during her unconsciousness. Bieren continued to stroke Lizbeth’s hand and whispered, his lips brushing against hers. 

“I’m sure you don’t want to hear me say I love you anymore.”

Lizbeth had never heard him say he loved her enough to be tired of it while she was awake, and her heart ached to hear how many confessions he must have poured out in his anguish over losing her. Her heart ached to imagine how desperate this arrogant man must have become to confess his feelings.

“I dare not now ask you to allow me to be by your side, nor will I ask you to mend me if you do not wish to mend me.”

Bieren whispered, pressing his cheek against Lizbeth’s palm. He repeated his request for her to allow him to be by her side. But now he knew that all his pleas were meaningless as he was just hallucinating. If he truly loved her, he shouldn’t demand what he wanted but rather give her what she desired. In his inadequacy, he finally understood and accepted this truth. Bieren added with a resigned voice,

“Now, if only you would come back to life, I could send you anywhere.”

Bieren could now understand his father. It seemed to him that his dying father must have known about his mother’s affair. There was no way he couldn’t have known the change in her face, the color in her eyes, the way she dressed, resembling a woman reborn from her deathbed. Yet, his father let her do as she pleased because he loved her. He hoped she would live freely instead of being left behind after his death. 

Bieren considered it foolish and pathetic to tread the same path as his father. But now he had finally accepted that he had become someone like him. He might be able to let go for love. Even if he would wither away without Lizbeth, he had to send her off to live happily.

“That’s how much I love you.”

Bieren repeated the declaration of love she was probably sick of hearing. It was a love that only knew how to confine and wield, a love he’d only ever known how to keep her on a leash for the rest of her life, but now he knew how to let go. Lizbeth, barely able to open her mouth towards the man confessing love with his face buried in his palm, managed to speak.

“Lord, my lord….”