Chapter 9 – Falling in Love Again (1)

With his arms spread wide, smiling, and leaving only enough distance between them that if either one of them lowered their head even a little, their noses would touch at once, he asked her.

To hug him just once.

And then he thought he would be able to fall asleep tonight.

She understood at once what he meant.

He had suffered from insomnia ever since he was a very young child. He was probably still unable to sleep well these days too.

Now that she thought about it, that beautiful face of his, those fine features, did seem slightly shadowed beneath his eyes, even under the dim night sky, and her eyes caught it clearly.

She drew in a sharp breath.

She could not bring herself to turn her back on him here.

In childhood, whenever they had the rare chance to meet, they would chase butterflies in the rear garden together and run about for a long while, picking flowers and playing here and there, and when the time came to part, they always said goodbye by holding each other in a warm, tight embrace.

Martin used to tease her, sniffing at the air and saying that after she had run around and played so much, she smelled fragrant, like flowers, like honey. And if he breathed in that scent to his heart’s content, then as if by magic he could sleep comfortably that very night. That after sleeping deeply without nightmares, he would wake refreshed the next day.

That was how it had been.

“So you still can’t sleep well these days, Your Highness.”

“I told you not to call me that. Irenie. Yes. Ever since you stopped hugging me, I’ve never once been able to sleep properly. So hug me.”

Like a child asking to be indulged. He leaned in closer.

Had the Martin of the past really been like this?

In her previous life, the one she had lived through was like a long nightmare…… when they met again then, he had already become a mature young man, so stirred that even the mere brush of their fingertips made him restless for a kiss, unable to hide his eagerness.

But he had never stubbornly insisted over forms of address like this, nor asked her to hug him as though he were still a child……

Still, whether he was that man from then or this man now…… whether he was the Martin of childhood, to her, he was simply him.

The only person she had ever loved. And even now, a being who made her heart pound violently from the smallest gesture or tone of his.

Martin.

“If I hug you just once, you’re going straight back to the Imperial Palace. If you don’t, then both you and I will be put in a difficult position, Your Highness.”

And so she only wrapped her arms around him as lightly and gently as she could, leaning the slightest bit against him…… and though even that was already conduct far beyond and improper to the etiquette and decorum due an audience with the Crown Prince, she still tried to take the posture of an embrace as carefully as possible.

But he swept her up into his arms.

As though the two of them had not been separated for eight years at all. As though, across those decades that she had lived through like a long nightmare, he too had spent all that time carrying layer upon layer of deepening loneliness and longing within his whole body. So that with this one fierce embrace, he seemed ready to crush all that deep and distant pain into nothing.

“Heu-up. I, I can’t breathe. Y-Your Highness. If, if someone were to see……”

She desperately tried to wriggle free from his arms as quickly as she could. But both her words and her movements were swallowed up and faded away within his embrace.

He was holding her tightly, as if he would never let her go.

For a long time, just like that.

Yet while enclosing her within that firm, solid bond, making certain that no one and nothing could intrude between them.

In the stubbornness with which he held her, she could only remain helplessly compressed by his presence, and before she knew it, even her wariness and awkwardness were melting away inside his arms.

“Heu-up…… Y-Your Highness……”

“Irenie, you have to call me Martin. Otherwise I’ll hold you like this all night. Because only when I hold you this way does it feel like you’re my Irenie, and I’m your Martin.”

His breath breaking against the shell of her ear, and that soft yet resolute tone.

She could resist no longer.

“Ma…… ma…… Martin……”

“Yes, Irenie. Your Martin. I’ve missed you every day. And now, in this moment while I’m holding you like this, I’m grateful to you. Thank you for coming back to my arms like this.”

Come back?

Did he mean that it felt as though their childhood had returned again? Because of the dizzying force of that moment, because of the heat of that embrace, she had no leisure to ask again or think any further.

When she called him Martin, he loosened the way he had been holding her as though binding her tightly, and looked over her face and body again. Then he drew her into a lighter, gentler embrace once more, and finally let her go, unable to hide his reluctance.

“I’ll come again tomorrow. Here, at this time.”

“No, no, you can’t. Absolutely not.”

“Why not? Then will you come to the palace tomorrow in the daytime? Should I, hmm, perhaps hold a court chamber orchestra performance? Yes, then let’s say you’ll come to hear that.”

He spoke with impatient urgency, as though he could not even bear waiting until late tomorrow evening.

“No, I’m not going to the palace. I really don’t feel very well.”

Unlike a little earlier, when she had reassured him that she had no fever, now she felt she had no choice but to quickly change both her expression and her words and use feeling unwell as an excuse.

“Are you really ill somewhere? You said you don’t have a fever? This won’t do. Let’s go to the Imperial Palace now. I need to show you to the Imperial physician. When everyone was saying Father had no hope, after he had been ill for so long, Imperial Physician Sir Bertrand brought every kind of medicine, and now he’s recovered completely.”

He looked ready to lift her up at once, seat her upon his horse while holding her in his arms, and race to the Imperial Palace in a single breath.

“No, no. I only…… I just want to rest comfortably in my own home.”

Standing before him again after eight years, she did not want to let any word that might suggest her monthly bleeding pass her lips.

“Really? Then all right……. Rest, then. Instead, I’ll come here around this time.”

“No. If the Imperial household were to find out…… my parents might be put in a very difficult position as well.”

“No, why……”

He seemed to fall into thought for a moment, then nodded. It was certainly not the sort of thing that should ever pass anyone’s lips, for an unmarried Crown Prince who had come of age to be secretly meeting a noble Earl’s daughter at night.

“This won’t do. I’ll have to invite you formally to the palace and summon you there. That way, you and I can meet openly.”

“Ma…… Martin……. We aren’t children anymore. Even simply summoning me as a companion to speak with would put us on many people’s tongues.”

“You were my only friend then, and you still are now.”

Yes, that much was true. When it came to being unusually shy and slow to open their hearts to others, the Martin of childhood and she had been the same.

Even when some young lord or young lady from another noble family had been assigned to keep Crown Prince Martinez company as a child, because Martinez did not want them there, they would return without lasting even a morning, often not even one or two hours.

That was how, in childhood, they had been singular and special to one another.

“And now I’m not trying to summon you merely as a friend. I want to summon you as my fiancée. Of course, I am going to formally propose to you and to your family. So please pretend you didn’t hear this part, Irenia del Tieri.”

Saying that, he even hastily bent one knee and inclined his head, as though merely speaking of an engagement, of a proposal, even for a moment made him wish to show the proper courtesy.

Though there was a playful note to the gesture, before him, speaking so naturally and without hesitation, making a proposal, that is, an engagement, sound like a settled fact, she was struck speechless.

In her memory, they met again after eight years not in the back garden of an Earl’s residence, but in the rear garden of the Imperial Palace, and that night, unable to contain their joy…… they embraced each other. Held in his arms, and then without either of them knowing who moved first, their lips intertwined, and at the end of sharing those desperate breaths, the depth of their passion grew and they kept yearning for one another more and more…… and so she gave him all of herself, beginning with her lips and all those movements besides. It had seemed only too natural that she would become his woman…… swept away in the frenzy of love, she had given him her first time that day.

But in order to avoid exactly that, she had skipped the imperial banquet and hidden herself quietly in her bedroom, lost in thought over how to avoid the misfortune that would soon come crashing down…….. She had never imagined that he would come looking for her like this. And though they had not yet shared a heated kiss this time, a mere embrace alone had awakened every sensation she had once felt in his arms.

He made the effort of the past few hours, in which she had been wholly occupied with planning how to flee from him and stay far away from him, seem meaningless. On top of that, he was treating their engagement as something only natural and already decided.

“Martin……. ah, no, Your Highness the Crown Prince……. Those words are too much, even as a joke. I shall pretend I did not hear your jest just now.”

Even as she did not know what she ought to do, to be honest, a small part of her still felt hurt. He had said he intended to formally propose to her and to her family soon…… and yet before that, to casually say half in jest, almost playfully, that he would summon her to the palace as his fiancée.

If that truly happened, then though he knew nothing at all of the aftermath that would come blowing in afterward…… she knew how monstrous and cruel the trials she would have to endure were, and her expression hardened. In the end, it had come to this. She had met him again, and he still wanted her. But if he chose her, then dark times too dreadful even to speak of would follow. With a face so utterly guileless, after that embrace, he was now asking for the whole of her life.

“I disappointed you by saying it too suddenly, didn’t I…… I’m sorry, Irenie. To me, becoming engaged to you is such a natural thing……. In truth, for all eight years, this was the very moment I was waiting for. I wanted to propose to you on the day we met again. I was going to propose to you in a garden full of delphiniums, your favorite flowers……”

Only then did he look at her as though he understood all her feelings, and open up his heart that way. But even at the word delphinium, all she felt was a pain slicing through her heart. She should never have loved that flower. The beings to whom she had given that flower’s name had become an unerasable pain to her.

So, Martinez, please, no longer keep that flower, or me, or that name in your heart.

In this life, please do not love me.

That was the only thing she wanted to ask of him.

But he paid no heed to such feelings of hers, and simply stepped close again, his hardened face pouring out a fierce affection, love, desire, a passion so great that no matter what name one gave it, the name would be too small to contain it, and he pressed his lips to hers.

The moment their lips met, as though he meant to draw in all her breath, all her memories, all her sorrow, and swallow them away, he took her in with such heat and force.

At his heated kiss, it felt as though not only her lips but her whole soul might be drawn into him. And so, in that dizziness and intensity, she felt she might lose consciousness at once, or else simply fail to reject him and leave her body in his hands, to be guided wherever he led.

“S-stop…… heu-up…… Ma, Martinez…… huu……”

Gently, slowly, he kept taking the edge of her lips into his mouth and letting them go, over and over, until before she knew it, his warm, full tongue had swept over every part of the soft inside of her mouth. All of those desperate movements seemed to stir something deep within her belly.