“It’s not that. My body hasn’t been well lately. I’ve been sleeping more than usual, it’s strange.”

She goes out on walks whenever she likes, leading servants behind her.

She spends her days idling in her room, and she claims her body isn’t well. And she’s sleeping more?

Contempt settled into Kaiden’s eyes, and Elsie’s cheeks trembled.

“What a worthless excuse. I almost want to laugh.”

“I’m just……”

She drew in a breath. Strangely, once it went in, it didn’t come back out.

She swallowed down the sick feeling rising inside her and looked at Kaiden steadily.

He had refused the divorce last time. So why was he treating her this badly.

The Kaiden of her childhood, no. The Kaiden before and after the wedding, hadn’t been like this.

“Are you going to marry Professor Eleanor Underwood?”

Elsie fixed her gaze on him and asked sharply.

“……What?”

“The newspaper said so. And I saw the two of you walking in the garden.”

“Ha. Now you’re digging into my affairs? Like that damned Count Resleth used to?”

She had no idea why her father’s name was coming up here.

Thrown by his reaction, Elsie bit down on her lower lip.

“It’s not like that. Someone left a newspaper on the table and I read it. And I saw you during a walk while I was painting.”

“Typical of a count’s daughter with nothing better to do.”

A dismissive, mocking reply.

Any desire to continue the conversation drained away. Elsie stared at him, and he met that look with open irritation.

“……Give me a divorce.”

After an uncomfortable silence, a conclusion that had nothing to do with what came before slipped out.

“Haa…… That again.”

Elsie squeezed her eyes shut.

It seemed like the only answer, and she couldn’t understand why Kaiden kept refusing.

“If we divorce, there’s nothing left to be angry about.”

She said it plainly.

But Kaiden said nothing for a long moment.

His lips set into a hard line, and his fingertips trembled faintly.

Then, at last, he let out a breath and looked away.

“So the great Elsie Resleth is well aware that I’m angry because of her. And yet she sleeps without a care. Still the same.”

She should reflect on herself and change. That thought never crossed her mind.

That was the kind of woman Elsie was.

“All she’d have to do is shed that rotten noble way of hers…… and I’m wasting my time arguing with a woman who can’t even manage that. I knew it. I’ll never have any feeling for you. Not in this lifetime.”

What?

Tears began to fill Elsie’s green eyes.

There had been a time when Kaiden had confessed his love to her. Said he would be with her for the rest of his life.

So why had he become like this.

No. She had known, really. That this was who he truly was.

The tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

Kaiden looked at her biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, and spoke again.

“Live a life of misery in place of Count Resleth, who died for nothing. That’s your reason for being alive.”

It was the kind of words that would tear a chest into a thousand pieces.

The person she had loved most drove a sharp blade through her heart and split it apart.

“Father was…… you……”

Elsie’s words were swallowed by the sob breaking loose from her throat before she could finish.

Kaiden watched her finally break down and clicked his tongue.

“Then again, who would ever care for the daughter of Count Resleth.”

It was a quiet mutter, but it drove itself clearly into her ears.

“Consider the divorce unsaid.”

“Iden!”

Her voice, thick with tears, splintered in every direction.

“The doctor said there was nothing particularly wrong with your health. And……”

Kaiden’s gaze swept over the paintings leaning neatly against the wall.

From sunrise to sunset. The paintings, capturing the passage of time step by step, looked warm, and yet gave off a strangely desolate feeling.

“You also seem perfectly capable of keeping up your pointless hobby.”

A young lady learning to paint for her own personal satisfaction.

While people with nothing to eat were crowding the streets begging, she had hired a private tutor and poured money and time into a pastime of no use to anyone’s survival.

A woman who had indulged in that kind of luxury her entire life, unchanged even as the world turned.

He had no patience left for this, and he no longer wanted to be here. Being in the same room as her made it hard to breathe.

“But……”

Elsie had barely begun to finish her sentence when Kaiden was gone.

She watched him disappear with a hollow swiftness and let out a sob.

Why on earth……

She couldn’t begin to understand why Kaiden, who seemed to despise her, refused to let her go.

***

Kaiden hated her.

But he wouldn’t give her a divorce.

Turning the contradiction over and over in her mind, Elsie leafed listlessly through her botanical encyclopedia.

She turned a page, and sleep crashed over her without warning. Her head drooped.

She had been trying not to fall asleep, but the drowsiness that kept sweeping in still tormented her.

Even now, one wrong move and she would be out again.

Knock knock.

“Come in.”

Jasper entered.

“My lady, I’ve come with documents that need your signature.”

“I reviewed and signed next month’s budget yesterday……”

“This is an urgent matter.”

Jasper set a sheet of paper on the table without further explanation, as though he had said all he intended to.

“Sale of Resleth personal assets?”

“Yes. There are plans to return to society the things greedily acquired by bleeding the people dry.”

That……

That was fair enough.

If that was what people wanted, it was all the more right that it should be done.

The Resleth estate was an ownerless house either way, and the things inside were ownerless things. If returning them could help people in some way, that was a good thing.

“But why the paintings? I’d like these brought back.”

Her eyes had landed on the childhood paintings of hers still kept in the Resleth estate.

“Ah, the incident at the National Museum the other day has been causing headaches.”

The words landed like a threat, and she fell silent.

“So it was decided to donate the paintings to the National Museum.”

“What?”

What did that have to do with any of this.

She looked up at Jasper, who was smiling with a thin, unpleasant edge.

“The intention is to use them as a cautionary example of how lavishly the nobility of that era lived. The museum has agreed.”

“My paintings are going to be used…… like that?”

It was horrible.

She had painted because she loved it, because nature was so beautiful to her. She had simply wanted to put that beauty onto canvas.

That was all it had ever been. So why were these being made into a cautionary example.

“Are you intending to refuse the National Museum’s wishes?”

Jasper’s eyes narrowed. His face twisted with something close to disgust.

“Isn’t contributing to this society in whatever way possible what you should be doing, my lady? It’s better than simply consuming resources.”

“But these weren’t painted to be used that way. I…… I know what I felt when I painted them.”

“That’s irrelevant. People who struggled so hard to survive that painting never even crossed their minds will look at these and be reminded of Citizen’s Day. How wonderful.”

Jasper pressed his index finger firmly onto the signature line.

If she signed, the paintings would be hung in the museum under the worst possible framing, and people would point at them with scorn.

She hadn’t painted them to be mocked like that.

“My lady, there isn’t much time.”

Jasper’s urging made Elsie’s hand tremble as she gripped the pen.

“What if I don’t sign?”

“This was approved by the master. Not signing is not an option.”

“……Iden did?”

“Yes.”

Ah.

This was a coercion so wretched it made her skin crawl.

Don’t cry. You can’t cry.

Elsie barely held back the tears. She didn’t want to break down in front of Jasper.

She signed slowly, deliberately.

“Thank you, my lady.”

Jasper smiled with satisfaction and left the room.

It felt as though a piece of her heart had been torn out.

Alone at last, Elsie let herself cry.

***

When one half of a couple was active outside the home, it was generally expected that the other would manage the household.

Kaiden was a soldier and a central figure in the revolutionary forces, so naturally the estate’s affairs fell to Elsie.

Even so, most of what was assigned to her amounted to minor tasks that required no real thought, or simply adding her signature to things Jasper had already handled.

The monthly budget review was different, at least. That she handled with care, offering her own input as she went.

But after the paintings were donated, things changed.

Elsie looked up at Jasper, who had placed a stack of complicated documents in front of her, her expression troubled.

“This…… I think it would be better to ask my husband when he returns.”

She murmured uncertainly, skimming through the papers.

She would have liked more information, but Jasper offered nothing further.

“There isn’t time for that.”

“Then tell me what you think, Jasper. I’ll take it as a reference.”