“So I told you to eat well and live well…”

She wasn’t coming back. Evelyn clutched her stomach with both hands and tears streamed down. She didn’t know why it felt like the sky was collapsing. The grief was maddening.

“What are you talking about, Evelyn? Explain so we can understand.”

“Hiding the fact that Evelyn was pregnant was my fault, but suspecting something between Sheila and me is a complete misunderstanding.”

“Don’t come near me if you don’t want to get bitten.”

She threw out the pathetic threat she could muster, but Elkas closed the distance in one stride and embraced Evelyn without hesitation. She struggled to escape from his arms, but the arm around her shoulders wouldn’t budge.

“Let go! Let go, I said. Popo, bite him!”

She cried out urgently, but Popo, who’d been sitting on the flower bed with its bottom planted, staring wide-eyed, leisurely passed her by and rubbed its body against Elkas’s leg.

‘You too. This traitor.’

Evelyn glared resentfully at Popo, whose sociability had improved, and wiped away the tears that had started flowing. Elkas repeatedly stroked Evelyn’s thin back as she cried.

“Please calm down. Evelyn, getting this worked up isn’t good for the baby either.”

“When you don’t even want this child…”

At that moment, cold hands cupped both of Evelyn’s cheeks and lifted them. His clear eyes rippled painfully, seeming to say he didn’t even want to think about it.

“Evelyn, no matter how angry you are, don’t say such things carelessly. Our child is listening.”

Evelyn flinched at those words and closed her mouth with a gasp, but she didn’t have the presence of mind to control the emotions welling up inside.

“You love Sister, not me.”

“…!”

Seeing his pupils dilate widely, Evelyn bit her lip. She’d thought he would either agree or try to deceive her by denying it, but unable to face him any longer, she closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to hear either option with her own ears, so she covered her ears with both hands. But even that was pulled down pathetically by Elkas’s hands.

“Didn’t I tell you not to turn away from me?”

On that day when he’d seemed so unfamiliar, Elkas had said exactly that. 

She hunched her shoulders, remembering the day she’d first thought he might be a frightening man, but Evelyn cried out like she’d been wronged.

“You’re the one who betrayed me first, My Lord Duke. I’m your wife.”

The words tumbled out haphazardly, driven by grief. But Elkas’s expression as he quietly listened was strange. More precisely, his blue-gray eyes, tinged with an unusual light, trembled finely like someone who’d heard something deeply moving.

“Say it again.”

“…You like Sister, not me. So why did you propose to me… mmph…”

Suddenly kissed, Evelyn’s eyes went round, then she looked past his shoulder at Sheila. Her sister, who’d been standing there looking confused, now wore an extremely pleased expression.

Why is Sister looking so pleased when a man having an affair is kissing his wife?

More importantly, we’re in the middle of a fight—what is this suddenly?

“So… the reason you were upset with me… you thought I didn’t love you? Is that right? Tell me again…”

Elkas’s face as he asked repeatedly looked incredibly bright. Evelyn was dazed by the sudden change in situation. Then he threw out a completely unexpected question.

“Evelyn, do you love me?”

“…!”

Flustered by the unexpected question, Evelyn quickly shook her head from side to side. Then, recognizing how unnatural that action was, an impulsive answer popped out between her lips.

“I… I don’t love you anymore.”

“Then did you love me before?”

Oh no. Caught by her careless answer, Evelyn’s eyes trembled.

“Tell me clearly. Evelyn, do you… love me?”

His gaze, pressing close, seemed to poke at her heart, urging her to tell the truth.

“…Maybe I did?”

She could see Elkas’s narrowed eyes slowly widening. At his persistent questioning, Evelyn opened her mouth with an attitude that said, so what if I did?

“It’s natural for a wife to love her husband. But My Lord Duke, you don’t love me, you… mmph…”

Their lips pressed together again, and flesh pushed in like a charging beast. Warm breath scattered ticklishly inside her small lips.

While flesh and flesh intertwined, Elkas didn’t even close his eyes, staring at her intently with deep eyes.

Kissed again.

When Evelyn, who’d been blinking blankly, belatedly tapped his arm, those cruel lips finally moved away, seemingly to tease her.

Evelyn, about to get angry immediately, was a little surprised when she saw Elkas’s face.

Because Elkas was smiling brightly with a face she’d truly never seen before.

Elkas’s sweet voice flowed into the ears of Evelyn, who’d frozen with a dazed face, as their eyes met.

“Evelyn. I’m the one who… loves you.”

“…!”

Firm hands slowly stroked down Evelyn’s back. She had the illusion that the soft knuckles pressing against her skin were trembling finely.

Elkas’s emotion upon learning that the reason Evelyn had sulked and left home was none other than jealousy was that profound. Having jealousy toward him meant there was that much affection backing it.

Throughout the half year they’d lived as husband and wife, Elkas hadn’t felt certain about Evelyn’s feelings.

Though they shared their bodies every day, Evelyn had never once directly expressed her feelings with words.

The remarkable man who had nothing to envy in the world felt extremely anxious about that fact.

What if she was only staying by his side because she had no choice?

What if her touch toward him, like kindness shown to an injured animal, stopped at emotions formed from simple pity?

Ironically, for Elkas who had nothing to fear, the most frightening and sad thing was that she might not have feelings for him.

How could he not be happy about his wife’s honest feelings showing through for the first time?

Elkas’s confession that burst out earlier and the man’s ecstatic expression only intensified Evelyn’s confusion. That wasn’t among the answers she’d expected.

Her lips gaped in surprise, unable to do this or that. That’s when Evelyn spotted a man walking out from inside the greenhouse where she’d thought only Elkas and Sheila were present, and she stepped back with a start.

“H-how…”

“My my, the Duke and Duchess have such marital harmony. How enviable.”

“Oh my, Douglas, you’re here?”

“I made you wait. More importantly, did I interrupt my wife’s secret meeting?”

Lord Douglas, her sister’s husband, laughed heartily and lightly pecked Sheila’s cheek.

“Really… you shouldn’t tease Evelyn. When you’re pregnant, even trivial things make you sensitive. Did you forget about the Berrium bracelet incident?”

“Ah… please stop going to your family home. I can recognize it today. Oh… the blue earrings suit you well.”

“Hmph. You pass today. Next time if you can’t answer correctly when I ask, I won’t come back at all.”

The more she watched the harmonious couple, the more Evelyn felt like she’d been dropped alone into a separate world, soaked in bewilderment. 

What were the three of them doing here together, including Lord Douglas, Sheila’s husband?

Moreover, unlike the rumors she’d heard before, they didn’t look like their relationship was strained. Rather, Sister’s behavior, seemingly manipulating Lord Douglas in the palm of her hand, looked quite satisfactory.

When she looked at Elkas with eyes seeking an explanation.

“Are you finally ready to listen to my story?”

Evelyn nodded silently. From experience, an undeniable premonition rang through her head that she’d caused trouble again after a long while.

* * *

Evelyn sat at a table set up in the middle of the greenhouse where the scent of fresh flowers spread between the clear babbling stream, fidgeting with both hands.

<We’ll excuse ourselves now.>

Silence had continued since her sister and brother-in-law left a moment ago. With those two people in the center, cat meows echoed continuously in the greenhouse.

Meow-ow…

Meow…

Seeming to give her time to think calmly, Elkas silently drank fragrant tea. After calming down for a while, Evelyn spoke up.

“Really… you prepared this place for me? Why?”

“I wanted to see Evelyn’s smiling face.”

Surprisingly, inside the greenhouse where Douglas had walked out from, a familiar scene unfolded. And when she discovered nearly twenty cats, she couldn’t help but be amazed.

Her cats from the shabby cabin at Windelson had been moved to the greenhouse at the Berenberg Ducal Estate. 

A few weeks ago, she hadn’t visited due to the butler’s mention of new construction, so she hadn’t known the interior had changed this much.

Though it maintained the basic form of a greenhouse, the name “cats’ playground” suited it better. 

One side had a space where cats could freely run and play, the opposite side had cat towers of various heights, and the back had individual cat houses and even soft sand laid out.

It was a moment when she naturally understood that the reason Elkas and Sheila had been meeting occasionally was to discuss moving the cats Evelyn had been raising at Windelson here.

Sheila, moved by Elkas’s proposal to bring the cats as a gift for Evelyn, had helped wholeheartedly. All this time, Elkas hadn’t been making just a simple greenhouse but creating a sanctuary for cats.

<Then why did Sister keep staying at her family home? I heard you fought with the Marquis…>

<We did have a row. This person didn’t even notice I was wearing the necklace I worked so hard to obtain. The person who praised my beauty before marriage changed too much, and I got angry and went home.>

It was truly an anticlimactic answer for the cause of the discord rumors that had been circulating.

Furthermore, Elkas candidly revealed why he’d hidden the pregnancy from Evelyn all this time. 

The estate’s security had become tight because remnants of the rebellion that once occurred in the territory might target Evelyn, so he’d hidden it for the time being.

Consequently, the secret meeting between the two had been Evelyn’s misunderstanding from the start, and she’d just spread the wings of her imagination alone.

“Evelyn, how did you come to such a misunderstanding?”

“Well… I saw you and Sister coming out of a room together at the palace. Both of you had disheveled clothes too…”

Elkas, only now learning that Evelyn had come looking for him, immediately remembered which day that was. He let out a hollow laugh. 

His young wife spoke with pouting lips like she was shooting back, but to Elkas’s ears, it sounded sweeter than any other words.

“You misunderstood just because of that? Ha… Evelyn… Theo was in that room that day. During our conversation, the child knocked over a water bottle and we both got doused, so we rushed to change clothes.”

“…Really?”

“The child’s nanny was also in that room that day, so I can prove it. More importantly, how could you possibly misunderstand like that?”

“But… Elkas, you sometimes show symptoms of your illness. To calm it down quickly, someone has to help… and when I’m not there, that person would…”

Though unrefined sentences tumbled out incoherently, Evelyn confessed honestly.

Not only because of Caroline’s suspicion, but at her reaction showing she’d truly believed it, Elkas brought up those words.