CH 46

Episode 46: When Sensuality Meets Sensibility (III)

“……What are you talking about?”

I pretended not to know and tried to get away, but he wouldn’t let me go.

Then he said with a serious face.

“I can’t see you anymore.”

It was not like he couldn’t see me at all, but it made me feel weird when he said that.

He slowly tilted his head and spoke again.

“I can’t see you after today.”

It was then that I made a fuss.

“…You can watch from afar. And it’s only a few days.”

Of course, it was he who endured only one day and came to see me.

I looked up at him and asked a little.

“If you can’t see me, will you die?”

“Well.”

Rixus answered with neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’, and nodded his head.

Then, without hesitation, he spoke seriously.

“If I don’t see you, I will die.”

“……”

My heart kept getting weaker. It was a clear foul to look at me at this moment with such a boyish expression and sincere eyes without any lies.

But I couldn’t really blame him.

Rixus slowly lowered his head and kissed me.

The moment when his lips and my lips softly met. The moment when our breath tickled each other’s skin.

It felt like my heart was about to explode.

“……”

The unbearable sensation made me unknowingly put strength into the hand holding his shoulder.

I felt dizzy from head to toe at the strange feeling of the surface of his lips rubbing against mine.

Even the scent of Rixus from the hand that wrapped around my cheek made my heart flutter.

Badump, badump, badump.

A heart was beating wildly, and I did not know whether it was mine or his.

While giving me a soft and dizzy feeling, he hugged my waist and soon dropped his lips gently.

We both inhaled and exhaled a little.

Our heated eyes stared at each other from a mere distance – just a breath apart.

I felt it at that moment.

That Rixus and I were thinking the same thing.

We wanted to hotly mix with each other’s most secret flesh.

But Rixus would remember.

In bed, I warned him that I didn’t like him that much yet……

This was all I allowed him to do.

And as for me… There were thousands of reasons to push Rixus away.

My fingertips were numb, but I struggled to let him go.

From his uneven breathing, I could feel him barely holding back.

“See you at the banquet.”

“…….Yes.”

I replied quietly to his words.

“Don’t dance with anyone.”

A small laugh burst out of me at that childish check.

Even if I met him at the banquet later, I wouldn’t be able to get close to him, so of course we wouldn’t be able to dance.

So I guess I shouldn’t dance with anyone.

“Don’t laugh, answer me.”

“You’re so childish, Rixus.”

He whispered softly through my hair.

“Answer me, Candy.”

I narrowed my eyes and answered the rather persistent request.

“Look.”

“You’re really being too much.”

At his accusation, I put the cloak over his shoulder again and said,

“See you later.”

He nodded. And we turned around at about the same time.

He went out the back door while I went out of the main door.

The secret meeting in the Imperial Library remained a secret known only to the two of us.

* * *

It had already been several days.

Deborah was ignoring Duke Douglas’ divorce petition.

And the duke endured as much as possible. Could he forcefully grab her and drag her out? The wife who had been living together with him for ten years?

‘Duke Douglas is a man who values dignity.’

So he wouldn’t be able to do that.

“Madam! Huff, huff… Madam!”

“What’s going on?”

But on this very afternoon.

With a pale face, a maid came to Deborah with shocking news.

“Right now, servants of the duke are pulling out the clothes from the Madam’s dressing room and loading them on the carriage!”

“……What?!”

Deborah got up immediately and headed to her dressing room.

As soon as she went up the two flights of stairs towards the 3rd floor, her steps came to a standstill.

It was because a small bag fell at her feet like trash.

Beyond that bag, dresses were thrown on the floor in a mess.

The expensive dress she wore to Verdi’s Salon, which looked as if it had butterfly wings attached to it, was torn and turned into a rag.

The purple dress that the servants were casually stepping on…… Duke Douglas gave it to her as a wedding present.

“What are you all doing!”

When she shouted, the servants all stopped at once.

Smack!

Deborah’s fierce hand slapped the chief servant’s cheek.

“You crazy bastards…”

“……”

“How dare you put your dirty hands on my clothes! How dare! Have you gone mad?”

The chief servant licked the red corner of his mouth with his tongue and stared at Deborah with an indifferent face.

And then he said,

“This is the order of Duke Douglas.”

Deborah felt like someone had hit her head with a sledgehammer.

‘…No way.’

She fell into denial for a while, but soon understood the situation, and frowned deeply.

Duke Douglas couldn’t drag his wife out, so he was pulling her stuff out.

To make it impossible for her to live in the ducal mansion.

It was dirty and cheap.

It was an intention to effectively expel Deborah without damaging his dignity.

“Call the Duke! You can’t do this to me! Duke Douglas!”

For a while, Deborah spewed curses and cried for the duke.

“There’s no need to call. I’m here.”

Duke Douglas slowly came down from the upper floor, revealing himself.

He had an expressionless face, as if he had anticipated all this commotion. He rebuked in a dignified voice.

“What a fuss!”

“The Duke made a fuss first. What’s this?”

“My ex-wife, whom I have divorced, is still occupying the mansion, so I have to get rid of her things. Is there any problem?”

Deborah was momentarily speechless. He thought he was already divorced.

She hadn’t even signed the paperwork yet!

“…There’s a problem. How can the duke and his wife’s divorce proceed without dignity?”

It was then. Duke Douglas snorted as if it was ridiculous and exasperating.

Then he looked at her with a strangely contemptuous gaze and said,

“It’s not suitable for a duke’s divorce. But Deborah, it’s suitable for a divorce with you.”

All of a sudden, Deborah was speechless.

The gazes the servants around were giving her felt a bit blue.

She knew what those eyes were.

When she held the head of Countess Mimosa in the salon, she received the same gaze from the nobles all at once.

And before that, Deborah had often received this gaze.

It was a look of pure contempt.

To a person of a lower class that was different from himself. To a woman who was of low origin and did nothing but evil.

Suddenly, she gasped as if someone was squeezing her lungs.

“Deborah, you were a beautiful woman when we first got married.”

“……”

“You were innocent and sweet. I loved that image. Everyone in society liked you too… But now you’ve changed so much.”

Duke Douglas had a bitter and gloomy expression as if he was recalling the past.

‘Did he say I was beautiful in the past?’

Before marrying Duke Douglas, Deborah had taken a job as the count’s maid in place of her parents who played and ate while enjoying ‘aristocratic play’.

She became a maid, and a maid from a barony was given chores like laundry and cleaning.

When she tried to hang out with the other maids, the maids from ‘real noble families’ looked down on her and ridiculed her.

The maids scolded Deborah for being obsessed with aristocratic things while being in a similar state as beggars.

Then, one day, while riding in a carriage with the youngest daughter of the count, an accident occurred.

Deborah, who had escaped from the carriage just because she wanted to stay alive, was beaten hard and cursed at like crazy, and was being blamed for not rescuing the young girl.

“The lady was still in the carriage, but this bitch crawled out first to live?”

“I…”

“Shut up! Do you think all lives are the same?”

She found out then ‘The value of life is different for each person.’

And that her life in that mansion was like that of a worm.

When she said she quit working at the count’s mansion because it was so hard, her father, who was screaming for money every day, strangled her. She wondered if the family would be completely ruined in four years.

Duke Douglas reached out to her who was living in that hell.

Deborah took his hand. She thought it was salvation.

However, the ‘value’ of Deborah’s life was the same even in the social world where she ambitiously made her debut.

People did not respect the duchess, a young lady of a baron family who had suddenly risen to prominence. They looked down on her with contempt.

It was then that Deborah had a dream. To become a person whose ‘life value’ was expensive.

Especially after getting out of the overturning carriage accident, she wanted to become a person who wouldn’t be criticized for trying to live because she was not an important person.

She didn’t want anyone to ignore her.

“Duke Douglas.”

Deborah looked at him while breathing calmly.

“It wasn’t that I was innocent and kind back then… Even if others looked down on me, I couldn’t help but smile like a fool.”

“Deborah!”

“You said that I was beautiful like that?”

Deborah looked at him coldly and continued,

“You don’t know me at all.”

In front of Duke Douglas’ trembling eyes, a bitter smile crossed Deborah’s lips.

‘He has always despised people’s greed for power.’

It was possible because he was already born in a place that didn’t lack anything.

Deborah immediately took the divorce papers and pen from the servant’s hands.

And quickly scribbled her signature.

“Deborah, you… stop!”

Without looking back, Deborah ran down the stairs, as if running away from the past.

Then she picked up a ring that was rolling by her feet.

It was a sapphire ring. Duke Douglas gave it to her as a birthday present.

The ring that he gave as a gift without knowing the size of her ring finger was big enough to even enter her thumb.

Deborah got into the carriage with just that, ready for a new life.

“Madam…! If you go like this…! Where the hell are you going?”

The maid hurriedly followed and asked.

Deborah looked down at her from the carriage window and answered succinctly.

“I’m going to Marquis Kalen. To propose.”

Leaving the maid engulfed in great shock, the carriage drove away from the ducal mansion.