The maids blanched at my words and each grabbed one of the nursemaid’s arms. But the two slender women were no match for the stout woman’s weight and strength. I glanced toward another maid who had been standing awkwardly nearby. Unlike the others, she seemed quick-witted enough to understand immediately and hurried over to help restrain the nursemaid.
“M-My lady, how could you… how could you…!”
Even as the maids dragged her away, the nursemaid kept muttering in disbelief, as though she still could not comprehend what had happened. There was no doubt she would sulk for quite some time afterward. Just imagining the effort it would take to soothe her already made my head throb.
I was especially exhausted today.
“Please don’t just stand there. Have a seat, Countess.”
I sat down at the table and gestured toward the chair across from me. The Countess looked at me with an odd expression.
“Didn’t you come because you had something to say?”
“You are rather different from what I had heard, my lady.”
She murmured the words as she took the seat I offered. Her gaze never once left me.
Ignoring her scrutiny, I beckoned to the maid still lingering in the room. The maid quickly approached my side.
“Two cups of lavender tea.”
The maid immediately left to prepare the tea. Leaning back into my chair, I looked at the Countess once more. She still wore that strange expression as she stared at me.
The room held only the two of us now.
“That can’t possibly be what you truly wanted to say.”
I met her gaze head-on.
Silence lingered between us for a moment before the Countess let out a soft sigh.
“That woman you called your nursemaid… If I were to charge her with insulting the nobility, what would you do?”
So she could not simply let it go after all. I had expected as much, which was why I had resorted to harsh measures from the start. A bitter taste settled in my mouth.
“I dislike speaking in circles. Please tell me what you want, Countess.”
“The Count… please meet him just once.”
In the end, I went to see the Count.
He was staying in the guest annex. During the Marchioness’s funeral, he had collapsed, but according to the Countess, he regained consciousness not long after the funeral ended.
She had also told me that the very first person he asked for upon waking was me.
The expression on her face as she said it had seemed faintly bitter.
“My child…”
The Count brightened the moment he saw me and struggled to sit up from the bed. He could not rise at once and appeared to be in considerable pain. The Countess hurried to his side and supported him.
In only a few days, he looked as though he had aged another ten years. His cheeks had grown gaunt, the wrinkled skin sunken deeply inward. He gestured weakly for me to come closer. Even that small motion seemed to exhaust him. His trembling arm resembled the brittle branch of a dead old tree.
Looking at him, I became certain of one thing.
The rumors were wrong.
The Countess had not killed him.
She had no need to.
There was no longer any attachment to life left in the Count’s eyes.
His daughter’s death must have struck him deeply enough to erase every lingering desire to continue living. Perhaps the reason he wished to see me was because he believed this would be the last time.
I walked toward him.
The Count reached out his hand to me. His rough palm wrapped around mine. His skin felt exactly as weathered as it looked.
“Are you all right, child?”
I stared quietly at him.
There was no reason for me not to be all right. The Marchioness and I had always been little more than strangers. Once, I had resented her. But now, she was nothing more than a complete stranger to me. I no longer felt any attachment or bitterness toward her.
I only pitied her as one woman pitying another.
“In the end… was death truly the only choice she had left?”
I had chosen the same ending she did.
I resented the man who never looked at me and cursed the world that drove me to the edge of the cliff over and over again.
“At that time… did I really have no other choice? Couldn’t there have been some better path?”
I still remembered the pain and desperation vividly. Back then, death was the only escape I could think of. I wanted to free myself from that hellish agony as quickly as possible.
And by then, I had already grown so unbearably weary of loving him.
Because I had once made the same choice as the Marchioness, I understood her desperation and suffering. Both of us had been far too blind in love. We had allowed ourselves to become foolish because we were consumed by that emotion.
“What about now? Could I avoid making the same foolish mistake this time?”
A chill swept through my entire body as though ice water had been poured over me. The emotions I had desperately buried away seemed to crawl slowly back to the surface.
I still had not met him again.
What would happen when I finally did?
“Would I fall in love once more and make another foolish choice?”
My fingertips trembled uncontrollably.
I found myself terrified of something that had not even happened yet. I was afraid of the version of myself that might fall in love with him all over again.
“I’m sorry.”
Warmth suddenly enveloped me.
At some point, the Count had pulled me into his embrace. With his large, rough hands, he gently stroked my back.
“No matter how painful it was, I should never have turned away from you. This is all my fault.”
The Count’s body trembled faintly as he held me.
He was crying.
I slowly pulled away from him and looked up. Tears streamed through the deep wrinkles lining his face.
He cupped my cheeks in both hands. His palms were coarse, yet warm.
“It is all your grandfather’s fault. So please… do not cry like this anymore.”
I could not understand his words.
The one crying was not me. It was him.
His face twisted with grief as he looked at me.
Then he brushed his thumb beneath my eyes.
Something damp followed the movement of his hand.
“Do not cry so sorrowfully in silence, my precious child.”
Reflected in his eyes—
I was crying.
