Chapter 64
“…Your Grace.”
The dizzying fear she felt earlier vanished, but in its place, a knot of tension twisted in her stomach.
On the other hand, Izar frowned immediately.
From the moment the shepherdess opened the door and entered, a scent she never used to wear wafted in, overpowering the faint grass scent he remembered from Deneb.
“It seems the maid was overly diligent.”
It was a reprimand for why she applied so much perfume oil all over herself.
Although she expected to be rebuked like this, Freesia’s face flushed with embarrassment.
“If Your Grace summons anyone, they would prepare this much.”
“Really?”
Seeing her flushed face, Izar slightly curled his lips.
Until just now, his head was foggy with accumulated fatigue.
However, upon seeing the shepherdess’s face, a strange thrill chased away the sticky headache pleasantly.
He remembered thinking once in Deneb.
The satisfaction of having someone else’s heart in his hand was too gratifying.
Izar’s golden eyes dimmed with this emotion.
Approaching the shepherdess felt oddly like a predator stalking its prey – leisurely and slowly closing in on a target that couldn’t escape…
And he playfully fiddled with the girl’s hair.
“……!”
The startled look on the shepherdess’s face made his breath burn hot. The tingling sensation, enough to make the fine hairs on her nape stand, made his heart ache.
The hair, smoother than it was on their wedding night, was pleasurably twirled around his fingers as he continued to press.
“Did you come with that expectation?”
“That……”
“Hm?”
Izar teased as if mocking.
The revulsion he felt towards the shepherdess, for being a ‘bastard’, was still suffocating.
This one thing, an emotion ingrained in his skin, seemed impossible to scrape off.
However, the fact that someone was so perturbed by his touch, flushing from her nape to her cheeks, brought a heavy sense of satisfaction.
This shepherdess, who apparently loved him.
He wished the shepherdess would throw away that pretense of calm, from her face to the skin revealed through the slits of her clothing, all flushed red.
He wanted to see her hesitate, unsure of how to respond.
Yet, as always, this woman diverged from his expectations. Freesia’s cheeks were red…
But she lifted her head to meet him face-to-face.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Hah.”
“It’s impossible not to have expectations. I’m human, after all.”
When he called her to his room, of course, a part of her held some expectation.
Maybe he has started to harbor some feelings for her?
However, since he so despised the idea of her acting as his wife, she immediately dismissed any positive thoughts.
“But even if I’m expecting it, I do not want to be held. Not if Your Grace doesn’t truly desire me.”
‘Being useful for something.’
That goal was enough.
‘Being useful’ has a very clean moral value, doesn’t it?
So once she closes her eyes in death, there will be no shame.
But to let a man harbor lingering desires for her body…
‘Maybe that would be the most effective. Someone might say I’m speaking from a place of luxury.’
Considering how she was living on borrowed time, why not try it? After all, she had decided to remove pride from her list of priorities—so why not take the shortcut?
But as one lives, there was always a certain line that one simply could not cross.
And Freesia had set her own line on her way here.
“I don’t want to walk down the same path my mother did.”
“……”
“So, even though I cherish Your Grace, I don’t want to be held if these feelings are not reciprocated.”
That statement silenced even Izar.
Freesia’s biological mother had been left to decay after being murdered.
Her body was scavenged by wild animals and swarmed with maggots, and the stench of decay where she lay did not dissipate for a long time.
Izar withdrew his hand from Freesia’s hair and slowly tilted his head.
For once, genuine curiosity blossomed.
“So you’re saying that you’d consent to sleep with me only if I truly held you dear?”
“Yes.”
“And what if I force you?”
“……”
“What then?”
To that question, Freesia also blinked slowly.
Of course, if he, the master of this land and her husband, commands, Freesia had no choice but to comply. Refusing to share a bed after making marriage vows was unthinkable.
But what if this man crosses the last line of pride as a human being, as a woman, that Freesia had set?
Should she neatly cry out or mourn the expiration of a tool’s usefulness or the death of a retainer?
Or, like herself, be ready to die once more, soaking from head to toe in love.
She couldn’t tolerate anything vague, anything in-between.
Freesia didn’t blink anymore.
“…Then I will do my best to break you, my lord.”
“…”
“While putting my all on the line.”
Had it started off a little better, she had hoped to have a decent relationship with this man. But if her second life betrays her again…
Then she would do her utmost to inflict all the harm that she could on this man.
Even if it meant redirecting the affection she had for him and throwing her entire being into ending everything.
Even if there was still time left in her life at that point.
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