Chapter 14
After fetching a change of clothes and a box of bandages and ointment, I returned to find Claude, already finished with his bath, standing in the middle of the bedroom drying his hair. A towel was wrapped around his waist.
His back, revealed in the moonlight pouring through the window, was packed with muscle. That body, honed to the limit, was enough to inspire pure admiration, no matter who its owner was.
The only problem was the large and small scars engraved across his broad back.
“……”
I’d always known that the path he walked outside my sight couldn’t possibly be an easy one. But facing the evidence with my own eyes was something else entirely.
Every time I saw the new wounds on his body, it felt as if similar marks appeared on my own heart. Maybe that was just presumptuous pity.
Even then, I still couldn’t define my feelings for him. But one thing was certain: I felt a pang of sympathy every time I looked at him.
Maybe it was an attachment that had grown in a strange direction. After all, I was just an orphaned girl who’d lost her whole family overnight and ended up with nowhere else to go, somehow drifting into a ducal household. Perhaps, inevitably, that affection had latched on somewhere unexpected.
Just as Claude had, for reasons unknown, made me an exception, maybe I too had grown especially attached to him as a matter of adapting to circumstances.
That thought was running through my mind when I suddenly felt a chill at the back of my neck… and realized the young master was now facing me, our eyes meeting directly.
For once, I couldn’t help being flustered. After all, I really had been staring at his bare body for far too long.
“Oh, so that’s why you were so diligent tonight. It wasn’t loyalty, but ulterior motives?”
Claude’s sarcastic joke, delivered with a sly smile, left me at a loss for words.
No matter how bold I’d become, I was still a girl who hadn’t even had her coming-of-age ceremony yet. Sure, earlier I’d tried to yank off his trousers out of urgency, but if he’d actually told me to take them off, I could never have done it.
Suddenly overwhelmed with embarrassment, for the first time that night I couldn’t meet the young master’s eyes.
Hovering somewhere between mortification and frustration, I could only stare at his feet, my face burning hot.
The tense, awkward standoff lasted only a moment before I was the first to wave the white flag.
“Sit down. I need to look at your wounds. And… I don’t have any ulterior motives, you know!”
Muttering my feeble protest, I plopped down on the floor, as if running away from his gaze.
Honestly, I really didn’t have any ulterior motives. If it had, my eyes would have lingered on him in a much more suggestive way. Even when someone’s trying to worry about him, he twists it into something else.
Muttering inwardly at my indifferent master, I did my best not to look at Claude’s face. Who knew how he’d tease me if our eyes met again?
Even as he quietly sat on the bed and extended his injured hands and legs, and as I applied ointment and bandaged the shallow but bleeding wounds, I stubbornly kept my head down.
Not that I would ever admit it, but truthfully, one of my secret pleasures when waiting on the young master was admiring his handsome face (as long as he kept his mouth shut). So I did feel a bit disappointed now.
But tonight, my pride wouldn’t allow it, so I stubbornly finished the treatment without ever looking up, and finally bowed deeply.
“All done, Young Master. I’ll be going now. See you in the morning.”
Even after I said goodbye, no reply came telling me to leave, so I waited there, eyes fixed on the floor.
The answer that finally came after a long pause wasn’t dismissal, but something rather unexpected.
“I never said there was anything wrong with having ulterior motives.”
“What… I just said I don’t have any.”
“Sure, let’s say you don’t. Now look up, Ayla.”
“Is there really any reason I have to look up? Judging by your talk about ‘ulterior motives’, it didn’t seem like you were too happy about me staring, either. A maid should know her place and keep her eyes down so as not to upset her master—”
Driven by pointless defiance, I tried to be stubborn to the end, but it didn’t last long.
“Ayla Bell.”
Oh, that’s an angry voice.
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
Maybe it was just the deeply-ingrained instinct of a maid, but it was hard to disobey his command. In the end, I had no choice but to raise my eyes and glare up at the young master’s intense gaze.
But even then, my eyes were still sharp with resentment. Claude looked at my puffy, sulky face and let out a short, incredulous laugh.
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