Chapter 58
The carriage carried us to a familiar lakeside. It was a lake Lloyd and I had often visited when we were married in my previous life.
Sitting on a bench and staring blankly at the lake illuminated by the lamplight, I asked casually.
“Why did you attend House Schultz’s banquet?”
He answered calmly, as though it were nothing important.
“There’s a business project underway through an agreement with Valdor, and House Schultz is involved in that project. Since they’re a cooperating house, I received an invitation to the banquet.”
I remembered that around this time, there had been a transaction involving an iron ore mine owned by Baldomer.
I soon nodded indifferently.
Lloyd glanced at me, then held his hand out toward the lake.
When I looked curiously at his hand suspended in the air, blue energy soon began spreading from his palm.
The energy that began at his fingertips soon spread in a circle around the lake.
“Ah…”
Even though it was still autumn, snow began falling from the sky. Pure white snow fell as though only the area around the lake had become another world.
It was Lloyd’s ability.
I stared blankly at the soft white snowflakes drifting down like flower petals. This, too, was a sight Lloyd had often shown me in the past.
Suddenly, I remembered how around this time in my previous life, Lloyd had fallen ill after forcibly suppressing his ability.
The incident caused his power to run out of control, revealing the ability he had kept hidden from his family, and he had spent some time bedridden from the aftereffects of the rampage.
“That ability… Don’t try so hard to keep it hidden.”
At the words that slipped out without thinking, Lloyd flinched and stiffened before looking at me.
I deliberately avoided his gaze and stared blankly at the snowy sky.
“If you forcibly dam flowing water, eventually it’ll burst.”
At his somehow startled gaze, I gave an awkward expression.
“I’m sorry. I overstepped, didn’t I?”
“No. Someone once said something similar to me before.”
I froze for a moment at his meaningful words.
There was no way he could remember himself from my previous life. Someone else must simply have said something similar to what I had.
I forced myself to look calmly at the sky.
For a long while, neither of us spoke. He looked at me, and I looked at the sky.
Perhaps because my mind had grown peaceful, drowsiness suddenly washed over me. My eyelids felt unbearably heavy, and now that I thought about it, my body seemed to be burning with heat.
‘Why am I so sleepy?’
Lloyd stared at the lake and murmured something as though speaking to himself.
“That person… to me… precious…”
My mind had grown so hazy that I couldn’t properly hear Lloyd’s words as he murmured them with a distant expression.
Only then did Lloyd notice something was wrong. He abruptly stood and asked urgently.
“Juliana? Are you feeling unwell? Juliana?”
Ah, my head was ringing.
I just wanted to lie down in the snow and close my eyes like this.
Lloyd caught my body as it went limp and shouted urgently.
“Juliana!”
He muttered a curse I couldn’t make out and lifted me into his arms. My fever was so high that I could barely make out what was in front of me, but I thought he was carrying me toward the carriage.
That was the last thing I remembered before I completely lost consciousness.
* * *
Damn it, making snow fall over someone who was sick.
Lloyd muttered a curse under his breath, furious with himself for failing to notice Juliana’s condition. Even then, he glanced nervously at her in case she might have heard him.
Juliana was sleeping soundly, wrapped tightly in his coat and the blanket the coachman had brought. Though it looked closer to passing out from the fever than sleeping.
He wanted nothing more than to take her straight to the Silverstel estate.
But if he did, Juliana would probably recoil in disgust the moment she regained consciousness, so he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Before long, the carriage arrived in front of the Baldomer estate.
Lloyd lifted the unconscious Juliana, blanket and all, and strode out of the carriage.
He planned to hand Juliana over to the members of the estate and, if possible, stay until the family physician examined her.
If the enemy House Baldomer treated her coldly in any way, he intended to pick her right back up and take her to Silverstel.
But contrary to his expectations, the one waiting for him at the entrance of the estate wasn’t one of Baldomer’s servants.
It was Kallion.
The moment Kallion saw Lloyd holding the sleeping Juliana, sparks seemed to fly from his eyes.
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