Chapter 34
She, too, had fallen with that vile Duke.
It was clear her husband had kept a mistress despite being married.
Claude pitied the children who would be born from that union.
But seeing the Duchess’ bright smile and glowing complexion —something he hadn’t seen in a long time—made him think that the affair had somehow saved a life from ruin.
“Hah…”
Claude sighed softly as the image came to mind. The very teacher who had caused the Duchess’s downfall yet saved her was in his own home.
“Sighing at a woman’s face is rude, Sir Racliffe.”
The Duchess giggled as she opened her fan.
Her eyes, playfully squinting as if she understood Claude’s thoughts perfectly, gleamed with the joy of a predator spotting prey.
“They say a passing stone kills a frog, so I suppose it was your misfortune that I uttered those words.”
“Oh my, what unfortunate news. But what I threw was not a stone—it was an arrow.”
“An arrow?”
“Cupid’s arrow.”
The Duchess winked and burst into laughter. True love, it seemed, had the power to make a woman feel young again—regardless of her age.
Whether it was a breeze or a headwind, it mattered not.
“The world must look rosy to you.”
“Indeed. It feels as though bright red roses have bloomed in my once barren life.”
The Duchess’s reply made Claude smile bitterly.
If meeting other men as an affair was so delightful, she shouldn’t have made that choice to begin with.
“Hoho, Sir, I expected that reaction from you.”
She laughed lightly, then lowered her voice.
Once a dominant figure in society, she was a woman who could don a mask whenever she pleased.
“How can one walk only in the sunlit path, Sir? If what I desire lies in the shadow, sometimes one must make such choices.”
Her fan slowly closed, hiding her joyful laughter.
“But… back then, I thought I could be the sunlight. That I alone could warm the shadowed land.”
Though time had passed, the fire of her former beauty still flickered faintly in her eyes.
Those deep eyes held sorrow, longing, and love—feelings beyond the understanding of Claude, who had never truly experienced love or marriage.
“It was arrogant thinking, something only youth can have. Changing a person’s thoughts and values isn’t easy, you know. I had no idea.”
She spoke to Claude like a confession, revealing her complex emotions—but without a trace of regret.
This puzzled Claude, who asked,
“If you could go back, would you make the same choice?”
“Of course. Had I not known the future, I would make the same choice a hundred times over.”
“And if you did know the future?”
Claude asked an odd, seemingly pointless question.
Though there was nothing to be done now but reflect on a past choice.
“…I would probably make the same choice.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Because I loved him. And he loved me.”
At her past-tense confession, Claude fell silent.
The Duchess’s gaze, once lost in the void, returned to Claude.
She smiled again, the tears vanished as if they had never been.
“Did you know, Sir, that my wedding was so grand it made history? The dowry he sent my family was too large to count. And when I was angry about his affairs, I stayed at the villa he gave me for our first anniversary.”
The Duchess opened her fan again with a soft rustle.
“In the end, I bought my love again—with my husband’s money.”
“You were already full with money to begin with?”
“Hoho, it’s funny, but even illicit lovers do calculations. If you’re going to be an illicit lover, wouldn’t you want a wife of a renowned person under your covers?”
The Duchess’s giggle suggested she truly knew no shame.
Thinking of her laugh, Claude recalled Felice.
It was hard to believe all this wisdom came from the woman in his home.
“…So, Sir Racliffe.”
The Duchess’s smile shifted slightly away.
They sat at opposite ends of the sitting room, but this distance only made their gazes clearer.
“Instead of fateful love where you hand a handkerchief to a lady, how about buying love with a little acting? Like my husband.”
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