Please Forget Me - Chapter 272

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

“…A fairy?”

I was fifteen at the time. Not five.

And yet I had a thought as naïve as a child’s. Because you were the very embodiment of a beauty that shouldn’t have existed in this world.

There is no such thing as a golden waterfall cascading down over alabaster skin. If that truly were just ‘blonde hair’, then every blonde I had seen before must have been an imitation.

The thin shawl and trailing ribbons fluttering behind you on the passing breeze were no different from a fairy’s wings.

But more unreal than anything else were your eyes. Blue eyes in which violet shimmered with every tremble of sunlight. So much so that it felt as though the petals of the forget-me-nots you held had been transplanted directly into your gaze. I remember thinking that if a forget-me-not fairy existed, she would surely look exactly like that.

“Ah!”

I snapped out of my waking dream when you startled upon noticing me and lost your footing. I reached out instinctively, but I was too late.

With a splash, water flew everywhere. I rushed down the slope to pull you out of the stream, but by then you had already sprung to your feet and ran off along the bank. You vanished into the sunlight in an instant, your shawl fluttering behind you—still as unreal as a vision.

Was she really… a fairy?

But I had never heard of fairies carrying parasols stamped with the mark of a famous Dunley boutique.

“My name is Dana Loveridge. It’s an honor to meet the esteemed members of House Ackroyd.”

I only learned that the fairy was named Dana Loveridge and that she was, in fact, human. Later that evening, at the dinner banquet held at our estate.

Like the other young nobles, you had been invited by my mother to spend the summer at the Ackroyd estate. It was presented as a country retreat, though I don’t know whether you realized it was, in truth, a gathering meant to assess potential brides for me.

By then, my mother was already obsessed with finding me a wife. As with everything else, it stemmed from her anxiety over my future. Just as it had when she forced Rupert and me into friendship.

For a ‘spare son’ of a noble house, there is realistically only one way to keep the silver spoon placed in his cradle from being taken away before it reaches the grave.

Marry a wealthy heiress.

As I’ve said before, I wasn’t penniless. My mother and relatives had passed on modest inheritances over time. But by my mother’s standards, anything less than our family’s annual budget amounted to loose change. She could not bear the thought of me living a ‘miserable’ life in a ten-room manor with fewer than twenty servants.

Still, the reason she rushed to find me a bride before I even came of age had more to do with the ‘lesson’ she learned from my older brother.

It seems she had already selected a suitable match for him, intending to arrange the marriage once he reached adulthood. But someone you find appealing is often appealing to others as well. While she waited for the right time, other families snapped those candidates up.

And in the meantime, my brother had already fallen in love with a woman who utterly failed to meet my mother’s standards.

Having learned from that mistake, my mother resolved to secure a perfect bride for me right around the age when I would experience my first love.

But life never unfolds according to plan. Especially when the executor of that plan is a son who constantly disappoints expectations.

I hated my mother’s scheme so much that I went out of my way to avoid the girls she invited to our home.

Had I known you were among the candidates, I would have stopped avoiding them immediately.

Sadly, my mother had no intention of marrying you to me.

…You’re asking why?

You really do ask only the most difficult questions.

But that’s all right. I love you.

No, this isn’t a tactic to dodge the question. I mean it.

All right. To answer honestly: you were the finest bride imaginable in this world, but you did not meet my mother’s entirely subjective standards. That doesn’t mean you were lacking. If anything, I was the one who fell short.

…You want me to repeat exactly what she said?

Dana, please. Not that.

Ha… it’s cruel to ask me to wound you with my own words.

…All right. I promised I would tell you everything honestly.