Chapter 217
“Ronya Schilling, the doctor who cared for Macy, has disappeared. Sleeping pills were found in the water from the basement.”
Like Dia, Ronya Schilling had been with the Krygen household for a long time.
The failure to properly control the lower servants was the critical mistake that let Macy slip away.
“It’s too cold outside. If I go out after staying inside, I might catch a cold… so… can’t we just lie down together?”
“There’s no reason why not.”
Falling for Macy’s whining voice after so long was a painfully foolish mistake. He was suspicious but ignored the ominous premonition.
As long as she was in the same room with him, Rubens thought she could never escape him. After all, guards stood at the door.
He didn’t even realize she was colluding with the doctor to put sleeping pills in the water. Macy knew he always drank water after they were together and might have been deliberately tempting him, but he failed to catch on.
He immediately tried to contact Macy’s friends, Kieran and Hils, to find her whereabouts, but they sent a rather meaningful message through the Krygen family attendants.
“They said if anything happens to them, Macy would reveal the Duke’s true identity to the world.”
“…”
Even while escaping, Macy had set up safeguards to protect her friends. She made it impossible for him to use threats anymore.
It meant she could no longer be controlled through those around her.
‘So what am I supposed to do?’
When Rubens first realized Macy had fled, he panicked simply because she wasn’t visible before him. But that wasn’t the real issue.
He quickly regained his composure because he had something to believe in.
If Macy didn’t get the Name treatment with Eren, the Name’s curse would consume her body. Besides, Macy was carrying Rubens’s child.
By now, she would surely know about the pregnancy.
“I’ll have to give birth. If that’s what you want…”
“Then hold me. If I get pregnant, I’ll gladly bear your child too.”
Those words must have been a lie. She would hate her own child terribly.
So, despite the doctor’s strong warning not to have relations until the stable period, he passionately shared her body.
He feared that if she lost her mind any further, she might harm herself and end her life—and he couldn’t bear to witness that.
But was that still not enough to calm him?
Macy, who acted as if she’d end her life anytime if her friends weren’t safe, was still alive.
Rubens guessed this by looking at Macy’s name still written on his back. If she was dead, her name would have disappeared.
The reason Macy was still alive was probably because of the child. She wouldn’t be cruel enough to end her life knowing she was pregnant.
Though she could only wish to be hurt after what happened in the basement, she wouldn’t turn away from carrying Rubens’s child, even if she considered it a curse.
So, should Rubens be grateful the child kept her alive? A hollow laugh slipped from his lips.
He had tried to erase it out of fear the pregnancy would drive her insane and cause self-harm. But now the child had become the reason she survived.
The child’s lifeline was as tenacious as Rubens’s own. Though Rubens had only seen the child in dreams, he already accepted it gladly.
If that child clung to its mother’s breath so stubbornly, Macy might return soon.
Or, unable to raise the child alone, she might come back after giving birth.
Therefore, Rubens had no reason to be impatient.
He could live his life leisurely, and when Macy returned resignedly, he would teach her not to be so insolent again and take her back in.
That was why he ordered the basement left as it was. Macy still hadn’t escaped him.
She never would in this life.
“This concludes the agenda.”
Rubens smiled faintly and quietly left the meeting hall.
* * *
As he stepped out, Nicholas closely followed Rubens.
“There’s a dinner gathering tonight with southern nobles regarding railway investments. Will you be attending?”
“Have you ever seen me at such events?”
“Still, today might be different.”
Nicholas pouted at Rubens’s cold reply.
“It won’t be different today either. Handle the hospitality yourself.”
“You’ll just focus on official duties at the mansion anyway.”
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