Chapter 174. A Losing Bargain
“This hand…… please let go.”
After a long moment, Deborah finally managed to regain her senses and get out that one line.
It had been so long—so terribly long since he’d smiled at her like that—that she lost herself for an instant, but once she realized that all of it was simply the alcohol talking, her mind cooled coldly once again.
But even at that polite request, Raymond showed no intention of doing so at all.
As he slowly leaned his body in, the distance between them grew closer and closer.
At that distance, the man’s expression seemed to engrave itself onto Deborah’s golden field of vision.
“Say it.”
“…..”
“Whether, even with a belly this round, you’re still passionate with your husband.”
The words that followed that sweet whisper tore at Deborah’s heart sharply once again.
What on earth had she expected, like a fool……
Reproaching herself for being so stupid, Deborah slowly opened her mouth once more.
“You seem… drunk—”
But once again, the same response came back.
“Working in a place like this because you need money?”
The act of cutting her words off abruptly.
At his complete disregard for whatever she might say, Deborah’s expression grew harder and harder.
“What on earth is so appealing about some old man who has a woman carrying his own child washing dishes in a place like this.”
“…..”
Tsk, at the click of his tongue, his blue eyes shone clearly even in the darkness.
“If that’s the case, just say so. We’re not exactly strangers.”
“…..”
“I thought of you every once in a while, too. Maybe because you were so satisfying…… every now and then, you’d suddenly come to mind.”
Telling herself not to misunderstand, she kept whipping herself mentally, but at the single low murmur ringing in her ear, her heart stirred helplessly all the same.
Telling herself to come to her senses, Deborah bit down hard once on the soft flesh inside her mouth.
“What…… on earth are you talking about……”
As she forced out the words one by one, as if wringing them out, a low rush of breath suddenly came from between Raymond’s teeth.
A moment later, his hand began to move slowly near Deborah’s neck.
“What I mean—”
“…..”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?”
The fingers that had been lingering near her neck moved slowly downward, dropping away secretively.
Her face, frozen stiff, unable to make even a single sound of breath.
Raymond, unable to take his eyes off that face, soon bent his head down and whispered into her ear.
“I’m saying, sell your body for money.”
A smirk, lips curving smoothly.
At that gentle whisper, as if it belonged to Satan himself, Deborah’s face instantly turned pale white.
Her lips bitten so hard they seemed about to bleed, the tip of her chin trembling faintly.
Watching her expression change moment by moment at the insult he’d given her, Raymond’s lips curved up even more deeply.
“Why.”
His hand, having risen again before she knew it, took hold of Deborah’s chocolate-colored hair and moved slowly.
“That’s the kind of woman you are.”
“…..”
“Climbing into my bed while having a husband, yet acting all innocent as if I were the only man you knew— performing it so flawlessly.”
“…..”
“So he must have been completely deceived. Cherishing a woman who’s nothing more than a harlot as if she were some kind of great saint.”
Heh, at the sound of his low, rumbling laughter, Deborah’s mind, for some reason, only grew calmer and calmer.
Perhaps it was because her heart had slowly gone cold at words so crude and insulting they could hardly be spoken aloud.
With a gaze now far more composed, Deborah stared straight at the man’s face.
“You should have said that from the start.”
It was right then that the man’s laughter, which had kept going on as if something were so amusing, suddenly stopped.
“……What?”
“If you had made an offer like that, when we met again.”
“…..”
“I would have gladly accepted it, back then.”
A face that was neither smiling nor crying.
At the sight of her, speaking her words calmly with an utterly unbothered expression, Raymond’s eyes, by contrast, grew all the more menacing.
“But what shall we do now? About that advice you gave me not long ago.”
“…..”
“The advice that I should live my whole life grateful to the husband who took me back, even after I’d rolled around with another man.”
“…..”
“That advice you gave me back then left such a deep impression that I’m still keeping it engraved deep in my heart, even now.”
“…..”
“So I’ll take what you just said…… as a slip of the tongue made in drink.”
The moment those words, spoken so quietly, came to an end—
The wind that had been brushing past the two of them vanished all at once, without a sound.
A suffocating stillness, in which even the sound of insects in the grass that had been drifting from somewhere had disappeared.
Deborah, breaking that soundless scene, bowed her head before him.
“Then, if I may take my lea—”
The words, meant to ask for permission, were cut off when the man suddenly seized her face.
“Mmph! Let go—!”
Flustered, Deborah belatedly tried to resist, but there was no way she could possibly overcome the force gripping her so tightly.
Flinching for only a moment at the lips bearing down on her with no defense to offer.
The breath pressing in against the tip of her nose made her head spin in an instant.
Just as her mind seemed about to be swept away entirely by the rough way he ravaged her mouth, Deborah bit down with all her strength on what was inside it.
With a groan, the metallic scent of blood spread through her mouth in an instant.
In the slight distance now between them, the two stared at each other, their gazes scraping painfully across each other’s faces.
“Please…… don’t do this.”
“…..”
“I……have a husband. I’m not the Duke’s Deborah anymore……”
Her tone was firm, as if issuing a warning, but her voice alone betrayed a note of anxiety.
Her expression was the same.
Looking, somehow, like prey cornered with nowhere left to run.
For a while, a tension so taut that not even the sound of breathing could be heard hung heavily over them.
That silence was broken the moment the wind, which had stopped for a time, began to blow again.
And, at the same moment, words like a sigh pressed into Deborah’s ears.
“Yes, I know, I know……”
“…..”
“I know it all too…… I do.”
Where had the man who’d mocked and sneered at her gone—at the sight of him now, looking utterly drained, like a soldier who had lost the will to fight, her heart suddenly sank.
“I know it…… and yet, why does it keep seeming, to my eyes, that you’re that woman from back then.”
“…..”
“You’re clearly that filthy woman, no mistake—so why do you keep looking, to me, like a fool, like that gentle, kind-hearted…… woman? Why do I keep…… wanting to believe that so badly?”
At the man’s words, sounding like he was speaking only to himself, her heart felt as though it were being torn to shreds entirely.
When he was condemning and slandering her as a filthy, vulgar woman, she could at least endure it somehow…… but seeing him like this, seeing this side of him, was something she could not bear.
Her heart crumbled to pieces, utterly wretched.
She just wanted to confess everything.
From beginning to end, she wanted to pour out before him every wretched, sordid part of her past, and simply be held in his arms and weep……
But she couldn’t do that.
In front of a man who had already promised marriage to another woman, she absolutely…… could not do that.
Just as she stood there, biting her lip hard, unable to do anything at all.
“If you were going to lie, you should have at least carried it through to the end.”
“…..”
“That it wasn’t true, that you knew nothing about it…… that from beginning to end, it was never once a lie……”
“…..”
“Then, I would have believed it.”
“…..”
“Even if I’d known it was a lie…… I would have let myself be deceived like a fool……”
Listening to his words pouring out like a lament, Deborah’s expression, at some point, subtly twisted.
She felt that she shouldn’t listen to any more of this.
Even if this were nothing more than some unintended act brought on by drink.
Or even, perhaps, the opposite.
To dig up something that couldn’t be undone now, in a way like this, would do nothing but reopen wounds in both of them that had not yet healed.
As if steeling her resolve, Deborah clenched her two dropped hands tightly.
“What…… could you offer me, then?”
Words spoken slowly, pitched as low as she could manage, lest they tremble.
At those cautious words, the man’s eyes, which had been wandering restlessly, suddenly stopped still in one place.
His gaze drifted over her face, puzzled as to what she meant.
A sigh, too small for anyone to hear, slipped from between Deborah’s teeth.
“That proposal…… you made just now.”
“…..”
“If I were to accept that proposal…… what could you offer me—”
It was right then.
The very moment the man’s expression, which had softened as if wandering through the past, froze over coldly once more.
At that chilling face, as if blue flame had caught alight upon it, her chest throbbed painfully all over, even though she herself had brought this on.
Still, she had no choice but to do this.
This was the right thing to do.
Thinking so, Deborah calmly continued on from where her words had momentarily stopped.
“If you tell me, I’ll…… think it over.”
After those words, her trembling voice barely swallowed back down her throat, another long silence settled in for a while.
It was only after a long moment that a strange laugh came from the man’s mouth as he dragged one hand down over his face—
And that silence scattered into the air, shattering like broken fragments.
“Right, this is the kind of woman you are.”
“…..”
“But I made a mistake again. Like an idiot.”
Pouring out words tinged with self-mockery, Raymond suddenly took a step back, widening the distance between them.
“Sorry that I’m the one who brought it up, but that’s how a deal works. There can be no complaints afterward only if both sides find it worth their while.”
“…..”
“Thinking it over, it seems like far too losing a bargain for me. Why would I want some woman thoroughly mauled and slobbered over by another man.”
“…..”
“Besides, a body carrying some bastard’s child is bound to be unappealing anyway.”
Isn’t that right? the man said, sneering, but his face soon turned cold as ice.
And that was the end of it.
As the man turned and walked away, his back growing farther and farther until it finally disappeared from sight, Deborah stood frozen in place, as if turned to stone.
For a very long time.
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
