Chapter 187. Hold On Just a Little Longer
The moment he opened the door and stepped inside.
The first thing that struck him was the suffocating heat and the nauseating smell that seemed to burrow deep into his lungs.
It was a smell he had never encountered in his life before, a foul stench formed by sweat, blood, and bodily fluids all mixed together.
Several utterly exhausted maids noticed the duke entering the delivery room and, startled as though burned by fire, began exchanging anxious glances.
Pushing through their gazes, Raymond walked toward the bed.
The moment he finally reached it and saw the figure before him, Raymond’s jaw twitched almost imperceptibly.
The limp woman… looked as though her life had already slipped away.
Shallow breathing, a pale face, and eyes completely devoid of life.
Had it not been for the faint breaths escaping her at intervals, no one would have found it strange to believe she had already crossed the river of oblivion.
As Raymond approached, the maid who had been gently wiping Deborah’s forehead quickly stepped aside.
At that moment, the woman’s motionless gaze slowly drifted to the right.
“……”
But that was all.
It was merely an instinctive response to the change in her surroundings.
The moment he saw the golden eyes, once radiant like the spring sunshine, now completely dimmed, his heart began pounding heavily.
Those eyes, utterly devoid of any will, only made Raymond more anxious.
Raymond quietly took one of Deborah’s lifeless hands into his own.
“…Deborah.”
At his low voice, Deborah’s eyelids slowly opened and closed once.
Her focus gradually became clearer.
At that tiny reaction, his hand unconsciously tightened around hers.
He wanted to tell her to stay strong, to hold on just a little longer…
Yet somehow, the words refused to leave his lips.
It felt as though the fear of losing the person before his eyes was silently spreading from the deepest part of his heart.
It was then.
The lips, covered here and there with dark, dried blood, moved ever so slightly.
Seeing her lips moving as though she wanted to say something, Raymond lowered his head and brought his ear close to them.
Her voice was cracked like that of an elderly woman who had completely lost her voice.
Even then, the words came only in broken fragments.
At first, he could not understand what she was saying.
As those repeated sounds gradually became clearer, he finally began to hear her words distinctly.
And at those quiet words, the composure he had barely managed to maintain collapsed completely.
“…It hurts…”
“……”
“It hurts so much…”
It hurts so much I feel like I’m going to die…
As she kept repeating those words like a child, his heart throbbed as though it were being torn apart with a red-hot iron rod.
Every time he realized how powerless he was to ease even a fraction of her pain, it felt as though he were burning alive inside.
As that helpless time dragged on, her eyelids slowly began to close once more.
Raymond hurriedly gripped her hand tighter, finally forcing himself to speak.
“Deborah…”
“……”
“You can’t fall asleep…”
Cursing himself for being able to say nothing more than those words, Raymond desperately struggled to keep the woman’s fading consciousness from slipping away.
As though she had heard him, her half-closed eyelids slowly opened once again.
“…I’m sleepy… I want to sleep…”
It was as though her body had instinctively found the only escape from that endless, unbearable pain.
Just as his heart pounded wildly, feeling as though nothing could keep her with him anymore.
A thought suddenly flashed through his mind and slipped from his lips before he could even think about it.
“The baby, Deborah… Don’t you want to see the baby?”
In truth, he did not care about the baby at all.
That child in her womb, the one that had put the woman’s life in such danger, meant nothing to him.
If it was never going to be born into this world anyway, then it would have been better if it had never taken root inside her in the first place.
He resented it enough to think such irrational thoughts.
But Raymond also knew better than anyone that the only thing capable of holding Deborah back now was the existence of that child.
That tiny life was all the lonely woman, who had seemed to be born into this world utterly alone, had cherished with all her heart.
No one else might understand what the baby in her womb meant to her, but Raymond did.
That was why she had endured even the cruel words he had spoken to her.
As though that thought had been correct, a faint glimmer slowly appeared in the woman’s unfocused eyes that had been on the verge of closing.
Raymond continued speaking.
“The baby… the baby wants to see you too.”
“……”
“He wants to see his mother’s face as soon as possible… That’s why he’s doing his very best right now.”
At those words, clear tears welled up in her dry eyes.
In an instant, they overflowed and streamed down her face.
That tiny change reflected in her eyes felt like a ray of hope to Raymond.
Without saying a word, Raymond gently brushed Deborah’s damp hair away as she silently wept.
“So… just a little… just a little more strength.”
“……”
“You’ve… held on so bravely until now, so just a little longer.”
She was a woman who had endured unimaginable pain without a moment’s rest.
Raymond knew better than anyone how cruel it was to ask someone like her to hold on just a little longer.
But those were the only words he could say.
So he continued whispering them like a heartfelt prayer.
Please… just as those words said, let her hold on just a little longer.
After quietly listening to Raymond’s words for a long time, Deborah finally gave the slightest nod.
Not long afterward, that dreadful moment came again.
A scream sharp enough to tear through the ears burst forth.
The midwife, who had already come to her side, positioned herself between Deborah’s legs and continuously urged her to push.
She must have known from her many years of delivering babies.
If not now, the child would never come into the world.
As he watched the woman cry out as though every blood vessel in her body were about to burst, the only thing Raymond could do was tightly hold her hand.
As he watched her body writhe like a wild beast caught in a snare.
As he watched the burst capillaries and the lips whose dried blood had split open again until they were covered in fresh blood.
Like a fool, that was all he could do.
Completely unaware of just how much strength that insignificant act was giving Deborah.
“Just a little more, just a little more strength!”
At last, as the tightly closed opening finally widened, the baby’s head began to appear.
Without taking her eyes off it, the midwife continued urging Deborah to keep pushing.
“It’s almost over now, just… just a little more!”
At the words that it was almost over, Deborah swallowed her scream and summoned every last bit of strength she had.
How many times had those agonizing moments repeated themselves?
As though the tightly stretched thread of tension had suddenly snapped, all the strength left Deborah’s body.
At the same moment, a joyful cry burst from the midwife’s lips.
“He’s out… he’s out!”
Countless emotions swept across the faces of everyone who had held their breath while watching the scene.
The awe of witnessing a new life come into the world.
The relief and joy that the ordeal had finally ended safely.
Yet the expression of the one who should have been happiest of all—the duke—was somehow completely different from everyone else’s.
Not long afterward, the cry of the baby echoed through the delivery room.
The moment everyone had been waiting for.
After skillfully cutting the umbilical cord that had connected the mother and child for months, the midwife finally lifted the baby into her arms and walked forward.
“A son.”
She spoke with overflowing joy.
Having delivered hundreds of babies while traveling from house to house, the midwife had witnessed countless different scenes.
Women who gave birth surrounded by the loving expectations of their families.
And on the other hand, women abandoned by men who had been forced to give birth alone in secret.
She had believed she had seen every possible situation.
Yet this was the first time she had encountered one like this.
Of course, she had been greatly surprised when she first learned that a woman who clearly did not appear to be a noble was carrying the child of the Duke of Cheister.
But such things were hardly uncommon.
In Denverer, stories of women giving birth to the illegitimate children of nobles were so common that they were barely worth gossiping about.
What had truly surprised the midwife was the behavior of the duke, who had always been cold and distant.
He had even ignored all proper procedure and rushed into the delivery room, making her believe that his affection for the woman carrying his child was exceptionally deep.
Naturally, she assumed his feelings for the child she had given birth to would be equally extraordinary.
But for some reason, the duke’s gaze as he looked at the tiny baby wrapped in white linen felt not only cold, but almost chilling.
Only after the duke’s eyes finally left the baby did the bewildered midwife conceal her expression and move toward the left.
“Here… It’s a son.”
As she placed the baby beside the woman, who was breathing faintly, tear-filled eyes slowly turned toward the child.
Though she was too exhausted to even hold him, the tearful expression on her face said everything.
It spoke of how long Deborah had waited for this very moment.
After quietly watching her for a long time, Raymond silently left the delivery room.
From last night until today, two full days had passed in a blur.
After enduring pain that had brought her to the very threshold of death, the child was finally born.
As the midwife had said, the baby was a son.
A child who had inherited Raymond’s golden hair and Deborah’s sparkling golden eyes.
It was the historic moment when Raymond von Cheister.’s first child came into the world.
