Chapter 46

Chapter 46

How much time had passed? Ines’s sobs had finally begun to subside.

“That’s enough now. Please let me go.”

As she pushed herself out of his arms with what little strength she had, Cedric felt relief, and yet a pang of reluctance. She had stopped crying, and that was a mercy, but the moment Ines slipped free of his embrace, the body that had held her warmth cooled in the bleak winter air.

Her makeup had nearly all been washed away by her tears, yet her pitiful state only heightened her beauty. Cedric gazed at her blankly.

“Duke Angel, you answered what I asked, so I will answer you as well.”

Her throat was hoarse, but her tone was calm. Darkness lay sunk deep in her green eyes. Sorrow had rushed in to claim the place where the light had vanished. Perhaps because she was struggling to hold back her tears, Ines looked like someone ready to cry again at any moment.

“You asked whether the engagement weighs on me. It is exactly as you said.”

Pausing once, Ines gathered her thoughts. A child. That one simple word cut into her heart like a sharp dagger, wounding her. Ines forced the sorrow rising in her throat back down, and tried with all her strength not to shed a tear.

“You told me that your feelings had never changed, Your Grace. That only your attitude had. I will believe those words.”

“Miss Ines.”

“I am truly grateful that you have given me such precious feelings. I won’t deny that I held affection for you, Duke Angel. Nor that I still do. Truly, hearing your words, it feels as though I have been repaid for all that long time. But that is all it is. Let us stop here, you and I.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Ines clenched her fist so hard that the bones stood out on the back of her hand. Her carefully tended nails dug painfully into her palm.

“I am a person who lacks a sense of responsibility. As long as it was only feelings, I didn’t have to answer for anything. But once we are engaged, and then married… then I would have to bear a responsibility far too great.”

“Miss Ines, wait a moment.”

“I am not fit to be the lady of House Angel. If you pressed such responsibility and duty upon me, I would surely be crushed beneath the weight of it and die.”

Not a single word that might persuade her would take shape as sound. Looking away from Cedric’s stunned face, Ines whispered quickly.

“You say you saw me happy in your dream, but they say dreams are the opposite of reality. Our married life cannot be a happy one. I know that.”

Because she had already lived it.

Every single day had been so happy that she could have died on the spot without regret, but if the ending was a ruin, then it was all as good as ruined.

Never again.

Never again did she want to taste that loss.

To avoid losing, she should never have had it to begin with.

“Since it has come to this, I will tell you everything honestly. The reason Father kept the announcement of the engagement date a secret is me.”

Having composed her emotions, Ines looked straight at Cedric. Her unwavering gaze said that what she was telling him was the truth.

“I have told Father more times than I can count. And still he refuses to listen to me at all. I should have said this to you from the very beginning. I am not a woman who suits the position of Duchess, Duke Angel. So please, break off the engagement with me.”

Cedric’s expression sank, as cold as the air of the snow-covered garden.

There was no way to misunderstand her. She sincerely wanted the engagement broken.

“I hope you will meet a better woman than me. There must surely be a better house than Greenwood. If you wished it, any family at all would welcome the match with open arms.”

“A match that everyone welcomes, and for Miss Ines, that is the exception?”

It was only after Ines had stopped, having spoken for a long while as if pouring it all out, and after a considerable silence had passed, that Cedric was able to open his mouth. He seemed confused, like a man who could not quite grasp what he himself had said.

“You don’t want to become Duchess Angel. No wonder the Count kept the engagement announcement a secret.”

Ines nodded at the words Cedric muttered as if to himself.

“Please break off the engagement, Your Grace.”

“Ha.”

A low laugh, spat out under his breath, echoed with a chill. Ines’s face stiffened.

“That will be difficult.”

“Your Grace.”

“I believe I told you before. That when I accepted the Count’s proposal, I had already decided to take Miss Ines as my wife.”

His face wore its usual faint smile, yet the atmosphere around it was entirely different. Seeing a side of Cedric she had never seen before, Ines was left speechless.

An unfamiliar side of the Cedric she had thought she knew so well. Ines felt she understood now why the nobles feared him.

“Surely… surely there will come a day when you regret this.”

Ines hoped that her voice had sounded as threatening as possible.

To Cedric, however, it looked like nothing more than a small, wounded animal puffing itself up to menace him. If anything, the sight drained away, limp and weightless, the anger that had been climbing all the way to the top of his head.

“Miss Ines.”

He wanted to show her only his good side. Cedric tucked her disheveled hair behind her ear. Feeling the affection in that touch, Ines felt as though she might cry again.

“You needn’t feel such a heavy burden about becoming Duchess Angel. Since my mother passed away, the ducal house has gone without a mistress for a long time.”

Cedric tried to persuade her in a coaxing tone.

“It is a house that ran perfectly well without a mistress to begin with. If the duties of a mistress feel so heavy that you hesitate over the engagement, then you don’t have to do anything at all.”

“You know very well that is not possible.”

“If we say we will manage our own household’s affairs as we decide, why would that be impossible?”

Ines could say nothing to Cedric’s words, which so naturally bound him and herself together within the single fence of ‘we.’

“Miss Ines still doesn’t know, I see.”

Smiling slightly, Cedric said,

“That above the law stands the power of House Angel.”

It was a joke, offered to break the stiff atmosphere. But Cedric sincerely believed it.

“Do as you please. The mistress of a ducal house is a position that allows it. No one, and nothing, can force anything upon you, Miss Ines. Not even your father.”

The fierce reaction she had shown when he brought up the dream about a child.

Cedric had jumped to the conclusion that her father, Count Greenwood, must have put pressure on Ines. Since the imperial consort had borne a son, her faction had taken the upper hand in the power struggles of the Noble Council. The Count Greenwood that Cedric knew was a man who could easily press his daughter to accomplish the same feat.

“But…”

“That is only if your reason for refusing the engagement is simply a sense of responsibility. Is there some other reason I ought to know?”

She could feel his will to resolve anything at all. Ines’s heart grew heavy.

If she told him that her father would stage a rebellion, what would the man before her say?

There was no way he would believe her story that the Empress Consort, who had been unable to bear a child for over ten years, would give birth to a son four years from now.

Right now, her father was riding high in noble society, and he was the person closest to the Emperor. Treason, from a man like that?

If she said it, she would only be treated as mad.

“I did warn you.”

In the end, that was all Ines could say.

“My feelings about not wanting the engagement have not changed in the slightest. You will regret it. I am not the kind of woman you think I am.”

“The Ines I know is warm, and considerate of others. Her eyes and her smiling face are lovely as well. Is there any part of that which differs from what I think?”

“Because of me, you will become a laughingstock.”

If the engagement was forced through to the end, she would have no choice but to use ‘that’ method. All Ines could hope for was that the engagement would be broken before it came to that.

But Cedric did not listen closely to her words. Instead, he smiled as though amused, and said,

“A laughingstock, hm. Shall we make a wager?”

Cedric lightly crinkled his eyes.

“I am rather curious myself whether there is anyone who would dare to laugh at me to my face. But if I were to become a laughingstock because of Miss Ines, that, too, would be a new experience.”

Ines said nothing. Cedric likewise only watched her.

It was then, as a silence as dark as the deep winter night sky settled between the two of them.

In the distance, an attendant spotted them and came running.

He must have been searching for a long while, for despite the cold winter day, beads of sweat had formed on his forehead.

“Your Grace! So you were here. I have been searching for you for ages.”

The attendant barely managed to steady his gasping breath.

“They are about to unveil the painter Adrian’s painting. Since you, Your Grace, as his patron, were not in the hall, I was out searching for you.”

The attendant’s words announced that the time had come to end this long conversation.

Cedric held out his hand to Ines.

“So it seems, Miss Ines. It is very cold; we must have stayed outside too long. Let us go back somewhere warm, the two of us.”

Ines looked up at Cedric. He was smiling down at her, his face as fresh and untroubled by any stir of emotion as when they had first come out into the garden. He looked like a man fully prepared to turn away any question or objection.

With the attendant here, she could not continue the conversation. In the end, all Ines could do was take his arm and walk.

Cedric held her fast with his right arm. As if vowing never to let go of the hand he held now.