Chapter 124. I… won’t go.
In fact, there was no need to ask anything more.
Regardless of how on earth he had found out about this place and come here, there was only one reason for him being here.
It was to take her back to Elfengreen.
Deborah bit her lip hard at the piercing gaze fixed upon her.
“……I, I can’t go.”
She could not go back.
With what kind of determination she had left that place, and with what thoughts she had endured and survived each day recently.
She could not repeat those events again.
“Why.”
“…….”
“Why can’t you go? I am there.”
Words that came out as if they were only natural.
Your place is by my side, where else on earth would you be—at the sound of him asking back so confidently, a corner of her heart throbbed.
Suppressing the emotions rising to the tip of her throat, Deborah slowly opened her mouth.
“Duke, I…… after leaving that place and being outside for a few days, I think I finally see reality properly.”
“……Reality?”
“Yes. To be honest, we…… our relationship was nonsensical from the beginning.”
A nonsensical relationship; as she uttered those words herself, her heart felt aching and sore as if cut by a sharp blade.
Still, this was the right thing.
While she could still stop this relationship herself, while she still had the strength left to endure even if it was as painful as death…….
Stopping now was the way to be hurt at least a little less.
“So, just…… let’s stop here.”
At the words that barely came out as if squeezed out, the man’s face contorted menacingly in an instant.
“Let’s stop here—.”
The voice repeating exactly what she said sounded extremely bleak.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected this kind of reaction.
Yes, I understand, I will do so; it would have been stranger for him to turn back obediently.
“It is a bit absurd. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never even thought of a welcome like this.”
“…….”
Deborah could say nothing to the low-bursting hollow laugh.
Nothing except silently biting her lip.
The lips of the man, who remained silent for a long time as if suppressing his anger, opened again before long.
“If the reason you are acting like this all of a sudden is because of Mother—”
“No.”
Deborah hurriedly cut off the words coming from his mouth as he composed his emotions.
“It’s not all of a sudden…… I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
“…….”
“That when the time comes…… one day, I must end this relationship…….”
“End it?”
In an instant, his face contorted fiercely.
“You were really having such a thought?”
“…….”
“Thinking about ending this relationship cleanly and leaving when the time is right, all while being held in my arms, moaning and crying from pleasure—.”
“…….”
“I didn’t know. I had absolutely no idea you were having such a cute thought—really, not even in my dreams.”
At the words spoken with a twisted lip and a sneer, the emotions she had suppressed all along burst out in an instant.
“Then…… besides that, what kind of future is there for the two of us?”
The man looked down silently at Deborah, who asked back with a frown.
“Do you perhaps…… intend to keep me as a mistress?”
A mistress. She shuddered with horror even after uttering it herself.
Someone might criticize her for not knowing her place.
Saying that for someone of lowly orphan status, becoming the Duke’s mistress is the ultimate honor.
But…… she hated it.
Waiting for him without knowing when he would come, getting disappointed and exhausted by the endless waiting.
Above all, the fact that she had to share him…… with another woman was so horrible and miserable.
Another woman occupying his bedroom, touching him…… laughing with him and falling asleep with him…… just imagining that made the blood in her whole body feel like it was boiling backwards, so how on earth…….
“I, I…… I hate that. That person becoming the Duke’s wife…… and me waiting endlessly and waiting again until the Duke visits me, that kind of thing…… I hate it. No, I won’t do it.”
Eyes that lost their light day by day while waiting for a man who did not come.
An obsession almost close to a disease that was never let go until the moment life was extinguished.
As the cold images of her mother engraved in her memory surfaced one by one, her body trembled uncontrollably.
“Go. I…… won’t go.”
She tried her best to pull out her captured arm, but the strength of the grip only grew stronger.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
At the action of pulling her arm toward him as if to show her, Deborah’s emotions momentarily twisted.
She became even more angry and disgusted by the man’s attitude, which clearly showed he held the upper hand even at a time like this, as if her situation was of no concern to him.
“Let go of this arm!”
Her emotions becoming intense, Deborah struck his firm chest wildly.
It was something that absolutely could not and should not happen, but at that moment, she couldn’t see anything.
“Really, why are you doing this? I said I’ve come to dislike the Duke now!”
“Dislike?!”
“Yes! I dislike you! So please stop being stubborn and just go now—”
While they were exchanging sharp words and glaring at each other, her captured arm was suddenly pulled forward even more strongly.
Her face was captured in an instant, and Deborah’s eyes widened at the fiery kiss pouring down fiercely upon it.
She tried to turn her head the other way to avoid the man’s lips immediately, but the more she did, the more the movement swirling inside her mouth turned persistent and lewd.
“Mmph! Mmph!!”
In the face of that reckless act that wouldn’t budge no matter how much she struggled, Deborah eventually bit down hard on what had entered her mouth.
The moment a fishy scent surged into her mouth, the man’s actions finally stopped.
“…….”
“…….”
From the man’s face as he wiped the bloodstains from his slowly parted lips, an emotion different from anger momentarily surfaced deeply.
The man’s gaze moved straight ahead.
Toward those golden eyes that were glaring at him as if to kill him.
“I…… hate this.”
She meant she hated acting this coercively, as if giving her a punishment.
Feeling as if she had become a woman it was okay to treat carelessly.
She could not bear for him, the man in front of her, to treat her like that, even if it were someone else.
At the misery that felt as if her whole body was being shoved into the mud and crushed, the tip of Deborah’s chin trembled.
Only after seeing that did the chilling energy surrounding the man begin to gradually subside.
After a moment of silence—
Finally, words like a sigh flowed from his mouth.
“About what happened just now…….”
“…….”
“Right, I made a mistake.”
“…….”
A clean apology.
Perhaps because she never expected such words to come out, Deborah’s golden eyes began to waver slowly.
“Why, of all places, here—”
The words he was saying were cut off in the middle, but Deborah somehow felt she knew the rest.
Since she was relying on the house of Jade Wilkins, whom he thinks of so horribly, he must have been naturally appalled and angry.
But did the man know that there was nowhere else for her to go except here…….
Deborah bit the tender flesh inside her mouth at the emptiness seeping into her heart.
At that moment, the man’s large hand landed softly on top of Deborah’s head.
Until the hand that was slowly stroking her hair finally pulled her body into an embrace, Deborah could say nothing, as if possessed.
The man, who held Deborah tightly and inhaled her scent, soon let out a sigh of relief.
“I felt like I was going crazy at the news that it had already been several days since you left.”
“…….”
“I searched every place you might go, but you were nowhere……”
The man could not bring himself to finish those final words.
At the strength of the hug, as if trying to be compensated for the anxiety he felt at that moment, something hot surged up in her throat.
“Let’s go for now.”
“…….”
“Let’s talk after we go.”
The man, who pulled away from the embrace, softly wiped Deborah’s cheeks which were now wet with tears.
She really wanted to follow him.
That she would never live like her mother, that she would never live waiting like a fool as a man’s mistress—
She had made that promise to herself, but in truth, her honest feeling was that she wanted to throw everything away and just stay by the man’s side.
Once a month, no, even once every two or three months was fine.
If only he wouldn’t forget her and visited her from time to time, she could wait without wishing for anything more.
But…….
Since they say even that isn’t allowed, and that even that is not enough for someone like me, how…….
Deborah spoke while hot tears dripped down.
“I…… can’t go…… I cannot go.”
“……Why.”
“…….”
To the question of why, asking for the reason, the words that were coming out sorrowfully were swallowed back into her throat.
How could she say it?
That your mother, your younger sister, and everyone opposes our relationship.
That she is afraid of returning to the place where those cold and stinging gazes are.
Whether he read that mind without her speaking, the man gave a soft kiss on the forehead of the sorrowfully crying Deborah.
“If you dislike Elfengreen, let’s go somewhere else.”
“…….”
Somewhere else—what on earth did that mean—Deborah’s gaze fell straight onto the man’s face.
“There are plenty of other places to stay besides there. The lakeside villa we went to last time is fine, or there’s Bluewill, where pretty flowers you might like are spread nearby. Ah, there’s also Ashford Castle, where the snowy scenery looked down upon from inside is exquisite in winter. How about it?”
Winter…… To her, for whom even a single season was unstable, the man was talking about winter.
That he would be with her until that season.
There was no way not to know what that meant.
“Waking up together every morning, and falling asleep together every night.”
“…….”
“There will be no marrying anyone else while keeping you. Because that is what I’ve set my mind to.”
She couldn’t regain her senses at the words pouring out from the man’s mouth.
She thought he just meant he would keep her by his side so she wouldn’t be lonely, but that he wouldn’t marry—what on earth…….
Looking at Deborah, who was gaping without being able to ask, the man’s mouth soon curved softly.
“So believe in me and go.”
The words that he can never go alone while leaving her here—
With those words at the end, as his face slowly tilted, Deborah’s brown eyelashes began to slowly fall downward.
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