Chapter 125. I Intend to Relocate
Inside the returning carriage.
Dark clouds filled Deborah’s face as she gazed out the window.
—It will be difficult, but just endure and wait for a while.
Those were the words he had said to her about an hour ago, before they left Jade’s house.
The words saying she had to stay at Elfengreen for a while until all preparations to leave were completed.
Deborah knew very well.
That for him, a Duke, to relocate his residence was not a matter of simply shaking things off and leaving easily by himself.
Unlike her, who only held one light suitcase with few belongings, it was natural that there would be a mountain of things to pack and tasks to handle.
—Until then, can’t I just… wait outside like I am now?
—Don’t talk nonsense.
—…….
—Are you telling me to leave you here right now?
The man cut her off flatly when she barely managed to voice her words because she did not have the courage to go back.
In the face of that cold energy, she could not even bring up the fact that she meant she would stay at an inn rather than Jade’s house.
Meanwhile, her thoughts suddenly drifted elsewhere.
‘Jade…….’
Until the moment she picked up her suitcase and followed the man out, she could not see Jade’s face in the end.
Seeing as he had not returned even though it was well past the time he usually came home, it seemed he likely knew.
That the Duke had come there looking for her, and that she would eventually end up following him…….
Indeed, it was not a difficult conclusion to reach if she thought about how he knew she was at Jade’s house.
Anyway, since she had been indebted to him for just a few days, she thought it was only right to say goodbye.
So, she hesitated for a moment at the entrance, but the man, who noticed that like a ghost, put Deborah into the carriage just like that.
If she left like this, she wouldn’t be able to see him for a while, then what about Teacher Helena…….
While she was lost in various thoughts, the running carriage began to slow down its speed.
Deborah’s gaze moved quickly across the carriage window.
The grand mansion, visible at a glance even from afar.
Seeing the lights pouring out even in the middle of the pitch-black night, Deborah finally realized she had returned to
Elfengreen.
“There is nothing to worry about.”
“…….”
Seeing Deborah looking extremely tense, the man spoke calmly.
Saying that since he is here, there is nothing to worry about—.
Listening to those words, it felt like everything would truly be alright.
A feeling that if she just endured this short moment, the happy future he spoke of would truly unfold before her.
However, despite that, her fluctuating heart did not settle easily.
An ominous foreboding, as if the moment she stepped off this carriage, something terrible would be waiting for her.
That unpleasant energy began to cling thick and heavy to Deborah’s entire body.
“Here—.”
Before she knew it, he had stepped down and was reaching his hand out toward her.
Deborah stared blankly at the man for a long time, then eventually reached her hand out toward him.
There was no other choice left besides that anymore.
Even if what lay ahead was a thousand-fathom cliff where one wrong step would lead straight into the fires of hell.
Deborah could not reject the man’s hand reached out to her now.
A long darkness settled over Deborah’s face as she stepped down while holding the man’s hand.
It was quite a late hour.
A time when the surroundings would normally be submerged in a quiet silence.
For some reason today, the entrance hall was so bustling that light leaked out brightly even to the entrance.
The reason was the sound of the bell that rang just a few minutes ago.
The sound announcing that the Duke’s carriage had passed through the main gate.
At the signal sent by the gatekeeper, everyone who had been waiting without sleeping until then ran out to the entrance hall hurriedly and stood straightening their appearance.
Perhaps because they recalled the Duke’s appearance as he exchanged a sharp battle of words with the Grand Duchess before leaving, a tight tension was steeped in the servants’ faces.
An appearance they had never seen before.
For the two people, who were a mother and son so close that everyone envied them, to face each other with such cold faces.
Just as everyone was each having complex thoughts in their heads about how things were unfolding—
Finally, the front door opened and the Duke entered.
“Have you returned, Duke?”
The people lined up together, and the butler Greig, who was at the very front, stepped forward and greeted the Duke politely.
However, seeing someone following behind him, his expression wavered noticeably.
“Come in.”
Everyone’s gaze shifted simultaneously to the person standing behind the Duke.
The maid whom the Grand Duchess had kicked out a few days ago while the Duke was away.
As soon as the Duke, who had accompanied the Crown Prince back to the palace, returned, the person he brought back inside as if to show everyone was none other than Deborah.
Unable to watch her hesitating with her head bowed low, the Duke walked back a few steps and snatched the bag from her hand.
Grabbing Deborah’s hand with his other hand, he spoke lowly toward Charlotte, who was standing right behind Greig, before taking a step.
“Prepare the bathwater.”
“……Yes, Duke.”
Charlotte bowed her head and answered his command.
With those short words over, the steps he took forward, however, stopped in place again before going far.
The servants were likely not the only ones who heard the bell rung by the gatekeeper.
As if they had heard the sound and come down, the Grand Duchess and Cecilia were looking this way from a few steps away.
With faces of extreme horror.
As if she could not believe it, the Grand Duchess’s wavering gaze moved slowly from her son’s face downward.
Once to the hand holding the shabby suitcase, and once to the hand tightly gripping the hand of that lowly maid she had kicked out.
In an instant, Cecilia, who was standing beside her, quickly supported her body as it swayed from the shock.
Watching Raymond’s stiffened profile, Deborah tried to pull her captured hand away.
However, the hand only gripped hers more tightly.
Unable even to ask him to let go, she just kept her head bowed down, but…….
“Charlotte.”
His lowly sunken voice echoed in her ears.
At the sound of him calling her, Charlotte quickly stepped toward his side.
“Take her upstairs.”
Though she flinched for a moment at the falling command, Charlotte soon quickly received the bag from the Duke’s hand.
Raymond turned his head for a moment and looked back at Deborah.
“…….”
“…….”
In the eyes that met for a split second, the message he wanted to convey was delivered through the way he slightly nodded his head.
‘It’s okay, go and wait without any worries.’
With those short words over, the man turned his head back and walked forward.
Deborah stood in that spot as if dead until his back, supporting the Grand Duchess and heading to the second floor, was finally no longer visible.
“Now, let’s go up.”
A while later, until those words fell from Mrs. Charlotte’s mouth, for a very long time.
“How can you do this?! You, of all people, Ray, how!”
Upon entering the bedroom, Eleanor questioned Raymond in a tone full of agitation.
The momentum was so fierce that Cecilia, who was standing nearby, was startled.
She, who had taught him that one must not lose the dignity of a noble at any moment, also seemed to find it difficult to maintain her reason in the face of her beloved son’s betrayal.
“You, who knows well how many long years of pain I lived through because of that woman Natalie! How can you commit such an act!”
At the sight of her pouring out her resentment as if bursting emotions piled up over the past years, Raymond’s gaze sank darkly.
How could he not know that?
The person who suffered because of his father over the past years was not just her alone.
A cold father who did not show him even half, no, even half of half of the affection he poured onto the illegitimate child.
Because of that, how had he endured alone with a chilled heart for those long years?
The reason he had tried so hard to ignore the emotions that came for the first time in his life and pushed them away so terribly also originated from all that.
Because, as Deborah said, he thought it was a nonsensical relationship.
He thought it was just a passing attraction that would flow away if he endured it.
Like an idiot.
But it was not like that now.
It could not be.
Now that his feelings had deepened this much—it was unimaginable to have someone else besides her by his side.
He knew it was a relationship that would not be approved by both of the two people he loved most in the world, and he knew it was an act of digging up his mother’s wounds again.
Still, he had no choice but to do this.
Since he had already made up his mind, he must not show a single inch of hesitation.
Because if he wavered, the person who would waver tens of times, hundreds of times more was Deborah.
The woman he must protect now, the person he had decided to be with until the end.
Therefore, he had to tell these two people, if no one else.
Since he had already decided to do so.
Raymond, biting his jaw, finally lifted his gaze and looked straight ahead.
“As soon as preparations are finished, I intend to relocate my residence elsewhere with that woman.”
A sound that flowed out calmly.
As if they had heard something strange, the expressions of the two people looking at Raymond appeared extremely bizarre.
Toward those two people, Raymond continued to speak.
“Naturally, I will not be getting engaged—.”
“Ray…… you, right now, what on earth…….”
Seeing her raising a trembling hand, Raymond took a breath for a moment.
But that was only for a moment; in the instant that breath stopped.
At the same time, the final words, like a notification, dropped from his mouth.
“Marriage, I intend to do it with that woman—Deborah.”
Thud—
It was the moment Eleanor’s world turned upside down in an instant.
☆▪︎▪︎▪︎☆
