Chapter 195. I will go find her
—Well, you wouldn’t have thought it would be resolved easily from the start anyway…….
As the face of Philip, who laughed sheepishly telling him not to be disappointed, came to mind, a chuckle, “Pfft,” leaked out from Raymond without him realizing.
On his way back after having an audience with the King.
The result was indeed just as expected.
Just as Philip said, he did not expect that everything would be resolved all at once.
If it were a matter that would be resolved so easily, he wouldn’t have dragged it out complicatedly all the way here from the beginning.
However—
Even while saying so, there seemed to have been some sort of expectation in a corner of his heart.
Going to find the woman who would be waiting at the end of this road back, saying before her that he had obtained the King’s permission.
That the child who would be sleeping peacefully embraced in that bosom now becomes the official successor of Cheister whom everyone acknowledges.
Saying so, and after that…….
“…….”
Leaving that last phrase behind, Raymond roughly swept down his face.
Ha, a deflate laugh burst out from between his teeth at that moment.
No matter how many nice-sounding words he attached to it like this or that, ultimately, the words he wanted to say were that.
‘My heart toward the woman’
Like a madman, even if he crawled on that bottom floor and made all kinds of struggles, that heart that stubbornly returned to its place again.
Perhaps at the very first moment, when he walked to the study drawn by that singing sound echoing at the end of the hallway, he might have foreseen that it would turn out like this.
‘A wicked witch who completely snatches away a person’s soul.’
Just like the stigma he had placed over the woman to deny himself, he could by no means block his heart that was helplessly drawn at every moment.
When he cleanly acknowledged that in the end he would not be able to let go of the woman no matter what he did, the skein of heart that had been so complicatedly entangled was unravelled so easily.
Until acknowledging that…… it took far too long a time.
Haa— letting out a long breath, Raymond raised his hand and loosely untied his cravat.
In the midst of doing so, something unfamiliar caught, “Thud,” on that edge of his field of vision.
A dark reddish-brown wooden box placed on the opposite seat.
It was something handed over from Philip right before departing during the day today.
—I do not know how on earth you plan to use this, but anyway, be sure to use it at a moment when it is absolutely necessary. Since you asked to help, I am sorting it out and giving it to you for now, but frankly, whether this is a good thing to do…… I do not know.
The image of Philip handing over the box with a expression mixed with concern.
Above Raymond’s blue eyes recalling that moment, a cold gleam suddenly passed.
The key.
The clue to navigate through this troublesome obstacle a bit more smoothly was contained right inside this box.
And tens of keys that he could pick and use to his own liking at that.
Of course, ignoring the King’s summons was also something he could not do, but the reason he hurried his reluctant steps was precisely because of this.
At the corners of Raymond’s mouth looking at the box, a satisfying smile floated after a long time.
Of course, that smile vanished without a trace just as it was before long though.
***
“There is no need to go up.”
It was the moment he had just set foot on top of the stairs heading to the second floor.
After lightly glancing over the faces that came out to greet in front of the entrance hall, just when he was heading straight to the second floor.
At that sound that made his steps stop, Raymond slowly turned his head to the opposite side.
“…….”
An expression asking what on earth that meant.
The strange point was Eleanor von Cheiste’s reaction, which showed not the slightest shaking despite his gaze falling blankly down on her.
Having a tragic face like never before, she took a large deep breath, and then slowly brought up again the words she had spoken a moment ago.
“Even if you go up to the second floor, that child will not be there.”
“…….”
“Because yesterday, she left this mansion.”
“…….”
In an instant, a quiet silence surrounded the two of them to the extent that even the sound of breathing could not be heard.
That the silence was broken was not so long after.
“Left…… the mansion, what on earth does that mean?”
A voice echoing coldly.
Even though he clearly understood what it meant, Raymond dared to ask.
“After you left, it seemed she thought a lot by herself. Coming to find me, asking me to take good care of the child, saying she wouldn’t receive the mansion or subsidy.”
“…….”
“Saying it would be better to leave before you returned, yesterday urgently—”
The words that flowed out continuously as if prepared were swallowed right into her throat just as they were at Raymond’s sudden, unexpected action.
“Ray!”
Behind him striding and leaping up the stairs, she called his name desperately, but Raymond’s image was already after disappearing from her field of vision.
Eleanor von Cheiste watched above the stairs where Raymond disappeared, like that for a long while with an anxious gaze.
**
Even while leaping up the stairs, he could not believe it.
‘Leaving? Who.’
That woman…… there was no way she would leave.
Leaving the child behind at that.
Absolutely…… there was no way that could be.
At the thought that he must confirm it directly with his own two eyes, Raymond’s steps began to become even faster.
While passing through the hallway, the servants bowed their waists before him with surprised faces, but such things did not enter his eyes.
Striding, the moment the targeted room door finally appeared before his eyes, his heart began to beat like crazy.
Bang—!
Grabbing the handle and flinging the door open as if it would break, he still thought it wouldn’t be so.
Though he knew his mother wouldn’t play a senseless joke on him, even so, he thought it wouldn’t be so…….
However, what was visible before his eyes was inside a room that was completely empty.
A cold interior where warmth…… could not be felt.
Though he tried hard to avert his eyes pretending not to know, the woman’s fragrant body scent that dug into the tip of his nose from the moment he entered…… and the scent of milk were not felt at all.
Thump—! Thump—!
His heart jumped around anxiously to the extent that it could be heard right in his ears.
Because it was a situation he had not doubted in the slightest, a feeling of his mind being completely empty.
It was a long while later that Raymond, who was standing blankly like a person who had lost his mind, moved again.
At the end of quickly retracing the path he had come back, what was waiting for Raymond was the exact same landscape he saw at the last.
As if she knew he would return like this, at the image of his mother standing straight, the feeling of anxiety without knowing the meaning only amplified further and further.
“Where is…… the child right now?”
It was a child he had never once sought after until now since being born.
Only reaching a moment like this, even though he knew his action of seeking only then was shameless, he still had to confirm the child with his own two eyes.
“He is in my bedroom—”
Likewise this time, Raymond turned his steps without even listening to all of his mother’s words.
Somehow it felt like he would be there if he went there.
Both the child, and the woman who would be holding the child in her arms.
Yes, surely it would be so…… then everything would become fine…….
He thought that this unpleasant feeling of anxiety would also all disappear cleanly, like that.
However, that desperate wish was shattered into pieces this time as well.
Opening the bedroom door and entering inside, the one who welcomed Raymond was another woman holding the child.
“……D, Duke. Have you arrived?”
A woman who bowed her waist deeply while gauging the mood here and there with an anxious gaze.
Inside that bosom…… seeing the small thing whining, he instantly became helpless and distraught.
Looking at the child before his eyes, the reality that became more and more vivid.
That is why he could not believe this reality even more.
Leaving the child behind, leaving the child who was like her own life behind, that the woman left cleanly all by herself…… just how on earth could he believe it?
To his brain that thought something had gone wrong, something flashed rapidly through.
—By what means do you think you will raise the child?
—When you are in a state of wandering from place to place without even a single place to rely your own body on, tell me just how you intend to raise a child. As if you aren’t enough, are you trying to make even the child a beggar?
—Think realistically.
—If it lives as your child, that child will live like you for the rest of its life. A life of enduring day by day laboriously just to not starve, unable to say anything even while being trampled by others, as if that is only natural.
—But what if it grows up here? For the rest of its life as a person of the Cheister family, it will live a life where dare anyone treat them carelessly. Not a life swayed by others, but as a person who sways others.
—So if you have a brain, do something called thinking at least once before you speak.
—What truly is for the sake of the child.
“…….”
Before leaving for the Royal Castle, the blame he poured onto the woman with his own mouth.
Saying she didn’t need any of it so just let her raise the child, that she wouldn’t appear before his eyes for the rest of her life…… at those words, the words he spat out cruelly in a twisted manner scraped through his chest only then.
At his own foolishness, having been confident that the woman would absolutely not be able to move even a single step from here leaving the child behind, fierce curses surged up to his throat in an instant.
Pushing her as much as he could so that she would leave on her own…….
Leaving the mansion foolishly after doing so, a rage he could not contain boiled up at that idiot-like behavior.
“She said it was a decision made thinking of the child.”
At that time when his mind was switching off and on with rage and self-hatred, those words dug into his ears.
Raymond slowly turned his body in the direction where the sound was heard.
“Asking to take good care of him so that he can grow up as a happy child without any lack, as a person of the Cheister family by all means…… saying she would not receive any compensation according to it.”
When she had come, his mother with a heavy face was standing behind him.
“Saying if a day comes in the future when the child comes to know about her—”
“…….”
“By any chance, she hated it if he thought he was exchanged with the child upon receiving some kind of price…… she refused until the very end like that.”
“…….”
The face of Eleanor von Cheiste conveying those words looked extremely complicated.
Although her status was different, because she understood that heart-wrenching maternal love as a mother who gave birth to a child, it was an appearance as if mixed emotions crossed.
However, the words coming out at the end were ultimately words thoroughly for the sake of Cheister.
“So now please forget everything, and try to find your place.”
Your place.
The ‘your place’ she spoke of was a phrase referring to his former self.
Raymond von Cheister.
A lonely and pitiful human who had never once held a woman, no, anyone deeply in his heart.
Such a person who would live lonely for the rest of his life with a cold chest filled with hatred and rage.
He had never thought that was strange.
Because he himself also thought that was an obvious life.
A life of living beneath the noble name of Cheister, and then being buried in that land.
However…….
An unexpected variable occurred in such a life.
A variable he once thought might become a stain on his life.
However, he knew now.
That only after meeting that woman, after meeting Deborah, did he finally come to find his true self.
That now, a life without that woman was something he could not even imagine.
As if organizing his tangled thoughts, a firm strength was applied to Raymond’s chin in an instant.
Facing his mother with a worried face, Raymond slowly parted his lips.
“No, I will go find her. That woman. Definitely.”
Spitting out words that were like a pledge toward himself, Raymond thought.
That he would definitely find her.
That finding her, this time for sure, he would never let go of that woman’s hand again.
