“Where have you been?”
“……I went to see a play. I felt stifled just staying at home. Were you waiting for me?”
“I had intended for us to have a meal together for once, but you weren’t in your room.”
His voice, pitched lower than usual, seemed to press down on the very air in the room.
Blair sent Lina, who was feeling flustered between the two of them, away to eat first, then entered the room with Headrin.
“You left even the carriage and the knights behind, so I was worried.”
Although Headrin’s words sounded like genuine concern, the look in his eyes was one of suspicion rather than worry.
The moment she met his gaze, she was reminded of the voice she had heard once before.
‘How can I trust you?’
He was doubting her again.
At the realization of that fact, an overwhelming surge of emotion welled up within her.
The man who hadn’t even shown his face for a fortnight was now acting with such blatant suspicion over a single outing, which only served to remind her of the past.
“Is it not that you simply cannot trust me?”
A sharp, uncontrollable voice escaped her lips.
In the past, Blair would have walked on eggshells, worried she might have offended him, but that was no longer the case.
Ignoring his reaction, Blair continued in a cynical tone.
“Are you perhaps anxious about what sort of scheme I might be plotting behind your back?”
At that, Headrin slightly narrowed his brows. It was a sharp side of Blair he had never seen before.
He met her violet eyes, which were filled with resentment, and let out a dry, hollow laugh.
If you know that much, why act so suspiciously?
The suspicions that had accumulated over time now surfaced as sharp, jagged blades.
“If you are aware of that, then take the knights with you wherever you go from now on. So that I need not be anxious any longer.”
Headrin, who had been biting out every word, swallowed the rest of his sentence upon seeing Blair’s reddened eyes.
He sighed, covered his eyes with his large hand, and then slowly opened them. His throat bobbed as he struggled to swallow and suppress his emotions.
“I—”
Before Blair could raise her voice any further, Headrin spoke in a strained, repressed tone and turned away.
“……Wash up and come down. You must be hungry.”
Blair watched his back as he left the room before she could even find the chance to stop him. Memories of the past suddenly overlapped with that retreating silhouette.
He was always like this.
They would raise their voices at each other, and at some point, he would stop and turn away to leave. As if avoiding the conflict before the rift in their emotions could deepen further. Even though her heart remained heavy, not a single knot untied.
He did so without even realizing that such behavior only dug the chasm of their emotions deeper.
Blair could only watch the back of him as he turned away. Watching his broad back as it moved further away, watching the door close coldly.
That was the uncrossable wall between the two of them.
Before her regression, she had turned away, afraid to open that door. She had been terrified that if she opened it, grabbed hold of him, got angry, or cried, only their ending would remain at the end of that collision.
That was why she had never managed to open that door. But…….
‘I don’t want that anymore.’
In her eyes, as she struggled to hold back the tears that threatened to spill, she saw the extinguished fireplace. After staring at it for a moment, Blair slowly approached it.
* * *
Headrin, who had come down to the dining room first, was drinking an aperitif while waiting for Blair. It was already his fifth glass.
Headrin moistened his parched throat and recalled the situation from a moment ago.
The reddened eyes, the trembling body, the quickened breathing—a woman who looked as though she might collapse if touched ever so slightly.
He couldn’t even push her further for fear that she might be harmed, so why had he let his emotions show? Like a fool.
Even then, he felt a bitter, self-deprecating laugh escape him at his own urge to verify if she carried the scent of another man.
And if there were another man, so what?
The moment that thought crossed his mind, his blood ran cold. He downed the aperitif like whiskey and set the empty glass aside.
However, Mason, who had been waiting in the back, did not move to fill the glass as he usually did.
Headrin called out to him in a voice tinged with irritation.
“Mason.”
Only then did Mason approach and skillfully fill the glass. A remark filled with worry followed.
“If you keep drinking on an empty stomach, you will ruin your health.”
At his nagging, Headrin let out a small, faint chuckle for the first time since entering the dining room.
“It seems you still see me as a twelve-year-old brat.”
“If you were twelve, you wouldn’t be able to drink, so I wouldn’t be this worried.”
“……Honestly, what a tedious old man.”
Headrin rebuked Mason for taking his joke so seriously, but there was no malice in his voice.
He remembered that it was due to Mason’s hard work that a twelve-year-old boy who had lost his parents grew into a man and the head of a respectable family.
However, just as he lifted the filled glass, ignoring that worry, the closed dining room door was flung open without warning, and Ruth burst in.
“Your Grace!”
Urgency was etched into Ruth’s voice.
Headrin stopped the glass he was about to tilt and looked at him with furrowed brows. A dark, ominous feeling washed over him.
“Her Grace has…… collapsed.”
And that premonition was exactly right.
* * *
Mely had waited for Her Grace in the bathroom to assist with the bath, in place of Lina, who had gone to change. She had been told that Her Grace would handle the changing of her clothes herself and to just wait in the bathroom.
But a long time had passed, and Blair did not come.
‘Is she having trouble because of the complicated clothes?’
Worried, she left the bathroom and was on her way back to the room when the expression on Headrin’s face as he left Blair’s room earlier suddenly crossed her mind.
Usually, even apart from his handsome face, Headrin always radiated a cool aura that was difficult to approach, but just a moment ago, he had emitted a coldness that was chilling, bordering on freezing. It was enough to make the very air around him hold its breath.
And when Mely had entered to attend to Blair, Blair had kept her back to Mely and did not show her face. Yet, that silhouette had looked somehow precarious. It seemed her voice, as she told her to wait in the bathroom, had trembled as well.
The uneasy premonition that dawned belatedly quickened Mely’s footsteps.
Mely, who had arrived at Blair’s room at a near run, knocked on the door, but there was no reply from within.
Unable to wait any longer, she opened the door and entered, and a gentle warmth touched her skin. The fireplace, which had been off until Mely left, was now roaring with flames. And in front of it…….
“Good heavens, Your Grace!”
Blair was lying unconscious in front of the fireplace.
Having heard the news, Headrin came up immediately, followed by the physician.
“It appears she lost consciousness due to a mental shock. There are no other abnormalities, so she should be fine once she gets some rest.”
The physician finished his examination and left, and silence descended upon the room. The sound of Lina’s sobbing broke the silence.
“Your Highness…….”
Lina could not bring herself to approach the bedside where Headrin was sitting, and instead, she sobbed, sniffling through her tears and runny nose.
Headrin’s expression stiffened at the honorific that slipped from Lina’s lips.
It had already been over a month since Blair became his wife, yet she still called her ‘Your Highness.’ Even the sound of her sniffling sobs was grating.
Without looking back, Headrin commanded.
“……Ruth. Take them out.”
Noticing that Headrin was in a foul mood, Ruth quickly led Lina and Mely out of the room. Finally, only the two of them remained.
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Blair’s fair face looked paler than usual, almost translucent. Yet, her expression was peaceful.
Seeing the woman who had turned the mansion upside down and was now sleeping with such a peaceful face made his anger boil.
She was someone who was so afraid of fire that she wouldn’t even go near the fireplace, so why on earth had she collapsed in front of it? He could not understand.
‘Could it be…….’
Just as Headrin was gauging the reason, Blair’s eyes, which had been closed tightly, fluttered, and she opened them.
Blair’s eyes blinked slowly, then turned toward Headrin, who was beside her.
The moment she met his eyes, the first emotion he felt was relief. So much for the anger that had been boiling up inside him just moments before.
Blair, who had been staring at him blankly, opened her mouth.
“……Did I faint?”
“Did you approach the fireplace on purpose, knowing this would happen?”
“I wanted to find my memories. It isn’t something I can just bury and claim to know nothing about forever…….”
The moment the word ‘memory’ escaped her lips, his heart sank.
A woman who was terrified of even turning on the fireplace in the cold winter had lit it with her own hands.
Because of those memories.
Because of him, who had suspected and driven her to this point.
Her voice was calm, without a hint of resentment. Or perhaps she was simply too exhausted from the earlier ordeal to be angry anymore.
Headrin ground his teeth and clenched his fist so hard that the veins on the back of his hand stood out.
“Even so, there is no need to find them in such a reckless way. So, never do such a thing again.”
Over his cold voice, memories of their previous life overlapped.
It had been the same in their previous life.
When she found out he had been acting like he loved her to extract the truth from her, and when she realized he was distancing himself because he saw no possibility of it, she had done the same.
Back then, too, Blair had attempted hypnosis on her own and ended up bedridden as a result, and Headrin had pressed her just as he was doing now.
‘Don’t do anything else anymore. Just, stay still. As you have done until now.’
The memory of the day she stopped clashing with him because she was afraid of how it would end.
But now, she didn’t want to do that.
“……And what if I never find my memories for the rest of my life?”
“There will be another way. Is Lady Lorellain not working on it?”
“You expect me to wait for memories that haven’t returned in ten years to come back after a few conversations, while I continue to invite your suspicion in the meantime?”
Blair’s previously calm voice rose in a strange way. At the same time, her breathing grew shallow.