I Only Need the Duke’s Child
The hour was late. Blair stood before the bedroom door.
Today was her wedding day, and this was the chamber where she would spend her wedding night with her husband.
After standing frozen for a long while, she pulled a shawl over the thin nightgown that clung to her silhouette and knocked.
“…….”
It appeared her husband had not yet arrived.
Blair let out a quiet sigh of relief, slipped into the room, and sat on the sofa.
She waited.
Ten minutes passed. Then thirty. Then another thirty.
An hour had gone by, and her husband had yet to appear. Unlike the past.
‘Does he have no intention of coming?’
Staring at the firmly shut door, Blair recalled the terms of their union.
‘It’s not a real marriage this time, but a one-year contract.’
A marriage forged strictly for mutual utility. There was no need to perform the rites of a wedding night as if they were a true couple, was there?
‘It’s better this way.’
If she were to face that handsome face again, to share skin-to-skin warmth, she might fall into the delusion that he loved her.
Just as she had in the past.
‘Spending the night with him just once—the day Aziel was conceived—is enough.’
Today was not that day, so it mattered little.
Concluding that he would not visit, Blair retrieved paper and a quill from the drawer. She began to calmly draft the document that would serve as proof of their contract.
She had just finished the final sentence when she felt a sudden warmth behind her. A man’s large hand pressed abruptly against the desk.
Startled, Blair turned to see the man who had approached without a sound.
Taller than most, his sturdy, masculine frame was framed by the gap in his heavy robe. Beneath his dark, flowing hair, his eyes were cold—the color of a summer night sky.
His face was so achingly beautiful that anyone, man or woman, would momentarily lose their breath upon meeting his gaze.
Duke Headrin del Marc.
As of today, her husband.
As if he could read the thoughts behind her surprised expression, he spoke.
“Why do you look so startled? It is our wedding night. Surely it is only natural for a couple to spend it together.”
“……I didn’t think you would come.”
“Even though you stayed awake waiting until now?”
At his remark, which struck uncomfortably close to the truth, Blair pressed her lips together.
“I only waited just in case. Duke… no, it would be improper of me to be asleep upon your arrival.”
At the slip of her tongue, Headrin’s gaze darkened.
“That sounds like you were quite prepared to spend our wedding night together.”
Blair flinched at the touch of his hand caressing her cheek, his voice a low vibration against her ear. But it was his words that startled her most.
‘Why on earth?’
In her past life, Headrin had accepted an unwanted marriage proposed by her brother only to extract the truth from her. The wedding night, the tenderness—it had all been a performance designed to trap her.
That was why, in this life, she had proposed terms to him before the ceremony, hoping to ensure she wouldn’t be swayed by his acting again.
‘If the Duke accepts my proposal, I will cooperate fully to uncover the truth of “that day.”’
She had told him that even without his deception, she would grant him what he wanted. She had been certain he would no longer bother with the pretense of seduction. So why?
‘Once you find the truth, wasn’t I supposed to be useless to you?’
Just as she had been in the past.
Yet, he was reacting in ways she had not anticipated. For Blair, who had not even expected him to walk through the door, the situation was utterly bewildering.
“There is no need to go through with the wedding night—”
“I want to.”
His whisper was fixed upon her red lips. The hand that cradled her cheek stroked her mouth with his thumb.
At the heat of his fingertips, her heart began to hammer.
Headrin lifted his gaze, and their eyes locked.
“Right now.”
In his blue eyes, a raw, unrefined desire flickered.
Before Blair could recoil, his lips descended to swallow hers.
Blair was struck by the sudden, sharp reminder that he was, after all, a man.
‘They say men can share their bodies even with someone they don’t hold in their hearts.’
Yes, this isn’t love. He isn’t acting for a greater purpose, either.
It is merely a momentary impulse.
Thinking this, she felt a strange sense of ease. Blair suppressed her chaotic heart and closed her eyes in resignation.
In the past, she had trembled with fear and trepidation at his intimate touch. His large stature had felt like a beast waiting to devour her, or a prison locking her away. Yet, because she had loved the way his eyes looked only at her—because of the warmth of his embrace—she had fallen for him instantly, believing it was love.
‘But I won’t be deceived by that warmth ever again.’
Spending the night with him now was solely for the sake of the child.
‘Aziel, my baby.’
If only she could meet the child she loved more than her own life once more.
She could endure the night as many times as it took with the husband who had, in another lifetime, likely killed her.