Chapter 12

 Your mood. Your feelings. The things you feel. The things that hurt you. Nothing is more important to me than those. He brushed back her fallen hair behind her shoulder. The woman’s light pink eyes wavered. She couldn’t speak for a long while. Larque waited patiently. He was the most gentle and patient man when it came to Ella.

 “Not everyone likes us. And that’s not special.”

 The words stung his ears. Because his heart ached. The dull pain approaching deeply from the outside to the center was unfamiliar. Larque waited for her, having lost his words.

 “The Countess of Roenel hated seeing our exposed shoulders. She felt it was frivolous. The head maid brought us clothes with puff sleeves. We changed into those and came out.”

 “Is that all?”

 “……The head maid. Well, I was trying to go find you, Master, but she gave me other tasks. That’s why I was a bit late.”

 “Why would the head maid–?”

 Ella rolled her eyes. They had entered the castle and arranged their belongings. The Countess found the servant girls who entered the corridor distasteful and had them change clothes. After that, they each tried to find their masters. Because that’s how it should be. The servant girls rightfully belonged to the knights. No one else could command them. Yet Ella followed the head maid’s instructions. Roman was inland, and though it was a border region, since the Count of Roman wasn’t a knight, the stewards of the Count’s household might be seeing servant girls for the first time.

 Even with customs, nobles who don’t keep servant girls in their household might not know what kind of beings they are. Ella didn’t refuse. They were simply people who saw her as lowborn. If a lowborn doesn’t act like one, it would invite anger. She didn’t resist and followed the stewards’ words. Their demands were simple. Draw water for the kitchen. Clean up after the servants. Ella helped the servants who widened their eyes at her appearance. She drew water and swept the stairs with a broom. While the work of a maid wasn’t difficult, it was hard to bear the gazes among servants who were seeing a servant girl for the first time. And……

 “How presumptuous.”

 “Are you thinking of punishing them?”

 “Are you afraid?”

 “Please don’t.”

 “Ella.”

 “Please don’t, Master. It’s just one day anyway. It’s all over now. Just, just think of it as me being a maid doing maid’s work. I want to go see the baby now. That child floats in my mind every day. The sound of his crying. Do you remember?”

 Larque’s eyes narrowed. Ella’s voice was excited. She whispered and rubbed her cheek against his chest. Like a female cat. Her breath slid across his chest that was nothing but muscle. He knew it was to change the subject. Still, he couldn’t help but be drawn along.

 “Eselmund. Our Edi. He cried when we separated. I still……”

 The woman’s eyes distorted. Now it was time for resentment to return. As familiar as this woman’s flesh scent.

 Larque waited. It was time for her to glare with tear-stained eyes and grind her teeth. Like a woman watching her husband take her child away. When it came to the child, Ella became bold to the point of being useless.

 “The child needs education.”

 “A child not even a year old? Do you really think that? That a baby not even a year old needs education? What kind of education?”

 “Ella. Don’t get excited.”

 “The child needs their mother. What he needs most is me. Not a wet nurse!”

 Ella breathed heavily. Larque grabbed her br*asts as she tried to break away from him. She immediately whimpered. He mounted her again. He can’t stand her trying to break away. He hates that. That’s the one thing he cannot tolerate.

 “I told you not to get up on your own. Have you forgotten who you are?”

 The woman who had been breathing heavily closed her mouth. Her eyes, full of indignation, crumpled sadly.

 “I, I know I’m Master’s servant girl. But I’m still that child’s mother. Eselmund’s mother.”

 “I know. Because I’m your child’s father.”

 It was a child we had together. It was also a child we made together and would raise together. He wasn’t unaware. Without being told, without needing to remind himself again, that young child was his child. He had no intention of denying it at all. His woman had no need to react so sensitively. That child was still in San Parvale, in his bedroom. The wet nurse always held the child and put them to sleep in his bedroom, and fed and dressed them with only the finest things.

Eselmund was a young noble of San Parvale. Whether Larque stayed at the castle or not. That child was treated as the Duke’s son. Still, the woman would go crazy whenever she saw the child. Hypersensitive and oversensitive. She would throw fits and get hysterical over things that didn’t need such reactions. What delusions was she having? She never failed to drive him mad. He wanted to dissect her mind. However, the woman was afraid he would take the child away and tried to run away to prevent losing them.

 She always completely forgot that fact. While not being unaware that the reason Larque separated the child from her was also connected to that fact…… If a second child came… would it be like this even with a second child? What about if a third came? Should he make her bear children one after another like Endymion to prevent her from running away? Have her bear so many children that she couldn’t hold them all in one arm—would she give up by then?

 Children could be gotten anywhere. Children were born from just one night of moving one’s hips. An heir and such. If a woman to conceive his seed was decided, such matters could be easily resolved. So Eselmund wasn’t precious because he was his child. Ella. Everything was because Ella bore that child. Because that child was born between Ella and himself.

 There was no other reason. If it weren’t Ella, he wouldn’t have had a child with a servant girl. He wouldn’t waste his seed in such ways. He had no desire whatsoever to accept a child born from a vulgar womb as his son. But it was Ella. That child was a piece of Ella. A fragment of them born from her womb. How could he neglect that child?

 He was a man who felt no affection even when looking at his swaddled child. Larque knew he didn’t love children. If Ella didn’t hand him the child with anxious eyes. There would be no reason to hold the nursing infant. Before that, he wouldn’t have even raised that infant in his bedroom.

 “Being a father, being a father…… you don’t even like that.”

 Ella released the strength in her wrists. She didn’t feel any desire to resist at all. Morning had fully dawned and the sky had transformed into a ripened day. She coughed in the cool air. Larque, who had been gripping both her wrists, let go. He pulled the blanket to wrap her up to her neck before embracing her. It felt almost like being a swaddled baby.

 “Master.”

 “……”

 “Master doesn’t like babies, do you?”

 It was a dispirited question. It was also a meaningless inquiry. Ella listlessly opened and closed her eyelids. No answer returned. The small piece of hope she had added crumbled miserably. The abyss was deeper than expected.

 “Master.”

 She examined him with distant eyes. Gray beneath black eyebrows. A perfect blank that she dared not color in. If hell existed, it would be in this man’s eyes. Because it was a perfect pit. Because it was an abyss that couldn’t be more complete.

 “……Why did you impregnate me?”

 The man didn’t stop her. He felt cruel to her. If he had forcefully shut her mouth, confirming his feelings, such cruel things…… She could have stopped.

 “Even though you don’t need it. Even though you won’t love him.”

 “……”

 “A child born from a lowborn servant girl’s womb……”

 “Because it’s you.”

 Finally the man opened his sealed lips. She looked at the man’s pale jaw and the lips above it. It was an elegant curve. Standing out in as rich a color as a servant girl’s lips…… The master’s lips were as beautiful as the red orchid petals that the previous Duchess had grown on the windowsill. Ella often lost herself in those lips.

 She recalled when those lips licked her collarbone. On lazy mornings, when they were lounging in bed, the man would spend time licking her collarbone where dewdrops had formed. It was an obsessive act. He often acted as if he wanted to bite into Ella’s pulse. He would lick below her earlobes with his tongue and press his lips between her collarbones, repeating the same action until love bites bloomed profusely. When her belly had swollen with child, he would lift her wrist to press his lips against it before sinking his teeth in. It was a numbingly sweet breath.

 The first time they kissed. When was that? She looked back on something meaningless to recall. A servant girl’s growth was a change with nothing joyful about it at all. Even when flat chests bloomed into round buds, it was only joy for those who exploited their femininity. When waists became slim while hips widened and buttocks grew large enough to bear children without strain, masters would lead them to bed. That was when Ella first kissed her master.

 It was under a sky with hot summer sunlight. She remembered it was while organizing sheaves at the training grounds. After presenting the well-trimmed sheaves to the master, as she tried to step back, he suddenly pulled her arm. Though the touch was clumsy, the passion burning in his eyes was quite intense. Ella pushed him away in surprise. Where their lips had touched burned hot. He rarely looked at her blankly with surprised eyes. It wasn’t a diminished spirit. But he didn’t seem to have the will to continue either. That’s how it ended. His lips moved again elegantly.

 “You must conceive my seed.”