39. Lie

Adeline entered the bathroom in the bedroom with a distant feeling.

Throughout her walk, she felt something hot flowing down between her legs.

Only after locking the doorknob did she lift her skirt.

“Goodness. Why is there blood……”

Bright red blood flowed onto the bathroom floor.

Adeline’s face turned not just pale white but blue.

It was a situation that anyone would suspect as vaginal bleeding.

Adeline’s hands trembled violently.

“Wh-what should I do?”

At that moment, she recalled what the physician had said earlier. Had she experienced any vaginal bleeding?

Adeline’s legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the bathroom floor.

She grabbed her hair until it became a mess.

She wanted to scream out, but if she did, the maids would surely come running.

All sorts of thoughts flooded her mind.

Was it because she hadn’t been careful? What kind of mother was she? Going into the lake.

Or was it because of too much stress?

“Why on earth……”

Adeline couldn’t understand why a perfectly fine baby had miscarried.

Had something been wrong since the pulse was said to be weak? But Adeline had been too perfectly fine for that.

She thought it might be possible if she had caught a fever, but that wasn’t the case either, so she was full of questions.

Then Adeline clutched her stomach as a sharp pain surged through her.

The pain felt just like something she had experienced before, and a gasp escaped Adeline’s lips.

“Could it be……”

Only then did Adeline begin to count back her last menstrual date on her fingers.

When she realized it had been long past her expected date, she felt dizzy.

Adeline’s hands and feet trembled uncontrollably.

“I wasn’t pregnant……”

Her voice, muttering in disbelief, shook unstably.

With the thought that this wasn’t a miscarriage but the start of her period, Casis came to mind.

Since she became pregnant, their relationship had been gradually recovering.

But.

‘If he finds out I’m not pregnant……’

Just imagining it made Adeline close her eyes in dizziness.

⁕⁕⁕

Adeline didn’t leave the bedroom until it became dark at night.

After returning from the villa, the two had become quite close.

Because of that, they had started having dinner together, but Adeline couldn’t bring herself to have dinner with Casis.

Just facing him would make her feel sick.

So she skipped dinner and went to bed early. But when she actually tried to sleep, she couldn’t.

While she was tossing and turning, the bedroom door opened, and someone walked in.

In fact, Adeline knew who that someone was. Only one man could enter and leave this bedroom.

He immediately approached the bed.

“I heard you wouldn’t eat dinner.”

She looked up at the low voice settling in her ear.

Adeline met eyes with Casis, who had already sat down beside the bed.

“I had no appetite.”

“Is your morning sickness starting again?”

“That’s…… not it.”

Adeline was about to say she never had morning sickness to begin with but trailed off.

She should speak honestly. But looking at his red eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to speak.

When should she tell him she wasn’t pregnant?

Adeline felt nauseated. It felt like the morning sickness that had never existed was starting again.

“I enjoyed the desserts you sent. They were delicious.”

He leaned his upper body toward where Adeline was.

Then he reached out and brushed aside Adeline’s hair scattered on the pillow.

“I didn’t make them.”

Adeline flinched involuntarily every time his hand touched her.

“I know. As if you could bake cookies. It must be Becky’s handiwork.”

Adeline didn’t know what to do as she looked at the duke who had now come close.

She turned her head first at his gaze, which felt not just calm but profound.

It wasn’t the kind of look a man desperate to devour her would have.

A man who had become gentle at some point.

So Adeline felt suffocated by guilt.

This is driving me crazy.

She couldn’t even meet his eyes, let alone tell him she wasn’t pregnant.

But Casis, unaware of Adeline’s feelings, tilted his head and approached.

Seeing his lips coming so close they might touch at any moment, Adeline twisted her head away.

Casis’s eyebrows twitched. As if his mood had been disturbed.

“Why are you suddenly avoiding me?”

He swallowed the rest of his words and stared down at Adeline.

She was searching for the right words, not knowing how to say it.

‘Actually…… there is no baby.’

‘I wasn’t pregnant from the beginning. It seems there was a misdiagnosis.’

She should speak honestly. But Adeline couldn’t open her mouth for a while.

After a long silence, Adeline painfully opened her quivering lips.

“……The, the physician said we should be careful for a while.”

Adeline closed her eyes tightly as she said this.

It was a statement that hadn’t been among the options she had been agonizing over.

A lie added to a lie.

Even knowing that the guilt weighing her down would grow greater with each day she deceived him, Adeline couldn’t speak.

No. She didn’t have the courage to speak.

“I know. I don’t intend to.”

Only then did he lie down obliquely beside Adeline as if his question had been resolved.

Then he looked at Adeline while supporting his head with one hand instead of a pillow.

Adeline’s heart beat unstably under his direct gaze.

She liked seeing Mel in this man who was so gentle.

But perhaps it was because she knew the reason he had become gentle was simply because she was pregnant.

Adeline’s hands began to tremble with anxiety.

And as if sensing her anxiety, Casis spoke first.

“My physician is more capable than you might think, so don’t worry.”

Adeline turned her head to look at him.

He seemed to know all the conversations she had had with the physician.

“I heard that pregnancy pulses can sometimes be detected weakly. But that doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the baby.”

“……”

“So don’t worry and sleep.”

Adeline’s mouth felt parched.

After a long silence, it was Adeline who opened her lips first.

“Are you…… being so nice to me because I’m carrying your child?”

“That’s right.”

Her voice trembled finely, but Casis didn’t seem to notice.

“Of course I should be nice to you if you’re carrying my child. Is that child an ordinary one?”

A child of the precious ducal family.

Hearing that story emphasized repeatedly, Adeline ruminated on her situation.

If she wasn’t pregnant.

It sounded like he wouldn’t have been nice to her if she didn’t have his child.

“Then if I weren’t pregnant, could we have become close again?”

“……I suppose.”

Casis didn’t answer readily and trailed off.

After a moment of silence as if thinking, he spoke again.

“It would be difficult.”

I thought so.

While agreeing with his words, Adeline’s heart tightened endlessly.

It was a meeting between the Duke Torpeo family and the Marquis Credion family.

Nothing had gone according to the natural course from their first meeting until now.

She had deceived him when he lost his memory and pretended to be lovers with him at the villa.

And from the moment she said she would stay by his side after his memory returned until now.

Adeline knew the sense of betrayal he must have felt toward her.

That’s why he had pushed her to become his mistress and tormented her.

And even that his anger had subsided a bit because she was pregnant.

“We’re not in a position to be close or not.”

“……”

“I quite like how things are now. So I’d like you to think only of my child now.”

Adeline’s heart was torn at his words that drove in the wedge.

He didn’t know that Adeline’s face had turned white as she lay back.

He simply blew out the candle.

Darkness descended on the room.

Not long after, silence fell around as Casis seemed to have fallen asleep too.

But Adeline couldn’t fall asleep even as dawn deepened.

Was it because her mind was consumed by the thought that if there was no child, they would have to return to how they were before?

Adeline curled up her body, wondering if he would feel her whole body trembling.

‘What should I do…… from now on?’

She couldn’t say she wasn’t pregnant.

When facing him, her mouth froze as if locked, refusing to move.

But she couldn’t deceive him forever.

Moreover, just thinking about what he would do when he found out she had deceived him again made her body shrink involuntarily.

Adeline had to spend the night wide awake until dawn broke.