One day in January when it was raining hard, a carriage arrived at the Dermund mansion.
As the carriage stopped, a woman inside hurriedly opened the door and got out. She had a petite stature, bright gold hair which flowed softly, and blue eyes reminiscent of the deep sea. She was a beautiful woman with bright red lips under her tall nose.
As she got off, the butler rushed out and greeted her with an umbrella over her head.
“Welcome, Miss Eila.”
“It’s been a while, butler. How is the Countess?”
“She took medicine a while ago and fell asleep. She was very happy to hear that Miss Eila was coming...… It's a pity, but I think you will have to wait until the evening to see her."
"Okay."
Eila couldn't hide the worry in her voice.
“How is her condition?”
“It hasn’t gotten particularly bad, but it hasn’t gotten any better either.”
Even the butler’s face, who responded that way, was full of concern.
A few days ago, Eila, who was preparing to graduate from the academy, received an urgent letter from the Dermund County. It was a letter that Countess Agnes Dermund, the owner of this mansion, had lost consciousness and collapsed on the way to a banquet at the imperial palace. Eila came immediately running to the Countess while she left everything behind.
Countess Dermund was the benefactor who saved her life.
A long time ago, Eila's parents passed away, leaving her alone. She was unprepared for the sudden accident, and what remained of her fortune was quickly taken away by a friend of her parents, who was doing business with them, and ran away. All that was left for the young Eila was debts which a child could not repay and was left with a bleak future.
If any of her left her inheritance left, one of her relatives might have taken her in. But no one reached out to her, and she was trembling alone in her mansion, when her debtors came and all her servants had left.
Except for one person.
"Do you remember me?"
Countess Dermund came to visit Eila, who was sleeping on the floor with a notice telling her to leave the mansion by next week. Eila carefully nodded her head in response to the Countess's question.
How could she forget. She was the owner of a beautiful mansion where she occasionally went to play with her parents. She told her that she always wished she had a daughter like her, and she even presented her with the sweetest candy and the cutest doll. And every time she went to that mansion, she remembered a boy with dark hair who was a lot taller than her.
“If it’s okay with you, I want you to come to my house.”
Even at the moment when she reached out her helping hand, the Countess politely asked Eila's permission. Eila wept and took her hand. So Eila came with Countess Dermund. She wished the story ended there.
"I will move your luggage to your room. Would you like something to eat?"
The butler's words awakened Eila from her thoughts. She heard a rumble inside her stomach before she could say anything. Come to think of it, she hadn't eaten properly since the morning because she had come in a hurry. The butler looked at her with a smile, who had become an awkward.
“Please wait in the library for a moment. I started a fire there. I will prepare so that you can wash up immediately after eating.”
Eila smiled brightly at the quick-witted butler's consideration.
"Thank you."
At the time, she was getting a little wet from the rain and was shivering. Eila, who was about to hand her coat over to her maids and go up the floor, turned around and asked butler.
“Oh, but……there…… perhaps…….”
At the hesitant look on Eila, the butler immediately knew what she was asking about.
“If you are asking about the young Count, he is not in the mansion right now. I got a call from the Imperial Palace saying that he will be back late tomorrow evening.”
“…… I see."
A look of relief flashed across Eila's face at the butler's answer. She was wondering what to do if he came first, but he's coming late tomorrow. Until then, she thought that she could relax a little. Eila headed to the study with a light step.
When she opened the door, she could smell the scent that she missed. The smell of old books and the smell of wood. However, the scent of freesia flowers, which was stronger than that, filled the study room.
“It must have been brought from the mansion’s greenhouse.”
A smile appeared on Eila's face at the unchanged appearance of the study. As she walked slowly through the study, she traced every single thing she remembered. An antique bookcase made of black solid wood. A vase with an angel carved into it, and even the space in the corner where she hid and cried. The study hadn't changed.
After standing for a while, Eila pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the fireplace. Did the butler bring it? Next to the chair was a blanket that was had prepared for her. Eila, who unfolded it and covered her body, fell into her thoughts.
‘Will she be all right?’
Last summer alone, the Countess had stated herself that she would live another fifty years. But someone like that fainted. It was necessary to see a doctor and hear more details.
“Huh…….”
She had been running frantically on the train since dawn, and was slowly getting drowsy. Her body, which had been drenched in the rain and hardened by the cold, began to be warmed by the warmth of the fireplace. He head began to nod. Her eyes closed and her head fell.
I can't fall sleep now.
Even thinking like that, it was difficult to bear the weight of her eyelids. In her increasingly hazy mind, she remembered what the butler had said a while ago to somehow chase her sleepiness.
‘The young Count is coming tomorrow.’
From tomorrow night, I will have to spend time in my room except for meeting the Countess without making a sound of breathing. Thinking like that, Eila's face hardened. Others will ask when they see it. Why is she so hard on her husband?
‘My husband…….'
Adopted Leon Dermund, called the young Count, was her husband.
‘Actually, we’re worse off than anyone else.’
When Eila was 12 years old, she married Leon.
Everything from that day was still clearly vivid in her mind. It was a very sunny and beautiful day, and the few people sitting as guests looked coldly at her and Leon. It wasn't even a crowd. Leon and Eila were nothing more than rolling stones that had stolen their fair share from those people.
‘I know you did it for me, but…… I was really surprised when you told me to marry him.'
When Eila’s relatives found out that the Countess had taken Eila, Eila's relatives made fun of her.
“Even if you are the Countess, it is difficult for you to do this. No matter what Eila says, she's a kid in our family, so it's right for us to take her. If you want to take her...… you have to at least give us proof that Eila will get along, right? That is, proof that the Countess will generously supporting the child.”
After abandoning her, they demanded her money in exchange for the Countess taking Eila as if she was their own.
It wasn't just that. They emphasized that even if they paid Eila to be taken, they still had custody over Eila. If Elia ever received anything from the Dermund family, they would reach out and take it.
The Countess knocked them out in a simple way. She married her adopted son, Leon, who was adopted before Eila with Eila.
Eila was 12 years old, eligible for marriage under the nobility law, and the imperial law allowed only married nobility to exercise the same rights as adults. So when Eila signed her marriage papers, her relatives were not able to exercise any rights over Eila.
'I don't want to.'
But Eila, who swore in front of the priest, wanted to run away right that moment. She was terrified of the cold gazes of strangers and relatives staring at her, but what was scarier than that was Leon, who was holding her hand without saying a word with a distorted expression.
Leon Dermund.
The boy she encountered whenever she came to visit this mansion was the child the Countess had brought before her.
Although it was said that he was not the Countess's own son, Leon showed extraordinary intelligence from an early age. The future of the Dermunds was guaranteed to be attractive, but he even had a terrifyingly good head. To him, who already had a high reputation at the Imperial Palace Learning Center, many forces gestured to join him in the future.
Eila was still young to understand everything, but she knew one thing.
'Leon hates me.'
“I hate this kind of marriage!”
His voice through the door was very angry. Hearing that voice, Eila turned and ran away. She hid in the corner of the study and wept.
In fact, when the Countess talked about marriage, she was half surprised and half excited. She would have been very afraid if it was someone she didn’t know at all, but if he were the boy she saw every time she came here...….
Eila pressed the back of her hand to her blushing cheek. Every time she came to the Countess’s mansion, she prepared the prettiest clothes for him, and she repeatedly begged her mother to tie her hair up. She hasn't had a proper conversation with him since they first met.
When she came to the Countess’s mansion, Eila looked for him, pretending to look far away. When their eyes met, he turned his head, but the boy stayed there. Once, she approached him first and asked him to play with her. Without answering, the boy took Eila to a greenhouse in the corner of the garden.
“It’s pretty, it’s full of flowers!”
“…… Let me know if you want to bring anything.”
At that, Ella asked for everything, and the boy silently obeyed her. On her way home, Eila was scolded to tears.
"How rude to the young Count!"
Eila’s parents looked as if they were about to faint when they saw Leon coming out with a large bouquet of flowers covered with soil and grass. They couldn’t believe their daughter was bossing him around here. The Countess and young Count said it was okay, but the parents' hearts could not be okay.
"The young Count told me to say what I wanted...….”
The parents sighed at the sight of Eila, who tearing up but did not let go of the bouquet in her arms.
“Eila, listen to me. No matter how many titles we have, we are not like them. The Countess is a person with a golden coat of arms that can have a solo conversation alone with His Majesty the Emperor. Sir Leon is the one who will take over. The two of them are welcoming us as guests because they are generous, but we are not in a position to even dare to raise our heads in front of them. Do you know what I mean? Don't misunderstand their kindness. And always be careful with your actions. They can overlook it now because you are young, but if you keep doing this, it's not good for you or them."
Eila heard her parents' voices nodded her head. From that day on, she stopped talking to the boy every time Eila went to Countess. The words "Don't misunderstand their kindness" made her cautious. Did the boy hear the same thing? He didn't speak to her anymore as she sat close to her parents without visiting the garden.
After that, the two never talked more. Still, her face was still red when she saw him passing by.
'I'm married to him...….’
She remembered the bouquet he had once given her in his arms.
'I don’t think he hates me.'
She used to think that.
Leon's voice came to mind again. The voice that shouted, "I don't like this kind of marriage." Crying in the corner, Eila recalled what her parents had said a long time ago. Don't misunderstand their kindness.
‘It’s natural that he doesn’t like me…… What was I thinking?’
She understood Leon.
It was obvious. How much he would have hated it. It was hard to imagine how insulting it would be for him to suddenly get married this way.
Leon, who was four years older than Eila, had already been getting marriage requests from all kinds of noble families. Among them, rumors circulated that an imperial princess was among the requestors. Then he was forced her to marry her, a child, who was abandoned without a penny to her name. It must have been a nightmare for him. Eila bowed her head. There was no reason for Leon to choose someone like her. That fact pierced Eila's heart.
Shortly after her wedding, Eila left immediately for the Southern Academy, far from the capital. She also wanted to avoid the relatives who came to see her every day, but she had a bigger reason than that. The reason was Leon, who immediately turned around when he saw her in the mansion.
At Eila's weeping request to let her go to the academy, the Countess nodded her head with a complicated face. That was 12 years ago. And for 12 years, Eila only returned to the Countess’s mansion during the Academy's summer break.
Fortunately, contrary to her concerns, she rarely encountered Leon. He was already busy carrying out the work of Count Dermund on behalf of the Countess. Occasionally returning to the mansion, he quickly averted his gaze when Eila and him met eye contact.
'You still don't want to see me.'
So Eila didn't leave her room at all the day Leon returned.
Did his work get busier? As the years passed, when Eila returned, the time he spent in the mansion shortened. Thanks to this, Eila was able to rest her mind and relax. It would be good for each other not to see each other. She thought so.
‘When was the last time he contacted me?’
Perhaps it was the New Year's letter that arrived a while ago. There was only a short greeting written in neat handwriting, [I wish you a good year]. A letter with the same words that he sent every year. Was it bothersome and unpleasant to even think of other sentences? Fiddling with the card, Eila quietly put the long letter she wrote in response to him into her desk drawer. If he received a letter from her, it would only bother him.
So Eila hadn't sent him a single letter in 12 years.
Eila, who was thinking of the past, pressed her chest in frustration.
"Haa…….”
She always felt sorry for Leon. However, she felt exhausted when she thought about how long she had to live like a sinner because of that marriage, which wasn't something she even wanted. In the meantime, she mumbled without realizing it.
“…… it’s not like I married him because I liked him.”
It was then.
“Eila.”
“……!”
Suddenly a low voice came from behind her. Startled, she jumped up from her seat and stepped on the blanket that was covering her. As she staggered and her body was about to fall forward, Leon's arm, which suddenly approached her, grabbed her waist as if hugging her.
“Thank, thank you.”
“…….”
I'm fine now. Eila thought so and looked down at Leon's arm, which was still holding her waist.
“Ah, I…… I’m fine now.”
Was it because of his unfamiliar body temperature that kept holding her waist? Her face flamed up and her voice trembled.
“…… okay."
Leon's arm fell off her waist. It was a slower movement than when he had approached. Eila's eyes widened slightly in surprise as she saw Leon taking a step back. How long has it been since seeing him up this close?
In the past, Leon was taller by about one head than her, but now he was a perfect adult. He was much taller and has broadened shoulders. And even his thick arms that held her. He went from a boy to a man.
Eila stared blankly at his expressionless face which she still couldn't understand, and she looked startled as she remembered what she had just said before.
'Did he hear me?'
Fortunately, he didn't seem to have heard her murmur, seeing that nothing was said.
“You arrived earlier than expected.”
Eila, lost in thought for a moment, came to her senses at Leon's words.
“Yes, I got a quicker ticket to get here……. By the way, young Count also came early. According to the butler, you weren’t supposed to come until tomorrow evening...….”
“…… young Count?”
She could see Leon's face hardening after muttering something. Eila was taken aback by his reaction. Then what should she call him? What was wrong? Could it be that his title changed while she was away?
Eila, who had been contemplating her for a while, carefully opened her mouth.
“Then what…… should I call you...….”
“You must not have forgotten my name.”
"Then…… Leon...… Sir?"
Leon's face softened a little at Eila's voice, which had become smaller as if to crawl into something. Fortunately, she guess it was correct.
“There is no need to attach Sir.”
At those words, Eila hurriedly waved her hand as if it were nonsense.
“How dare I call you that?”
“…….”
They were not meant to call each other by name. A cold sweat broke out on her back at the subtle silence that followed. Was she taking his words too seriously? I guess it's correct to call him young Count then. Silence continued. Then the door of the study opened with a knock.
“Oh, you two are here. I was looking for you two.”
The butler said to the two with a relieved face. As if Eila had been waiting, she quickly approached the butler. She wanted to get out of this awkward atmosphere quickly.
“The Countess has risen. Come on to her room.”
With that said, Eila quickly left the study. Leon looked at her back like that for a long time.