IDIBC Chapter 39

Our Unchanging Bond

“Just bear with it a little. It’ll be over soon.”

At Ricardo’s actions, groans escaped from the mouths of the women standing nearby.

I too was fortunate not to have let out an exclamation of admiration like them. He was thoroughly playing the part of an affectionate fiancé. It was bewildering yet not an unpleasant feeling.

Just as Ricardo had said to bear with it a little, by the time I had barely finished a glass of wine, Count Enehaz approached us again. He promptly guided us to the location of the room where he and I would stay together, as if it were a matter of course.

Ricardo simply nodded with a familiar attitude.

It was common for those attending banquets to stay in guest rooms. I knew this intellectually, but from that moment on, my trembling grew more intense, unable to even pretend to hide it.

The thought that what was coming had come brought tension first.

I tried hard to calm myself.

In our childhood, there were countless nights when we had slept together in the same room.

Of course, even though Ricardo was now excessively large, with unusually broad shoulders, and his back muscles made their presence known with every movement, Ricardo was still Ricardo and I was still me.

What had changed was just our age, wasn’t it?

****

“Ha!”

In the end, Ricardo and I went through a proper initiation, so to speak.

When the last dance ended and the people who had been glancing at us disappeared one by one, we left Enehaz’s splendid banquet hall.

To be precise, it wasn’t “we”—I took the Duchess’s carriage on my own, while Ricardo took the carriage he had arrived in, both heading to the Rochester ducal estate.

“So this is your answer to my question about what you want to do with me.”

The more I thought about it, the more absurd it seemed, making me laugh bitterly. No, it’s not that I had expected anything at all.

But hadn’t Ricardo been the one to make a fuss first about receiving my night or whatever?

To make someone so nervous and then drag their exhausted body home at this dawn hour.

Did he have no consideration for the coachmen who had been driving carriages around all day?

Moreover, we had that… incident in the carriage on the way back to Count Enehaz’s estate, hadn’t we?

‘Was I too hasty?’

For a moment I felt such self-reproach, but I didn’t particularly regret it. If I regretted it too, I felt like I would feel too miserable.

Boarding the Duchess’s carriage alone, I lay down on the seat before long. It wasn’t behavior befitting a noble lady, but my hesitation was brief. There was no reason to maintain appearances when alone.

The interior of the large carriage was so spacious and cozy that even when I stretched out my legs and lay down, I didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable.

I wondered if I could possibly fall asleep peacefully after experiencing such tremendous events, but with the comfort of the plush carriage seat and the soothing motion of the moving vehicle, I let everything go and fell into a deep sleep.

In fact, what I had experienced that day was enough to exhaust my mind.

Moreover, the relief that came from having somehow completed the order given by the Duchess led me into a completely deep slumber.

When I opened my eyes, I was in my bedroom, and I briefly suspected whether Ricardo had erased my memory in the meantime.

Otherwise, how could I not have known that someone was carrying me?

Still, the events of last night were vivid enough that I could explain them broken down by the minute, so I could only attribute it to having been exhausted enough to lose consciousness.

****

Having woken later than usual, I barely came to my senses and tried to visit Blue Hill around lunchtime. But soon I heard from Freddy that our entire family had moved from the summer estate to the winter estate.

“If you have something to say, say it. Stop making that stupid face.”

Sabrina clicked her tongue at me as I sat on her bedroom bed with a blank expression. At her carelessly tossed words, I barely escaped from my thoughts of last night.

“What is there to say?”

Grumbling unnecessarily, I flopped down on the bed and looked around her room. Either the perceptive Duchess had already perfectly grasped Sabrina’s tastes, or she was still using what could be called a bouquet of a bed.

“How do you like it here?”

“Need you ask? It’s so good. Did you see the bathroom? It’s bigger than my room in Resotia.”

And here she had said she was happier when we lived together in a small house.

I shook my head and rolled around once on her bed. Then I propped my chin up and lay prone, falling back into thought. Suddenly, Ricardo’s face, which had been swaying anxiously before my eyes, came to mind. Up to that moment when he leaned his face toward me and moved in close.

Just the thought made me dizzy, and I buried my face in the pillow.

“You’re something else.”

Sabrina clicked her tongue even harder than before and looked at me with pitying eyes.

“What do you mean ‘something else’? I just rolled around once on your bed.”

“How funny, you think I don’t know you? Stop suffering in silence and tell me what you’re worried about.”

“What worry? Everything’s been resolved well. We’ve secured safety, at least for a while. We just need to find a way to live during that time.”

Sabrina nodded at my words, then came over to the bed where I was lying and casually sat down. Then she stroked my hair once. At times like this, I felt as if Sabrina were like an older sister to me.

“That’s right, six months is longer than you think. When did we ever live looking at tomorrow, anyway? We lived on thin ice never knowing when we might die.”

It was sad, but her words were true. Getting to live a stable life for even six months was fortunate. And that, in the heart of the Dermeier Empire at that.

“I’m going to spend my time here as if I’m on vacation. When will we ever get to enjoy such luxury again? This is all thanks to the Young Duke of Rochester.”

“You’ve always lived like a traveler anyway.”

Sabrina chuckled at my words.

“That’s right, I flitted around like a moth to flame, meeting this man and that man. Unlike you.”

Even though she spoke lightly now, I knew that Sabrina had been living with a somewhat self-destructive mindset to some degree.

I had never lived as a noble from the start, so I was used to giving up that kind of life.

But Sabrina was different. Though it had been a casual promise between adults, she had even had a fiancé from a decent family.

However, after the family fell, though she was still a noble, she couldn’t be incorporated into Resotia’s social circles. So she dated freely without caring about others’ gazes. Unable to have her debutante, she wasn’t invited to banquets or tea times, but she went to racetracks with men and watched fights.

I always scolded her to stop doing such pointless things, but I made sure to get good fabric for the dresses Sabrina would wear each season.

“You’re right. I don’t remember the other guys, but I do remember Ethan from the Kimberly family and Jenok from the Schmitz family quite well.”

“You mean Jenok from the Kimberly family and Ethan from the Schmitz family.”

“Oh, is that so?”

Sabrina laughed as if she’d heard an amusing joke, then suddenly got up from the bed. Then she touched each of the jewels the Duchess had bestowed, one by one with her hands. As if they were beloved babies.

“You told me not to be indebted to you anymore, yet your eyes are absolutely sparkling.”

“Well, strictly speaking, it’s not a debt to you, is it?”

Crazy girl. She definitely must have heard my voice, yet she took no damage whatsoever.

“Stop making that idiotic face and just tell me what the problem is. I may not have a head for studying, but I’m not oblivious.”

She held a green necklace the exact color of her eyes up to her neck and moved around in front of the mirror. Even at a glance, the jewel suited her very well.

Sabrina had vivid green eyes like summer leaves that contrasted with her dark brown hair.

She had been a glamorous beauty since childhood, and that beauty ripened with each passing day. Sabrina always resembled a vibrant midsummer’s day.

“You see this? This is a sapphire necklace the Duchess sent for you to wear when attending your engagement ceremony. If you knew how top quality this is, you’d faint.”

“I don’t know much about jewels. What would I even use that for?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. We don’t know where we’ll go when we leave this house after six months. So we need to take good care of these jewels. Surely the Duchess won’t ask us to return the things she gave us when we leave.”

“Ah…”

Only then did I realize that Sabrina was making plans for how to survive somehow after leaving this house.

She had adamantly declined dresses that wouldn’t be worth money if sold, insisting on only two—one to wear to my engagement ceremony and one to wear to the imperial banquet—but she readily accepted the jewels offered in place of dresses.

“You’re better than me.”

Come to think of it, Sabrina adapted well wherever she went.

She seemed much smarter than me, who swayed when Ricardo shook me and stopped when he called.

“But an engagement—even hearing it, I can’t believe it. How are you two so unchanging? Whether you have your memories or not.”

If there was anyone who knew the relationship between Ricardo and me best, it was undoubtedly Sabrina.

“Even when we were young, you two were a bit like that. No one else could penetrate even this much.”

“Were we… like that?”

“I’m telling you.”

Responding curtly, Sabrina tried a new necklace with a reddish tint around her neck.

“But, Sabrina. Men, you see…”