IDIBC Chapter 79

If Only I Could Keep Seeing You

“Are you planning to continue riding in this cart-like carriage from now on?”

Ricardo crossed his arms and leisurely stretched out his legs. Because the carriage was cramped, even the slightest extension of his body caused our knees to touch. I pressed both knees tightly together, turned to the right, and nodded.

“I told you, didn’t I? That I don’t want to draw attention.”

There wasn’t a soul in this empire who didn’t recognize the Rochester ducal crest. If a carriage bearing this emblem were to parade through the city streets, people would line up to watch the procession. So for now, this cart-like carriage was the answer.

“It seems Freddy changed all the seats?”

I rubbed the seat with my palm. The purple velvet that tickled my fingertips was the same as that in the duchess’s carriage. Unlike the completely black carriage, even the color was incongruous.

Somehow it made me laugh.

“Freddy’s a bit excessive. But you… what are you thinking about to be laughing like that?”

“Um, Sabrina.”

“Why my younger sister-in-law?”

“Pardon?”

“Why are you making that face? Should I call her ‘elder sister-in-law’ instead of ‘younger sister-in-law’?”

I shook my head at his joke delivered with a serious face.

“Neither is an appropriate way to address your fiancée’s sister.”

Since asking him to come along, Ricardo had been acting as if we had a tomorrow, or rather, as if we had no future ahead of us. Though my heart sank at such moments, I didn’t dislike it.

After all, I was the one who had insisted that as time passed, we should cast everything far away and, in the time given to us, look only at each other. From the very beginning.

“So why were you thinking about Lady Fennel?”

“Just, well, this and that…”

Last night, thinking Sabrina, who had gone to Lethon, would return around dawn, I went to bed without waiting. But she returned to the estate much earlier than expected.

With an uncharacteristically weary look, barely managing a smile, she told me a story worth staying up through that long, long night—that the time given to him and me might now be only a month.

Sabrina, who had worn an exaggeratedly bright face, was just like this velvet. Sparkling, soft, and splendid, yet the reality surrounding her was no different from this carriage.

The face of Sabrina as she said it was time for us to return to our proper places looked somehow relieved.

“Surely you didn’t come out today without money for theater tickets again? I brought enough for snacks too, intending to treat you, Young Duke.”

When I shook the purse I was holding, he responded by patting the chest area of his outer coat a few times. Hearing the clinking of coins, I burst into laughter.

The play I had chosen today was performed by a theater troupe run by commoners. Having noticed that most of the places I wanted to go were like this, he was dressed more casually than on other days.

His pants were tailored to fit closely, but his shirt was loose. With a moderately stylish vest worn over it, he looked good just as he was.

While there was some responsibility on Angela’s part for this outcome, having taken all her advice on date courses, above all, I liked the plot of the play.

The eldest son of a count’s family falls in love with the family’s maid—an utterly unrealistic love story, wasn’t it the formula for romance plays where failure was impossible?

As Angela dreamily explained the play’s content, there was only one thing I confirmed.

Whether this play had a happy ending or a sad ending.

“By the way, have you ever seen a play like this?”

He laughed, “Ha ha ha,” a bit long.

“As if.”

Well, of course. He would never have had reason to come to such a shabby theater in the first place.

“As if I would have gone around watching plays like this.”

Though it was an obvious statement, my heart sank. Absurdly, such thoughts followed one after another.

What does the saintess look like? Is she pretty? She must be pretty, right?

Since she had been protected by the Temple of Hadeima from birth, she would exude a noble bearing. So she would suit this man far too well.

She wouldn’t have occasion to go around watching plays while jingling coins, nor would she ride absurd boats on a lake crowded with people.

Ricardo, who would embrace the saintess and become emperor, wouldn’t hate her, who bore no sin. The man I knew was like that. Perhaps he would even show her the smile he now showed only to me.

They would be alike in being noble from birth, and similar in having to walk a destiny determined by divine selection, so eventually they might come to hold each other in their hearts.

Those two would suit each other perfectly, as if drawn together.

The mere imagination hurt my heart so much that suddenly I couldn’t breathe properly.

Just then, Ricardo suddenly reached out his hand.

“What are you thinking?”

“Ah… I was thinking maybe from now on we should just take a nice carriage, something like that. It feels a bit stuffy.”

A lie.

Or was it a lie? My desire to become someone who suited him even a little wasn’t a lie. So thinking I should at least take a nice carriage was just a pathetic sentiment.

He urgently pulled my arm and embraced me. As our body heat touched, Ricardo let out a deep breath.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but please, don’t do that. When you make that expression… it feels like my stomach is heating up.”

What emotion could that possibly be?

“What did I say to make you wear that expression?”

I shook my head.

‘It’s not your fault. But it’s not my fault either, so then whose fault is it?’

“Everything I experience because of you is all first-time things.”

“…”

“I lived without memories. Can you understand what it feels like to be born at fifteen?”

Instead of answering, I wrapped my arms around his neck. Embracing him tightly, I wanted to say it too—that I was the same, that the moments when you disappeared somewhere and I had to start everything over from the beginning sometimes pierced my heart too deeply.

“While you were gone, I just learned and fought. Whatever came my way. And when I had time, I drew you. That’s all I’ve done. How could someone like me know how to share laughter with someone, how to give and receive hearts?”

At the calm voice speaking, it felt like my stomach was heating up just as he described. So this is what this emotion is. Something that can’t be conveyed any other way than this expression.

I pulled away from him and returned to sit in my seat. Then I smiled brightly. Though my heart ached, tears didn’t come. It wasn’t yet time for him and me to shed tears.

We watched the play mixed among the crowd. The seats were uncomfortable and the surroundings were disorderly, but as Angela said, the play was quite entertaining.

The dialogue between the male and female protagonists was full of cheap metaphors, but the protagonists’ earnest feelings were conveyed reasonably well.

“Should I beg him? He’s granted everything I’ve wanted until now, so if I plead this time, he might give in.”

It was the female protagonist’s monologue, knowing that the male protagonist had gone to meet his arranged marriage partner. I glanced at Ricardo.

Like someone watching a play for the first time, he was viewing it with a serious attitude. With his thumb against his cheek, his hand half-covering his mouth, sitting at an angle, he was every bit a noble young lord.

Just looking at him, one couldn’t distinguish whether this was a small theater troupe in the marketplace or a grand opera house run by the imperial family.

“If I say let’s run away, he will, he will surely go with me.”

Should I beg too? Hearing the heroine’s continuing monologue, I think I momentarily had that thought. Just thinking that I had to part with this man after thirty nights was suffocating.

He had granted everything I’d begged for until now, so he might allow it this time too.

If he said it was dangerous because of the emperor and therefore impossible, I could say that I’m very good at staying hidden. Arguing that we could remain as good friends didn’t seem like a bad idea either.

If he refused to the end, I could be unreasonable and say that in the Dermeier Empire, wasn’t finding a man with only one wife harder than finding one who didn’t?

That even such a terrible relationship would be fine with me. If only I could keep seeing you.

Thinking such thoughts, laughter suddenly burst out. I really am going mad, Lienne Rowe Fennel.

Must you drive this relationship to ruin to feel satisfied?

Suddenly, Ricardo turned his head to look at me.

“This is a sad scene, so why… are you laughing?”

Our eyes met and my heartbeat grew fierce. At a distance close enough for our breaths to mingle, he smiled.

When the opaque emotions clear and someone appears before whom you can truly transparently bare your heart, how will you smile? More brilliantly than now, right?

He gently embraced my shoulders as I asked with my eyes.

Before my body was fully pulled in, our lips locked.

On stage, the sad monologue of the man who ultimately couldn’t go to meet the woman continued.

String instruments playing a sad melody in tune with the man’s voice rang out beautifully from the performer’s hands.

****

Besides spending dreamlike time with Ricardo, I had to spend quite busy days.

While the duke handled ducal affairs, Ricardo attended to imperial matters. The duchess’s role was, of course, high society.