Chapter 82
“Ah… you heard? Even though it was so noisy outside, you didn’t look out, so I thought you had left.”
Yulia flinched at the fact that she had met Cain without Cayente’s prior permission. She awkwardly set down her cello and stood up. Thinking back, since Henry had seen Cain rescuing her, there was a high chance he had mentioned what happened outside.
Cayente, wearing a blank expression, simply answered that he had been in the sample storage, then waited for Yulia’s response. Yulia approached him with a smile and confessed everything honestly.
“I met Sir Cain.”
She explained: He had helped when her mother nearly got run over by a carriage. When she tried to thank him by treating him to tea, he couldn’t refuse. She had remembered her brother’s words about asking permission first, but since there had been so many people watching, just leaving without a word seemed too rude. So instead, she had bought him a cup of coffee nearby.
“So that’s why you were smiling so brightly, like a weight had been lifted?”
“What? No, that’s not it, it was because of the cello… What reason would I have to smile with relief just from meeting Sir Cain?”
Yulia quickly tried to explain, startled by Cayente’s words. But Cayente, whose mood still hadn’t improved, asked in a trembling voice.
“I warned you about this before, didn’t I?”
“But—”
“Yes, yes, manners. I get it. What I’m asking is, was etiquette more important to you than my warning?”
Even though Yulia had explained thoroughly that she hadn’t ignored him on purpose, Cayente continued to press her. Yulia’s smile faded, and she clenched her fists tightly. This time, she didn’t want to end the conversation with an apology. This wasn’t something she should have to grovel over.
“I don’t care if I get scolded… but isn’t it like this? Your reputation is already bad enough. If people start criticizing my behavior too, won’t they just insult you even more?”
“You already know what my reputation is like, don’t you? What difference does it make if one more bad word is added to it?”
Still, Yulia insisted it wasn’t right. She didn’t want to be the cause of more rumors. She could understand Cayente’s habit of trying to control her life because he had paid money to “buy” her, but why did he hate her meeting people so much?
“Why do you hate it so much when I meet someone?”
“Do I have any reason to like it?”
“And what’s the reason to hate it? Meeting Sir Cain was just a coincidence, and there will be plenty of times I’ll run into people by chance in the streets. Am I supposed to ignore everyone just because I didn’t get your permission first? I already told you before—here in the Empire, friendships aren’t separated by gender.”
As soon as she returned from her honeymoon, she had been flooded with invitations to tea gatherings. As the mistress of a noble household now, it was practically her duty to establish connections with other nobles. She had already become acquainted with more than ten such people. Was she supposed to ask Cayente for permission every time she ran into one of them and stopped for a chat or a cup of tea? That was practically impossible.
But when she explained this, Cayente insisted even those casual exchanges weren’t necessary.
“Why would you need such connections?”
And once again, he brought up money. He claimed that anyone useful for business, he himself was already meeting. Idle chatter was pointless. He would even give her a list of the households she must associate with, so she should stick to that list.
“Why do you say it’s unnecessary? You never know what might happen. Maybe one day I’ll need someone’s help.”
“No. And what if, while pointlessly socializing, you run into someone strange like Cain? Didn’t I tell you? It disgusts me to think of men looking at you with desire.”
Cayente told her she should spend that time practicing cello instead. But was it really just people’s gazes that bothered him so much? To Yulia, it seemed the issue wasn’t simply her meeting people—especially men—but something deeper.
“Wait… are you worried I’ll meet another man and cheat on you?”
She said it with a laugh, because the idea was absurd. But Cayente didn’t laugh. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t deny it either. His eyes, usually so indifferent, flickered violently at her words, barely containing anger.
Her joke only made the air heavier. With a small sigh, Yulia tried again.
“How could I live if I cared about what every single person thought of me? Besides, who knows if men really do look at me like that?”
Cayente had once shown possessiveness in strange ways—asking if she would leave him for a pair of shoes, for example. But she hadn’t thought he would go as far as imagining things like this. So she asked him—how many men really looked at her and imagined her in bed? Cayente’s answer was firm.
“They do.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I do.”
If he thought of her that way, then surely every other man did too. Even someone like him, who claimed to have no interest in women, couldn’t help it. So other men, who were worse than him, obviously would as well.
It was such an arrogant thing to say—judging everyone else by his own standard. But in its own way, it surprised her too. Because it meant Cayente was admitting that whenever he looked at her, he wanted to hold her.
“How could they not? When you’re this… unbearably tempting.”
After their honeymoon, the Empire had entered the height of summer. Her clothes were thinner now, showing a little more of her figure. But what part of that was supposed to be “tempting”? Yulia couldn’t agree at all. Still, she swallowed hard, because Cayente’s eyes were burning with heat as they looked at her.
“That’s not true.”
Instead of arguing that people can’t be reduced to mere calculations, Yulia smiled. Because, pathetic as it was, she liked those eyes—the way they yearned for her.
“How can you be so sure?” Cayente asked.
“Because no one else looks at me the way you do.”
“And how do I look at you?”
He seemed genuinely unaware of how he looked at her. Yulia thought it ridiculous, but she had no other way to put it.
“Like you’re desperate to hold me, to the point of madness.”
She hadn’t expected anything in particular, but Cayente frowned as if the words displeased him, then suddenly turned away. She had thought he would laugh at the absurdity—but he didn’t.
“Let’s go to dinner.”
“…Yes.”
Yulia didn’t see it—the way Cayente’s eyes trembled violently as he turned his back.
At the dining room table, even as they ate, Cayente kept replaying Yulia’s words in his head.
― Like you’re desperate to hold me, to the point of madness.
Did I really look at her that way?
“Hm? What did I just eat? Lucy, what’s inside this pie?”
As Yulia’s eyes lit up at the sweet-and-tart flavor of the pie filling, Cayente realized—he might indeed be looking at her like that right now.
Even when he was angry just moments earlier, this kept happening. And it wasn’t only when he was with her. At random times—while working, while meeting people—suddenly, the image of Yulia melting into his arms would rise up in his mind, filling him with an unbearable feeling.
Even if he was weak to such thoughts, wasn’t this obsession too much?
― Why do you hate it so much when I meet someone?
Because originally, he had planned to isolate her completely, keep her shut inside the house, make her cry alone. But that intention had long since vanished. Now, what he hated most wasn’t her meeting people in general—it was her meeting Cain.
With such innocent eyes, Yulia could never understand that even she could inspire lust. Cain was not the kind of man who approached women without a reason. Like with his own sister, Cain didn’t care whether a woman was married or not.
So when Cayente heard that Yulia had met Cain, his anger wasn’t only because his “permission” had been ignored.
― Are you worried I’ll meet another man and cheat on you?
Of course, even as naïve as she was, Yulia would never fall for a man like Cain.
“Brother, you have to try this pie. I’ve never eaten anything so delicious before!”
Yes, she would never. Yulia would cry and cling to him desperately if he ever tried to push her toward another man’s bed. There was no way she would ever secretly give herself to someone else.
“Brother?”
Cayente turned to her blankly, feeling cold sweat trickle down his back.
Why did just the thought of Yulia smiling at Cain make him so uncontrollably furious?
What made it worse was that he had actually expected her to cry to him about her mother’s situation, so he could promise to protect her, even by sending the baroness away.
But instead, she had poured out her troubles to Cain, and then smiled with relief.
That was why he was angry.
Every part of it was incomprehensible and troubling.
