“Thank you… everyone.”
As my chest warmed and tears welled up in my eyes, Sally, who was watching from the front, quickly cried out.
“No, my Lady! If you cry, your fever might rise again!”
Then Ris chimed in.
“That’s right, so please have the aide make our Lady laugh!”
Raven, who had been called out out of nowhere, pointed at himself with a bewildered expression.
“Me, me?”
That flustered, vacant look was already funny, and a small laugh escaped me. Seeing that, Sally burst into laughter and shouted.
“Waa, my Lady smiled! Sir Aide, you really do have a talent for making people laugh!”
Even Rastan, who was watching from the side, joined in with a smile.
“That’s right, Raven. Why don’t you dance or something?”
“Wh-what do you take me for!”
“Well, birds do perform courtship dances and all.”
“My Lord….!”
Raven turned red and looked like he was about to cry, when Sally jumped in with sparkling eyes.
“Gasp, Sir Aide. You dance too? I want to see it as well!”
At that, Raven’s face grew even redder, and he whispered softly to her.
“Th-then… we can talk about that separately later…”
Watching this unfold right in front of me, laughter naturally bubbled up.
“Haha, the tears I was about to cry went right back in. I do not think I will cry at all now. It is such a happy day.”
Rastan met my eyes with a warm gaze and whispered softly.
“Thank you for being happy in my manor. I hope we can continue to be together like this.”
In the past, I would have just avoided those words and not thought deeply about them.
But maybe because so many things had changed now, my face grew hot at what he said.
“….I will think about it.”
At that, not only Rastan but also Sally, Ris, and Raven all widened their eyes at the same time. The one who spoke was Rastan.
“I think this is the first time I have received a response from you about our engagement that leans in a positive direction.”
“Uh…. it is not exactly positive, but….”
I awkwardly averted my gaze, but they were already openly brimming with excitement.
Sally leaned over and whispered into Ris’s ear.
“Don’t you think if we push just a little more, she’ll say okay?”
“….I can hear you, Sally.”
“Hehe, it is not really a secret anyway. I really wish, truly, that you would live here with all of us for the rest of your life, my Lady.”
Scratching her head like a mischievous child, Sally clasped her hands together and looked at me with an earnest gaze.
“His Grace is so amazing, you know. He is really a good person, and he would do anything for you, my Lady, and…”
Since Sally didn’t know that Rastan had proposed the engagement out of necessity, it seemed our relationship looked nothing but rosy to her.
“My Lady, live here with me. Please?”
“I s-said I would think about it.”
Rastan, standing beside us, was simply listening to our conversation with a pleased expression.
Somehow, a reasonable suspicion crossed my mind that perhaps he had instructed Sally to persuade me.
That night, just as I was about to go to bed, someone knocked.
‘Is that Sally?’
Without thinking much, I opened the door wearing my bathrobe. But there was no one outside.
‘What? Did I hear it wrong?’
I turned around, dismissing it, when I heard knocking again. But this time, it didn’t come from beyond the door I was standing at, but from the opposite side of the room.
‘Uh…? No way.’
I focused my eyes and looked over there, and just then, a low voice came from that direction.
“May I come in?”
“Uh, y-yes…?”
I answered without thinking, and the door inside the bedroom, meant for a married couple, opened, and Rastan came in. In other words, he had come into my room through the door connected to his own bedroom.
Seeing my slightly stunned expression, he lifted the corner of his lips in a mildly playful smile.
“This was the fastest way.”
As he said that, he raised the bottle of wine he was holding.
“I wanted to celebrate your recovery, just the two of us.”
It felt strange for him to enter my most private space, and through a door meant for spouses, at that.
But when I thought about it, I was only a guest temporarily staying in this room, and he was the master of the House. In truth, it was more natural for him than for me to enter this room.
Feeling a little awkward, I fidgeted for no reason.
“We already celebrated together earlier.”
“That was because the others wanted to celebrate, so I arranged it. I wanted to celebrate alone with you.”
“It was not even a serious illness. I was just sick for a few days and then got better, it is not such a big deal.”
“You being ill was a big deal to me. And as for suggesting a celebration… it might simply be an excuse I made because I wanted to spend some quiet time alone with you.”
Rastan plainly acknowledged the reason for his visit without dressing it up in grand words.
‘Right, not trying to embellish or show himself off is this man’s charm.’
As I nodded to myself inwardly, he naturally moved over to the sofa.
I assumed we would sit facing each other, but Rastan naturally sat right beside me.
We clinked glasses with the wine he poured, and after taking a couple of sips, its sweet yet deep aroma spread through my entire body at once.
“Wow, the aroma is really nice. Since you brought it… it must be a very good wine, right?”
Rastan answered with a silent smile, then asked in an even, casual tone. It was clearly an important question, but it was obvious he was deliberately asking lightly out of consideration for me.
“By the way. Could you tell me why you were so ill?”
Well, of course he would be curious. The moment I heard the investigation results, I had looked utterly shocked and spaced out, then spent several days bedridden. To anyone, it would look obvious that I had fallen ill from the shock of those results.
‘If it were me, I think I would have grabbed the other person and asked from the moment they were lying in bed, but he held back all this time.’
I couldn’t tell a clumsy lie in front of someone who had seen my reaction back then with his own eyes.
‘Of course, that doesn’t mean I can talk about my past life and regression…’
I decided to be as honest as possible. If the situation were reversed and I asked Rastan that question, he would surely do the same.
“Actually, there was a child I was searching for, for certain reasons. I thought that if we found all of Gerald’s illegitimate children, that child might be among them.”
I chose my words carefully.
“Someone once claimed that the child was Gerald’s illegitimate child.”
Rastan’s expression visibly stiffened. As expected, perhaps it seemed suspicious for an unmarried young woman to be searching for a child.
“I looked on my own as well, but I simply could not find them, so I borrowed your strength. Thinking it was my last chance.”
I forced myself to voice the conclusion I didn’t want to accept.
“…If even after using both the Empire’s institutions and your information network we couldn’t find them, then I suppose it truly is a child who cannot be found.”
Though there must have been many things he wanted to ask about the gaps in my explanation, Rastan simply listened in silence.
Even without saying anything, it somehow felt as though he was encouraging me to keep talking.
Because of that, I was able to speak about something I had hesitated over a little.
“…Before, when you first proposed a contract marriage, I said that, didn’t I? That rather than marriage, I wanted to go far away and live with someone.”
“You did.”
“That someone was that child. I did not give birth to her, but to me, she was like a daughter.”
At those words, Rastan narrowed his brows and murmured.
“…So it wasn’t a man. …Like a daughter…”
I stole a glance at his face. Rather than looking displeased, he seemed to be chewing over something that struck him as odd.
“But not being able to find her was probably too big of a shock for me.”
In truth, it wasn’t simply that I couldn’t find her, but that I had confirmed Rosie’s nonexistence, which had shocked me. But explaining that would inevitably lead into talk of my past life, so I glossed over it vaguely.
He might have asked what kind of child she was, but Rastan merely nodded faintly, looking as though he were thinking something over.
At this point, it felt like I had told him everything except the truly decisive parts.
No matter how this story sounded to Rastan, after letting it out, my heart felt lighter.
Perhaps it was because, as I spoke, I realized that there was nothing left weighing on my mind regarding my engagement to him.
I gently shifted the topic so that Rosie wouldn’t come up again.
“You must have worried a lot and taken care of me while I was sick. Thank you. And I am sorry.”
“If you are sorry, then I hope you never get sick again.”
Rastan seemed to deliberately mix a bit of humor into his words, but I couldn’t bring myself to banter back.
After all, I had seen him stay by my side the entire time with a face as if his world were collapsing.
“How were your dreams while I was ill?”
