Chapter – 04
Asil was leaning against a large wooden barrel, conversing with a man she had never seen before. They seemed quite close, perhaps colleagues. The appointed time was approaching… and since there had been no mention of meeting anyone else or being introduced to a friend, she assumed he would send the man away soon. Nadia had no desire to increase the number of people who knew about their relationship.
Leaning against the wall, she waited for the stranger to leave.
“Want one?”
“No, she hates it.”
As she waited quietly, fragments of their conversation began to reach her ears. Despite the distance, Nadia could recognize Asil’s voice instantly.
Is he talking about me? What do I hate? She wondered, but the answer came quickly. A faint but unmistakable scent of tobacco smoke drifted toward her.
An involuntary smile played on her lips. He remembered her mentioning in passing that she disliked the smell of cigarettes. She had assumed he wasn’t a smoker at all, but it seemed that wasn’t the case. Nadia held her breath, straining her ears to listen.
“You’re still seeing her? You said she’s a noble?”
“Just… having a bit of fun.”
Nadia’s smiling face froze instantly. It seemed the conversation continued, but not a single word registered. The thumping of her heart was so deafening that she could no longer hear Asil’s voice.
Nadia pressed her hand firmly against her chest. Holding her breath, she peeked around the corner again. She saw the stranger laughing heartily, playfully clapping Asil on the shoulder. To her, it looked undeniably like they were mocking her. She quickly averted her gaze, gripping her skirt so tightly her knuckles turned white.
What she had heard was only a fragment of a conversation. Because of the distance, the voices hadn’t been clear to begin with. She tried to tell herself there must be a misunderstanding. It was reckless to judge a whole situation based on a mere snippet.
There’s no way Asil would do that. I’ll just walk out and ask who his friend is with a smile… and then tell him I heard them talking from behind the wall.
Gulping down the shallow breaths that kept rising in her throat, Nadia hesitated for a long time. She heard the sound of the man departing, leaving only Asil behind. Just one step, and he would realize she had arrived.
She was terrified. If, just if—though it couldn’t be—she asked and he confirmed that what she heard was true? What if he mocked her just as he had laughed with his friend?
A possibility she had never considered drifted to the surface of her mind. A chill ran through her as if the temperature had suddenly dropped, and goosebumps broke out over her skin. Nadia wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head.
Speculation and denial repeated in her mind. He wouldn’t do that. He cherished me so much. …But what if it was all a lie? She kept denying it, but the tiny possibility that he might confirm her fears kept her feet rooted to the spot.
I should at least hear him out. She couldn’t negate all the time they had spent together based on a single sentence. Her head knew this.
However, she lacked the confidence to walk out and face him with a smile. She couldn’t maintain her composure. She didn’t have the courage to greet him with a calm face and ask him boldly. The confidence she had so carefully inflated had shriveled miserably.
A cold chill settled in her heart. Perhaps she had been mistaken all along. Having never experienced such things before, maybe she had been too excited and misinterpreted his kindness and delicacy as signs of love.
I wish I hadn’t eavesdropped. I wish I had walked a little slower. If she had, she wouldn’t be doubting him like this, nor would she have realized her own lack of self-assurance.
Gasping for air as her thoughts became tangled, Nadia finally put strength into her frozen feet and took a step.
The rest was easy. She ran away frantically and caught a passing hired carriage. She had never been so relieved to be wearing a veil; it allowed her to hide her face, which was twisted with raw emotion, from everyone.
She burst into her room as if fleeing for her life. The maids looked at her with confusion, seeing her return so soon after leaving.
“I don’t feel well. I’m going to rest… tell everyone not to disturb me.”
Leaving behind a rambling excuse, she slammed the door shut without waiting for a reply. Leaning against the door as if to barricade it, she took deep breaths. She remained short of breath, and her vision blurred. The thoughts she had tried to bury began to rattle, trying to break free. In the end, she hadn’t been able to ask him anything.
If only she had a bit more self-confidence, she could have stood boldly before him and demanded to know what they were talking about. She knew how harmful it was to let her imagination run wild without hearing the full story. She urged herself to think rationally, but emotions beyond her control overwhelmed her reason.
“No… no. That can’t be.”
She whispered “no” repeatedly as if trying to convince herself, but the words spoken in a trembling voice simply bounced off the thick walls she had built around her heart.
Negative thoughts followed one after another. She found it pathetic to assign negative meanings to every small, insignificant action he had ever taken, but she couldn’t stop.
Imagining that everything he did was an act, or picturing the foul things he might have said while mocking her with his friend, was addictive in its self-destruction. In her imagination, she had already become a pitiful girl betrayed and abandoned by her lover. It was so simple to conclude she was a victim, even though she was the one who had fled, too afraid to seek the truth.
Her hands trembled as she pressed them against her heaving chest, but Nadia did not stop trying to steady her breathing. If she didn’t, she felt she would collapse and start wailing right then and there.
I can’t do something so unsightly. Crying would not only ruin her face but also make her eyes swell, and she couldn’t let the maids see her like that.
Taking off her hat and tossing it aside, Nadia stood before the mirror. She removed the pins holding her hair and smoothed her disheveled locks. Looking into her own eyes in the reflection, she whispered like a mantra:
It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. She kept muttering to stop her thoughts and calm herself, but the blue eyes in the mirror only grew wetter, betraying her will. Eventually, the dam she had desperately built collapsed.
“How stupid. You believed that? Why? On what grounds?”
Needing an outlet, she chose to hurt the easiest target—herself. Her voice shook pitifully from the crying, but she didn’t stop.
“You’ve never even been loved before, so how were you so sure that was love? How stupid. That’s why you get tricked. Serves you right. Who would ever like someone like you!”
Startled by the high pitch of her own voice, which sounded like a scream, Nadia flinched and clamped her mouth shut. She held her breath for a moment, wondering if the maids had heard her, then rubbed her face haphazardly before finally washing it. Despite her efforts, tears continued to stream down her face while she changed her clothes. Her trembling hands covered her face.
“He worried about me. He said I was pretty… He said he liked me…”
Everything was a first for her. There was no way she had the discernment to distinguish between what was sincere and what wasn’t. She had been too busy clinging to the first warmth she had ever felt, too giddy believing that the words from a sugar-coated tongue were signs of genuine affection…
“I thought it was real… I… how was I supposed to know it was a lie…”
She felt suffocated. she poured out resentment that would reach no one, but the tears wouldn’t stop, as if she were broken. She curled up on the bed, sobbing and gasping for air.
“…I want to die.”
The words escaped her as she clutched her aching chest, but she didn’t actually want to die. Nadia simply wanted to be loved.
It was a relief that she had used the excuse of being unwell. She spent the next few days in bed, lacking any motivation. Without anything to do, self-deprecating thoughts were constant, but even they began to subside as time passed.
On the third day after Nadia finally managed to pull herself together—fearing that others might find her behavior strange—her father, Duke Ingram, returned from the estate.
Upon seeing Nadia’s haggard face as she came out to greet him, the first thing Duke Ingram did was scowl in disapproval and click his tongue. She stood with her eyes downcast, silently listening to his reprimands about her lack of self-care, but she snapped her head up at his next words.
“You are to be married next month, so look after yourself properly. You cannot appear before people looking like this.”
“Marriage? …My marriage?”
Duke Ingram raised an eyebrow as if he hadn’t expected a question.
“Yes.”
“S-so suddenly? Who is the groom? What about the engagement ceremony…?”
“The Marquis of Elantz. We’ve decided to skip the engagement ceremony. He has to go down to his estate, so we hurried to set a date. Not knowing, of course, that you would be in this state.”
The terrible voice of her father, evaluating her from head to toe and calling her a mess, no longer even registered in her ears.
