Chapter 64
Louise looked as though she had momentarily forgotten what she had just heard. Her face, which had been glowing with a bright smile as she looked at her son, froze instantly. Her complexion paled so rapidly it was almost piteous to behold.
“Just now, Blair… Mother must have had too much to drink.”
Groping at her cheeks and hair with vacant eyes, Louise suddenly burst into a clear, ringing laugh. Like a drunkard fleeing from reality, her lips—which had trembled as if to spit out a terrible curse—curled into a picture-perfect, elegant smile.
“I must have been dreaming for a moment. Now I’m even hearing hallucinations.”
“As soon as my engagement to Cissy is broken, I intend to propose to Vanessa.”
“I really should… quit drinking… just as you said….”
“I came to tell you this myself. I thought you ought to know.”
The smile slowly bled from the lips that had been murmuring as if she hadn’t heard a word. In its place rushed horror, fury, sorrow, and a sharp, jagged malice. Her eyes, wide enough to suffocate, stared fixedly at her son—as if she were facing an incomprehensible creature she had never seen before in her life.
“The engagement with the Brontë family will be settled within the week. Since you will likely find it uncomfortable to see my face for a while, I will be staying at the estate in the south that was prepared as a marital home. Once things are settled there, we will leave for Nordt.”
“Blair!”
Finally, a shrill scream erupted like a thunderclap. Her clenched fists struck Blair’s chest and shoulders repeatedly, fueled by sheer spite.
“How do you think I raised you! Do you have any idea what your mother… endured for your sake!”
“Then it’s for the best. You won’t have to endure anything anymore.”
“Do you think you can be forgiven for doing this to your mother? Hmm? For the sake of a mere girl… how can you be like this!”
“Her name is Vanessa. She is not a ‘mere girl.’”
Blair caught Louise’s wrists and forced them down, his face sinking into a cold, hard mask as he continued.
“And she is the only daughter of the friend you cherished most.”
“Blair Fabian Winchester!”
“I do not care if you no longer consider me your son. I didn’t come here to ask for your permission in the first place.”
Louise pressed her hand to her brow, her fingers deathly pale.
“Blair, please….”
“I intend to hold a wedding with Vanessa early next year. I plan to stay in the south until then. If you ever feel like giving us your blessing, you are welcome to visit anytime. I will receive you gladly.”
Her trembling lips, twitching in disbelief, suddenly curled into a bloody smile.
“And did she say she would willingly marry you?”
“People’s minds change. Especially when their precious, trivial life is on the verge of total ruin.”
She stared at her son with a dazed look, as if she had been struck. Her gaze, suddenly turning hollow, was as precarious as someone standing on the edge of an endless abyss.
“Was it your doing? Those… filthy… rumors….”
Blair swallowed a bitter breath. A dry laugh escaped him at the sight of his mother acting as if she were genuinely shocked.
Whether it was instigating, conspiring, or merely spectating—in truth, Vanessa’s piteous situation was the joint masterpiece of three men. Every one of them had a hand in it. All to use that poor woman more effectively without consequence. Or to drive her to such desperation that she would have no choice but to grab the hand offered to her.
“There is only one thing the young master needs to confirm….”
What had that reporter looked like again?
“Whether you have seen the Duke near Gloucester. Or if you have ever witnessed the Duke and that woman meeting, even once.”
There was no need to fabricate anything. A single nod of the head had been enough. Guessing the answer from Blair’s calm expression, Louise let out a hollow laugh. Her hands fumbled desperately across the table, searching for alcohol.
Soon, she snatched up a half-filled bottle of wine. Her movements were clumsy as she pulled at the loosely fitted cork with all her might, just as those who are deeply intoxicated often do. When the cork refused to budge after several attempts, Louise’s breathing grew increasingly ragged. It was the moment Blair moved to take the bottle away.
“I’d rather—!”
Clatter! With a shout that sounded like a strangled scream, Louise hurled the bottle against the wall with all her strength. Shards of glass and liquid sprayed in every direction.
“I’d rather….”
Blood trickled from her white ankle where a broken shard had grazed it. With a face that didn’t seem to know what words were leaving her mouth, Louise stumbled toward her son, her eyes bloodshot. Her hands reached out piteously and grabbed Blair’s collar.
“I’d rather you just kill your mother….”
“I am tired of these arguments.”
He coldly brushed her hands away as if straightening his clothes.
“Have I ever truly disobeyed you? Why can’t you understand that this is a matter of life and death for me?”
“Because it can’t be her!”
He flinched at the shrill scream that erupted, as if she had never been pleading at all. Louise did not miss the opening in her son’s momentary weakness. She grabbed his large hand and pressed it against her tear-soaked face.
“You can bring home any other woman in the world, but not her…. Blair, please… you must believe your mother….”
“I don’t understand why you detest Vanessa to this extent.”
Louise lifted her tear-filled eyes and looked straight at Blair. Green eyes, a straight bridge of the nose, the red hair passed down through her family for generations, and elegant features. Small replicas of herself from head to toe.
That was where the guilt began. This was surely a divine punishment for the twisted heart that had hoped her children would resemble Raymond, the older brother, even a little, rather than Wyatt.
“Whether you were drunk or mistook your partner because of medicine… they say there was a witness who saw you go into the garden with Wyatt.”
“But, Father…. I swear to God, I would never have done that if I were in my right mind…. You know me….”
“…Louise, you foolish girl.”
“It’s true…. It was a relationship I didn’t want in the slightest. I never wanted him, not even once….”
“They say you looked perfectly fine on the outside. So we cannot bind the Earl of Somerset by claiming your honor was defiled. Moreover, we cannot ask the brother to take responsibility when the party involved has fled.”
“Father, please….”
“No matter how devastated you feel, the world will not see you as a woman who was forced.”
“Blair.”
A situation no one understood, and a grotesque lingering affection she couldn’t give up even in the midst of it. Because the world said it was so, there were days of silence where, at some point, she began to believe it herself.
“Your biological father is, actually….”
She saw the unavoidable affection for her in this boy’s eyes. She saw his love for a weak mother. He was the son who had cried and pulled at her sleeve when she had leaned over the terrace, ready to give up on life.
The wrong fruit of that warm, irresistible, terribly passionate affection.
The countless days and nights she had secretly seen ‘him’ in this face. When she had resolved to love them despite the horrific regret, self-loathing, and guilt, she had made a vow. She would raise these children as heirs to the Winchester family. She would never let them be entangled with that family again, in any way.
For that sake, Louise could be more cowardly and cruel than anyone else. Even if it meant carving open her child’s heart with a blade and leaving a wound that would never be washed away in its deepest depths.
Her trembling, delicate lashes closed like a sigh. A single teardrop fell, covering her deceitful lips.
“You were born of coercion.”
The door to the bedroom opened slowly as dusk settled. A dark figure was huddled under the covers on the bed. Hearing the occasional sound of sniffling and rustling, it seemed she had been crying all this time.
Blair walked quietly toward the bed. He sat carefully on the edge.
“…Rosalyn.”
Her eyes, swollen red from crying, peeked out from under the blanket. Seeing her like this felt like a flashback to when they were five or six years old—a stark contrast to the way she had spent the last few years playing the part of an elegant lady. Blair stared at his sister for a moment, momentarily forgetting the situation.
Yes. Back to those good days.
“Did Mother… tell you too?”
He handed a handkerchief to the sniffling Rosalyn. Her eyes, which looked ready to spill over with tears again at any moment, were piteous. He slowly shifted his weight onto the hand resting on the bed. He reached out and brushed back his sister’s disheveled hair.
“Some of it.”
“Now… I finally understand Mother….”
A sorrowful sob bubbled up again from Rosalyn’s slender throat.
“Don’t cry.”
He tried to comfort her out of habit, but he was feeling the same sense of original sin. It felt as if that sin was strangling him with every breath he took.
As Rosalyn said, everything finally made sense. The days their mother would burst into tears while staring blankly at them, the way her drinking increased every year to the point of addiction, and even their father’s attitude—sometimes tender, sometimes terrifyingly harsh toward their mother.
“In the beginning, I just… I felt sorry for her.”
“…….”
“That’s why I talked to her…. When we were little… we saw that photo by chance. The graduation photo of Mother and Vanessa’s mother together…. So I… I just wanted to be like that with her.”
“…….”
“But now, I don’t know… how to look at her, how to treat her. That’s why I kept….”
Her words, which had been trailing on like a fumbled excuse, cut off abruptly. Her gaze was vacant as she looked up into the air. A wet, self-mocking laugh escaped her red lips.
“She must be having such a hard time.”
“Rosalyn.”
“It’s horrible. The moments… when I ate and slept in that house.”
“Take a breath.”
“I sincerely thought… it would be okay if you two… got married. Even if our parents opposed it, I thought you could run away….”
He ran a hand over his bone-dry face. He wished he could cry like Rosalyn. Right now, like a doll with something vital broken inside, he couldn’t feel any emotion. Not sadness, not anger, not annoyance. He was just tired. And…. He swallowed a hollow laugh.
If they had been ordinary cousins, he would have found a way. Even if society frowned upon it, it wasn’t illegal in some countries. But if the problem concerned his mother’s deepest wound—her fragile self that had been left bloodied and alone, hiding the fact that she was a victim of a crime.
“Blair, I….”
Rosalyn’s bitten red lips let out a wretched wail.
“I don’t think I can see Vanessa anymore. Even though I know… it’s not her fault.”
