Previously
Sienna overhears a conversation at the monastery while heading to the dining hall during a storm. Meanwhile, Declan discusses the recovery of his soldiers with a healer and plans their return to the capital within three weeks.
How to Part with You Completely — Episode 11
In the Empire, the common custom was to seek a betrothed during the social season upon coming of age at eighteen, marrying in one’s early twenties at the latest.
The Grand Duke, however, had spent the years when one would normally seek a match on the battlefield. Even when occasion demanded his presence at social functions, he merely showed his face before departing. Because of that, though he had long passed his mid-twenties, he had no betrothed, let alone a wife.
There were always women whose hearts were stolen by his entrancing beauty, but the problem lay in the way he treated them.
Declan Monferrato was an impeccable gentleman, yet he never once crossed that line. Though it would have been only natural to show interest in a woman at least once, nothing of the sort had ever occurred.
While men his age found suitable matches to bear and raise an heir, he never spared women a glance, drifting solely between blood-soaked battlefields.
He had attained immense renown as a result, but that was all.
Reaching that point, the Count was beginning to grow anxious. For a nobleman, an heir to inherit title and fortune was just as crucial as rising through the ranks. All the more so for the Grand Ducal family, where offspring were scarce.
“While the children of your peers are beginning their succession training one after another, Your Grace continues to turn down every proposal that arrives, leaving the retainers deeply worried. If you had someone else in your heart, they would not be nearly so uneasy.”
With the war finally over, the Count seized his chance and fired off his complaint. Declan, who had been letting the words pass idly through his ears, rested his chin on his hand over the map and answered nonchalantly.
“There might be someone I cannot forget.”
The Count’s voice cut off abruptly. Having heard it with his own ears yet failing to comprehend it at once, he stared blankly at the Grand Duke, his face gradually washing over with shock.
“Wh-what did you just say…?”
Forgetting all dignity, the Count sat with his mouth gaping wide, unable to string a sentence together. In place of his stammering older brother, Theo chimed in with an astonished expression.
“Someone you cannot forget? You, Your Grace?”
“Is that really what matters right now?”
Despite Declan’s chilling response, while the Count remained so stunned he could only open and close his mouth, Theo readily accepted it.
‘To be fair, with a face like that, being indifferent to women makes even less sense.’
Theo nodded, privately convinced by his own conclusion. He could roughly understand why the Grand Duke refused to say a single word about who she was.
The moment that truth was known, the woman would become the most watched figure in high society—and the target of every aristocrat’s piercing glares.
He understood it rationally, but he could not suppress the curiosity quietly blooming in his chest.
A quick glance sideways showed the Count was no different. He seemed to have lost all interest in Theo’s return to the capital.
With lingering shock still stamped across his face, he examined the map and answered his superior’s questions dutifully, yet the sidelong glances he cast at the Grand Duke from time to time were brimming with the exact same curiosity. Anyone could see his mind was entirely elsewhere.
‘Whoever she is, she’ll face a great deal of envy once it comes out.’
Sitting beside them and observing the pair, Theo instinctively turned his head at a faint pattering against the glass above. At some point, rain had begun to fall.
“…Rain, of all things.”
Theo muttered to himself.
With each passing moment, the rain drumming against the window grew heavier.
It was the start of an untimely downpour.
* * *
Having returned to her room, Sienna was drenched from head to toe by the unexpected storm. Her face, already paper-white, was drawn and pale enough to take on a bluish cast.
Even after stumbling into the room on unsteady feet, she did not take off her soaked clothes. She simply stared vacantly out the window at the sheeting rain. The water dripping from her pooled on the floorboards.
‘So there is someone he cannot forget.’
Her eyes blinked slowly as she gazed into the dark. Rainwater clinging to her long eyelashes broke away, trickling down her pale cheek. Her expressionless, pallid face twisted into a hollow laugh.
Why had she never realized it until now? Foolish creature.
He had another woman.
It should not have come as a surprise. Many women had always adored him, some among the Empire’s most renowned beauties. In such circumstances, it was far more bizarre that he had seemed completely indifferent to women.
Even as her mind accepted it with cold detachment, the fingertips undoing her robe trembled uncontrollably.
Why had he never spoken of it? Perhaps he thought the die was cast once there was a child, keeping it swallowed down inside. Given his nature, he was more than capable of that.
Pondering it alone yielded no answers, and there was no longer anyone left to confront.
Whatever his reasons for maintaining their marriage, one truth had become clear today: Sienna had never truly possessed him, not for a single moment.
They had always been strangers to each other. Even in the brief moments when they were closest, there had been no genuine heart behind it. Thinking she had won someone’s affection, even fleetingly, had been nothing more than her own delusion.
Her motionless frame shivered faintly. Whether from the raw chill or something else, she could not tell.
The rain that had started late in the night soon turned into a deluge. The mad downpour finally broke only when morning came, though gloomy weather lingered through the entire morning.
Perhaps from being caught in that unseasonal rain, Sienna fell into a fever that kept her bedridden for days.
* * *
Because the monastery’s healers were wholly devoted to treating the soldiers, Theodore brought in a priest knowledgeable in medicine as a makeshift measure.
The priest, who examined Sienna and administered remedies to lower her fever, seemed quite accustomed to such tasks. Yet though the princess occasionally drifted toward consciousness, she repeatedly slipped back into a stupor.
“It would be best to bring a proper healer after all. This is unusually severe for a simple cold.”
The priest offered his conclusion after examining her. Theodore nodded quietly in agreement. Though ignorant of medicine, even he could tell from the way she tossed in a delirium that her illness was far from ordinary.
“It isn’t a grave affliction, is it?”
“Likely not.”
The priest replied indifferently, gesturing toward the window with his chin. Turning around in bewilderment, Theodore saw a garment still dripping water hung by the casement.
“She was asleep while wearing that.”
Theo looked between the princess and the sodden garment, his brow furrowing in utter incomprehension.
“What do you mean…?”
“It seems she was caught in last night’s rain. The night air has been quite chilly lately, and falling asleep soaked through like that makes it hardly surprising she came down with a fever.”
The more the priest spoke, the more confusion washed over Theodore’s face.
The rain had begun late in the night. The mere notion of the princess wandering out alone at such an ungodly hour was baffling enough, but falling asleep drenched through was entirely unthinkable.
If nothing else, the princess did not possess the careless temperament to simply sleep in soaking-wet clothes. When it came to delicate sensibilities, no one in the Empire surpassed her.
“I will remain by Her Highness’s side, so would it not be better for you to go, Sir? You are acquainted with the Grand Duke, so fetching a healer should prove far easier for you.”
The priest’s voice snapped him from his thoughts. Pulling himself together, Theo nodded.
“I shall do so.”
* * *
It was a peaceful afternoon.
Sienna sat before the grand artificial lake of the ducal estate. With every breeze, the dense fragrance of the lilacs planted throughout the grounds drifted toward her.
A little child who barely reached her waist came running toward her from afar, yellow dress fluttering in the wind. When Sienna spread her arms, the child leapt into her embrace as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
A sweet scent of sugar confections drifted warmly from the tiny body.
‘Mama! Papa caught a butterfly for me. It’s blue, just like Mama’s eyes.’
Wriggling in her arms, the child cupped her tiny hands together and held them up before Sienna’s eyes. Slowly parting her fingers, an insect fluttered its brilliant wings and took to the air.
It was only a butterfly common enough to see anywhere in spring, yet the child found it so miraculous, letting out an awed gasp with shining violet eyes as the creature fluttered away from her grasp.
Finding the sight so utterly endearing, Sienna pulled the little frame tight against her chest and pressed kiss after kiss to the soft cheek. At the slightest tickle, the child burst into easy, bright laughter.
As Sienna rubbed her cheek against hers, the sound of the child’s laughter filled the ducal estate.
She loved everything about her.
Holding the girl in her arms, she had repeated it to herself countless times. She vowed again and again that this child, at the very least, would never have to know the grief and sorrow she had endured.
As she nestled against her, basking in her affection, Soliet suddenly looked in one direction and broke into a bright smile.
‘Papa!’
Sienna followed the child’s gaze. In the distance, golden hair fluttered on the breeze. Before long, violet eyes the very shade of her daughter’s found her, softening into a radiant smile.
‘Sienna.’
The moment that sweet, whispering voice called her name, Sienna opened her eyes.
Instead of the radiant scenery of the ducal estate, what greeted her was a dark, dim room. About to call her daughter’s name out of habit, she closed her mouth.
She had only just realized the boundary between dream and reality.