Chapter 41
Lottie’s brow furrowed at the breezy response. Ron, who had been acting disgusted just moments ago, was now grinning ear to ear.
“Try? Try what?”
“You asked if I could handle it. What choice do I have? If that’s my future wife’s temperament, I’ll just have to deal with it.”
“In your dreams! You could never handle me!”
“You’re so certain when you don’t even know me, which only makes me more curious. Why can’t I handle you? Just because you had a lover who was like a stud…?”
Ron’s eyes swept up and down Lottie’s frame dismissively.
“There were probably three or four at most.”
“Three or four?! There were way more than that!”
“Ho. Then… five?”
Fiiiiiive? Lottie, seething with indignation, spat out her words.
“Don’t make me laugh. Multiply that by ten.”
Even she thought the number was staggering. While Lottie glared at him with her arms crossed, Ron let out a hollow laugh.
“Even better.”
“Wh—what?”
“I have three or four lovers myself, so I’ll just bring in fifty concubines to match.”
Ron suddenly grabbed Lottie’s wrist.
“Let’s have a wild night. All of us together.”
“What do you mean ‘all of us’…! Let go!”
“There’s nothing stopping us now, so let’s go to my father right away. To get permission for the marriage!”
Lottie dug her heels in like a dog on a leash, but it was no use.
As she was dragged along, a horrific scene flashed before her eyes: fifty bosomy concubines marching in a line into her marital home.
Now, Lottie could no longer stop herself from choosing an extreme measure.
‘I’m sorry, Father!’
It was just as she gathered all the strength in her right leg, prepared to have three generations of her family executed for what she was about to do.
“…!”
Someone gripped Ron’s wrist tightly.
Though only one arm had been caught, Ron, who had been marching forward with such vigor, came to a dead halt.
Both Ron and the Lottie he held looked toward the same spot.
‘It can’t be.’
It wasn’t straw-like blonde hair. It was a perfect gold that couldn’t have suited the deepening sunset better.
The straight forehead, the prominent brow bone, the deep and elegant reddish-brown eyes, and the mouth that always seemed poised for a joke.
A man of exquisite beauty, like no other in the world.
‘I won’t harbor false hopes. I won’t be fooled. I won’t believe it…’
“Let go.”
A cold voice fell. Even that voice was familiar.
“Before I break it.”
Ron immediately spread his five fingers wide like a dog hearing its master’s command. Lottie fumbled to pull her captured hand back to her side.
Though he had been told to let go and had complied, the stranger still held Ron’s wrist in a iron grip. Ron, his face turning pale, shouted.
“Wh—who are you?!”
“Me?”
The reddish-brown eyes turned toward Lottie. The cold, hardened gaze was gone, replaced by his usual boyish look.
When their eyes met, he smiled. A crisp answer followed.
“Miss Evanshire’s fiftieth stud.”
At that moment, there was no need to say whose jaw was practically rolling on the ground.
“Fi—fifty… Re—really? You’re really this woman’s lover?”
Ron was the first to recover his jaw. After silently admiring the appearance of the man who introduced himself as Miss Evanshire’s stud, Ron barely swallowed his gasp before continuing.
“The fiftieth. Th—then a real wild night together… Ow, ow, ow, ow!”
“You want one?”
Calyx gave a thin smile and shook Ron’s wrist hard. Caught by a man a head taller than himself, Ron was shaken like a rag doll.
“If you want to lay a single finger on the young lady, you’ll have to get through me first.”
“Wh—what…!”
Suddenly, Calyx yanked the arm Ron had been holding up. Just as Lottie had moments ago, Ron was dragged along without being able to offer a single bit of resistance.
Calyx looked down at Ron, who was now right in front of him, and smirked as if he might devour him.
“Think you can do it? Handle it?”
Ron’s face turned from pale to a dark, mottled red.
He must have seen it too. A vision of himself becoming Miss Evanshire’s fifty-first stud, only to be marked and handled by the fiftieth.
“Yo—you think you’re so special just because you have a pretty face?!”
Ron shouted, finally managing to shake off the gripped arm. Judging by his stuttering, even he seemed to realize that the word ‘just’ didn’t quite fit.
Fearing another humiliating situation like the one before, Ron hurried backward.
Once he had secured a safe distance, Ron pointed a finger at Lottie and screamed.
“You! I’m the one dumping you! Got it?! Be grateful I don’t tell my father about this, you lewd succubuuuuuuus…!”
The rest of his words scattered like a mountain echo as he fled.
Even after Ron had completely disappeared from sight, silence lingered on the path for a long while.
“….”
Realizing belatedly that he had been seized by more anger than necessary, Calyx let out a shallow sigh.
He hadn’t imagined their reunion quite like this.
He slowly turned toward Lottie, waiting for her reaction, which was always impossible to predict.
And then, he froze.
“Ho—how… How on earth… A person like you… hic.”
Lottie was crying.
No, she was biting her lip with a flushed face, forcing back an explosion of tears.
As someone who feared her tears more than anything in the world, he, quite naturally, broke down.
“I—I thought you were dead. Everything went dark before my eyes.”
“….”
“You promised, hic, that you’d return. But you didn’t say a single word to me… hic.”
The story of the ship carrying the deposed Crown Prince sinking had been a false rumor Calyx started intentionally. It was the only way for someone who had been sentenced to exile to step foot on Matila soil again.
He thought Lottie would have known. Even though they had parted in a hurry without a detailed explanation, he had promised her he would return.
“How can a person, hic, how can a person be so heartless? How…!”
Watching Lottie struggle to hold back her tears until her face turned red, Calyx opened and closed his lips several times.
Thinking she would have known, or that time was of the essence—those were ultimately excuses to hide his own lack of consideration. In the end, he was the one who had made her worry.
As Calyx looked at Lottie, a smile slowly spread across his lips.
He found himself wanting to just leave her there, whimpering because of him. He knew it was petty, but the fact that the woman he loved was worrying for him was intoxicatingly sweet.
“I’m alive, so don’t cry.”
“I’m not… hic, crying. I won’t cry. Not for a heartless person like you…”
“Oh? Then what’s this?”
Calyx leaned down slightly to meet Lottie’s eyes and placed a finger near her eye.
With a warm touch, a single clear drop broke free and rolled down her cheek.
She had said she felt like she would burst if touched, and it was true. Starting with that one drop, tears began to pour down like dew falling from a petal.
“I know I should tell you I was wrong, and that this will never happen again, and comfort you so you stop crying…”
Calyx spoke in a low voice, gently wiping away the tears wetting her cheeks.
Unable to stop the tears that had burst forth uncontrollably, Lottie ended up closing her eyes.
Calyx gave a soft laugh.
“But why do I want to keep making you cry?”
“…Because you’re a bad person.”
“Stop crying now. I feel like this bad person is going to do something even worse.”
Following his playful voice was the light laughter she had heard so often in the capital that it had become familiar to her ears.
Slowly opening her eyes, Lottie met his face.
He looked as beautiful and composed as he had when they last met. If there was anything different, it was perhaps his clothing.
Unlike then, when he had been dressed in a suit with a silk hat obscuring his face, he was now wearing a white shirt and brown cotton trousers held up by suspenders.
Now that she looked, a stray lock or two of the hair he always kept neatly combed back was messy on his forehead, and his black boots were dotted with mud.
As her surging emotions settled somewhat, Lottie’s mind began to clear.
‘So that’s what he meant… when he said he’d definitely return.’
Though it was drastic, there was no surer way to erase his existence.
Unless a festival rivaling a world expo broke out in this quiet rural village, there would be no one to report to the palace that he was alive and well.
No, wait. There was. Exactly one person.
‘My father, a sitting member of the aristocratic council.’
Furthermore, hadn’t Great-Aunt Isabel already met Calyx in the capital?
How did this man plan to deceive them? How could he be so nonchalant?
“Your Highness. I don’t think you should be here right now. The elders are gathered at the castle, so for now, just between us…”
“Loooooooottiiiiiiiiie…!”
A scream that sounded like someone was about to faint drifted from the end of the path.
‘It’s Father.’
Even though she had prepared herself, Lottie’s eyes began to tremble.
There was no way Ron Garnet, who had been chased away in disgrace, would have quietly gone home.
She didn’t know what kind of nonsense that brat had spewed to her father before fleeing as if his tail were on fire, nor how aghast her father must be.
“First, let’s get our stories straight. Your Highness is a member of the middle class from abroad, and…”
“It would be better to get our forms of address straight first.”
“Pardon?”
As Lottie blinked, Calyx replied with a remarkably serious expression.
“There isn’t a person in the world who refers to their own lover as ‘Your Highness,’ is there?”
“That’s… true, but.”
Her mind screamed logically that the problem was what her father would think of him, not the time to be sorting out nicknames. However, Lottie’s logic quickly lost its footing before the excessively persuasive face in front of her.
“Then… what should I call you…?”
‘Darling? Honey? My sweet ginger cookie?’
All sorts of pet names her maternal cousins had included in their love letters came to mind. They were all cringeworthy things she felt she could never utter.
Calyx watched as Lottie’s pupils began to shake like an earthquake, swallowing back his laughter.
“A name.”
What followed was warm yet sincere.
“My forged identity doesn’t have a name yet. You give me one. I want to start my new life here with that name.”
Lottie blinked slowly. She had named the stray animals that often frequented the manor garden, but she had never given a name to a full-grown adult.
And so, for a moment, Lottie read his request in a different light.
As a deeply human desire to shed a yoke stained with blood and fear and be reborn with a new name.
“I’m… not very good at naming… um.”
