Chapter 157
“If you become a sparrow, I’ll take good care of you. I’ll buy you a pretty birdcage for you.”
“Birds have short lifespans.”
“It’s okay. Even in that short moment, I’ll be happy listening to your chirping. When you pass away, I’ll make a coffin the size of my palm, put you in it, and hold a funeral for you in the Dalton Family’s burial plot. And I’ll remember you for the rest of my life and live as a widow. Or, maybe I’ll miss you as a sparrow and remarry another sparrow.”
Ian chuckled dryly. Once he laughed first, persuasion was a lost cause.
Laura, having cleverly escaped the crisis, gently pushed Ian’s hand away and turned back towards the path they had come from, intending to return to the mansion.
Just then, Ian suddenly hugged Laura tightly. He buried his face in her neck and began rubbing it against her skin.
“I want to kiss you. Let’s kiss, Laura.”
Laura knew it instinctively. The persuasion stage was over, and the stubborn stage had begun.
“Ian. I have to go home. I need to check the dinner menu and hand it over to the kitchen before 5 o’clock.”
“I’ll let you go if you just give me a kiss.”
“I can’t.”
“Then let’s stay like this until night comes. I don’t mind.”
Ian hugged Laura even tighter.
Laura sighed. This wasn’t the understanding husband she knew. The Ian before her now was a stubborn child with the Big Ben Clock Tower stuck in both ears.
Laura grabbed his ears and tugged on them roughly.
“Honestly, you’re not a husband, you’re a complete child. I understand why your brother treats you like a kid.”
Ian slowly lifted his head, his face looking utterly dejected.
“Really not?”
“No.”
Her firm tone seemed to lessen his pouting.
‘Really, he’s just like the youngest master. I understand why his brother treats him like a child.’
Laura pushed Ian away and turned around again. But just as she was about to take a step, he stopped her.
He was looking down, his head bowed.
“Honey?”
“……”
“Ian?”
He didn’t say anything. The silence stretched on for about thirty seconds.
Laura grew anxious. Unnoticed, it was a fleeting moment, but in this situation, it felt like thirty minutes.
Finally, he spoke, his voice low and unstable.
“Laura, does our love really weigh the same?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m always the one who wants things first, and I’m always the one who keeps wanting. It’s been like that since the moment we met. I was captivated by you at first sight, but you rejected my proposal twice.”
“Honey, you know that. Back then…”
Laura couldn’t finish her sentence. Ian’s expression, as he raised his head, looked so desolate.
“I know you loved me too. I understand your position back then. But I’ll never forget those memories, no matter how much time passes. Your back as you coldly turned away in the forest. The words you said in the carriage, treating my love as nothing more than a passing breeze. And the slap I received from you. When you slapped me, it felt like my heart was being torn to shreds.”
He took Laura’s hand and rubbed it against his cheek.
“I said I forgot everything after you proposed to me, but that was a lie. I… I still hurt…”
Laura was stunned.
The times before their marriage when she had repeatedly rejected his proposals remained a very sad memory for Laura as well. The situations where she had to push away the person she loved and hurt him. No matter how altruistic her intentions and clear her judgment had been, Laura had lived with a sense of guilt for the pain she had caused him in the past.
Still, she never knew he had been hurt so deeply. That he would shed tears and express his pain to this extent.
“Ah, I’m sorry. Ian…”
Laura felt an overwhelming sense of guilt as she stroked his cheek.
“The reason I rejected you was because I loved you more than myself. I didn’t want to make you unhappy because of me. Pushing you away felt like… like cutting off one of my arms.”
In the end, Laura’s eyes welled up with tears.
“Please don’t doubt my love. The method was different, but I loved you with my life, just like you did.”
Ian smiled.
“You love me?”
Instead of answering, Laura stood on tiptoe and brought her lips to his.
Her desperate desire to comfort him made Laura proactive. Her tongue cautiously tested Ian’s lips, as if gauging the temperature of a hot dish. She gently rubbed her lips against his saliva-moistened lips and lightly sucked on them.
It was a shy kiss, filled with caution rather than passion.
Laura gently pulled away. A transparent thread connected their lips.
Ian was gazing down at Laura. The tears had vanished from his eyes. Laura felt relieved.
“It’s the first time you’ve kissed me first.”
Laura’s face turned red.
“It feels like I received a gift.”
“Do you feel more at ease now?”
“No.”
Ian wrapped his arms around Laura’s waist. A gleam returned to his dark eyes.
“I feel hotter.”
Their lips met again.
His other hand firmly grasped the back of Laura’s head.
Laura’s parasol fell to the ground with a thud.
“Ugh, ugh…”
Their breaths began to mingle through their lips.
Her heart pounded loudly. Laura could feel Ian’s chest, pressed closely against hers, beating just as wildly.
She wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck.
‘You think I don’t want you as much as you want me?’
Laura trembled and clung to him even tighter.
‘I’m just shy and hiding it. If you don’t beg, I will. I’m so embarrassed… I love being like this with you.’
Her mind grew hot. Her stomach was even hotter. Her skin became sticky with sweat and all the more sensitive.
His hand began to explore her back. Laura shuddered. For a moment, she completely forgot time and space. Even her sense of self faded away. She just wanted him to caress her more, more, to let her feel him more.
Then.
“Wow, is that a tongue?”
A young girl’s voice pierced Laura’s ears. She turned her head towards the sound.
About twenty steps away from the couple stood a group of a dozen girls, their mouths agape.
They were children, aged between twelve and sixteen. They were all wearing calico dresses with small floral patterns, muslin aprons, and sun bonnets on their heads, and they were carrying baskets filled with wild strawberries in their arms.
Laura immediately recognized them as the church choir girls. They were all faces she saw at church every Sunday.
As soon as the girls made eye contact with Mrs. Dalton, they screamed and ran back towards the hill full of wild strawberries they had just come from.
Ian chuckled.
“Oh dear. This will definitely spread.”
Laura staggered away from her husband and collapsed onto a tree stump.
“Ah… ah…”
Laura lowered her head and covered her face with her hands. She was so shocked that she couldn’t even cry.
She could comfort herself that people hadn’t seen what happened in the carriage, but this was an undeniable situation. The girls would surely confirm with each other as they left the forest whether the couple they had just seen were indeed the Daltons, and they would be certain that they hadn’t seen things.
And when they arrived in town, they would grab everyone they met and spread the rumor. That the Daltons of Whitefield were in the forest, sucking on each other’s tongues as if they were going to eat them.
Just thinking about it made Laura want to run to the Dalton Family’s burial plot, dig a hole, and enter eternal rest.
“Don’t do that, Laura.”
Ian patted his wife’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong with a married couple sharing a kiss? A few years ago, the Star couple had the same rumors. But no one remembers it now.”
“They don’t not remember it, they just don’t bring it up. Because it’s such an embarrassing incident that even whispering about it is awkward. Things like that are never forgotten. Never… Ah, what will people think every time they see us!”
“They’ll think we’re a young couple.”
His tone was carefree, as if he were talking about someone else’s problem.
“Laura. Think positively. It’s not like we were caught in the middle of a full-blown lovemaking session.”
“It’s the same thing, honey. We live in a conservative rural area.”
“Then let’s try to make it a more open-minded place. I’ll ask Oliver Star to preach that kissing between couples is God’s will.”
Laura was starting to get angry.
“Are you not bothered at all?”
“It’s funny. Did you see the kids’ faces earlier?”
He looked back at the path where the children had run away as if their tails were on fire and chuckled. He looked like a mischievous boy who had released a mouse into the classroom. The sorrowful look of someone crying from a wounded heart was nowhere to be seen.
‘It’s a relief that he’s feeling better.’
Laura tried to think positively and move on. But seeing Ian’s expression, which was exactly like George’s when he secretly put caterpillars on Olivia’s head, a suspicion crept into her mind. It was a part she hadn’t thought about because she had been too surprised by her husband’s tears earlier.
“Honey. Were you really… being sincere when you cried just now?”
The chuckling stopped abruptly. He turned to Laura with an awkward expression.
“Huh?”
“It wasn’t a play you put on because you wanted to kiss me, was it?”
Just look at that guilty face. Laura’s suspicion solidified into conviction.
“Ian.”
As if realizing the seriousness of Laura’s hardened expression, Ian frantically waved his hands.
“No. Laura. No.”
“Really?”
“Of course!”
“Do you swear?”
“I swear.”
“On your honor?”
“Yes.”
“On the Dunville Park family?”
“Yes!”
“On our love?”
“……Yes…….”
Laura sighed deeply.
“On our parents in heaven and God watching over us?”
“……”
In the end, Ian lowered his head.
“……I’m sorry.”
A moment of silence followed. The only sound was Laura’s increasingly rough breathing. Laura bent down and picked up the parasol she had dropped.
Thwack!
He looked at Laura, startled by the sudden impact. Laura was clutching the parasol with a bright red face, panting. Her eyes were filled with tears.
