148 - Pieces of the Broken Glass Slipper
Shattered Glass Slipper Shards 148
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In an instant, Lady Roshan jumps up from her seat. She immediately grabs my hand, pulling me to face her. Her eyes, sharp as a mother protecting her young, are fixed on the Crown Prince.
“I shall take my leave, Your Highness.”
She only says ‘Your Highness,’ but her attitude is as disrespectful as if she were addressing a friend of the same gender. Her immediate move towards the door, without even waiting for his reply, is proof enough.
However, the Crown Prince watches us with an inscrutable smile.
“Lüce, do you think I would betray Mel?”
His voice stops her in her tracks. But she doesn’t turn around. The Crown Prince continues.
“Don’t be so sensitive, unlike you. It’s enough that Mel is becoming strange.”
Lady Roshan doesn’t reply. She squeezes my hand tightly and walks forward. The door closes after us.
“It means nothing,”
Lady Roshan says quickly as we walk down the hallway. The voice that leaks through her teeth is very sharp, as if suppressing her emotions. I can’t understand why she’s being so defensive. The hand she’s holding is starting to hurt more and more.
“So don’t worry about it. Sis is not someone to be treated so carelessly.”
Why is affection like a scale, so blatantly showing its imbalance? Her hair is flying wildly.
Thanks to this, I realize for the first time that Lücette Roshan is someone who can walk like this. Also, that she is a woman who can be this agitated.
In fact, as Roshan said, an ordinary woman would have blushed or squirmed with embarrassment upon hearing the Crown Prince’s words. Or perhaps, filled with some kind of expectation, she might have cast a subtle glance.
Who could resist a seductively beautiful woman smiling languidly and saying, ‘I desire you’?
The problem is that the words ‘easy to move piece’ were omitted before ‘I desire you.’ He wanted me as a chess piece, not anything more than that.
The Crown Prince simply wanted me to fall deeply in love with him. Because there is nothing easier to manipulate than a woman in love.
Knowing this, I can accept it calmly. The intense gaze that seemed to bind me was frightening, but I could look back because I knew he would show ‘courtesy’ as promised.
But Lücette Roshan didn’t understand this. Or rather, she didn’t seem to want to. In her agitated state, she seemed far from calm, as if she couldn’t see anything. Starting with the fact that she was walking forward without thinking. That’s why I had to say the answer she wanted to hear to calm her down.
“Not every woman falls for His Highness’s charm.”
At my answer, Lady Roshan’s pace slows down noticeably. Interestingly, both Sir Ayres and Lady Roshan overly believed in the Crown Prince’s charm.
I don’t know what they’ve seen by his side, but they seem to think that there are hundreds of women who would scream and fall at my slightest gesture.
“Lady Roshan.”
I call her name in a soft voice. Then she turns her head to look at me. Her eyes, having regained reason, clearly reflect me. I deliberately frowned as if to show her.
“My hand hurts.”
The following words contained a bit of nagging and complaining. She is startled and immediately lets go of my hand. Her palm had turned bright red, as if blood couldn’t circulate.
“Oh my, what have I done? I’m sorry.”
Her restless gaze is pitifully pathetic. I said as if it were nothing.
“It’s okay.”
“Why did His Highness have to say such a thing… Anyway, don’t worry about it. Jokes are originally silly. It’s better to just let go of words that have no meaning.”
There was an inconsistency in her words. I was the one who first brought up the word desire, but she was unconditionally shifting the responsibility to the Crown Prince. As if she had to.
“Lady Roshan.”
I asked her, rubbing my freed hand with the other. Why should we let it go, what is the reason?
Since the three of us, the Crown Prince, Lady Roshan, and I, started meeting, I had never seen her act so emotionally. She was acting sensitively to an incomprehensible degree.
Then Lady Roshan’s face turns pale in an instant. Her eyes, turned downwards as if trying to avoid something, hold a color that I have never seen before.
Something that is difficult to see as being for a friend is shaking her. An emotion based on affection, but colored more darkly and insidiously, was emitting residual heat.
Only for a moment, soon Lady Roshan looks at me as if nothing had happened. She pretends to be her usual self, as if telling me not to be curious any further.
If I go any deeper here, something might happen.
I swallowed a sigh and said to her soothingly.
“I understand. Let’s let it go. I swear, the thing you’re worried about will never happen.”
Lady Roshan doesn’t answer. She just raises her eyes to look at me. Her eyes reflected me.
“I think I should leave now. I want to rest.”
After a while, she opens her mouth and speaks. Her barely parted lips held a faint tremor. At the words that clearly showed refusal, I quietly nodded. Lady Roshan smiled faintly as if to thank me. And took a step back.
As summer approached, the blowing wind contained hot air. I felt breathless. It was the same for Lady Roshan, as she stared blankly at the floor until the maid came to find us.
And when the maid approached, she got into the carriage without any greeting. Acting as hastily as someone being chased.
I couldn’t exchange a single word with her until I arrived at the mansion. I had no choice but to remain silent, feeling like I shouldn’t.
As soon as I got out of the carriage, Lady Roshan left without leaving any lingering feelings. It was different from before, when she waited until I entered the mansion. So I felt a subtle feeling.
Something was going very strangely.
\*
Mother’s morning sickness started around the beginning of summer. It clung to her so severely that it was painful to watch.
Her body, already drooping from the heat that had come like a swarm, was combined with morning sickness, so Mother’s body was only getting thinner day by day. It’s not that she didn’t have an appetite, but every time she ate, she threw it all up, so there was no way she could gain weight properly.
I heard that she was waking up the maids from dawn to eat food and then immediately throwing it up. Feeling nauseous just from smelling something was a daily occurrence. So Mother’s eyes were becoming more and more fierce day by day.
Her beauty was still maintained thanks to the maids’ care, but they couldn’t even trim her sharply honed nerves, so she kept getting annoyed.
“What if I’m just bones left? Then it will be really ugly. Oh, what should I do?”
Even though Mother had experience with childbirth, it was difficult to carry a child while maintaining her dignity as a Countess.
She had just vomited, so her breath reeked of sourness. She rinsed her mouth lightly with water made from herbal medicine, but it was no use as she kept gagging and throwing up sour water.
“That won’t happen. You’ll soon regain your former self, so don’t worry. How are you feeling?”
Mother stroked her swollen belly at my question and smiled. And what she said to me in a confident voice was, ‘It must be a son.’
“How do you know?”
“The shape of my belly is different from when I was carrying you. So it must be a son.”
Isn’t a pregnant belly just swelling forward? It was an incomprehensible sound, but since Mother said so, I had no choice but to nod and agree. Well, I thought it was fortunate if she could receive comfort in this way.
“Then you should eat better.”
“But I can’t get it down. You were so easy.”
“Me?”
“Of course. When I had you, I could eat anything and it went down well. There wasn’t a single difficult thing.”
“Then the younger sibling who will be born soon will be very gentle.”
“Huh?”
“It’s nothing.”
It was Mother who called me, who was planning to rest and read in the room today.
When I said I couldn’t visit later, she insisted that it had to be today, and as soon as she saw me, she beamed and made a joyful expression.
And she had the maid prepare refreshments. She said she wanted to have a cozy tea time for the first time in a long time.
But among the prepared food, the only thing Mother could touch was a piece of dried fruit. Even that felt nauseating, so she immediately spat it out and rinsed her mouth.
The hand wiping the water droplets from her chin was trembling, perhaps because she lacked strength. Her face, having vomited, was full of exhaustion.
“How about lying down and resting?”
“You’ve been coming home late because of meetings and stuff. Stay with me just for today.”
After feeling betrayed by Roena, Mother treated me with even more sincerity. As if trying to improve the estranged relationship. It was like seeing Mother before she returned.
So whenever I tried not to be with her even a little, she would make a disappointed expression and become depressed. It was a good change.
“I will.”
At my answer, Mother suddenly raises her hand and sends the maids outside. She silently looks at the table until all the maids leave, and then opens her mouth quietly when the door closes.
“I heard you’ve been hanging out with Roena these days?”
Mother’s face was full of worry. I asked her with a smile on my face.
“Didn’t you tell me to hang out with her sometime?”
“That was then. It’s different now.”
“That’s true. Yes, I’m hanging out with Roena.”
“But I heard you only hang out when you receive an invitation from His Highness the Crown Prince?”
“How did you know that?”
When I asked with my eyes wide open, Mother made a proud expression and raised her chin slightly. It meant that she wouldn’t know that much as the wife of a Count.
“Yes, that’s right. I’m only going out to gatherings where His Highness comes.”
Then Mother’s expression twists quite subtly. It contained the premonition of jealousy and envy, and the worry that Roena might take my place. So I didn’t bother to say that I was acting according to the Crown Prince’s arrangement.
“That, you know. Ah, no. Ah, that’s right! Does His Highness treat Roena well?”
Well, is that treating her well? I couldn’t open my mouth easily. He was certainly accepting her kindly, but it was difficult to express it because it was more of a prank to enjoy a moment’s amusement than treating her well with affection.
In reality, she was using her beauty to confuse Roena’s eyes, so what more could I say?
The problem was that he was openly focusing on me and Lady Roshan, which was drawing out Roena’s jealousy. Because only Lady Roshan and I could sit next to him or drink the tea he personally poured.
At the Crown Prince’s gatherings, Roena was just someone sitting at a table and wasting time. Of course, she couldn’t hide the expression on her face that she was happy to death at the questions she occasionally threw out.
Thanks to this, Roena’s nagging continued throughout the journey back to the mansion these days. She envied me and Lady Roshan, His Highness the Crown Prince was still kind, she was happy that she seemed to have gotten closer to him, and she said that she wanted to be like that too.
Shining her eyes as if she was ecstatic and praising his appearance was exactly like any other stupid woman who had fallen for the Crown Prince.
Is that why? These days, I feel like the Roena of the past is being shattered. I was wondering if the girl I had only regarded as a wall was really like this.
She, the perfect woman I wanted to overcome, was a more elegant and witty person.
But Roena, who was fine even when she was invited to the Empress’s tea time, became a complete idiot immediately after falling for the Crown Prince. The Roena I wanted to ruin was not like this, and she was getting stranger day by day.
“Sissae?”
“Ah, yes. I think he treats her well. He’s such a kind person.”
“Really? But your expression… Ah, no. Anyway, I’m glad he’s treating her kindly, but this mother feels a bit that way.”
“Are you feeling unwell?”
“No, I feel upset thinking that Roena is hanging out with you to be by the Crown Prince’s side.”
In Mother’s eyes, the current Roena seemed to be seen as a villain trying to steal my things. I felt like laughing at the sharp vigilance.
So Mother has really returned.
But I pretended to be nonchalant and probed Mother’s true feelings.
“Sir Ayres would be upset if he heard that.”
Mother frowned and said to me.
“But you can’t compare him to the person who will be the master of the empire.”
“That’s true.”
Mother’s face brightened when I quietly agreed. Her eyes were cunningly sparkling.
