Memories of sponsorship flowed through the wind.
Kaian held me tightly and kissed me anxiously as if he would take my breath away.
I stopped resisting as if I was going to push him away.
The man, who noticed this in an instant, lost the strength that had been restraining me in his arms.
As I hung with both my arms around his shoulders, Kaian lifted me up and held me as if he had been waiting for me.
“...I hate you."
"Huh."
Kaian answered half-heartedly, as if he had overheard my complaints, and lowered his head again.
The sunset was on my side as it fell through the laundry hanging high above my head.
Even then, we stood still for a while, longing for each other.
“The weather is nice today.”
“I thought I’d have to do laundry tomorrow too. It dries quickly... Oh!”
“Oh my gosh.”
The castle maids who had come to collect all the dried things ran away trembling and giggling.
I froze. Heat slowly rose to my cheeks, and then my whole face felt hot.
“I told you not to do it.”
I blamed Kaian. I pushed him away and quickly ran away to the castle.
'...If only it weren't for insomnia.'
It was really difficult to have to see that man in the bedroom again tonight.
***
Kaian was having a day that couldn't have been better.
It was these days that he realized why things go well outside when there is peace at home.
“Next time I go to the capital, I’ll have to take care of something for Valquiterre.”
It was entirely thanks to Valquiterre that he got Claudel as his wife.
Kaian was so immersed in extreme happiness that he forgot all about Valquiterre's actions that had bothered him during this royal event.
“It’s so cute I’m dying.”
Even as he sat in his office, all he could think about was Claudel.
In his opinion, love was a very noble emotion.
Isn’t this the most dramatic emotion a human can have toward another person?
Sometimes, he is blinded by love and makes wrong choices even though he knows it - and this was the most difficult behavior for Kaian, who was raised from a young age to make only the right choices as the successor to Temnes.
Sometimes, he sacrifices his life for the one he loves - and since he was young, Kaian was a Temnes who had to survive until the end, so it was not easy to sympathize with him.
It is true that Kaian must protect and defend the territory and the territory, but if a truly critical situation were to arise, the first person to avoid and run away was Kaian.
Rather than risking his life to protect something, he saved people's lives for the glory of Temnes, and those who would die in his stead stood by Kaian's side.
As a result, Kaian, who was exceptionally good at learning even during his days as a minor, was particularly weak in poetry.
Even now that he thinks about it, many of the poetic works that make him cringe are about love.
Some of them compared loyalty to a lord or friendship to a friend to love.
Most people thought that it was an extreme or spontaneous, meaningless, and vain emotion that clashed with Kaian's values.
Nevertheless, the reason he thinks love is precious is because it is an emotion that Kaian himself lacked.
The Duke of Temnes is always superior to others and is looked up to by everyone.
Lord Rowen, is respected by all the people of the territory.
Of the noblemen who went to war, seventy percent died.
Soldiers could be captured and taken prisoner or escape, but if captured, leaders were either executed or committed suicide.
These are men who went to war on behalf of a family by order of the King.
If he converts the price of their lives into money, how much does he have to pay to get them back?
The greatest shame was being captured alive by the enemy.
If money is exchanged in exchange for hostages, there is no way that the head of the family, whose prestige has fallen, will be able to rule the territory and family even if he returns alive.
So, if they survived and were captured by the enemy, they did whatever they could to kill themselves.
Under the barrage of enemy attacks, Kaian survived to the end without being caught even once.
Although Kaian glorified the name of the undefeated general Temnes.
The poetry teacher who taught him when he was young forced a smile on his embarrassed face and said,
'It seems that God made a mistake while trying to create a perfect creature.'
On the other hand, Valquiterre, whom he sometimes took classes with when he visited the estate, received quite a bit of praise.
One time, his poetry teacher made a fuss as if he was very moved, and he still remembered the poem Kaian written by Valquiterre.
[Love. If you don't have it, it's better to destroy it.]
Anyway, the earnestness of love is expressed through irony. This isn't the writing skills of a ten-year-old child.
Anyway, Kaian was deeply immersed in this feeling he was experiencing for the first time.
He was proud of himself too.
He was born and raised as a human being and enjoyed all the glory that can be achieved with his skills, and he felt proud of the fact that he had even become loved by many people.
In the end, there was nothing he couldn't get his hands on.
“Claudel was a bit different from the beginning.”
Even though she was Vermont's daughter, she was not thought to be inconvenienced.
It was true that his mind kept wandering and he was worried.
“It’s harder than I thought. I thought I could bear it.”
Claudel was indignant that he was doing nothing, but the reality was different.
Kaian felt like he was going crazy because he liked Claudel.
He was sorry that his words had hurt her, but he couldn't help it.
It is difficult for him to be true to her, as long as her breath is attached to the Duke of Vermont.
There is a shortcut to ruining the reign of a country or a territory, and one of them is to fall in love with a woman.
The Lord, wrapped in a skirt, has his eyes and ears darkened.
He orders ridiculous investments and starts doing stupid things that are as obvious as fire, but no matter how much people around him try to stop him, he doesn't listen and just does what the woman he shares a bed with whispers to him.
When he was dealing with other people, he might pass it off as, 'What a pathetic person you are,' but Kaian couldn't allow himself to be that kind of person.
It was obvious what the Duke of Vermont would do if he found out that he truly cared for Claudel.
Asking to increase the food being shipped out was cute.
He could have tried to take back the woman who would bear Temnes' heir.
One fortunate thing was that their marriage was a marriage ordered by King Valquiterre's order, so the parties from both families could not divorce without the King's mediation.
If it weren't for the King's name, he wouldn't have taken the woman from Vermont as his wife.
It was fortunate that this situation didn't separate him from her.
The Duke of Vermont would be troubled if Claudel, while pregnant, took her to her parents' home, demanding a divorce.
His sincerity will become a weakness.
In any case, the fact that Kaian fell in love with Claudel was so unexpected that no one should have known.
“She seemed to have a deep friendship with her sister.”
It was also surprising that Princess Irena and Claudel had a good relationship.
Irena grew up as an only child, and if she suddenly had a younger sibling, she might have hated that child.
Claudel must have suddenly become a member of someone else's family due to unfortunate circumstances when she was young.
Watching the Duchess of Vermont and Claudel talking at the ball, it didn't seem like the Duchess was disparaging Claudel.
“I thought the Duke of Vermont was the only problem.”
It was his mistake resulting from a lack of information.
Even after searching through the information coming from Castle de Valmonde, there was no mention of Claudel before the marriage.
Depending on the direction of Princess Irena's marriage, Valmonde's power could also influence the capital's politics, so she was only mentioned occasionally.
Vermont's next successor was in fact, Irena.
Although she was born a woman, no one knew that she had grown up receiving an elaborate education that was typical of other families' heads.
She was born as Vermont's eldest daughter, and if she had a husband to give birth to the successor, Irena, who had discretion comparable to that of the head of the family, would raise that child and become the next Vermont.
“Why does she get along so well with her older sister?”
He wondered if he would be able to truly reveal his feelings to Claudel by then when the Duke of Vermont died.
However, if she has a good relationship with the next Duke of Vermont, Irena, the current Duke of Vermont, who commanded, 'If there is a life, you should kill that bastard.'
Then again, Claudel was unable to say anything to Irena before she died.
'I hate you.'
Claudel, who resented him, often showed raw emotions.
'I hate you so much.'
Kaian didn't think it was normal for him to get excited by the woman's tone of voice blaming him.
Every time he sees her looking at him sadly through her hurt eyes, he feels so sad and so happy that he dies.
“Now that I think about it, I didn’t get to see the bride properly on the wedding day.”
When Kaian made eye contact with Claudel through the white cloth fluttering in the back garden, he lost control.
He hugged her and kissed her and said without him knowing, 'I think I'm going crazy because of you too', but fortunately she couldn't hear it because his pronunciation was muffled because he was kissing her.
‘On the wedding day. What were you wearing?'
When she asks that in the carriage.
‘It felt more plain than what you wore today, right? It looks like you were wearing a furry cape.'
'That's right. Valmonde was definitely cold. Why are you suddenly asking that?'
'I don't really remember.'
In fact, his heart sank a little.
'That would have been really cool.'
'Does this mean that's not the case now?'
She may have blurted out her words, but her memory was quite accurate.
At that time, Kaian was so angry that he did not wear the wedding dress that the groom was supposed to wear.
As soon as he arrived at the castle of Valmonde on horseback, the huge castle with its closed structure aroused his displeasure.
Not only did he want to get out of the castle without delay, but he also had a feeling of rebellion against Valquiterre, so he dressed up as a new groom and had no intention of entering the ceremony hall, so he got married in the same clothes he was wearing.
Of course, since it belonged to the head of the Temnes family, the clothes he usually wore were probably not that shabby.
When he thought back, he had never seen her on the day he came to Rowen Castle, nor had she changed out of her robes to catch the rain, nor had she put a white veil on her head.
How beautiful the white cloth fluttered in the wind over her red hair.
“Why did it rain that day?”
She must have been pretty enough to captivate his eyes.
When the carriage broke down in the heavy rain and she asked for help, he told her to come back on her own feet, but he had long since forgotten his fault.
Kaian sat at his desk, lost in thought for a moment, and then called his butler.
“Did you call me, My lord?”
“Think of a way to do the wedding again.”
Two series are out now! If you like mystery, horror, and historical genre, you can check it out!
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