Cesare held Ariadne in his arms and went behind the pillars on one side of the hallway, where even the dim light from the candles could not reach.
As soon as Ariadne regained her composure, she firmly pushed Cesare away.
“What are you doing now?”
“Wait a minute, let me talk. Just a minute is enough.”
Duke Cesare fled from San Carlo in the early summer of 1124, shortly after his engagement to Countess de Mare had been broken off. He could no longer bear it.
The gossip of the people was not the problem. The King's illegitimate son, the most handsome man and womanizer in San Carlo, was used to being talked about anyway. The real problem was that Villa Sortone, no, the entire San Carlo, was colored in bright colors by the memories of his time with Ariadne.
As Cesare walked down the corridors of the Palagio Carlo, he thought of Ariadne, who had walked with him down those corridors, with her hand on his arm. As he rode across the piazza on his black horse, he thought of Ariadne, bowing her head in the family box in the front row of the Basilica of Saint Ercole beyond the piazza.
The house was not safe either. As soon as he woke up in the morning, Cesare looked down at the rose garden of Villa Sortone and saw Ariadne rejoicing there.
She could have continued to be happy. She could have continued to smile. Even if he had not touched Isabella.
The bedroom was even more horrible, because Ariadne was not there. It was the only place in the Villa Sortone where she had not entered.
It would take all his fingers and toes to count the women rolling around on Cesare's huge canopied bed, but she was not there.
Instead, the empty white bed smelled of the suffocating scent of Gaeta rosewater. The owner of Gaeta rosewater had only slept in this bed once, but the guilt of that time followed Cesare to the end. It was a stench that symbolized the loss of everything meaningful in his life.
Every day when he opened his eyes and saw the white sheets, Cesare felt suffocated by the smell.
'There was no paradise where I ran away.'
After going down to the Pisano estate, his memories were spotty. That was natural. While he was staying in Pisano, Cesare rarely had a day when he was sane. He drank to forget, and when he came to his senses, he couldn't stand it and vomited and drank again. He drank in the morning and in the evening.
Sometimes, when he couldn't stand to drink no matter how much he drank, he searched the entire territory to find a tall, black-haired woman.
Was Ariadne's body temperature like this? Was Ariadne's breath like this? He imagined a woman who had ended everything without even being able to hold her, and he hugged a woman he didn't know while drunk. He deliberately didn't look at her face. For a brief moment, he was able to fool himself.
But when he woke up in the morning, it became clear that his salvation was not for him. The smell of a strange woman and a splitting headache. There was no woman, only dirty sheets. He stopped doing that one day when he found a black wig lying around in the Pisano estate's bedroom. Because he had become ridiculous.
He kept imagining being forgiven.
'I'm here.'
He imagined that when he entered the de Mare mansion with a smile, she would come running to him and hug him, saying that she had missed him so much. He imagined that while holding her in his arms, he would tell her how much he had suffered over the past three years, and Ariadne would whisper something to him in her warm voice just like before, a sweet fantasy.
Then from then on, he will never do anything she doesn't like. He will ask permission to go out, let alone take a walk. Even the daily life that men would think is stupid is a hundred times better than the terrible pain he is going through now. He will live a happy life of dependence, rolling when she tells him to and fetching when she asks him to.
Cesare never thought of having a child, but it would be nice to have one. A little guy who looks half him and half her. A little friend who will hang on her feet and forever connect Mom and Dad. He wishes it were a daughter. He would hate it if it were a son because he'd be jealous.
Thinking about it this far, he found himself laughing at himself for going ahead. He didn't even think about who he would give the cake to. But the ray of hope he held in his heart did not go out.
But what Cesare overlooked was that Ariadne was a very attractive woman and that the seat next to her would not remain empty forever.
For his fantasy to become reality, there had to be no other man for her. The other guys in the capital were not scary. Whoever she brought in, they were inferior to him.
It was only when he heard that Prince Alfonso had returned to the capital that Cesare began to feel nervous.
'I should have gone.'
If he had set out for the capital as soon as he heard the news, things might have been different. He regretted his decision to this day.
What stopped Cesare was fear. He wasn't sure if she would forgive him.
'I'm sorry. I love you. Please come back.'
How would she react to these words? He couldn't guess. He had desperately hoped for a picture full of hope, but it was also possible for Ariadne to coldly laugh and close the door. Once the image appeared before his eyes, Cesare couldn't muster up the courage.
Let's set off tomorrow, the next morning, when the rain has stopped, let's set off. After the rain has stopped, after the horses have been shod, after the stables are fully prepared, let's wake up early the next morning, after I go to bed early and set off. The departure date he had decided on was postponed day after day.
It was when he became certain that Prince Alfonso and Countess de Mare were in communication in the capital that he could no longer delay. As soon as he got the first piece of evidence, he jumped up from his seat and ran to the capital. However, when he arrived at San Carlo, where he had run all night in the morning dew with Leopoldo... everything was already too late.
Countess de Mare and Prince Alfonso were always together, whether they were secretly seeing each other or not. They attended balls together and traveled together to the golden city of Trevero. He even accompanied the woman's father. Eventually, the man himself revealed to him that they were seeing each other.
His hopes grew fainter and fainter, but they were never extinguished.
Today, Cesare's watery eyes, which were calling Ariadne, were deeply sunken. That was quite strange. Cesare was usually excited when he took action.
“I have nothing to talk to you about. I am a married woman now.”
“I know, I know.”
Cesare's face twisted in pain for a moment. But he got over it relatively calmly. Cesare brushed his red hair back. There was a twinkle of pain in his eyes. It wasn't pleasant, but Cesare now looked like he had been alive for a long time.
“I. I thought about it.”
He spoke with difficulty. He kept his gaze on Ariadne. However, Cesare, who had finished his speech, could not continue.
Ariadne was annoyed. She didn't want to be around here with Cesare, and she didn't want anyone to see her with the Duke. Ariadne spat out shortly.
“If you have nothing to say, I will go now.”
“Ari, please. Ari.”
Cesare washed his face dry.
“...I can’t live without you.”
Through the red hair pouring forward, he could see two eyes blinking. The watery eyes were truly wet.
Ariadne felt her heart sink at Cesare’s words. What do you want me to do now? She repeated like a parrot.
“I’m already married...”
“I don’t mind if you’re Alfonso’s wife.”
This time, Ariadne's eyes widened. What kind of new nonsense is this? Cesare continued speaking urgently before Ariadne could run away.
“It’s okay if you don’t look at me.”
He thought hard about what was truly important to him. He thought hard about what he could let go of. He was really willing to give up more than he thought. For Ariadne.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. I don’t care if you’re not my woman. I can’t live without you, and I want to be with you no matter what.”
Cesare was in a kind of checkmate, without any law of annihilation. He was being dragged away and married, and his mother and father were ignoring his objections. There was no way for him to defeat Alfonso and win Ariadne.
His mother seemed to be troubled by many things. If Alfonso's successor is not recognized due to his marriage to a commoner, then Cesare will become the heir to the throne?
It wasn't about defeating Alfonso, but about inheriting what was Alfonso's. In fact, if it were Ariadne who was to inherit, then it was fine to inherit it. He really thought hard and decided that he could give up even that. However, what Cesare would inherit was the throne.
Cesare didn't want the throne. He wanted only one thing: the black-haired woman standing next to Alfonso.
“I thought about it, and what I want isn’t the satisfaction of declaring to the world that you’re mine, nor is it my child that you gave birth to. I just... just need you.”
Her round skin, her rosy lips, her voluptuous body were all nice, but what he truly desired was her body temperature, her laughter, the time she spent on him, her care, the eye contact between them, and her affection.
If only Ariadne had met his gaze and whispered to him like before, there was nothing more he could have wished for in the world. Even the reprimands she would throw at him were good. Calling him an idiot, telling him not to laugh, and shouting in her characteristic accent, "Oh, come on!"
There were days, very rarely, when Ariadne would compliment him on his good work. On those days, it felt like flying. He felt like hr owned the world.
The latter part of Cesare's confinement to the Pisano estate was a time of reminiscence about Ariadne. He thought of her, of his time with her, of his memories of her.
It went back quite a long time. The blush on Cesare's face when he first touched Ariadne's cheek, the wide eyes in surprise when she saw the golden deer, the way she got angry when he teased her about being a child, the hand she held out to him, their first kiss in the rain.
What should I do so that all these things do not disappear? The answer is simple. The problem was the day he fell for the scent of the Gaeta rose.
Cesare regretted the day he laid a hand on Isabella. And it wasn't just the Ariadne birthday ball in question where he had been caught flirting with Isabella.
When Isabella came to visit him at Villa Sortone, he regretted having ever seen her.
He regretted falling for Isabella's trick and reading Ariadne's letter.
Even if he had read it, he could have just endured it and let it go. He regretted that he had laid a hand on the older sister of the woman he loved, saying that he would try to mend her torn heart and stab her as much as he had been stabbed.
“Just make eye contact with me sometimes. Smile at me. Like before, just occasionally, like before...”
It must feel like drinking seawater. The more he drinks, the more thirsty he becomes, and he will roll around on the sand. Even if she smiles at him, when he sees her standing next to Alfonso at an official event and bowing her head, a fire will burn inside his heart.
But he couldn't stand doing nothing. These days, Cesare was as good as dead while still alive.
Ariadne glared at Cesare without saying a word. Her expression was a mixture of shock, disbelief, contempt, and anxiety.
But Cesare had one hope. There was one shining virtue in those disgusting looks Ariadne made: they were emotions themselves.
“Am I crazy to do something like that?”
“Please take pity on me...”
Cesare's words were interrupted by a sharp voice. It was the voice of a middle-aged woman.
“Countess de Mare. Isn’t ruining Prince Alfonso's life not enough?”
It was Duchess Rubina who went down to the kitchen, scolded the cook, and came back, just in time to witness this heartbreaking sight.
As soon as Ariadne regained her composure, she firmly pushed Cesare away.
“What are you doing now?”
“Wait a minute, let me talk. Just a minute is enough.”
***
Duke Cesare fled from San Carlo in the early summer of 1124, shortly after his engagement to Countess de Mare had been broken off. He could no longer bear it.
The gossip of the people was not the problem. The King's illegitimate son, the most handsome man and womanizer in San Carlo, was used to being talked about anyway. The real problem was that Villa Sortone, no, the entire San Carlo, was colored in bright colors by the memories of his time with Ariadne.
As Cesare walked down the corridors of the Palagio Carlo, he thought of Ariadne, who had walked with him down those corridors, with her hand on his arm. As he rode across the piazza on his black horse, he thought of Ariadne, bowing her head in the family box in the front row of the Basilica of Saint Ercole beyond the piazza.
The house was not safe either. As soon as he woke up in the morning, Cesare looked down at the rose garden of Villa Sortone and saw Ariadne rejoicing there.
She could have continued to be happy. She could have continued to smile. Even if he had not touched Isabella.
The bedroom was even more horrible, because Ariadne was not there. It was the only place in the Villa Sortone where she had not entered.
It would take all his fingers and toes to count the women rolling around on Cesare's huge canopied bed, but she was not there.
Instead, the empty white bed smelled of the suffocating scent of Gaeta rosewater. The owner of Gaeta rosewater had only slept in this bed once, but the guilt of that time followed Cesare to the end. It was a stench that symbolized the loss of everything meaningful in his life.
Every day when he opened his eyes and saw the white sheets, Cesare felt suffocated by the smell.
'There was no paradise where I ran away.'
After going down to the Pisano estate, his memories were spotty. That was natural. While he was staying in Pisano, Cesare rarely had a day when he was sane. He drank to forget, and when he came to his senses, he couldn't stand it and vomited and drank again. He drank in the morning and in the evening.
Sometimes, when he couldn't stand to drink no matter how much he drank, he searched the entire territory to find a tall, black-haired woman.
Was Ariadne's body temperature like this? Was Ariadne's breath like this? He imagined a woman who had ended everything without even being able to hold her, and he hugged a woman he didn't know while drunk. He deliberately didn't look at her face. For a brief moment, he was able to fool himself.
But when he woke up in the morning, it became clear that his salvation was not for him. The smell of a strange woman and a splitting headache. There was no woman, only dirty sheets. He stopped doing that one day when he found a black wig lying around in the Pisano estate's bedroom. Because he had become ridiculous.
He kept imagining being forgiven.
'I'm here.'
He imagined that when he entered the de Mare mansion with a smile, she would come running to him and hug him, saying that she had missed him so much. He imagined that while holding her in his arms, he would tell her how much he had suffered over the past three years, and Ariadne would whisper something to him in her warm voice just like before, a sweet fantasy.
Then from then on, he will never do anything she doesn't like. He will ask permission to go out, let alone take a walk. Even the daily life that men would think is stupid is a hundred times better than the terrible pain he is going through now. He will live a happy life of dependence, rolling when she tells him to and fetching when she asks him to.
Cesare never thought of having a child, but it would be nice to have one. A little guy who looks half him and half her. A little friend who will hang on her feet and forever connect Mom and Dad. He wishes it were a daughter. He would hate it if it were a son because he'd be jealous.
Thinking about it this far, he found himself laughing at himself for going ahead. He didn't even think about who he would give the cake to. But the ray of hope he held in his heart did not go out.
But what Cesare overlooked was that Ariadne was a very attractive woman and that the seat next to her would not remain empty forever.
For his fantasy to become reality, there had to be no other man for her. The other guys in the capital were not scary. Whoever she brought in, they were inferior to him.
It was only when he heard that Prince Alfonso had returned to the capital that Cesare began to feel nervous.
'I should have gone.'
If he had set out for the capital as soon as he heard the news, things might have been different. He regretted his decision to this day.
What stopped Cesare was fear. He wasn't sure if she would forgive him.
'I'm sorry. I love you. Please come back.'
How would she react to these words? He couldn't guess. He had desperately hoped for a picture full of hope, but it was also possible for Ariadne to coldly laugh and close the door. Once the image appeared before his eyes, Cesare couldn't muster up the courage.
Let's set off tomorrow, the next morning, when the rain has stopped, let's set off. After the rain has stopped, after the horses have been shod, after the stables are fully prepared, let's wake up early the next morning, after I go to bed early and set off. The departure date he had decided on was postponed day after day.
It was when he became certain that Prince Alfonso and Countess de Mare were in communication in the capital that he could no longer delay. As soon as he got the first piece of evidence, he jumped up from his seat and ran to the capital. However, when he arrived at San Carlo, where he had run all night in the morning dew with Leopoldo... everything was already too late.
Countess de Mare and Prince Alfonso were always together, whether they were secretly seeing each other or not. They attended balls together and traveled together to the golden city of Trevero. He even accompanied the woman's father. Eventually, the man himself revealed to him that they were seeing each other.
His hopes grew fainter and fainter, but they were never extinguished.
Today, Cesare's watery eyes, which were calling Ariadne, were deeply sunken. That was quite strange. Cesare was usually excited when he took action.
“I have nothing to talk to you about. I am a married woman now.”
“I know, I know.”
Cesare's face twisted in pain for a moment. But he got over it relatively calmly. Cesare brushed his red hair back. There was a twinkle of pain in his eyes. It wasn't pleasant, but Cesare now looked like he had been alive for a long time.
“I. I thought about it.”
He spoke with difficulty. He kept his gaze on Ariadne. However, Cesare, who had finished his speech, could not continue.
Ariadne was annoyed. She didn't want to be around here with Cesare, and she didn't want anyone to see her with the Duke. Ariadne spat out shortly.
“If you have nothing to say, I will go now.”
“Ari, please. Ari.”
Cesare washed his face dry.
“...I can’t live without you.”
Through the red hair pouring forward, he could see two eyes blinking. The watery eyes were truly wet.
Ariadne felt her heart sink at Cesare’s words. What do you want me to do now? She repeated like a parrot.
“I’m already married...”
“I don’t mind if you’re Alfonso’s wife.”
This time, Ariadne's eyes widened. What kind of new nonsense is this? Cesare continued speaking urgently before Ariadne could run away.
“It’s okay if you don’t look at me.”
He thought hard about what was truly important to him. He thought hard about what he could let go of. He was really willing to give up more than he thought. For Ariadne.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. I don’t care if you’re not my woman. I can’t live without you, and I want to be with you no matter what.”
Cesare was in a kind of checkmate, without any law of annihilation. He was being dragged away and married, and his mother and father were ignoring his objections. There was no way for him to defeat Alfonso and win Ariadne.
His mother seemed to be troubled by many things. If Alfonso's successor is not recognized due to his marriage to a commoner, then Cesare will become the heir to the throne?
It wasn't about defeating Alfonso, but about inheriting what was Alfonso's. In fact, if it were Ariadne who was to inherit, then it was fine to inherit it. He really thought hard and decided that he could give up even that. However, what Cesare would inherit was the throne.
Cesare didn't want the throne. He wanted only one thing: the black-haired woman standing next to Alfonso.
“I thought about it, and what I want isn’t the satisfaction of declaring to the world that you’re mine, nor is it my child that you gave birth to. I just... just need you.”
Her round skin, her rosy lips, her voluptuous body were all nice, but what he truly desired was her body temperature, her laughter, the time she spent on him, her care, the eye contact between them, and her affection.
If only Ariadne had met his gaze and whispered to him like before, there was nothing more he could have wished for in the world. Even the reprimands she would throw at him were good. Calling him an idiot, telling him not to laugh, and shouting in her characteristic accent, "Oh, come on!"
There were days, very rarely, when Ariadne would compliment him on his good work. On those days, it felt like flying. He felt like hr owned the world.
The latter part of Cesare's confinement to the Pisano estate was a time of reminiscence about Ariadne. He thought of her, of his time with her, of his memories of her.
It went back quite a long time. The blush on Cesare's face when he first touched Ariadne's cheek, the wide eyes in surprise when she saw the golden deer, the way she got angry when he teased her about being a child, the hand she held out to him, their first kiss in the rain.
What should I do so that all these things do not disappear? The answer is simple. The problem was the day he fell for the scent of the Gaeta rose.
Cesare regretted the day he laid a hand on Isabella. And it wasn't just the Ariadne birthday ball in question where he had been caught flirting with Isabella.
When Isabella came to visit him at Villa Sortone, he regretted having ever seen her.
He regretted falling for Isabella's trick and reading Ariadne's letter.
Even if he had read it, he could have just endured it and let it go. He regretted that he had laid a hand on the older sister of the woman he loved, saying that he would try to mend her torn heart and stab her as much as he had been stabbed.
“Just make eye contact with me sometimes. Smile at me. Like before, just occasionally, like before...”
It must feel like drinking seawater. The more he drinks, the more thirsty he becomes, and he will roll around on the sand. Even if she smiles at him, when he sees her standing next to Alfonso at an official event and bowing her head, a fire will burn inside his heart.
But he couldn't stand doing nothing. These days, Cesare was as good as dead while still alive.
Ariadne glared at Cesare without saying a word. Her expression was a mixture of shock, disbelief, contempt, and anxiety.
But Cesare had one hope. There was one shining virtue in those disgusting looks Ariadne made: they were emotions themselves.
“Am I crazy to do something like that?”
“Please take pity on me...”
Cesare's words were interrupted by a sharp voice. It was the voice of a middle-aged woman.
“Countess de Mare. Isn’t ruining Prince Alfonso's life not enough?”
It was Duchess Rubina who went down to the kitchen, scolded the cook, and came back, just in time to witness this heartbreaking sight.
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