TMWDS Chapter 31

Yvonne suddenly shoved Ionna aside.

"Forget it, I'll just do it myself if you won't. Move!"

"Yvonne!"

Yvonne, throwing the door open, and Ionna, trying to catch up to stop her—both of them froze the next instant, stiff as statues.

Standing right there, in front of their eyes, was the very cause of the entire argument.

"D-Duke...?"

"...What is all this?"

Ionna prayed, uselessly, that he hadn't properly heard their conversation.

"You mean Dame Ionna isn't Count Modrov's adopted daughter, but his illegitimate child?"

Leroy's expression had gone frighteningly rigid as he moved straight to confirming the facts.

Feeling the pressure of that, Yvonne shrank back a step. But only for a moment—realizing this was too good an opportunity to waste, she quickly summoned a pleading tone.

"I'm so sorry, Your Grace! I never wanted to deceive you. I really didn't. I kept meaning to tell you the truth, but my sister was being so shameless about it that I just—"

Ionna's face had gone completely ashen.

She couldn't offer a single word in her own defense.

What was there left to explain, or how? Every word of it was true.

Ionna was a bastard who didn't even know who her own mother was, and she had shamelessly hidden this fact while trying to marry a duke.

She had nothing to say for herself even if he decided to make an example of her and bury her socially for it.

Leroy turned his eyes to Ionna next and asked:

"Dame Ionna, answer me directly. Is this true?"

"Your Grace, if there's anything you'd like to know, you can ask me—I'll—"

"You'd best return to your seat now, my lady."

Firmly declining Yvonne's interruption, Leroy stepped forward, closer to Ionna.

Yvonne, who had been itching to sow discord, looked a little disappointed, but quickly recovered from the letdown.

Either way, the marriage negotiations between the Duke and Ionna were as good as broken at this point.

"Then I'll leave you two to talk."

Having accomplished her goal, Yvonne walked away, footsteps light.

Finally, only the two of them remained in the dark corridor.

Leroy asked, his expression unreadable.

"Explain this to me in a way I can understand, Dame Ionna."

"...I have nothing to say. Everything you heard is true. I—"

Her jaw trembled. It took real effort, pressing her tongue against her teeth, before Ionna could finish the sentence.

"...I am, in fact, Count Modrov's illegitimate daughter."

Silence fell.

Leroy stared at Ionna's frozen face for a long moment, saying nothing.

Unable to summon the nerve to meet his eyes, Ionna dropped her head.

His low voice fell over her like a sentence being handed down.

"You tried to deceive me."

"……."

"I suppose it wasn't only inferiority that made Nils Modrov break your leg."

She'd assumed he wouldn't know, since it happened while he was away from the capital—but perhaps that kind of information wasn't so difficult for someone like him to dig up after all.

She could hear the faint edge of anger threading through his voice.

She was terrified he'd demand, right now, that this marriage be called off entirely.

For Ionna, who had survived her entire life by proving her usefulness, this failure was nothing short of a death sentence.

Wasn't obedience to her liege the only value she possessed?

If she failed to carry out Rihardt's command, this time she might well be abandoned completely.

Fear blurred her vision white.

Ionna clenched her fists tight and spoke urgently.

"Please, don't call off the engagement."

Ionna knew perfectly well she was doing something pointless.

Leroy had never once given her a firm commitment to marry her in the first place.

And now that he'd learned the sordid secret of her birth on top of everything else, there was no chance he'd accept her.

Her pleading wasn't going to change his mind, and Ionna knew that better than anyone—and yet, even so, she had to beg for his mercy, right now, in this moment.

It was the only thing left she could do in this situation.

"Please. I'll make sure no one else finds out. I'll silence Yvonne somehow, myself. Honestly, she probably has no intention of spreading this outside these walls either. She only did it because she hates me... yes, that's all this was. And she has every reason to."

Ionna rubbed at the corners of her eyes, trying to wipe away the cold sweat. Her body was, strangely, shivering.

She could feel that she was babbling, out of character, but there was no composure left in her to fix it.

Ionna, head bowed before him, kept spitting out whatever words came, in whatever order.

"I know full well how utterly out of the question a marriage like this must be for someone like you, Your Grace. I know how contemptible my birth must seem to you. A bastard becoming a duchess—it's genuinely absurd. But. Even so—"

"……."

"Could I—...could I have just one chance? I'll do anything you want. I'll make sure this never brings a single stain on your house's name. I'll make sure I never do anything to displease you, so please…."

Please.

Ionna's eyes squeezed shut.

Despite her desperate whispering, he still gave no answer.

Everything was falling apart. In utter desperation, Ionna moved to drop to her knees before him.

She would have licked his boots too, if that was what he wanted. If he hadn't reached out to stop her, she would have already done it.

"Enough."

"……."

"I understand, so... that's enough now. Stop."

Saying this, Leroy laid his hand over her cold one. Then he stepped in closer, so she'd have something to lean against.

Only after she'd buried her face in his chest did Ionna realize she'd been trembling. He appeared to be perfectly still, and yet her vision had been shaking wildly.

She wanted to apologize for her rudeness, but her breath was coming too fast, too raggedly, for her voice to work.

Ionna matched her breathing to his, drawing air in and out again and again, until at last it began to settle.

Once Ionna's breathing had finally returned to something like normal, he spoke, as if to reassure her.

"I'll do it."

"……."

"I'll marry you."

Then he took her stiff fingers and slowly, with great care, began to work the tension out of them.

Ionna knew she would never, for the rest of her life, forget that moment.

The faint scent of his cologne against his collar, the texture of the fabric against her forehead, the slow rise and fall of his chest and the heartbeat beyond it—

That absurdly unfamiliar sensation of being treated, by someone, as precious.

It was, without question, the perfect moment to fall in love.

If Ionna had been like other, ordinary people, she might have started an entirely hopeless one-sided love right then and there. Even indulging in the presumptuous delusion that he might feel the same thing for her.

But Ionna knew, with painful clarity, the real reason he'd changed his mind so suddenly.

At first, she hadn't been sure. But the longer time passed, the more deeply she came to understand this man, the more certain she became.

It was pity.

If he hadn't married her, she would simply have been left behind, abandoned in this hellish house.

It was obvious what kind of treatment awaited a woman who'd failed at marriage and hadn't even managed to give up her spot to her sister instead.

He was weak to women as unfortunate as herself. And so he'd accepted a failed marriage, walked straight into the middle of a battlefield to rescue a wife who existed only in name.

Ionna parasitized his kindness, shamelessly feeding off the happiness meant for someone else. That was the true nature of their marriage.

Ionna could say it with total certainty.

If she told him about her abusive past, and cried while doing it, he would happily slide a ring onto her finger this time, too.

'But I can't do that.'

Ionna hadn't proposed this marriage to him just to repeat the same trick all over again.

This time, it would be the other way around—she would be the one to help him.

She was determined never to create the kind of wronged circumstance that would let him pity her ever again.

By then, Leroy had finished applying the ointment and pulled his hand back from her cheek. Ionna bit down on the inside of her cheek, as if steeling her resolve, then forced strength into her throat.

“I'm not the type of person you seem to think I am—someone who just lets herself be walked over.”