ETKAD 2
by Sylvie Hart 🪐Chapter 2
“But, but…”
Her flustered violet eyes wavered uncertainly before she seemed to make up her mind and looked straight at him.
“I wanted the Duke to see me properly, even if only once. I’m a grown woman now, but you still only treat me like your little sister. Sniff.”
She bit down gently on her lip, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill.
“So… so… I was tempted when I heard that drinking it would make the other person immediately fall in love with you… They said it was a potion whose effects had actually been proven… Sob.”
Dominic had expected as much, but hearing her confession made his head throb.
It was clearly not a love potion, but a fake concoction that came with terrible side effects.
“This is all the Duke’s fault! If it weren’t for you, why would I ever have gone that far? Sob.”
She wailed.
She seemed even more impossible to reason with than the Crown Prince who had visited earlier.
Dominic was bewildered as to why he had ended up in such a horrible situation.
All he had done was attend a party after receiving an invitation from the count and his wife the previous evening.
“For now, you should calm down and go home, Sylvia.”
He slowly walked toward the window and spoke as he tried to clear his head.
Sylvia rose from her seat and pleaded with him.
“Even the Duchess Dowager held my hand tightly and told me that she wanted a daughter-in-law like me.”
“…”
“I want only you so much that I was willing to turn down the position of Crown Princess. How long are you going to pretend not to know how I feel about you?”
Unable to bear it any longer, Dominic spoke to her.
“Sylvia. I’ve already told you several times. I don’t have those kinds of feelings for you.”
Sylvia approached him and quietly took hold of his arm.
“Please, just once, see me as a woman. I’ll do everything I can to make you change your mind.”
“If you’ve said everything you came here to say, you should leave now.”
At his cold dismissal, she turned away with a sorrowful expression.
Even as she climbed into her carriage, Sylvia looked up at the window where he stood, her expression making it clear that she had no intention of giving up.
After Sylvia left, Dominic paced around his study with a grave expression.
Once he reached a decision, he hurriedly pulled the bell cord.
Jeffrey appeared immediately, as though he had been waiting right outside the door.
“Bring Higgins here immediately.”
“Yes, my lord.”
After he left, Dominic opened both windows wide and placed his hands on his hips.
Unlike the troubled state of his mind, the fountain in the garden was sending a refreshing stream of water soaring toward the sky.
The magnificent Lindertho estate was as peaceful as ever, but the young duke looked more troubled than he had ever been.
“What? You want me to find whom?”
Higgins was bewildered.
The duke had summoned him so urgently that he assumed there must be something important to discuss regarding business.
Instead, he was suddenly being ordered to find some woman.
“She was at the party yesterday. Small enough to fit neatly within my arms, and…”
The duke gazed vaguely into the air as he stroked his chin.
“Her hair was reddish brown… No, pomegranate red… No. Anyway, it was somewhere in the red range. Her skin was fair… Her eyes were light green. I think she was wearing a silver-gray dress. Or perhaps it was blue under the moonlight.”
Faint fragments of the previous night, preserved in his memory like scattered pieces of a puzzle, spilled from his lips one by one.
“The corners of her eyes were red from tears, and I think her skin carried a faint floral scent. Her lips were sweet and moist like fruit…”
Higgins’s eyes widened at the unexpectedly detailed description.
“Her voice was clear as sparkling beads, and the breathy sounds she made when she was excited were…”
Ahem.
At Higgins’s embarrassed clearing of his throat, Dominic looked up.
His mind, which had been wandering through the heated greenhouse from that night, finally returned to the cool study.
Dominic gave Higgins a cold look before continuing.
“Her dress was hopelessly out of fashion, so her family must be insignificant. Where on earth would someone even buy something like that?”
Even if she came from an unimportant family, wearing such a dress to a count’s party was strange. He could not even understand how she had been invited in the first place.
“The area around her eyes was red and wet, so she must have been crying.”
Higgins, who had been standing silently and listening, developed an increasingly complicated expression.
After putting together the duke’s description, he offered his opinion.
“Could she have been a maid?”
At Higgins’s words, Dominic stopped for a moment.
A maid. A maid?
He searched his memory and slowly shook his head.
“No. Even though she was plainly dressed, she had an air of refinement about her. She didn’t have the bearing of a maid.”
Higgins rolled his eyes thoughtfully before seizing the opportunity to ask,
“But where did you first meet such a young lady, Your Grace?”
“The greenhouse.”
“Pardon?”
“I saw her in the greenhouse, so we should focus our search on the women who weren’t in the ballroom at that time.”
Higgins slowly nodded.
“So we’re looking for a refined young lady who was with His Grace beneath the moonlight in the greenhouse on the night of the party. Ah! And her eyes were moist from crying.”
Dominic nodded at Higgins’s concise summary, then abruptly turned his gaze toward his secretary.
The man was grinning to himself as though he were imagining all sorts of things, and somehow that irritated Dominic.
“I understand completely. I’ll find that mysterious lady at once.”
Higgins quickly bowed and practically dashed out of the room.
Dominic was once again left alone with his thoughts.
Now that he thought about it, there were more than a few things that seemed strange.
Why was she alone in the greenhouse crying at that hour? Could she have been having a lovers’ quarrel in there, only for her lover to leave first? Or perhaps she had run into the greenhouse after him?
If that were the case, she was quite a ridiculous woman.
She had kissed him first and had not resisted when his touch grew more intimate.
The thought suddenly left a bitter taste in his mouth.
There had been more than a few women who had approached him in that manner.
If she was the same sort, then the whole thing was laughable.
And I thought such a woman was refined.
Suddenly, he began to doubt everything that had happened the previous night.
Perhaps she had deliberately hidden herself in the greenhouse and waited for him.
She might have seen him staggering around in a drunken stupor and decided that it was the perfect opportunity to make her move.
Perhaps she had even planned it all carefully, hoping to create a scandal with the duke.
“I must find her before malicious rumors start spreading.”
His expression turned cold.
Vines of roses climbed around the walls of a slightly faded sky-blue mansion.
A large zelkova tree stood in the front yard, while bed linens and carpets fluttered over the blue grass.
“Why are you doing this, my lady? Let me do it.”
When the maid came out of the entrance and tried to take the bedsheet from Elin, Elin hugged it even tighter.
“Mari. Please. It’s more painful staying inside.”
Elin gazed toward the inside of the house, and Mari looked at her sympathetically.
“If that’s truly what you want, my lady…”
“Okay. Let’s shake them out together.”
Only then did Elin give her a small smile.
That day, after Elin had shaken off the viscount’s hand and run away at the party, her father and stepmother had raged for several days.
“Because of you, the entire Nilsson family has been reduced to a family of no standing whatsoever. How are you going to take responsibility for this!”
“A viscount is already far above your station. You should be grateful, yet you dared to run away from the party? Honey. If she were my own daughter, I would have taken a cane to her. Do you have any idea how much I’ve had to walk on eggshells around that girl all this time just because I’m her stepmother?”
“Calm down. I’ll make sure she learns her lesson so thoroughly that this never happens again.”
Remembering how the two of them had tormented her, Elin sighed.
“Even so, making her go without food for two whole days was too much. I really wonder if the baron is actually her biological father…”
Mari shook her head in disbelief, then quickly covered her mouth with her hand.
“I’m sorry, my lady.”
Elin gave a self-deprecating smile.
“But it’s true. I wonder about it all the time, too. Sometimes I think maybe I was a child they found somewhere.”
The two of them looked at each other and laughed before walking together toward the garden.
They had just grabbed opposite ends of the bedsheet to shake it out when an unpleasant voice came from somewhere nearby.
It was a sharp, shrill voice almost identical to her stepmother’s.
“Oh my. When did our household gain another maid? You look exactly like one.”
Elin turned her head and saw her stepsister, Janice.
Dressed in an elegant outing gown, wearing silk gloves and holding a lace parasol, Janice looked every bit like a young noblewoman.
Beside her stood her husband, Royce Creighton, with an uncomfortable expression.
“Elin. It’s been a while. When did you come back from Castia? Is Great-Aunt doing well?”
He had once been Elin’s childhood friend, but now he offered only the most perfunctory questions.
“Dear.”
The moment Janice shot him a sidelong glare, even that little conversation made him clamp his mouth shut.
“Thank you, Royce. I came back a few days ago, and Great-Aunt is in good health.”
Janice barely listened to Elin’s answer before fanning herself with her hand.
“It’s still so hot here. We only came back yesterday after staying at my in-laws’ villa. We should have stayed another week, shouldn’t we, dear?”
She affectionately linked her arm through Royce’s in front of Elin, clearly showing off.
The more she did so, the more awkward Royce became.
Before he married Janice, he had always followed Elin around.
He used to say that Elin was the only woman he would ever marry.
So when the two of them announced their marriage, Elin had been both surprised and somewhat bitter.
She had only ever thought of Royce as a friend, so she did not particularly care that she could not marry him.
But did it have to be her stepsister who became his wife?
That was why things were awkward every time they met like this.
“Oh, right. I heard there was a party. If I’d known, I would have come a few days earlier. I heard even Duke Lindertho and His Highness the Crown Prince attended.”
At the mention of the duke, Elin’s shoulders flinched.
“But surely you didn’t go to the party dressed like that, did you? How embarrassing.”
After mocking Elin one last time, Janice giggled and went inside the mansion with her husband.
Mari, who had heard the entire conversation, discreetly glanced at Lady Elin.
Even to her, the way Miss Janice behaved was so irritating.
If Janice had been her younger sister, Mari would have grabbed her by the hair and rolled around with her in a proper brawl.
But Lady Elin seemed deeply lost in thought.
“…My lady?”
Mari called her, but Elin was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not even notice.
Her mind was filled entirely with what had happened at the party that night.
The duke seemed incredibly drunk. Surely he doesn’t remember me.
She desperately hoped the duke had completely forgotten that night.
That embarrassing thing they had done in the greenhouse.
Oh, what am I going to do?!
As the memories slowly began to resurface, Elin squeezed her eyes shut.
It had all started because she had stolen a kiss from the duke first and provoked him.
I threw myself at a man who was drunk enough to be completely out of his mind. I must have been crazy.
Even though he had not refused her, that night…
That night had been…
It had been far too sensual for her to even think about it any further.
When she remembered the warmth she had felt from his strong arms wrapped around her, the solidness of his chest, and the cool touch of his lips as they pressed gently against the back of her neck, her back straightened.
That thrilling sensation she had experienced that night raced down her spine once again.
Before she knew it, Elin buried her flushed face in both hands.
html,
body,
body:not(.web_whatsapp_com) *,
html body:not(.web_whatsapp_com) *,
html body.ds *,
html body:not(.web_whatsapp_com) div *,
html body:not(.web_whatsapp_com) span *,
html body p *,
html body h1 *,
html body h2 *,
html body h3 *,
html body h4 *,
html body h5 *,
html
body:not(.web_whatsapp_com)
*:not(input):not(textarea):not([contenteditable=””]):not(
[contenteditable=”true”]
),
html
body:not(.web_whatsapp_com)
*[class]:not(input):not(textarea):not([contenteditable=””]):not(
[contenteditable=”true”]
),
html
body:not(.web_whatsapp_com)
*[id]:not(input):not(textarea):not([contenteditable=””]):not(
[contenteditable=”true”]
) {
user-select: text !important;
}
html body *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
body *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body div *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body span *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body p *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body h1 *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body h2 *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body h3 *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body h4 *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection,
html body h5 *:not(input):not(textarea)::selection {
background-color: #3297fd !important;
color: #ffffff !important;
}
/* linkedin */
/* squize */
.www_linkedin_com
.sa-assessment-flow__card.sa-assessment-quiz
.sa-assessment-quiz__scroll-content
.sa-assessment-quiz__response
.sa-question-multichoice__item.sa-question-basic-multichoice__item
.sa-question-multichoice__input.sa-question-basic-multichoice__input.ember-checkbox.ember-view {
width: 40px;
}
/*linkedin*/
/*instagram*/
/*wall*/
.www_instagram_com ._aagw {
display: none;
}
/*developer.box.com*/
.bp-doc .pdfViewer .page:not(.bp-is-invisible):before {
}
/*telegram*/
.web_telegram_org .emoji-animation-container {
display: none;
}
html
body.web_telegram_org
.bubbles-group
> .bubbles-group-avatar-container:not(input):not(textarea):not(
[contenteditable=””]
):not([contenteditable=”true”]),
html
body.web_telegram_org
.custom-emoji-renderer:not(input):not(textarea):not([contenteditable=””]):not(
[contenteditable=”true”]
) {
pointer-events: none !important;
}
/*ladno_ru*/
.ladno_ru [style*=”position: absolute; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;”] {
display: none !important;
}
/*mycomfyshoes.fr */
.mycomfyshoes_fr #fader.fade-out {
display: none !important;
}
/*www_mindmeister_com*/
.www_mindmeister_com .kr-view {
z-index: -1 !important;
}
/*www_newvision_co_ug*/
.www_newvision_co_ug .v-snack:not(.v-snack–absolute) {
z-index: -1 !important;
}
/*derstarih_com*/
.derstarih_com .bs-sks {
z-index: -1;
}
html
body
.alc_unlock-pseudo-before.alc_unlock-pseudo-before.alc_unlock-pseudo-before::before {
pointer-events: none !important;
}
html
body
.alc_unlock-pseudo-after.alc_unlock-pseudo-after.alc_unlock-pseudo-after::after {
pointer-events: none !important;
}
0 Comments