ETVEWHF 7

Chapter 7

If things continued like this, Kristine would be poisoned to death by Julia.

And I would be divorced by Howard, who had fallen in love with Cassie, and then killed.

I wouldn’t let that happen.

“Julia Clearwater. How dare you think you can set foot in this household?”

I lowered my voice and deliberately put strength into my steps as I approached Julia. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bewildered expression on Kristine Blackwood’s face beside me.

“Rowina…?”

Julia couldn’t get another word out.

Because I slapped her across the face with all the strength I had.

A sharp crack rang through the hall, and Julia’s face snapped to the left.

“Gasp!”

One of the maids covered her mouth with both hands in shock.

Julia’s trembling eyes looked up at me.

‘She must be completely caught off guard.’

Julia had probably thought of Rowina as someone who was on her side.

After all, Rowina had been a silent bystander to the affair Tom and Julia had enjoyed.

Whenever every member of the family except Rowina was away from the house, Tom would bring Julia to the mansion.

Julia would try on Kristine’s clothes, drape her jewelry over herself, and spend intimate, pleasurable hours in the bedroom.

Tom had ordered Rowina to keep quiet about it, and Rowina had faithfully obeyed, locking herself away in her room.

That had also become one of the reasons Kristine disliked Rowina.

“Miss Julia Clearwater. This house no longer has anything to do with you.”

In truth, I didn’t particularly resent Julia.

Until recently, she had been nothing more than a name written in a book to me.

So this was an act.

As a member of Kristine’s family, I was playing the role of someone who would rebuke Julia’s shamelessness on Kristine’s behalf,

and win Kristine’s favor in the process.

Getting angry wasn’t difficult.

Kristine’s fury, blazing like flames rising from hell, had reached me loud and clear.

“Even if you did lose something here, you weren’t invited, and you have no connection to this household. That means you simply left something behind on the road.”

“Madam has no obligation to entertain an uninvited guest. So leave. Right now.”

Julia glared at me with humiliation written all over her face before storming out through the door.

I turned toward Kristine, who looked as though she was both deeply moved and utterly confused.

She looked exhausted.

After taking several deep breaths, Kristine’s legs suddenly gave out.

“Mother!”

I hurried to support her collapsing body.

Fortunately, she hadn’t completely lost consciousness. Kristine leaned against me while using her cane to support one leg.

“I… want to rest.”

I nodded and handed Blackwood family’s Madam over to the servants.

A little while later, when the sky outside the window had grown dark, I went to check on her condition.

“Dr. Morgan.”

Dr. Morgan was pacing anxiously in front of Kristine’s bedroom.

“Ah, Madam.”

“What brings you here?”

“It’s time for Madam to have her medicinal tea. I heard there was quite an incident earlier, so I came to see whether she was all right…”

“If that’s all, I’ll take it to her.”

At my words, Dr. Morgan’s eyes widened.

“What? No, I couldn’t possibly ask you to do something like that…”

“Morgan, I don’t like repeating myself.”

In the end, Dr. Morgan handed me the tray and left.

After making sure no one was around, I slipped the reagent I had hidden away into the tea.

I knew what kind of poison would be used.

I’d also purchased a reagent capable of detecting it while I was out.

The greenish tea remained completely unchanged.

I let out a sigh of relief.

Why was I checking Dr. Morgan’s medicinal tea when Julia Clearwater was supposed to be the one attempting to poison Kristine?

‘Because the two of them are working together.’

Julia Clearwater had seduced Dr. Morgan into joining her.

In the book, much of the reason she succeeded in poisoning Kristine was thanks to Dr. Morgan.

I knew when Julia would put the poison into the tea.

I intended to make appropriate use of that knowledge.

“Madam, I’m coming in.”

After knocking, I entered the bedroom.

Kristine was sitting against the headboard of the bed.

“…I made a fool of myself in front of you.”

Kristine looked considerably older than she had yesterday as she spoke.

“Yes. You were right about everything.”

“I spent every day wishing my husband, who was fooling around with another woman, would just die.”

“But when he really did go away, I couldn’t even bring myself to be happy. And yet I couldn’t mourn him properly either, because I hated him.”

“At the funeral, as I watched his coffin being buried, I thought back on the years we’d spent together. Rather than the times we’d fought as though we wanted to kill each other, I found myself remembering raising Howard and Nigel, trembling together when they went to school for the first time, and worrying about their futures.”

Kristine probably knew that she had been behaving foolishly.

That was likely why she had been even more furious when Rowina had crossed the line with her remarks.

“I know. It’s contradictory.”

I thought carefully about what to say.

If I said something too unlike Rowina, or carelessly showed sympathy and tried to comfort her, it could easily have the opposite effect.

“At Father’s funeral, I was thoughtless.”

“Rowina…”

“My personal curiosity shouldn’t have taken precedence over showing respect for the deceased.”

Rowina’s inability to empathize with other people’s emotions often caused her words to cut into their hearts without meaning to.

After all, a normal person wouldn’t respond to a question like, ‘Wouldn’t this actually be something to celebrate?’ by simply apologizing and admitting that the question had come from their own curiosity.

Kristine’s expression briefly looked touched, but then she gave me a look that seemed to say, ‘Of course.’

“However, back then, I didn’t understand what affection between a married couple was. I didn’t see Howard’s face for the first time until our marriage had already been decided, and at the funeral, we’d been married for less than a year.”

“That’s right.”

“I watched the two of you and wondered whether we’d become like that someday, too.”

One way or another, Tom and Kristine had lived together for several decades and raised children together.

They had spent more than half their lives side by side.

But perhaps Kristine interpreted my words differently, because she suddenly snapped in anger.

“Howard isn’t that kind of person!”

Kristine gripped the blanket tightly.

“I didn’t raise that boy to look at other women when he already had a wife.”

Uh… well…

He already seemed to be looking at another woman.

“Ah, that’s not what I meant.”

I quickly cleared up the misunderstanding.

“You two spent half your lives building a household together and devoting yourselves to raising Howard and Nigel into fine men.”

Even if Tom might not have been sincere about his love for his wife, he had certainly been sincere about raising their sons together with her.

“I meant that I wondered whether we might someday become the kind of couple who moved forward toward the same goals.”

“Hmm.”

Kristine turned her head away, looking embarrassed.

“Yes, having children is certainly important. Once you have children, the bond between husband and wife grows stronger, and the two of you become true companions.”

I let her old-fashioned mother-in-law-style advice go in one ear and out the other as I handed Kristine her medicinal tea.

“If you notice even the slightest sign, tell me immediately.”

Am I crazy?

What happened last time had been an impulsive mistake made without sufficient preparation.

If I had a child, it would interfere with my plans for a divorce.

Of course, all I did was nod obediently at Kristine.

Kristine added that I shouldn’t tell Howard about what had happened.

She said she didn’t want to burden him with such a one-time disturbance.

Julia Clearwater would continue to provoke Kristine from this point onward.

Since I couldn’t tell her that, all I could do was answer that I understood.

The following morning, Kristine came to see me after dressing up.

“Mrs. Winter has acquired some rare works of art and is opening an exhibition hall to display them.”

Mrs. Winter’s exhibition hall.

‘So it’s today.’

It would be a day when the worst possible thing would happen to Kristine.

“Have a pleasant time.”

“Will you come as well?”

I was slightly surprised by the question.

‘I knew Kristine Blackwood had a rather straightforward personality, but…’

Kristine had previously allowed me to visit Mr. Ron’s shop in the shopping district.

But that wasn’t a social activity or anything of the sort.

It had been little more than finding somewhere to send me off.

Taking me to a gathering of ladies was different.

For Rowina, who had been confined to the mansion and almost never given the chance to show her face at social events, this meant being allowed to make an appearance in society again.

If I attended this gathering, Rowina would probably begin receiving more invitations in the future, and her social interactions would become more active as well.

In other words, this was a declaration that my period of confinement was coming to an end.

‘Hmm.’

According to what I knew, Julia would drop an enormous bombshell at the exhibition hall today.

She would reveal the existence of an illegitimate child.