Chapter 11

The Northern Grand Duke’s Wife, I Can’t Do This Because It’s Too Cold

The festival continued noisily until nightfall.

Of course, the temperature had dropped considerably, and my body had grown cold again. Still, being surrounded by the bustling crowd somehow made me feel a little better.

……Well, that was just how I felt. In reality, I wasn’t getting any better at all. My hands and feet had already turned pale, and I could barely feel them anymore.

There was nothing I could do about it. I had a feeling that once I returned home today, I would be bedridden and groaning for quite some time. So, since I had already come all the way here, I might as well make the most of it. Even if I had to sacrifice this body of mine!

‘When else am I ever going to get to eat street food?’

Once I decided that I had to enjoy this while I could, I became even more determined and dragged Mikhail around with me.

Chicken skewers, which I had missed so terribly, and cocoa on a freezing day…… It was a taste that brought back so many memories. Somehow, street food always tasted delicious no matter where you ate it.

“You seem to be eating better than you do at the estate.”

“……That’s your imagination.”

Mikhail wiped the sauce from the corner of my mouth with a handkerchief.

Gasp! What an embarrassment.

No one saw that, right?

I hurriedly looked around, but Mikhail simply placed a hand on my head as if to reassure me that everything was fine.

Come to think of it, he had only taken one sip of his cocoa and hadn’t eaten anything else.

……Could it be that he normally wouldn’t even touch something like this, but had bought it just to humor me?

“Why aren’t you eating?”

“Just watching you eat is filling enough. Here, Aron will eat mine for me.”

Aron received the chicken skewer from Mikhail with a slightly displeased expression.

That was his reaction, but the moment he received it, he devoured it as though he were about to chew through the stick itself.

How could someone eat that much with such an expressionless face?

I let out a hollow laugh as I watched Aron eat his chicken skewer.

“Aron, I guess this is his first time eating that.”

“They probably have them in the capital, too.”

“The capital?”

“He’s from the capital.”

My eyes widened at Mikhail’s words.

He seemed so much like a native of the North that I had never imagined he was actually from somewhere else.

“You’ve seemed particularly interested in him lately.”

“Me?”

Aside from the time I gave him a huge pile of cookies, I hadn’t really done anything.

……Was even that a little too meddlesome?

Come to think of it, I did have a habit of trying to take care of anyone who looked even slightly younger than me.

Perhaps it was because of the time I had spent looking after my younger siblings at the orphanage. Sometimes, that instinct simply surfaced without me realizing it.

I should probably restrain myself from now on.

He might find it burdensome.

“Ah, you’ve got sauce on you.”

Without thinking, I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped the corner of Aron’s mouth.

Gasp.

It hadn’t even been a few seconds since I had promised myself to restrain myself……

“I’m sorry. If you were uncomfortable…….”

“It’s fine.”

Well, that was a relief.

But he wasn’t secretly cursing me in his head, was he?

I awkwardly watched Aron’s back as he walked away.

Thankfully, Mikhail happened to be one step ahead of me.

If he had caught me wiping Aron’s mouth, how much more sensitive would he have gotten?

“Aisha.”

“Yes?”

Mikhail suddenly turned his head toward me.

Ah, that startled me!

For a moment, I thought he had somehow heard me talking about him in my head.

“That.”

He gestured upward with his chin.

I looked up at the night sky, and immediately, brilliant colors came into view.

‘Wow…… the aurora!’

I rushed forward, drinking in the sight of the vast sky spread above me.

My heart pounded.

Against the star-filled sky, where countless stars glittered without a gap between them, an aurora unlike anything I had ever seen was blooming.

‘Calling it beautiful isn’t enough.’

The sight was so mesmerizing that I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Standing among the crowd made me feel strangely different.

For these people, this must be an ordinary sight.

“What would it be like…… if I got to see something like that so often that it became familiar to me?”

Even as I murmured those words, I thought it was an overly ambitious wish.

I slowly took in every shade of those beautiful colors.

“Grand Duke, Madam is going to freeze to death and collapse if she keeps standing like that.”

“……Yes.”

If only he could watch those sparkling eyes for a little longer.

Mikhail strode toward Aisha and took the fur hat Lara had handed him, placing it firmly on Aisha’s head.

“Ah, you startled me.”

He quietly watched as she lifted the hat slightly.

‘When did it start?’

When had she become able to look directly into his eyes like this?

Mikhail recalled the day he had first met Aisha.

When a request had come in asking him to resolve the enormous debt a southern nobleman had incurred from a bank in the North, Mikhail had sensed something suspicious about the situation and grown wary.

So he personally boarded the carriage heading south.

Of course, that suspicion disappeared the moment he arrived in the South.

‘Please, Grand Duke! Spare me! I still have children I need to take responsibility for! I-I incurred the debt because…….’

It was nothing more than a foolish scheme by a foolish minor noble.

He must have lost the trust of the people in the South and come all the way to the North to borrow money.

Mikhail had let out a hollow laugh when he saw the miserable state of the Marianne estate.

Had he really come all this way just to see something like this?

Just as he was about to become completely dumbfounded, Mikhail noticed a girl standing some distance away.

Her hair was the same color as the Baron kneeling before him.

Judging by that, she was probably his daughter.

Yes.

One of the ‘children he had to take responsibility for’ that the man had mentioned earlier.

‘You there. Come closer.’

At Mikhail’s gesture, she slowly walked toward him.

She looked only two or three years younger than him, and her appearance was so shabby that it was difficult to believe she was a noblewoman.

Without realizing it, his brows furrowed.

‘Grand Duke! She’s my daughter. If you wish, you may take her as your mistress…….’

‘You still have the courage to open your mouth?’

When the knights drew their swords threateningly, the Baron finally began trembling again and prostrated himself.

‘What a pathetic father she has.’

Mikhail examined Aisha, who had lowered her head deeply.

There were heavy shadows cast across her face.

The wrist visible beneath her sleeve was marked with wounds that had clearly been left untreated for a long time.

It seemed the Grand Duke of the South had no intention of resolving even something as simple as this.

Mikhail thought of the blurred face of Daven and decided that he, too, was a pathetic man.

Should I save her?

As he looked at Aisha, who kept her gaze fixed on the floor, he began to consider it.

‘……Please.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Please save me. Save my father.’

For the first time, he could see her eyes clearly.

Contrary to his expectations, there was determination in them.

Perhaps, no matter how terrible he was, a father was still a father.

Despite her shabby appearance, Mikhail could sense a faint but unmistakable determination to save her blood relative.

He was reminded of himself, always staying by his sick mother’s side.

Compared to his own younger self, who could do nothing but pray at the time, her actions seemed perhaps even braver.

Remembering his past self, Mikhail decided that he should save her.

It was a decision driven by nothing more than sympathy.

‘All right. But there’s one condition.’

And so, on impulse, he took Aisha as his wife.

Accepting all the losses that came with it.

Perhaps because it had begun with such a brief and whimsical thought, she was unhappy, and Mikhail often felt an inexplicable sense of guilt whenever he saw her like that.

He had thought their loveless marriage would simply continue that way.

But everything changed from the day she began looking directly into his eyes.

At first, he had refused to let go of her hand because his pride had been wounded whenever she struggled desperately to leave him.

‘But now…… why do I keep feeling uneasy whenever she’s beside me?’

Those eyes gazing at the sky as though she were enchanted filled him with hope.

The hope that perhaps she might accept this cold North.

“Mikhail, is there something you want to say?”

He had thought that he no longer needed a family.

Perhaps he had been wrong.

He concealed the small stirrings in his heart.

“Put your hat on properly. We’ll watch for just a little longer before going back.”

“Ugh, I told you not to press it down.”

Unaware of what was going on inside him, Aisha looked up at him with a disgruntled expression.

Mikhail could only meet her eyes, his heart tangled with complicated emotions.

“Hmm. Why isn’t he answering the communication?”

A man sat with his legs propped up on a desk, tapping his ear with an insolent air.

A moment later, static crackled, and a faint light bloomed near his ear.

—Sorry. I’m at the festival right now. There are a lot of people, so I’ll contact you lat—

Click.

The sound cut off before he could finish speaking.

The man blinked several times before abruptly jumping to his feet.

“I told him to merely pretend to play the role. I didn’t mean for him to actually get so immersed in it.”

The man smiled with mixed feelings.

Just as he was beginning to feel slightly annoyed, he shook his head and began reassuring himself.

“Yes. In the end, that’s the side that’ll be worth watching.”

He quietly murmured two names.

“Mikhail Rithervan, Daven Moltian……”

A chilling smile spread across his face.

Yet unlike the smile on his lips, the more he rolled those names around in his mind, the more his mood sank.

He folded his arms and paced back and forth.

Then, another name suddenly came to mind.

“Aisha Marianne.”

Ah.

Now she was Aisha Rithervan.

He gave a quiet chuckle and corrected himself.

It was a name he had been hearing frequently in recent reports.

She hadn’t been like this at first, but lately, the woman had been making some rather interesting moves.

And somehow, it seemed she had managed to win over not just one, but two Grand Dukes.

“How should I make use of her?”

He let out a low chuckle.

Kukuku.

His laughter echoed through the room.

Strangely enough, sunlight streaming through the window illuminated his green hair with a fresh, vibrant glow.