TLSD 23

Chapter 23

A knight chuckled and waved his hand dismissively.

“Look here, My Lord. All that stuff is garbage. It completely shreds and ruins a woman’s uterus. Good grief, our Commander isn’t the kind of man to feed someone something like that! It’s such a harsh medicine. It utterly ruins a woman’s life, you know.”

“My… what a terrible medicine it was.”

Greta let out a deep, regretful sigh.

“It must never be used.”

Elio, who had climbed down from the horse, flusteredly adjusted her raincoat and took a step backward.

“I-I’m a woman, too!”

At this out-of-the-box remark, Carlos raised an eyebrow and placed the dropped raincoat hood back over her head.

“What are you talking about? Put your raincoat on properly.”

She ended up sounding like an idiot.

“This isn’t even my raincoat, so it’s all oversized… Anyway, y-you coming into a woman’s room uninvited is the My Lord’s fault. Though it’s not like I’m holding that much of a grudge over it.”

“Whose raincoat is it? Are you saying you’re holding a grudge against me right now?”

“Do you lack a conscience, My Lord? Of course it makes no sense for me not to hold a grudge. …Though it’s not that much, of course. The raincoat just belongs to one of the knights.”

Carlos silently stared at the woman, who looked as though she had been swallowed up by the oversized men’s clothing.

“Commander! Let’s have a sparring match for old time’s sake! Fifteen-on-one! Let’s blow off some steam!”

At the shouts of the regular knights who had finished preparing for training, Elio raised her head. They grinned and playfully snapped a salute.

Seeing them act so friendly just because they had gotten dead drunk together yesterday, a deflated laugh slipped out of her. Knowing it wasn’t her fault, they didn’t seem to feel any particular animosity about her father’s obstruction of Carlos’s marriage either.

…Do they know that I’m someone who will be leaving soon?

Giving Carlos’s blunt expression a sidelong glance, Elio forced a bright smile.

“Ah, hello. You drank a lot yesterday—are your stomachs holding up alright?”

“Go inside. It’s time for training.”

Whether Elio was smiling brightly or not, Carlos accepted an outer shirt handed to him by a squire knight and spoke to her as if shooing away an annoying bug.

“Greta. Did you get the swords sharpened at the blacksmith?”

Carlos pushed Elio toward the direction of the annex, casually flipping through the squire knights’ swords, which had been honed sharp enough to sever a finger. Elio frowned and peeked sideways at a sword meant for squires.

“M-My Lord. Look, I could probably lift a sword around that size, too…”

“What are you doing? I told you to go inside.”

At Carlos’s cold urging, Elio’s turquoise eyes narrowed into a petulant squint.

“Yes. I’ll hand over the rest of the swords tomorrow. Everyone, come over here. Change your clothes and line up in formation.”

“Commander! Should we include the squire boys too? Twenty-on-one? Hey, where do you think you’re running off to!”

Seeing the swarming regular knights, the bickering squire knights, and Greta smiling as she organized them, Elio abruptly spun around.

“I said go inside.”

She told the man who kept pushing her by the back in a crisp, precise tone.

“Yes! Since I can’t bear to watch you look pathetic, My Lord, I’ll go inside now! Well, everyone loses sometimes, though.”

As Carlos cracked his left shoulder with a pop, he raised an eyebrow for a second, failing to understand what she meant. Staring at the flushed woman, he let out a sharp laugh and shook out his wet hair.

“Do you think I’m going to lose?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you trusted me.”

“No! I don’t.”

Elio said coldly, turned on her heel, and tried to walk toward the annex, but her wrist was caught.

“Why are you pouting?”

“Me? When did I ever pout?”

“Commander, when are you going to start! If you’re just going to keep playing around with the lady, should we just get started on our own?”

Carlos stripped off his outer shirt in one swift motion. He pulled on the thin cotton t-shirt he was holding in a single fluid movement and cracked his thick, sturdy neck.

As Elio flushed and stepped back, Carlos twitched his eyebrow again and gripped her wrist.

“Stay and watch.”

The rain grew heavier, turning the ground into a muddy quagmire.

Unable to even wipe away the mud splattered on her hand, Elio stood stock-still like a shocked baby owl, only blinking her huge eyes.

Could knightly sparring really be this vulgar?

The sight of muscular men tangling together bare-handed all at once looked little more than a back-alley brawl—or rather, a dogfight between pit bulls.

Elio chased a single, uniquely muscular man with anxious, darting eyes.

Before long, as they tackled, hoisted, hurled, and battered one another to the ground, loud bursts of laughter, groans, jeers, and cheers erupted all at once.

“Whoa, Commander! You’re going too far today!”

The blistering heat and the smell of sweat mingled with the downpour. Amidst the mud-covered giants lying sprawled out, panting heavily and giggling, the burliest mud-doll of them all—caked in mud from head to toe—wiped the muck from the nape of his neck and stared right at her.

Seeing the man covered in mud down to his very fingertips, the corners of Elio’s lips twitched. Catching the eye of the man, who raised an eyebrow at her, she turned and fled toward the stable as if running for her life.

Sitting hunched under a stable pillar, Elio cast a sidelong glance at Carlos’s face as he tracked her down like a bounty hunter catching a thief.

“Ahahahahaha!”

She clutched her stomach and burst into laughter once more.

Her clear laughter echoed through the crisp, pouring sound of the rain.

“Ahahahahaha!”

Carlos let out a wry chuckle and looked at Elio. She had laughed so hard her cheeks were flushed a delicate pink, and tears were even welling up in her sparkling eyes.

“How long are you going to keep laughing?”

“No… it’s just that the sight of you…”

Flushed bright red, Elio wiped away a tear clinging to the corner of her eye and stared at Carlos’s mud-smeared face.

“You’re just keeping on laughing even after I won.”

Carlos dropped down to sit right beside her, speaking in a low, muffled voice. Elio stopped laughing.

Flinching as the man turned his head toward her, she quickly reached out and tugged at the very edge of his sleeve.

“I-It’s not because it was funny.”

Carlos shifted his gaze back to the woman who was frantically tugging at his clothes.

“It’s because I’m glad. Really. I knew you’d win even if there were a hundred of them, My Lord! Do you actually spar like this every morning? No wonder you’re so fast…!”

The woman whispered, tugging at his sleeve, and when he remained stubbornly silent, she scooted her hips backward as if preparing to make a run for it.

Seeing the rabbit’s lightning-fast change of tactics as she distanced herself from him, Carlos clicked his tongue, slowly lowered his massive frame, and tilted his cheek toward her.

“I cleaned you up with my own hands, you know.”

“Pardon?”

Tapping his own cheek lightly, the man curved his lips into an amused smirk at the cowering rabbit.

“The mud. Are you just going to leave it be?”

Elio’s face instantly crumpled.

Her hand trembled slightly as she reluctantly took the handkerchief. Hesitating, she carefully wiped away the grime from his cheek, the sound of her swallowing hard echoing much too loudly in the quiet space.

Every time her hand hesitated near his lips, a sudden surge of mischief spiked within her. Wasn’t this the exact same man who had put her through the wringer just because she laughed a little?

“Didn’t that woman teach you how to ride a horse?”

His gaze locked straight onto her. Elio avoided the man’s eyes and stared only at his sharply defined jawline.

“No. Because I didn’t have a horse. There was my sister’s horse, but whenever I tried to ride it, the horse hated it so much I never got to try.”

“There wasn’t a horse at the county estate?”

“My father had one. I didn’t. Maybe my father was worried I’d try to run away on horseback or something, so he made absolutely sure I wasn’t even allowed to set foot in the stable.”

Elio offered a faint, bitter smile.

Carlos stared intently at her crinkled eyes.

“Now I can go anywhere! I was actually worried about how I was going to leave Schüpenhardt when the time came.”

Elio continued with a cheerful smile. Carlos quietly curved the corners of his lips.

“You don’t even know how to gallop.”

“I can practice! I might be a little slow at learning, but I’m a total practice bug!”

Her flushed cheeks bobbed up and down adorably as she spoke.

“How much does a horse usually cost? Is it very expensive…?”

“It’s expensive.”

“How much?”

“Ten million shillings.”

Though of course, there were also hundred-thousand-shilling ones.

Elio stopped the hand that had been wiping his cheek and blinked her eyes wide.

“By any chance… when we part ways… isn’t there something like a parting gift? A-A horse, perhaps…?”

Carlos gently grabbed Elio’s chin and lifted it toward him.

“Oh, you are wonderfully brazen, My Lady.”

With a reddened face, Elio moistened her lips with her tongue and darted her eyes toward the pillar.

“Since I have to leave the territory after we break up anyway, what am I supposed to do if a horse costs that much? There’s no way I can leave on foot.”

Carlos let out a soft laugh and plucked the handkerchief from her hand.

“Wouldn’t most people think of taking a carriage?”

“Riding a horse seems so much more fun. You get to see all kinds of scenery that way!”

Elio’s turquoise eyes sparkled as she looked up at the eaves.

Whoosh— The scent of grass grew richer amidst the thickening downpour once more.

Resting both arms on his knees and leaning his face against them, Carlos watched Elio.

The woman’s eyes, gazing at the transparent raindrops as if they were precious jewels, shone with intense vitality.

Reaching a fern-like hand out into the rain, she fidgeted with it for a long time before eventually starting to inspect even the tiny weeds and pebbles on the ground.

Carlos curved his lips into a wry smile.

“Why. Wasn’t looking at me fun, then?”

“Pardon?”

Elio instinctively plucked a rainwater-soaked weed up by its roots.

“You were scanning me so hard in the carriage…”

The corners of his lips curved lazily.

“Was the view not to your liking?”

He glanced down sequentially at his own chest and thighs, then raised his gaze back to her.

Following his line of sight, Elio flusteredly swept her gaze down his sturdy, rigid body and held her breath.

Drip, drip—droplets of water falling from his dark hair traced a thick, elongated neck line and slid right down between his heavily muscled chest.

Elio stared blankly at those falling droplets.

“Doesn’t look like you hated it.”

With a face baked red like a well-cooked sausage, Elio cried out in a panicked rush.

“When did I ever scan you, My Lord!”

“Oh. You didn’t?”

Carlos chuckled softly, then slowly straightened his torso. He briskly shook out his wet hair.

“When are you going to show me that purification?”