TMLWA 03

Chapter  03

Even though she knew better, it wasn’t Anne’s true will that made her stop her steps.

“This can’t be happening,” she thought, forcing herself to turn away at the corner of the corridor.

Besides, Gray was the illegitimate son of a noble house. He wouldn’t go hungry, and if he fell ill, he would receive proper treatment.

He wouldn’t die alone in a cold room without a fireplace like Jamie had.

Thinking of Gray Benton—the future duke—Anne didn’t even want to look at the boy.

And yet.

“Second young master.”

Anne felt like tearing out her own hair.

The boy sitting slumped in the hallway looked up at her with tearful eyes. Seeing him like that made her think the child had done nothing wrong.

But then again… would she repeat the same mistake knowing how he would one day hurt her?

“It’s late at night. You should go to your room and sleep.”

“I’m scared. Alone…”

The boy reached out and grabbed the hem of Anne’s skirt.

When Anne wordlessly pulled it free, he quickly grabbed her hand instead.

A small, soft child’s hand. There was an enormous difference between seventeen and thirteen.

Anne, already tall and nearly adult-like, contrasted sharply with him—he would grow into an adult within just a few years.

“Please go to bed.”

After laying him down, Anne checked the fireplace. She tried to leave, ignoring the gaze fixed on the back of her head.

“Can you stay until I fall asleep? Please.”

At the boy’s desperate plea, Anne reluctantly turned back.

He’s just a child.

She placed the candleholder on the bedside table.

“…Very well.”

“My mother used to tell me stories before bed. She said if I stayed here, the duke would call me back once she got better.”

Anne had never heard about his mother again after that. The fate of lower-born women who had long been ill was usually the same.

She probably died while Gray was growing up—just like her own younger brother Jamie.

Anne pushed down the sudden surge of pity and slowly began to speak.

“Once upon a time—”

The fairy tales she had once wanted to tell her own child… the stories she had repeated countless times to the child she once carried in her womb.

She had many stories to tell through the night.

Much later, Anne looked at the boy’s closed eyes and quietly finished the tale to its end, then extinguished the candle and left the room silently.

“—And they lived happily ever after.”

Sitting side by side on the sofa, Gray read aloud from a novel while holding Anne close.

To teach her how to read, he often picked up books, and when a story became interesting, Anne would demand that he read to the end.

Even after learning to read, she still liked the stories he read to her—and his voice.

Gray would smile faintly, wrinkling his nose slightly, then pull Anne closer into his arms before continuing.

Like the cheap romances he read aloud through the night, Anne and Gray swore eternal love into each other’s ears.

And so, they spent three years in hardship, living in hiding.

They changed their names and ages to erase their identities, wandering from place to place until they finally found stability in a small rural village.

Gray became a tutor, and Anne worked in a kitchen at a small restaurant.

They were not unusual as a wandering young couple. Both had once lived as poor commoners, so their disguise came naturally.

On the day the parents of a child Gray was teaching brought him gifts in gratitude, Anne felt proud of him.

With the money she earned from kitchen work, she bought him a fine fountain pen as a gift. Gray, in turn, came to the restaurant where she worked, bringing flowers he had made with the children.

Even though many days passed with them exhausted, only holding each other’s hands before falling asleep, they were happy.

Until the day a knight from the Benton ducal family arrived at Gray’s hiding place in the countryside.

“We are here on behalf of the Duchess of Benton. Young Master Gray Benton.”

The beginning of the end of Anne and Gray’s happiness was not poverty or hardship—but the moment wealth and honor were given to them.

Amid the villagers’ envy and shock, Gray held Anne’s hand tightly and returned to the ducal house.

“If we must die for running away, then we’ll die together, Anne.”

But contrary to expectations, what awaited him was not punishment.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Gray Benton.”

The Duchess, who had once disapproved of him, personally came out to greet him at the entrance and embraced him as soon as he stepped out of the carriage.

“My son.”

She acknowledged him as her son—and made him the rightful heir of the ducal family.

Soon after, Gray Benton became the new duke.

“Anne. From today on, you are the Duchess of Benton.”

When Gray kissed the back of her hand and looked at her with unchanged affectionate eyes, Anne believed in the future with him.

She thought a paradise would finally unfold—days spent with the man she loved, free from hardship.

But that imagined happiness lasted less than a year.

They say a position shapes a person—but no. One must first be suited for the position.

Anne was not someone who could sit beside Gray in that world.

“Anne.”

The one mercy she had once granted him was the last. After that, Anne tried her best to avoid the boy, but whenever she was seen, she had no choice but to respond to his call.

“Yes, young master.”

Even if he was a bastard child, he was still the duke’s son—and she was only a maid.

“Here. Take it.”

Gray smiled brightly and handed her a single flower he had picked in the garden.

He had always been kind and gentle—someone who gave beautiful things to those he loved.

Anne couldn’t find words to refuse and accepted it.

“Thank you.”

As she returned to the servant hall with the flower, the other maids glanced at her.

Cathy nudged her arm.

“Anne, isn’t it obvious the young master likes you?”

“He’s just a child.”

“He is now. But wait a few years. If you keep him like this, he won’t stay sane—”

“Stop it. He’s a child.”

But Anne herself had once fallen in love with Gray six years later in exactly the same way.

While she had been dismissing his constant affection as longing for a parental substitute, Jamie’s death shattered her heart—and Gray took advantage of that crack.

The moment he turned nineteen and heard of Anne’s impending marriage, he threw everything away and came running.

The boyish hands that once held a flower had turned into strong, muscular hands after four years at the knight academy.

By fifteen, he had already outgrown Anne in height. At seventeen, Gray Benton was someone who looked down at her completely.

And now, as a nineteen-year-old adult, Gray Benton looked at Anne Ferrer as a woman.

“Anne.”

As Anne set down the laundry and hung clothes in the yard, a small hand waved in front of her.

She finally steadied her unfocused gaze and looked down at the boy.

“Yes, young master?”

When the other maids had finished their work and disappeared, only Anne and Gray remained in the yard.

“Do you have something on your mind?”

The thirteen-year-old frowned, studying her expression.

His resemblance to her younger brother made Anne harden her expression.

“No.”

In truth, yes. She wished the person in front of her was her brother instead.

Her heavy, suffocating gaze did not belong to him, so she looked away.

“Can’t I help you? I may be young and not strong yet, but…”

The young Gray offered his sincere concern, eyes shining.

If it had been Anne in the past, she might have patted his head or smiled warmly.

But now she only wanted him gone from her future.

She almost stepped away—but then remembered something they had once said.

“If you become my personal attendant, that would be nice.”

Neither the duchess nor Anne had known what consequences that wish would bring.

At the time, Gray had no authority to make such a request, but Anne had been a capable maid favored by both the lady of the house and the head maid.

So the duchess had lightly accepted Anne’s suggestion.

No one else wanted to serve Gray Benton, so it was convenient.

But Anne no longer wanted that role.

She would no longer smooth the boy’s drooping brows, nor smile at his lonely back.

She would not feel her heart race at his hands helping with laundry, nor blush at his kindness.

So…

Jamie!

Anne suddenly thought of her younger brother, as if grasping for something to replace this moment.