🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 38
Benjamin, carrying a tray in one hand as he was going down the stairs, ran into Joe, who was coming up the stairs holding a bundle of documents.
Joe greeted him with a bright smile.
“Good morning, Master!”
Benjamin, who had been about to nod roughly and pass by, stopped and called out to Joe.
“Head attendant.”
Since it was extremely rare for Benjamin to stop him like this, Joe looked at him with delight.
“Yes, Master!”
“What is that?”
“Ah, these are the documents Madam requested.”
Benjamin took a few sheets from the documents Joe was holding and flipped through them quickly.
They were filled with headache-inducing paperwork—simple things like receipts for items used at banquets and wage settlements for workers whose contracts had ended, to more complicated matters such as taxes and military levies of the territory.
For Benjamin, just glancing at them briefly was enough to make his vision swim.
Benjamin said,
“Take them to my study next to the bedroom.”
Joe’s eyes darted in surprise.
“Is that all right?”
“My wife isn’t feeling well today.”
Startled, Joe asked,
“Madam? Shall I call a healer?”
Benjamin hesitated for a moment.
When he thought of Helena lying there, pale-faced and groaning in pain, it seemed easier to let a healer see her.
But he also understood Helena’s reluctance to show her body to a healer whose background she didn’t even know.
No matter how much of a healer he was, if another man were to take Helena’s slender wrist under the pretense of checking her pulse…
Crack.
“Huh—!”
Joe sucked in a sharp breath.
Coming back to his senses, Benjamin looked down at the tray in his hand. Perhaps he had unconsciously tightened his grip—the metal tray had split cleanly in half.
Holding the broken tray together with both hands so the dishes wouldn’t fall, he spoke.
“No need for a healer. Madam said she’ll be resting all day, so see to it.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
As he went down the stairs carrying the broken tray, Benjamin thought,
I should find a female healer as well.
It had been nothing more than a marriage of political necessity.
Yet with just one person entering his life, there were already far too many things that needed to change.
Helena felt like she was dying.
Ah, I’m really going to die…
The pain continued, as if something were slowly scraping out the inside of her abdomen with a hook.
Whenever the pain eased just enough for her to catch her breath, a forgotten headache would return to torment her.
If the abdominal pain was something she had to endure by clenching her teeth, the headache was so infuriating she wanted to smash her head against the wall and knock herself out.
“Damn it, shit, fucking hell…”
Helena moved her dry lips, hurling every curse she knew. She felt like she wouldn’t be able to endure it otherwise.
“…Benjamin Ishfern.”
And as if it had been destined, the arrow turned back toward Benjamin.
No—Benjamin deserved every curse.
She had always suffered from anemia and severe menstrual pain around her period, but days when the pain was this intense from the very first day were rare.
She didn’t need to ask a healer to know the cause.
I’ve been overdoing it lately.
She wasn’t naturally diligent. If anything, she was closer to lazy.
Before marriage, she would wake up disheveled only after the sun had risen high in the sky, rousing herself with a cup of rose dew tea brought by her maids.
After that, her daily routine amounted to nothing more than lazing around all day and bullying her younger siblings.
Her real day didn’t begin until after sunset.
As dusk crept in, only after adorning herself with jewels and dresses did she regain her vitality.
At night, she would rise like a star and head to the glittering banquet halls of the imperial capital.
Enjoying herself until the night was over amid brilliance brighter than daylight.
That was Helena Winston’s life.
Not running around worrying over trivial cleaning issues, household problems, and money matters.
Helena gnawed at her dry lips as she renewed her resentment toward Benjamin.
Benjamin Ishfern—if it weren’t for that man, I wouldn’t have ended up like this…!
Grinding her teeth as she tried to straighten her back, Helena sucked in a sharp breath as a new pain shot through her spine.
“Ugh…!”
It felt like the consequences of forcing her frail body to run around were finally catching up to her.
She could feel each vertebra and her pelvis rattling and screaming—pain as though bone and flesh were being torn apart.
“Hah….”
Moisture welled at the corners of Helena’s eyes.
“I want… I want to go home…”
She missed the House of Winston.
The Winston family’s healer was a master at making painkillers; once she took them, she would forget all pain and fall into a deep sleep.
Helena missed that painkiller desperately.
And what about her maids?
When they were by her side, Helena never had to want or need anything. Before she even realized she needed something, the quick-witted maids would already have brought it.
Stones wrapped in wool so she could hold them warm, sweet chocolate, cool lemon water.
That wasn’t all. To mask the faintly bothersome smell of blood, the maids would place fragrant branches in the fireplace, and they would massage her cold feet.
“Hngh… Eliza, Ira, Henry…”
Whenever she groaned in pain, her siblings would sit around her bed and wait until she got better.
Eliza, who put chocolate into her mouth whenever she grew irritable; Ira, who brushed her tangled hair; little Henry, who clung to her aching waist to share his warmth.
She missed her siblings terribly.
“Stepmother… Father…”
Mia, whose health was astonishingly robust, would scold her to stop exaggerating whenever she groaned, yet still warn the maids to take good care of her.
Count Winston, knowing she often skipped meals when she was ill, would send her foods she liked.
“Hic…”
Sniffling, Helena gradually drifted into shallow sleep.
But even sleep was uncomfortable.
Perhaps because of the pain, she had a nightmare for the first time in a long while.
Even in the dream, she was fighting with Benjamin.
They were bickering—your fault, my fault—when suddenly the door burst open and Empress Clarissa entered.
The empress spoke in a loud voice.
“Helena, I am disappointed in you.”
“W-why, Your Majesty?”
As she stood there flustered, Benjamin spoke while holding her.
“Because… the one I love is you, Helena.”
Helena shuddered in disgust and grabbed Benjamin’s curly bangs tightly.
“Are you insane?”
“I’ve liked you since childhood.”
“Are you completely out of your mind? We never even met as children!”
Henry began to cry loudly.
“Waaah! Sister, don’t get married!”
Her head hurt. Helena shook her head and shouted.
“Henry, stop it! You’re too loud!”
The next moment—
The door burst open again, and this time Crown Prince Rufus, Adela Bayard, Duke Bayard, David Coburn in a pink shirt, Lord Tarlow with his foul breath, and Uncle Flon appeared.
They lifted Helena up and stuffed her into some kind of sack.
“Ugh—! Let me go!”
She couldn’t breathe.
Grinding her teeth, Helena groaned and twisted her head from side to side.
They set her down on some damp floor.
A chill ran down her spine.
Helena squeezed her eyes shut.
Even in the dream, she knew it was a dream. She had dreamed it dozens—hundreds—of times.
Don’t open your eyes.
But the silence in the dream was heavy and suffocating like a block of iron, endlessly long. It was a silence that would never end unless she opened her eyes.
In the end, Helena had no choice but to open them.
When she did, another Helena was lying in front of her.
“Ah…”
An immense, unfathomable fear surged over her. Helena could only tremble violently, unable to make a sound.
The other Helena was whispering something.
No. I don’t want to hear it…!
Helena resisted desperately.
“…?”
Benjamin, having returned to the bedroom out of concern for Helena, witnessed a strange sight.
Helena, wrapped up in the blanket from head to toe, was thrashing about like a fish hauled out of water.
On a normal day, he would have ignored it, thinking she was out of her mind. But today, given the circumstances, he wondered if she was acting like that because she was in pain.
Benjamin gently lifted the blanket.
“Hh… hhngh…”
Inside, Helena’s face was pale, cold sweat covering her as her body trembled in something like convulsions.
Startled, Benjamin shook her shoulder.
“Helena.”
