MDCHC 49

chapter 49

In an instant, my body was lifted into the air. Startled, I dropped the pen and letter paper I was holding. Instead, my hands went around Lord Winchester’s neck.

Being carried like a princess by the tall Lord Winchester, I was quite high up. It wasn’t like he would drop me, but I couldn’t help the feeling that I might fall, so I had no choice.

“Pardon me.”

Huh? Isn’t that something you say before you do something rude?

“If I don’t do this, it seems my wife will stay up all night again.”
“No, I wasn’t planning to stay up all…”
“Or you’ll come to bed at dawn.”
“I wouldn’t…”
“Didn’t you do that yesterday?”

How did he know? I was sure he was asleep!

As he said, last night I had also stayed up late writing letter replies. When I tiptoed into the bedroom at dawn, Lord Winchester had definitely been asleep.

But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

“Overexerting yourself will harm your health. Isn’t my wife’s health already frail to begin with?”
“Me? I’m not that weak, am I?”
“How can you say that when you’re this light?”

He said it in a blunt voice. But the content of his words was not blunt at all. Rather, it even made my heart flutter a little.

‘Could he actually be a kind person?’

A small question bloomed. The small question that sprouted in my head tickled my heart with its tail, swaying gently.

“And, it’s not Lord Winchester, right?”
“Huh?”

He said that just as we had passed through the corridor, entered the bedroom, and reached the front of the bed.

“Didn’t we agree to call each other something other than Lord Winchester?”
“Ah! Right. We did.”

Only then did I realize what he meant. It referred to our agreement to use more spousal terms of address.

“The new terms we decided on aren’t familiar yet, so I slipped up.”

I meekly admitted my mistake.

“……”

Lord Winchester was silent even in the face of my meek admission. With his unreadable poker face and blunt expression, he just stared at the bed.

‘What? Did he malfunction?’

Not only was he not saying anything, but even after reaching the bed, he still held me just like that. His expression and actions showed no sign of putting me down, so I gauged his mood.

‘We made eye contact!’

As Lord Winchester suddenly lowered his gaze and looked at me, our eyes met.

“Call me.”
“Huh?”
“To get used to it, you need to keep calling me, don’t you think?”
“W-well, yes…”

Lord Winchester’s demand wasn’t unreasonable. In fact, it was correct. But…

“R-right now?”

Wasn’t this posture a bit strange? It was the bedroom, I was being held by him, and he was looking at me. Moreover, it was late at night.

“Yes.”

But Lord Winchester’s reply was firm. Then again, when was he ever not firm?

“……”

I hesitated slightly and looked at his expression. It seemed the atmosphere wouldn’t end unless I called him.

Besides, holding me didn’t seem to tire him at all. He looked like he could hold me all night long.

Somehow I felt shy and embarrassed. My lips had become parched, so I stuck out my tongue to moisten them.

‘Darling’ or ‘dear’. We had agreed on such ordinary spousal terms.

Aunt or uncle. They were just terms to define a relationship, similar to those.

So why was I so nervous?

“D-darling?”

My voice calling Lord Winchester trembled slightly. I was embarrassed that my voice so clearly revealed my tension.

The moment I called Lord Winchester that, the hands supporting my thighs under me, though only slightly, flinched.

Static electricity?

“Well done. I hope you’ll call me that from now on.”

After the praise, like a reward, Lord Winchester finally gently set me down on the bed.

The moment my body touched the bed, two feelings abruptly welled up.

Relief and regret. Incompatible emotions arose simultaneously. Which one was heavier?

As I watched the retreating back of Lord Winchester who had turned away, the scales wavered.

He was a kind person.

It was another side of Naeris that Lorinus had discovered.

A kind, gentle person who tried to connect the Crown Princess with love, taught flower meanings to ladies, and never refused the hand of someone asking for help.

‘It’s not a discovery. I knew from the start that he was a kind person.’

In the first place, giving cookies to Daniel was what made me take notice of Naeris. So ‘kind’ wasn’t a newly discovered merit of Naeris.

‘Strictly speaking, is it a rediscovery?’

In the early dawn, looking at Naeris’s sleeping face lit by the whitish light of daybreak, Lorinus thought.

It was an ordinary face. The eyes, nose, mouth—there wasn’t a single strikingly beautiful feature.

But putting it another way, that also meant there was no sharply ugly feature in the eyes, nose, or mouth either.

Interpreting it more willfully, it meant that depending on how you looked at it, you could see it as pretty.

‘D-darling?’

Last night, Naeris in his arms came to mind. The face that seemed a little tense was cute. The slightly trembling voice was lovely.

To put it metaphorically, it was similar to how a clumsy but earnest novice apprentice looked endearing. Comparing one’s own wife to an apprentice might not seem fitting, but for Lorinus, there was no more apt metaphor.

‘He resembles Daniel a little.’

Lorinus thought that if Naeris heard that, he would either beam happily or frantically decline, insisting he was nothing like the cute Daniel.

To his eyes, their sleeping faces were somewhat similar. That might be because Lorinus had seen Daniel asleep more often than awake. He always left before Daniel woke and only entered after Daniel fell asleep.

Daniel had no idea that Lorinus would enter his room, gaze intently at his sleeping face, occasionally brush aside hair that might be bothersome, or pull up the blanket. Of course not. He was asleep.

Anyway, in Lorinus’s eyes, the two looked alike in their sleep. Their neat eyelashes or slightly parted lips were lovely. Looking at them made him feel strangely drowsy and softened his heart.

‘A kind person…’

Lorinus took hold of the blanket that had slipped down to Naeris’s waist. Then, slowly pulling it up, he let it go around her shoulders. Naeris’s expression softened a little more than before, as if she was warm.

‘My person…’

Far away, beyond the window, today’s sun rose. An orange glow faintly illuminated Lorinus’s smile.

The Pomots family carriage arrived at the Camellia mansion without notice in the dim evening.

“Mother? Father?”
“Naeris!”

While I was looking at them, surprised by their unexpected appearance, my father, who had gotten off the carriage, called my name happily. As soon as my mother got off the carriage with Father’s escort, I immediately hugged her.

“Long time no see, Mother.”

Her familiar scent and a slightly unfamiliar powdered scent tickled my nose at the same time. I closed my eyes and briefly enjoyed the warmth of Mother’s embrace.

“You too, Father.”

As soon as I pulled away, Father immediately spread his arms as if waiting, and I gladly went into his embrace. I also slowly breathed in Father’s scent, similar to the smell of dry grass.

“What brings you here without notice?”
“You haven’t contacted us or come to see us, so we came.”
“Ah… hehe.”

At Mother’s words said with a sulky expression, I forced an awkward smile. No matter what excuse I made about being busy lately, they must have felt hurt, right?

“Why take it out on the child unnecessarily? It’s not that, we came to give you something.”

Where Father pointed, a servant stood holding a large pot.

“You cooked?”

Wondering what dish it was, I sniffed and caught a somewhat ambiguous smell. A slightly fishy smell, one I felt I had smelled before.

“Perfect timing. It’s not yet dinnertime. We can have dinner together. Lord Winchester hasn’t returned yet, but he didn’t say he’d be particularly late, so he’ll probably be back soon. Please, come in.”

Smiling, I ushered my parents into the mansion.