Chapter 259
Chapter 259
Lucius returned at dawn that day, kneeling in front of her and blaming himself.
‘It was my carelessness. I thought we could easily catch him. But I didn’t expect him to hide and then stab the horse I was riding on before escaping. I never thought he would target the horse instead of me.’
Lucius would never know how much Deatrice had worried that dawn.
The knights had all returned, but Lucius was late. Many had opposed him going out to personally capture the one who had come to kill him, but he had been stubborn. And he did not return until dawn.
The horse had died, and he had walked alone through the dark forest. Fortunately, the searching knights found and brought him back; otherwise, he would have had to walk all the way to the mansion.”
Deatrice had been ruminating all night about the fact that her cousin had tried to kill him, so even when he returned, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. But Lucius, on the other hand, felt even more apologetic.
‘You don’t need to look like that.’
He took her hand and kissed the back of it.
‘It’s all my fault. I promised to withdraw the knights from your side after three weeks, but it’s already been over a month, and I feel ashamed to face you.’
‘Lucius.’
‘The knights have to stay by your side because he might harm you. Once he’s caught, I’ll let you be free.’
‘That’s not what’s important.’
Deatrice spoke as if frustrated and pulled his hand.
‘I’m the one who should be ashamed. I never imagined Ethan would do such a thing. He was always competitive, but I never thought he’d be this reckless…’
She closed her eyes tightly, genuinely feeling embarrassed and sorry for what had happened.
‘I’m sorry, Lucius.’
As he looked at Deatrice’s apologetic face, he recalled the day of their wedding when she had danced with Ethan Vander. They had seemed quite natural and happy together, being cousins.
Lucius gently brushed her hair back and spoke in a quiet voice.
‘If he’s caught, he must be executed. Even though he’s your cousin… I can’t imagine how you must feel. The moment he’s caught, he’ll be summarily executed. There’s nothing I can do about that.’
Without saying a word, Deatrice took Lucius’s hand and kissed his fingers. The fingers, wounded from the events of the previous night, pained her heart. The fact that he felt sorry about the inevitable execution weighed heavily on her.
‘You’re the only one that matters to me.’
Deatrice said, looking up at him.
Of course, Ethan had been quite good to her as a cousin, and she felt a sense of pity for what had become of him, but nothing could compare to Lucius.
Lucius quietly looked down at her, then bent down to kiss her. The kiss was sweet and gentle as always, but Deatrice thought she couldn’t understand the meaning behind Lucius’s gaze before the kiss.
It was just that his eyes seemed a bit darker than usual and ominously red, as if they had been heated.
***
Ethan Vander was reckless and foolish to the extreme, but his ability to escape was remarkable.
The entire knight order was chasing him, but Ethan survived in the forest for two weeks. Deatrice thought he would have starved to death, been bitten by a beast, or fallen off a cliff, but when he was captured, he was unscathed and not seriously injured.
Lucius had said that Ethan would be summarily executed as soon as he was caught, but for some reason, he was kept alive for a few more days. Deatrice sighed deeply when she heard that Ethan had been transferred to the underground prison in the castle.
She had received dozens of letters from the Vander family.
Louisa Vander, Filbert Vander’s wife and Deatrice’s aunt, pleaded with her to persuade Lucius to spare Ethan’s life. At first, Deatrice read the letters, but after a few, she stopped opening them and burned them immediately.
As Lucius’s wife, even receiving and reading such letters felt like a sin.
‘I need to be more ruthless.’
So Deatrice did just that.
She had already heard stories about how arrogantly her relatives had behaved, trusting that Lucius wouldn’t kill his wife’s relatives when they were captured. They must have thought that Lucius wouldn’t dare kill them because of her.
To Lucius, Deatrice was a weakness, and to the duke and her relatives, she was an excuse for ‘getting away with it.’
Deatrice knew that the more lenient she and Lucius were, the bigger that weakness would become. It was possible that even after inheriting the dukedom, they wouldn’t be able to protect it due to interference from her relatives.
After that, Deatrice refused the letters and declared that she wouldn’t meet the Vander couple, but they were persistent. Filbert Vander came to the mansion and said he wouldn’t leave until Deatrice met him.
Deatrice ignored Filbert Vander’s carriage at the gate for three days, but on the fourth day, she couldn’t endure it any longer and let him into the mansion. Filbert Vander was body-searched by the knights guarding Deatrice before he was allowed into the reception room.
‘Thank you for meeting me.’
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