Side Story 71
Ver turned his head around shortly after the carriage changed directions. Marquis Weiand’s carriage was heading in the opposite direction- perhaps Prillance was there.
At that thought, Ver flinched for an instant and tried to chase after it. But he could move no further than a step. She might have gone ahead while looking forward to a meeting with Roman. That thought seized Ver in his footsteps.
A feeling of inferiority bordering on self-harm enveloped Ver like a stab to his heart. He withdrew his gaze only after the carriage had completely disappeared.
Ver’s eyes were full of hurt when he looked back once more. Cecia felt a stinging sensation; it was the look he gave towards Prillance Weiand in that carriage.
At that moment, Roman’s words crossed her mind. He said all Ver’s actions and behavior stemmed from her.
“It’s you who made me like this.”
The uncontrollable surge of her emotions in that instant was understandable.
“You never let me know anything while by your side- made it seem like you’d stay with me.”
There was a feeling of disappointment of course. They had parted through a unilateral notice that appeared suddenly without saying a word and confused her.
“That’s right, only you, only you…..”
Ver had moved forward towards the future on his own while Cecia was left in disarray. He had set his eyes on and protected another person. She ultimately ended up crying.
“…… I’m sorry.”
Ver didn’t reach out to Cecia despite apologizing. He only apologized for not concluding the situation properly.
And all while he was by her side. He didn’t seem to know that this was more cruel to her.
“Don’t go. Please?”
Cecia caught hold of Ver for the first time. Tears welled up in her beautiful, sea-like, emerald eyes. And they soon streamed down like an overflowing sea.
“I’m sorry that I cannot do that.” Ver’s facial expression was one of heartbreak.
But he didn’t wipe away her tears or hug her as he used to do. He didn’t even console her with a gentle voice.
Cesia could feel it. The final thing they hadn’t been able to do up till now. Ver was heading towards the end.
“Cecia.”
“Don’t say anything.”
This ending was as one-sided as their initial separation. She covered her ears so she wouldn’t hear.
“When I get back, I will be requesting a re-investigation into Minnippi.”
Her glossy black hair flowed down little by little as her head dipped low. Despite her resistance, Ver continued to speak.
“Then the Royne family, who had temporary control over the management, will also be investigated.”
“Ver! Stop, please!”
“It would have been better if nothing happened, but I don’t think so.”
There was a bitter tone to Ver’s words. The conjectures he made from what he’d seen here were by no means a small matter. It will most likely take a considerable blow.
“Can’t you stay by my side?”
Before one knew it, more tears were flowing from Cecia’s eyes. She grasped Ver by the arm and spoke like a child. Her clenched hands were telling him she didn’t want to let go.
“Do your best to protect the house. It’s fine to hate me for breaking up the engagement and making a mess of your family. No, go ahead and just hate me”, Ver said, shaking his head as if he was making a request for the last time.
Although the context within those words were not friendly, it was still kind.
“That is what needs to be done going forward”, said Ver, who did not wipe away her tears until the very end.
He then shook off her grip on him and left Cecia behind. She reached out for Ver as he walked away, but couldn’t reach him. Perhaps the two of them had already become too far apart to reach for.
In this way, this couple who had been separated against their will, finally parted ways for the last time.
*~~*
“Hold on.”
Prillance, who had been silent for a long time while riding the carriage, suddenly asked the coachman to halt.
“I have to go back.”
“Pardon?”
“Once more, I have to go back to the exhibition hall.”
The coachmen, who saw her frantic look and felt her sense of urgency, quickly turned the carriage. It seemed to go faster than before.
Freelance gripped her dress. She hadn’t meant to leave the two of them behind. A belated sense of regret ensued.
Prillance got off in a hurry as soon as the carriage stopped. She heard the coachman anxiously cry out ‘my lady’ but she had no time to care. She held up the hem of her dress and headed to the place she had seen the two of them earlier. But Cecia was the only one there.
“What about Viscount Grant?”
Cecia raised her head at Prillance’s voice with clear tear marks on her face. Those red, swollen eyes gave her a sense of how much she cried.
“Did something happen?”
Nevertheless, Prillance searched for Ver.
“Are you feeling better now?” Cecia responded to her concerns with a sharp answer.
“What are you saying?”
What kind of conversation did the two of them have that made Cecia so angry? Prillance couldn’t understand. She just guessed that something bad had happened.
“You were playing with my heart from the very beginning, weren’t you. You were going to make it like this.”
“What….”
She was messing around? With whom? Prillance didn’t understand and made a face.
“How does it feel to have won Ver’s heart?”
Cecia seemed unwilling to listen to Prillance. Prillance understood the meaning of Cecia’s question soon after however, and was surprised. That fact that she knew Ver liked her was embarrassing.
“You must feel satisfied, of course?”
The openly sarcastic tone was uncomfortable to hear.
“Young Lady of Viscount Royne, your words are out of line.”
Prillance’s mood deteriorated at Cecia’s rude language.
Cecia snorted. Out of line, she says. She wondered who was being rude to whom. The guilty thief was not qualified to turn around and be angry at the innocent.
“You’re going to play around with Ver’s heart and then go to Duke Tonz, isn’t that so? Who is worse: a person who is rude in words or a person who is rude in behavior?”
As she was becoming agitated, the thoughts she had been holding in her mind began to surface and emerge. And Prillance, who showed a face that seemed to know nothing, was detestable. She took her most precious thing and spoke as if nothing happened.
“What do you mean play around with it? It’s not like that, I……!”
“You always spoke like that, I’m sure, hovering around and attracting attention. In the eyes of the Young Lady Weiand, the Viscount title seems to be beneath your notice.”
Cecia was becoming increasingly enraged before her eyes. Was it just Prillance feeling that her face now looked distorted and whatever charm she saw in their first meeting seemed to have disappeared?
“Do not say such words.”
Furthermore, Prillance could not understand why Ver was being described as such. She was talking as if his title was everything. He was a man who shined in his own right. She was treating him as if he had been devalued in worth.
“Ver knew that. He knew you would ultimately go to Duke Tonz! And that he was not good enough for you. You knew everything, but you still…!”
Cecia’s exclamation, as she spoke with such ferocity in her eyes, seemingly struck Prillance like a hammer to the head. Was that what Ver thought?
“Ver…. Did Ver really say those words?”
Had he made the knight’s oath to her despite this? She could only imagine what Ver’s feelings were as he made his confession.
“I’ve spoken of how selfish you are. Because Ver doesn’t know.”
She thought that Prillance’s acting was great as she behaved like she only knew this for the first time. Prillance’s face, which had appeared to be sad, soon turned into astonishment. Maybe she was surprised to know the truth. Cecia scoffed at the change on her face by raising a corner of her lips.
“It can’t be that this talk about peerage and titles, of being unsuitable, everything….?” Prillance muttered and looked at her.
Cecia didn’t answer in any significant way to acknowledge it. She merely just stared at her.
“So stop and let him go now. Don’t play with it anymore….!”
Slap!
It was the sharp impact sound of Prillance slapping Cecia on the cheek. Cecia’s head swung to the side as hard as the sound of the strike was powerful. Cecia covered her cheek with her hand and looked at Prillance in surprise.
There was Prillance with anger on her face.
“You, what are you doing!”
Prillance shouted at Cecia.
It was a sight she had never seen or imagined.
“He- for him…..! How much did he…..!”
Prillance knew how many aristocratic young ladies had visited his house since Ver became Viscount and lived in reclusivity at the beginning. The young ladies would make numerous insulting and inflammatory remarks to him when Ver refused to accept their advances.
“You don’t know anything. You, you don’t know a single thing about him.”
Ver suffered the humiliation alone. He tried to endure and endure with an indifferent countenance while endeavoring to desensitize himself to it. Even though there was no way he was going to be okay, he persisted by pretending to be so. That was Ver’s daily life at the beginning of the novel.
Nevertheless, he worried about the Cecia before his eyes. He never once asked her to comfort him or asked her to know. Cecia didn’t know for who’s sake Ver had been left alone, for whom he was willing to shoulder so much criticism. Up until the very end.
After pouring out a flurry of anger, Prillance looked straight at Cecia’s eyes with a shuttered expression as she stood before her. Prillance heaved a long sigh and straightened her posture, once again the image of a noble young lady.
“Are you asking me if I looked down on him because he was of low rank?”
A sneer appeared on Prillance’s lips. And that smile was clearly directed at Cecia.
“You’re welcome. Aren’t you the one who saw it that way? Have you ever visited him after he was demoted to a lower title?”
There was no answer from Cecia.
“Do you know how he spent that time? You don’t even know if he ever left the house, do you?”
What Prillance was referring to was Ver’s daily life, which Cecia didn’t know about. Her eyes were starting to tremble.
“The nobles pointed their fingers at him. It didn’t end with a fall in rank, but in reputation as well. But he never denied it and accepted everything. Why do you think it was so?”
Prillance’s gaze pierced directly into her eyes. That gaze, which questioned whether she knew or not, caught Cecia.
“Did he really hold doubts about his father?”
The answer that popped into Cecia’s head at Prillance’s last question was a ‘no’. She, who had been looking on for so long, believed that it was impossible.
So, of course, Ver must have believed in Marquis Grant.
It can’t be.
Cecia covered her mouth with trembling hands.
An uncharacteristically cold-hearted letter of annulment of their engagement. The loss of contact. The meaning of it all.
“Do you understand?” There was no strength in Prillance’s voice as she said this.
She spoke like a snake.
“It was because of you. For the sake of your family, for your household. If he had created a ruckus in high society, you would have ended up being dragged into the gossip right along with him. Then you will be less welcomed by the nobles and become a laughing stock.”
Ver never doubted his father for a single moment. And yet he did not refute it.
He probably stepped down and gave up halfway through. Unacceptable truths, a forsaken family that perished, an already lost honour. What Ver wanted as his last wish was for Cecia’s happiness, which he exchanged with his honour.
Even then, he lived his life for Cecia till the very end.
For this young lady to further mutilate his wounds like this right in front of her eyes-
“If you’d known him, if you’d cared a little more.”
She couldn’t understand. Ver wasn’t a man of many words or explanations.
His considerate actions were always done behind the scenes. So that it was not apparent, in a careful manner.
“His sincere feelings would have been apparent quickly enough.”
But Ver’s heart was burrowed within his unchanging kindness. Through his eyes, through his actions, through his voice.
He loved her, so he expressed his sincere hope for her to be happy with all his heart.
Tears flowed from Cecia’s eyes little by little. But there was no sobbing. Because she hadn’t even realized for herself that she was crying.
Her face with her black hair sparkling in the moon, subtly shining emerald eyes, and beautifully shaded in the moonlight, was so beautiful that it made the viewer feel faint.
However, it left no impression on Prillance who was standing before her.
She didn’t want to understand Cecia’s wounded expression anymore. It couldn’t have hurt that much. She couldn’t have comprehended the wounds Ver suffered with just those few words. Just like Prillance didn’t fully understand him through a mere few pages of text in a novel.
“You said it was for Ver. Let me ask you again. Didn’t you see Ver at Countess Moran’s garden party?”
Cecia, who had been in a dazed state, tried to recall her memories little by little.
She had seen Ver the day she went as a partner with Roman. Where she received a note from someone.
The question shown on Cecia’s face was Prillance’s answer. She had never told anyone and so she was surprised that she knew.
“Did you not meet him? Was Ver unable to recognize you?”
It was in the form of a question, but the context assumed that Cesia had met him for sure. Ver would have waited considering the time Prillance showed up.
When Prillance found Roman, Cecia was no longer there. Then even despite considering the traveltime for that distance, it was inevitable that she met Ver.
There were two assumptions. Either they met and pretended not to know each other, or either one of them refused to meet even though they saw each other.
But if they had already met, there was no need for such a surprised face. It was possible to deduce now because Prillance had carefully observed the expressions of the two that day, especially Ver’s.
Ver clearly had never met Cecia that day.
“You went to the flower garden but said there weren’t any flowers, right?”
She thought it was a trick of fate. She wondered how there could exist such a relationship where two people could so profoundly pass each other by.
It was sad, so she wanted to make it happen. They were people who strived to accomplish what they wanted even if their hearts were broken.
“Were you unable to meet him because there were no flowers or did you not meet him?”
It seemed like she understood now. In the first place, it was impossible for the two of them.
Cecia, who said she loved him, did not actually meet Ver. She didn’t even think of meeting him. That thought only came to her now.
“Ah….. ah…….”
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