If You Wish to Have Me - Chapter 131

After that day, with some intervals between visits, Seyard came to Count Vansfelt’s estate two more times.

There were surface reasons—wanting to see Kisa in her wedding dress after the alterations were finished, having something to discuss with Count Vansfelt, and so on—but the reality was crystal clear.

He was surely thinking that by spending intimate time with Kisa, the resentment between them from the incident a few days ago would disappear.

However, contrary to such expectations, Kisa found the time spent with him increasingly suffocating.

No matter how much Seyard treated her with a smiling face, she watched his every expression and constantly reflected on her own behavior.

Worried that she might have gotten on the man’s nerves, or that she might have fallen short of the ideal love he desired.

For Kisa, who had no confidence that he truly loved her real self, this was natural, if one could call it that.

She constantly doubted. Wasn’t the being he loved perhaps the girl in his own idealized vision, created based on memories of the past?

And so one day, as she was returning to her room after seeing Seyard off, she suddenly muttered to herself.

“This can’t go on…”

Even if she couldn’t return to how things were before, she had hoped that they might at least have a reasonably good relationship.

But that was merely a vague hope, and the more Kisa met with him, the more she came to fear Seyard’s visits.

She was afraid of him. She couldn’t know what sinister intentions he might harbor behind that affectionate face.

Just how long would she have to endure this desperate anxiety?

Would it get better if she married him and lived closely with him? Would she become accustomed to it?

‘What if it doesn’t get better?’

What if it got worse instead?

Would she have to endure it for the rest of her life then?

Until his interest in her waned, or until her life came to an end?

“…”

Kisa, who had stopped in place and stood there blankly for a moment, suddenly turned her steps around.

Her destination was not her room, but somewhere entirely different.

“It’s quite unusual for you to come all the way here.”

A short while later, Kisa was facing her father, who sat at his desk in the Count’s study.

“What brings you here?”

His gaze, looking at his daughter as if she were a stranger, was unchanged from before, but Kisa didn’t find herself becoming infinitely small in front of her father as she used to.

Having already known a more fearsome existence, even Count Vansfelt, who had oppressed her for so long, now seemed like an ordinary person.

Kisa was somewhat amazed by this change in herself and put on an expression that seemed deliberately shy.

“Must I have business to come see you? Between father and daughter. I just wanted to come and have a cup of tea together and chat.”

Of course, knowing better than anyone that this was an awkward excuse, she added a few more words.

“…I’ll have to leave this house and father’s embrace soon. Once I marry and move to the Hillan territory, I’ll only see father very occasionally, and I don’t want to leave any regrets if possible.”

Marriage was quite a convenient excuse.

Perhaps thinking it wasn’t strange to do things one normally wouldn’t do when facing a major life event, the Count didn’t probe further for reasons.

“Sit down.”

He simply pointed to a low table and said so, then ordered tea from his secretary who was nearby.

Before long, a maid who had received instructions from the secretary brought black tea, and only then did the Count put down his papers, rise from his seat, and sit across from Kisa.

When even the secretary left so that the father and daughter could converse freely, the Count looked at Kisa and told her to speak if she had something to say.

“Hasn’t the weather become quite warm lately? Spring will come soon.”

Kisa began the conversation with an everyday topic.

She wanted to get straight to the point, but she couldn’t be that reckless.

‘It’s obvious how father would react if I said I wanted to reconsider the marriage or postpone it.’

She recalled the time when she had previously asked him to break off her engagement with Daniel.

The Count had dismissed his daughter’s appeal and absolutely refused to allow the broken engagement.

If even breaking an engagement was like that, what about marriage?

Moreover, this time the other party wasn’t Daniel Lowens but Duke Hillan himself.

Objectively judging, the probability that someone who valued the family’s position a hundred times more than his daughter’s happiness would grant Kisa’s wish to reconsider marriage with Seyard seemed extremely slim.

‘But I can’t say there’s absolutely no possibility.’

She had once had a conversation with the Count about the new Duke Hillan.

At that time, he had certainly shown signs of finding Seyard’s behavior distasteful.

He seemed to feel an indescribable sense of incongruity toward a man who looked exactly like the cold and sharp Vischer Hillan yet acted like a frivolous rake.

At the time, Kisa had only favorable feelings toward Seyard, so she had overlooked the Count’s such hints, but thinking about it now, his intuition had been quite sharp.

‘Wouldn’t it be possible to make good use of father’s suspicions somehow?’

Through the events of that day and her father’s attitude of dealing with Seyard only in a businesslike manner, Kisa guessed that he didn’t particularly like Duke Hillan.

‘Come to think of it, there was something I felt when I first saw him in society, when he was Vischer Hillan.’

Though she didn’t want to admit it, the two men were somewhat similar in some ways.

Particularly in their controlling aspect of trying to manipulate Kisa according to their will.

The difference was that Count Vansfelt used authority to suppress, while Seyard was more about cleverly deceiving her to elicit the behavior he wanted.

‘…Perhaps it’s a kind of hatred of one’s own kind.’

Both Count Vansfelt and Seyard were too selfish to like someone with a personality similar to their own.

In any case, given enough trigger and reason, the Count might also agree with Kisa’s opinion.

So Kisa planned to subtly probe the Count’s inner thoughts through this conversation.

But just as she was gauging when to bring up the main point, the Count struck at the core first.

“Come to think of it, have you heard any news about Daniel recently?”

Kisa, inwardly surprised, blinked her eyes.

After Daniel had been injured by robbers and gone down to the countryside to recuperate, this was the first time his name had been mentioned in their conversations.

Kisa wondered if it was mere coincidence while also thinking it worked out well.

Regardless of him being someone she disliked, Daniel could be used to revive the Count’s suspicions toward Seyard.

If given the opportunity, he would certainly pour out malicious gossip about Seyard to the Count without hesitation, claiming he was a murderer.

If it were only Kisa’s words, the Count might dismiss them as needless worry, but if Daniel said the same thing, he wouldn’t be able to ignore it easily.

To the Count, Daniel was the son of a close friend and the heir to the Lowens family.

Moreover, having watched him since childhood, he had some affection for him.

“That’s right, father. Since Daniel’s name came up. That fellow is in the capital now. I happened to run into Daniel on the street the other day—”

“Do you know what situation Daniel is in right now?”

However, the next moment, the Count’s statement that cut off Kisa’s words was shocking.

“I heard he was recently arrested by the royal investigation team. He’s currently undergoing a closed trial.”

After a few seconds, Kisa asked back in bewilderment.

“What? Daniel?”

The Count sipped his tea and calmly answered yes.

“Why? Did he commit some serious crime?”

It was a reasonable deduction since the royal investigation team wouldn’t mobilize for just any matter.

“You must have read the newspapers, so you’d know. The spy incident where someone was dramatically caught just before making contact with Jackeu, trying to leak royal secrets they had obtained from officials to Jackeu.”

Since she had even discussed this with her nanny, Kisa naturally knew about it well.

But wondering why that story was suddenly coming up here, she swallowed dry saliva.

“Surely… surely Daniel wasn’t…”

Count Vansfelt nodded greatly.

“Yes, Daniel was that spy.”

At that moment, Kisa involuntarily raised her voice in response to her father’s words.

“That’s impossible! That can’t be!”

Naturally, it wasn’t because she believed in Daniel’s moral character or humanity.

“Wasn’t it true that Daniel was favorable toward Jackeu? After returning from studying abroad, he made several statements about needing to follow Jackeu’s example.”

“That’s not the issue. Father, you know this too. He doesn’t have the capability for such things in the first place. Daniel doesn’t.”

No matter how much she thought about it, the Daniel that Kisa knew wasn’t the type to undertake such bold actions.

Risking his status, position, honor, life—everything—to leak royal secrets to Jackeu for his beliefs?

If he had been such a person in the first place, rather than cowardly plotting behind the scenes to bring down Seyard without revealing his presence, he would have openly challenged him to a duel, demanding the return of his stolen fiancée.

Daniel Lowens loved what he possessed too much, so while he outwardly cried for social reform, in reality he never took active action for it.

The feudal status system was, after all, the foundation that made his current superior position possible.

“Nine times out of ten, he’s been falsely accused. Someone must have fabricated evidence and orchestrated the situation to bring Daniel down. And that person is probably—”

“Kisa.”

The Count then stopped Kisa’s words.

“That’s enough.”

The moment she saw his eyes, Kisa realized.

The fact that the Count, like Kisa, suspected who was behind this affair.

And at the same time, that he didn’t want to voice that uncomfortable truth.