Chapter 58
***
"What? What do you mean?"
Caius and Louise stood dumbfounded, unable to understand what Caroline was saying.
Caroline waved her hand in embarrassment.
"The pills. I know it's an important time, but they're really bad for the body. Don't let her take them, Your Excellency."
For someone who barely understood what was being said, Caius managed to keep a straight face. Except that when he glanced over, Louise was turning blue.
He answered a moment later, with just enough to probe Louise.
"Thank you for your concern. Madam."
The answer seemed so natural that Caroline continued.
"After we got married, I tried it myself, for my husband never gave me a day's rest in his youth."
Theobald, standing behind her, coughed. Caroline blushed slightly and continued.
"I was so unwell, and the doctor told me afterward that if I'd taken them a little longer, I wouldn't have made it to the fifth. I was so, so worried, excuse me."
Now there was no one who didn't understand. Pauline, who had been waiting at the front of the carriage, looked up in alarm, and then dropped her head as soon as she realized what was happening.
Louise swallowed dryly, her face white with nervousness. It was unfortunate that the medicine had been discovered, but she must not make it obvious.
"For being so motherly and concerned...... Thank you, madam. I didn't realize it was such a bad drug, but I'll be careful."
Caroline took Louise's trembling hand in her own.
"Perhaps I should have told you quietly when we were alone, but I like a man to know these things."
Louise nodded ruefully.
"Yes, you're right, I understand."
Caroline smiled brightly, as if a burden had been lifted.
"You must take good care of yourself, you're the most precious body in this empire."
"Ugh, she's a tough one. Then again, I must be getting old."
Theobald interrupted.
"Actually, my wife consulted me beforehand, and I'm sure the lady will be fine, but I thought I'd give you a heads up, so please forgive the old woman’s interference.”
"No, rather, I apologize for worrying you."
Caius escorted Louise into the carriage with the couple watching. A fidgety-faced Pauline soon followed.
She did not dare to ask the pale-faced hostess anything.
The ride back to Burg seemed even slower than the way they had come.
***
When they arrived in Burg, the sky was already dark.
"You took the medicine..................?"
Caius didn't speak to Louise, not even when they stopped to rest or do a quick walk. He was clearly offended, but she hadn't expected him to ask so directly.
Louise cautiously opened her mouth.
"You come to see me often, but the timing doesn't seem to be so…good.”
His head tilted toward her. His golden eyes burned with anger.
She was surprised, because she didn’t expect him to be this angry.
All he'd ever been doing was indulging a need. He'd said he could do with other women what he could do with his legal wife. But because of the watching eyes.
Louise stammered.
"That, and I thought maybe you didn't want children.........."
"So you drugged yourself because you thought I might not want one? Do you think that's an excuse?"
"Because you have something big coming up this year............."
"You didn't want that."
Louise looked up at him with frightened eyes.
Of course she had never wanted a child. She didn't think he would want one, and she didn't know how his mission would turn out.
How dare she wanted children in a relationship with him? Everything revolved around him, and she had been led this far without even knowing it.
But Caius did not wait for a moment's hesitation.
"Why, does this loyalty you speak of not include the child, even to the point of giving everything else, but not your own child, so much like your mother, perhaps?"
Louise was stunned and speechless; she had never imagined he would think that way.
"How dare you ask my forgiveness on such a subject?"
The man's eyes flashed, and her heart, which had been warm all along, turned cold.
She couldn't understand how a man who hated her so much could see a successor in her.
As her head cooled, she managed to form words.
"I didn't want to pass on my misery .................. because the baby is not guilty of anything."
"Is that really what you want to say to me, that you blame me for the sins of the parents when I didn't commit them?"
"It has nothing to do with me or my parents, but the child is...............!"
"You've cried yourself to sleep under me every night, you've swayed your hips and wrapped your legs around me, and now you've stabbed me in the back like this? Why, did you think you'd get away with it if you didn't have a child?"
Louise's voice rose in anger.
"If it works..................! If it works, you won't need me!"
Caius gritted his teeth.
"Who are you to judge?"
His rough hand gripped Louise's thin wrist painfully.
"Did you think I'd let you go once I regained the throne? Did you want to run away? What was that you said you'd leave your name by my side even in death?"
"Ah, it hurts, Your Highness................"
Louise gasped, but the grip on her wrist only grew stronger.
"I am so sick and tired of your loyalty, you Ermoli. Do you think you can abandon me so easily, just like your parents, who kept a seven-year-old waiting for a lifetime, leaving behind those light words that they would return?"
Louise shuddered at the horrible misunderstanding.
It had never occurred to her that she would abandon him. She had only feared that he would abandon her.
"Where do you want to go, to that lousy Melk? You want to go to that man?"
"That's not ...................! That's not what..................!"
Before Louise could finish, Caius tugged harshly at the ribbons of her dress.
"Ah, Your Highness."
Startled, she tried to cover her breasts with her hands, but his strong grip grabbed her wrists once more.
"Don't do this."
Despite her desperate pleas, he gave her a light shove, sending her tumbling to the bed. Then he ripped at the fabric of her dress.
"Oh, no, not like this................!"
Her slender jaw clenched in his large hand as she screamed.
"Hate?"
Transparent tears spilled from her jeweled emerald eyes, the last few days of crying and laughing in his arms, of sharing passionate breaths, dissolving like a mirage.
"I don't want to, Your Highness. I don't want you to do this......"
The hand on her chin suddenly became gentle.
Caius tilted his head slightly. His pale gold eyes flashed yellow in the still-bright light.
"Now, Louise, look me in the eye. Who am I?"
She shuddered at the cruel gaze that met hers.
He was her mother's Heidenberg, Ermoli's lord.
Her pulse pounded, his body heat hovering over Louise's stiffened lips.
She gnawed at the inside of her narrow mouth like a stigmata. His angry hands groped unceremoniously over her delicate body.
"Ugh...."
Caius gulped down every last drop of saliva and tear.
He could taste blood on the stretched and crushed flesh. Louise pounded on his chest, gasping for breath.
Her voluptuous breasts rose and fell rapidly through the gap in her clothes.
The man's eyes widened as he finally released her.
He pressed his lips to Louise's sobbing ear and whispered in a hushed tone.
"You'll never be like your mother. If you die, you'll die by my side."
One by one, her tattered clothes fell from her body.
***
Looking down at Louise, panting and red, the man smiled languidly.
"Get off the pills. If the only thing you don't want to give me is a child, I'll take it."
Tears welled up in her green eyes, but she choked them back.
"If you're as unruly as your mother, I'll drag your dead parents back to the ground and crush them."
His eyes flickered with anger.
The wreckage slowly turned to sawdust and scattered, until all that remained was a deep sinking.
Louise closed her eyes. Her slender limbs shook as he moved.
Caius didn't stop all night.
Until the sun rose.
***
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LC (Thursday, 24 October 2024 21:00)
TY! ❤️