Chapter 90
Chapter 90
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 90
Chapter Title: A Cheap Trinket
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“How...”
Lennox flinched at the whisper that slipped out like a sigh.
A slender, trembling hand cupped his cheek.
Suppressing the urge to grab her wrist and stop her right then, he held his breath quietly.
In his heightened state of nerves, the touch of another's hand on his cheek felt strangely peculiar.
Lennox Carlyle hated anyone touching his body.
It was a habit ingrained in him since the days long ago when he rolled through the battlefields.
There are thirty-nine vital points on a person's head, sixteen of which can easily take an opponent's life even for someone untrained, if accurately targeted.
Pushing away someone touching his body was easier than snapping a child's wrist.
Yet...
The touch upon him brought ecstasy and misery so intense that he couldn't push it away.
“Juliet.”
He pleaded in a voice sunk dangerously low.
“Please.”
“Please... stop crying.”
He didn't need to see to know what expression the woman before him wore.
Juliet rarely cried in front of him.
So he didn't know how to comfort a crying woman.
He felt like he could do anything if it would just make her stop right now.
The one he'd desperately longed to reclaim over the past month was sitting in his arms... yet that woman wept endlessly.
Out of pity for him.
That fact plunged him into the abyss.
*How pathetic, Lennox Carlyle.*
She was the woman who had abandoned him without a second thought even when his sight was fine.
Still, now that she knew he was blind, Juliet would feel guilty.
Then she'd pity him, and...
He quietly gritted his teeth.
And then what?
“Damn it. Did someone die or something?”
“No, I'm not crying.”
At his harsh words, she barely managed a reply in a voice thick with barely suppressed sobs.
It was a lie even a child wouldn't buy.
* * *
Juliet knew how much he hated crying women.
Their relationship had always been premised on not bothering him any more than necessary, so she let the tears fall silently.
“Juliet.”
But that had been a miscalculation.
“I told you not to cry.”
The man repeated himself in a tone that blurred the line between threat and plea.
Normally, she'd just turn and leave, but she couldn't do that now—that must be why.
Juliet quickly wiped her cheeks.
There was still more to say.
“Lennox...”
If not for the sudden noise from beyond the door.
Crash!
“...”
In the next instant, Juliet shoved him away and leaped to her feet.
She crossed the bedroom in a few strides and flung open the door to the drawing room.
Slide.
“Uh... have you been well, my lady? It's been so long.”
It wasn't just the ducal physician—even Eliot and the other familiar ducal secretaries were clustered awkwardly at the drawing room door.
*
“I'm heading back.”
After pressing the physician for every detail, Juliet rose with the same crisp poise she'd shown upon arriving at the mansion.
“Ah, I... I'll see you out.”
Eliot, who had been anxiously eyeing the exchange between Juliet—who hadn't even hinted at returning—and Lennox, who made no move to stop her—sprang to his feet.
Moments later, the sound of carriage wheels rumbling outside drifted through the window. Eliot returned shortly after and announced,
“Miss Monad has gone home.”
“Got it. Out.”
“......Yes.”
Lennox wasn't surprised in the least.
She might not come back at all.
If he lost his sight forever, could he at least hold onto this woman?
He wasn't above having entertained the thought. She was so impossible to pin down.
By preying on shallow pity and guilt, maybe he could at least keep her husk.
Even if she eventually grew weary and disgusted, Juliet wouldn't be able to leave him.
If he cleverly stoked her guilt, would that do it?
*No chance.*
Lennox sneered at himself.
He had known from the beginning that he couldn't chain Juliet down with cheap pity.
It wasn't a matter of pride, or of being unable to stomach her looking down on him with compassion.
Juliet might not have realized—might not have cared—but he had always tried to give her nothing but the best.
So how could he now cling to her ankle with his own wretched, broken shell?
Out of habit, he fiddled with the pigeon-shaped silver trinket in his hand—then it hit him.
*This damn cheap thing.*
He felt like he'd become the cheap silver bauble himself. And he recalled an incident from so long ago it was barely a memory.
*
Juliet had often vetted the gifts arriving for Lennox and sent the unsuitable ones back.
She had a keen eye for colors and styles that suited him, and he trusted her judgment.
But why hadn't he let that one slide?
By chance, he'd caught her poring over some documents with uncharacteristic interest.
They were the marriage proposals sent to him.
“Just... tidying the desk...”
*I happened to see them.*
There were no documents she wasn't allowed to see in the first place.
He himself hadn't spared them a glance, yet Juliet hadn't just read them intently—she'd gone so far as to sort them neatly into stacks.
“If I overstepped, I'm sorry.”
Seeing her apologize with such calm composure left him momentarily dumbfounded.
Was that the face one made upon finding marriage proposals addressed to one's lover?
He had no idea what he wanted to do about it himself, but that expression grated on him fiercely.
There wasn't a trace of betrayal or sadness on Juliet's face.
Not knowing what precise emotion to seek in that serene visage, he simply found it strangely irksome. Up until then.
He grasped the true nature of that feeling the very next day—right after spotting her, by chance, in the castle's banquet hall. Her face brimmed with vibrant delight as she chatted with someone.
It wasn't anything remarkable.
Most northern nobles were haughty and standoffish.
Juliet attended banquets dutifully in his stead but, like him, took no pleasure in them.
Yet some among them showed a particular sort of interest.
The upright and refined stood out without trying—as if to prove their noble birth and fine upbringing.
Juliet Monad shone even brighter.
She sparkled in the eyes of the man who saw her every day; how much more dazzling she must have seemed to others.
Juliet had only exchanged a few words about paintings with a man who served as some noble's secretary. From what he overheard, the fellow hailed from the capital as well.
It was nothing but idle chitchat on a subject that held no interest for him.
Yet in that moment, he recognized in himself the exact emotion he'd desperately hoped to glimpse on Juliet's face the day before.
After that, he handled it as he always did.
Clearing away the annoyances that pawed at him without knowing their place, one by one.
Lennox seemed to want to console Juliet for losing her conversation partner—perhaps with some lavish gift.
But Juliet barely glanced at the opulent jewels, instead appearing faintly disappointed at not seeing her interlocutor again.
And then there was the time he found her in the castle's rear garden, beaming over a mere shabby scrap of silver.
“You like this cheap crap?”
“It's not cheap. Give it back.”
Lennox grew furious each time she slipped beyond his predictions.
Ignoring priceless treasures yet fawning over a cheap silver trinket.
Lennox toyed with the pigeon's blunted wingtip in his palm, then quietly shut his eyes.
Right now, he felt like he had become that cheap trinket himself.
“Velocitana.”
He spoke into the empty air.
Whoosh.
The sword propped against the wall seemed to burst into flames—and in the next instant, a sleek black-furred beast appeared in its place.
*(Finally in the mood to talk to me?)*
“Shut up.”
*(Such manners.)*
Belying his words, the massive black panther stretched languidly.
*(So, what's the condition?)*