Chapter 39
At Elisha’s sudden question, Richard looked at her with surprised eyes.
‘Does she want a child?’
He didn’t want a child. He still had a deep aversion towards Albert’s lifelong desire.
But putting aside Albert’s wishes, he didn’t really have any other reason to not have a child.
Actually, the truth was that he had never thought about having a child before. The future that he had dreamt of had only ever included Elisha.
That was because he was happy with only her.
Plus, he had heard that pregnancy and delivery were hard on the body for women. He didn’t want to burden the already small and frail Elisha.
“I never really wanted a child. But…… .”
If she wanted a baby, and if her child was someone that looked like her, then Richard thought that it would be pretty nice to have a child.
Only, he didn’t want a child now.
For now, he wanted to be the only one who would have her attention.
He was about to say this when they both heard Thomson, who had been escorting them, saying something to someone from behind them.
“Oh, you rascal.”
When he turned around to see what was going on, he saw a child who looked like it had just started walking in Thomson’s grasp.
“Coo! Ooo!”
The baby stretched out its tiny hands towards Elisha. It looked like the baby had wanted to go to Elisha but was stopped by Thomson. When Elisha looked at the child, a smile spread on her lips.
“It looks like this little rascal wanted to say hello to Madam. I will come back after I drop this child off to its parents.”
“Then I should say hello as well. Please let the baby go.”
Thomson seemed a bit surprised at Elisha’s words, but when he recalled that Elisha had often gotten along well with the children in the Rubelin territory, he conceded and let the child go.
As the child started walking over to Elisha after it had been freed from Thomson’s grasp, its legs gave out from underneath it, and it fell flat onto the ground.
Elisha was surprised and hugged the baby after she picked it up.
“Are you okay, little baby?”
Thankfully, the baby didn’t seem to be hurt anywhere.
The baby, who didn’t know why it had fallen in the first place, stared at Elisha for a seconds before it started laughing and squealing while playfully grabbing onto Elisha’s arm.
“Aw, you didn’t even cry after you fell! You’re a big kid now!”
Elisha grinned and dusted off the dirt that was stuck on the child’s pants. Her mood had gotten better as she listened to the child’s laughter.
At that moment, a breathless young man with a pale face came running after the child.
“I- I’m so sorry. My lady. Did my child cause any trouble?”
“No, none at all.”
The man who claimed to be the child’s father worried that he had inconvenienced Elisha and bowed multiple times before he took the child and went away.
Until the distance was too great, the child stared at Elisha as it was carried away in its father’s arms.
Elisha laughed at the child and waved goodbye. Suddenly, she remembered Richard was next to her and looked back at him.
As she expected, he was looking at the child and the child’s father going away with indifferent eyes.
When she saw Richard’s reaction, Elisha felt increasingly uneasy.
The couple returned to the territory before the sun set.
Richard had gone off for something urgent at work, so after she finished taking her bath, Elisha sat alone on the swing in the garden.
She sat on the swing while holding her fist-sized bump on her stomach.
It felt nice to smell the scent from the flowers in the garden, but even the flowers couldn’t put Elisha’s uneasy heart to rest.
“I’ve never really wanted a child.”
Elisha sighed as she remembered what Richard had told her back at the lake.
When she thought about his situation, it was totally understandable for him to answer like that.
After all, he had been constantly nagged by Albert to have a child to carry on his name.
‘I really shouldn’t tell Richard about this.”
She had already expected his response, but she felt nothing but pity and bitterness for the sake of the child in her stomach.
Suddenly she remembered that she had read somewhere that the mother’s negative emotions and thoughts will have an effect on the child, so she quickly changed her thoughts.
‘Don’t worry, my baby. Mom will love you in place of your dad.’
She was still thinking this when Anne, who had been outside, returned.
“Madam, I got the medicine.”
Anne was worried about Elisha’s increasingly severe morning sickness, so she went to find the doctor to get medicine for morning sickness.
Anne placed the medicine down before Elisha. Green pills filled up a transparent bottle.
“These pills are made with herbs that will relieve your morning sickness. You just have to take a serving of medicine before each meal.”
“Thank you, Anne.”
Elisha thanked Anne as she took the bottle from Anne.
Anne only looked at Elisha with worried eyes.
“To be honest, I heard that even though people may take the same medicine, it might not work for some people, so it might not be a big help. If that’s the case with Madam, then the only solution will be to wait it out…… .”
“Well, I guess I can’t do anything about it if the medicine doesn’t work.”
“I think it will be good for you to go on walks more frequently. You even reject His Excellency’s offers to go on walks. I’m worried that Madam will suddenly faint one day.”
Anne stroked Elisha’s slender hands with tears of worry glistening in her eyes.
At that moment, Elisha heard a very faint voice from outside the arch’s door.
“Elisha.”
At the voice that came seemingly out of nowhere, Elisha was surprised and whipped around to look at the door.
Richard was standing right in front of the door.
“R- Richard?”
His shaking eyes said it all. He had heard the conversation between Anne and Elisha from just a little while earlier.
As soon as she realized this fact, Elisha’s mind went blank.
‘What should I do……?’
As Elisha sat there frozen, Richard walked up to her and pulled her into his embrace. He looked at Anne with calm eyes and talked to her in a cold voice.
“Tell me what disease Elisha has, Anne.”
‘…… Disease?’
Elisha was confused, but she came back to her senses at Richard’s words.
He hadn’t realized that she was pregnant but had thought that Elisha was sick instead.
‘Ph……ew?’
Elisha was a bit relieved at first, but when she saw Richard’s face, she quickly changed her mind.
The way that Richard was looking at Anne was similar to how a person would look at their enemy.
His glare was so cold, that if someone who didn’t know the situation saw this, they would think that Anne was the one who had caused Elisha to get sick.
“I- It’s…… .”
Anne’s face looked embarrassed as her sentence trailed off. She looked at Elisha to know what she should say.
Elisha quickly grabbed Richard’s arm.
“It’s not what you’re thinking, Richard.”
“Then what are these pills for?”
“I don’t think we should talk about this here, so let’s go talk about this in my room. I’ll explain everything there. Please?”
Richard was still deeply suspicious about the whole situation, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn down Elisha’s request.
Instead, he picked Elisha up in his arms and started to carry her. Shocked, Elisha reflexively threw her arms around Richard’s neck.
“R- Richard?”
Richard left Anne, who was frozen in place, inside the garden and made it outside the arch’s door.
After she made sure that there was nobody else around them, Elisha squirmed around a bit to let Richard know that she wanted to be let go.
“Let me go. I can walk on my ow-”
“…… you.”
Elisha stopped talking when she heard Richard’s flat voice.
Richard was looking down at her with bloodshot eyes.
Her heart sank when she saw tears glistening in his eyes.
“Are you thinking about dying by yourself in a lonely place when I’m not there?”
“…… Huh?”
Elisha was flustered.
It seemed that he still believed that she had caught some sort of terminal illness.
“Wait, Richard? I think you’re misunderstanding something here-”
“I don’t want to send you off, so if you’re going to die, then die in front of my eyes, Elisha.”
As he was whispering these words, a single tear dropped from his eyes.
But much differently from his face, his voice was almost oppressively accusing, like holding her in place like a sticky swamp.
‘I made him cry!’
Elisha was going crazy.
‘But how can someone look so pretty when they’re crying…… .’
The eyes that had been previously dry of any emotion were now glistening with tears, and his now wet eyelashes were trembling pitifully.
Although he looked very pretty crying, her heart hurt that he was crying because of her.
First, she had to wipe the tears away from his eyes.
Elisha felt her heart grow heavy with guilt as she wiped the tears away from Richard’s eyes.
“I didn’t get any kind of terminal illness. I just…… have an infection in my digestive tract, and if I’m careful with what I’m eating, I’ll get better soon. So don’t worry.”
Since she couldn’t exactly tell him that it was because of morning sickness, she decided to cover it with a condition that would have similar symptoms.
When she said this, his red eyes stared down at her. It looked like those eyes were trying to decide whether she was telling the truth or a lie.
Elisha forced a smile to tell him that she was really okay and that he should believe her.
Richard continued to gaze down at Elisha.
“Then I’ll nurse you from now on. At my side.”
For some reason the way that Richard said ‘my side’ made her slightly nervous.
After she ate her dinner, Elisha, who was lying in bed, was soaked in a cold sweat.
It was because of the thick blanket that Richard had placed on top of her, but the main reason was that……
Elisha stopped staring at the canopy on the ceiling and glanced over to her side.
Richard’s red eyes were still staring intensely at her.
“Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”
“N- No. Don’t worry about me and go to sleep.”
Elisha quickly looked away and held back a sigh.
‘Of course I’m uncomfortable. Ugh, as if that would matter now!’
After he had brought Elisha back from the garden, he did not leave Elisha’s side for a moment.
He even ate dinner with her in her bedroom and watched her eat her dinner.
Thankfully, the medicine Anne had brought for her had worked and she was able to eat at least a little bit. She was extremely glad that it had worked.
She had been able to tolerate his constant, watchful eye.
That was until he had told her that he was going to nurse her throughout the night as well.
‘Is this what he meant by nursing me?’
Richard had said that he was going to sleep in Elisha’s bed.
‘My wife is sick, so of course it makes sense that her husband would nurse her throughout the night.’
It wasn’t like she was actually sick, and even if she was actually sick, it wasn’t like he was a doctor, so he couldn’t do anything to help her. Even so, he insisted on sleeping next to her.
She had tried her best to dissuade him from taking care of her, but he had just climbed into her bed and laid down next to her.
Although she felt a bit uncomfortable, she also understood why he was making such a fuss, so she didn’t have the heart to push him away anymore.
‘If he continues to stay here, getting caught is only a matter of time.’
Her morning sickness would probably get better with time, but by then, her stomach would probably be more visible, and it would be increasingly hard to hide her pregnancy.
If he never knew, then everything would be much easier, but once he found out, there was no going back.
She didn’t want that kind of situation to ever come.
‘It’s really heartbreaking to see that you live with the painful feeling of hatred ingrained into your heart, but I really do want you to be happy…… .’
She also wished that the baby in her stomach would also be happy and grow well without getting any hate from his father.
‘In that case, there’s only one solution.’
Elisha made up her mind, and after peering over at the now-sleeping Richard’s face for a few seconds, she settled down and slowly closed her own eyes to sleep.