As soon as he turned around, she gasped in. River’s back was full of old wounds. It looked as if someone had scratched his back dozens of times with a rake, or that he had been whipped hard.
“Then are you going to look at this and feel nauseous, too, Ellen?”
Ellen stared blankly at his back. Every time he moved, the snake-like scars on his back wriggled. While her scars looked like a hundred worms dawdling, his scars were much thicker, larger, and deeper.
Ellen unwittingly reached out her hand and fumbled with her finger the scar crossing the middle of his back. It is common for knights to have scars on their bodies, but few of the aristocratic men had such severe scars. At least that is what she knew.
“Why, why did you get this scar?”
Ellen’s voice was very low. River shrugged his shoulders.
“Because the former Duke Madison was a bastard.”
Her eyes grew bigger.
“The former Duke of Madison…isn’t he your father?”
“That’s right. I sometimes loathe the fact that I’m sharing his blood.”
He turned slowly and looked at her. A lock of disheveled hair slipped over his forehead, casting shadows over his eyes. His darkened eyes looked like a winter lake, similar to those of the current Duke of Madison. Ellen stopped breathing. His smile had faded, and his serious face was so intense that she could not look at him straight.
“Some women get frightened by these scars. Some women ran away right away. Are you going to, too, Ellen? You don’t want to see it and find it appalling? Do you want me to dress up and leave?”
Ellen took a step back. While biting her lips, she untied the laces of her corset with her still trembling hands. The hard corset fell to the floor with a heavy sound. Now Ellen’s thin, white cotton undergarments were all that was left covering her body. She pulled out her arms one after the other, and the cotton inner gown that was covering her upper body fell on the floor. All that was left now were her underpants.
While Ellen stood still, covering her chest with her left hand without saying anything, River tilted his head slightly and looked at her scar, connecting the right side of her neck, passing by her upper side, to her right arm. The scarred flank of her breast also led to her back.
“Is it a burn?”
Ellen nodded slowly.
“When did it happen?”
“Right after I was born,” she said in a small voice. It was an incident that everyone in South Horn knew about but would not speak of.
“My father wanted a son. Because he already had a daughter. I heard it was a difficult birth. Not only did my mother die giving birth to me, but the one who took her life was a daughter. South Horn didn’t need another daughter.”
Ellen was cut off. River had come before her. His hands slowly climbed up and swept back the hair covering her ear. Ellen’s body flinched as his finger stroked her damaged ear.
“So?”
“My father threw me into the fireplace. The nanny saved me.”
Sometimes she wondered why the nanny had saved her life. South Horn didn’t need her. Indeed, it might have been better if she had just died then. Many people would have been happy.
“I should thank the nanny.”
“… She died from the plague when I was five years old.”
Since then, no one had cared about her anymore. Ellen lowered her gaze. Though they were not big, there were several wounds on River’s chest and sides. Made by a knife, or an arrow, those kinds of things. Ellen slowly raised her hand to touch the wound and flinched. With her left arm covering her chest, all she could move was her scarred right hand, and somehow it felt wrong to put her hand on his body.
Noticing the hesitation, he grabbed her right hand and pulled it to his chest.
“You can touch it any time. I’m not as ashamed of my wounds as you are. This is proof that I survived. I survived longer than the bastards who did it.”
“For a man it’s fine. For a man… a scar can be his pride. Because you are a knight.”