A Mad Lady’s Confession - Chapter 43

The question must have been unexpected, as the woman’s eyes briefly filled with surprise. But soon, it melted into a smile, as if asking what kind of thing he was saying.

“Eleanor Brynhill, that’s my name. Of course, now it’s Nielsen.”

Matthias simply looked down at the woman for a moment. From the beginning, he had thought something was strange. For a count’s daughter, the woman had too many gaps.

Her etiquette was decent enough, but it felt hastily learned, and above all, she lacked the particular arrogance or indifference typical of Römern noble offspring.

But he hadn’t tried to learn more. He hadn’t had even the minimal emotion or time needed to dig deeper. It would end in a year anyway.

However, now Matthias was genuinely curious.

Inside the box, the handbag contained only a single strange-patterned brooch wrapped in cloth. There wasn’t even a single coin to be found anywhere in the room, let alone a check. There wasn’t even the smallest emergency money that one’s family would usually provide.

The Brynhill family, who knew better than anyone that this was a one-year contract marriage, had sent the woman off without giving her any kind of safeguard.

Why hadn’t he realized it before? The woman sitting there pretending to focus on her sketchbook had her shoulders tensed tightly.

“….”

Matthias sat down beside Eleanor. The sight of a Duke and Duchess sitting down on the grass without even a blanket was probably something that had never happened since this estate was established.

A cool scent drifted from the man sitting close enough for their arms to touch. Eleanor, waiting anxiously for what he might question her about, heard him ask something else instead.

“Do you like drawing?”

His gaze turned toward the vine wall Eleanor had been sketching.

“Yes….”

This, too, was one of the few things she had been praised for by others. It was also the only thing that could be called a hobby of Eleanor’s.

Matthias, who had been quietly assessing her drawing for a moment, spoke, “You’re fairly skilled.”

“Thank you.”

After that, a brief silence passed, and when Matthias spoke again, something unexpected came out.

“I don’t eat pork. Grilled, fried, boiled, none of it. When I was very young, I happened to see a pig being slaughtered. Since then, I haven’t been able to put it in my mouth.”

“….”

“Now it’s your turn.”

As Eleanor turned to look at him, wondering what he meant, his gaze was also directed at her. As she tried to figure out his intention, a faint realization spread through her.

“Let’s call it a time for confessions. What do you think? That’s how you spend a dull afternoon.”

“….”

“Do you have anything to confess?”

He could have demanded she speak right away. Even so, if the woman kept her lips tightly sealed, he could easily dig up everything about the Brynhill family using the Nielsen’s abundant information network. But Matthias didn’t feel like doing that.

He wanted to give the woman, Eleanor Brynhill, a chance. A chance for her to speak on her own.

After a short pause, the woman hesitantly pushed out her words.

“…Um… I… I…. I really like sweet things. When I drink tea, I actually want to put in about five cubes of sugar, but I hold back every day. Since sweet things are, after all, considered extravagance and indulgence…?”

Desserts worthy of being called such rarely appeared on the Nielsen dinner table. Neither the former Duke nor Matthias himself enjoyed sweet foods. At most, there were cookies baked with raisins.

He gave a small nod and continued his confession.

“I actually don’t like the capital. If it weren’t for the summons from the imperial family, I’d be willing to stay buried in the Gammelstad estate for the rest of my life.”

“…Really?”

“To be more honest, there are more times when I find the capital disgusting.”

For a man who seemed more suited than anyone to life in the capital to say that he didn’t like it sounded like quite a secret.

For some reason, Eleanor felt as if she had to offer a confession of equal weight. For example, about the very topic the man was most curious about and waiting to hear.

Releasing the tension in the hand gripping the hem of her dress, she answered slowly, but clearly.

“Have you ever heard anything about my family?”

At the question returned to him, Matthias carefully listed what he knew. In truth, the Brynhill family was one of the noble houses in the capital with very little social interaction.

In particular, he’d heard that the previous Count Brynhill rarely stepped beyond the gates of his estate unless it was at the urgent request of the imperial family. Now, Eleanor’s older brother had inherited the title and seemed to engage in occasional exchanges, but even that was said to be passive.

He recalled the first time he met Count Brynhill to discuss the marriage with Eleanor. The man, who resembled a woman, had a pale complexion and an irritable impression.

Even while speaking, he hadn’t stopped casting probing glances at Matthias. It was by no means the gaze of a brother measuring whether he was a suitable groom for his sister. If one had to describe it, it was more like a look trying to gauge how far the other party had calculated ahead.

In any case, what he knew about the Brynhill family amounted only to these fragmentary pieces of information. Since they were a reclusive house with little interaction, anyone among the nobles of Belgar would likely give a similar answer.

“My father was a very strict man. He would get angry whenever he saw me, but even that father was said to be gentle only toward my mother. I heard the two of them were very, very close….”

Matthias quietly waited for the woman to continue. Eleanor hesitated, as if choosing her words, then spoke, “My mother died while giving birth to me. So he didn’t like me very much.”

“….”

“He said I was ominous.”

There was a time she woke from sleep and, startled to see her father standing at the foot of her bed holding a blade, nearly fainted.

“I know I’m lacking in many ways, that I’m clumsy with etiquette. No matter how much something is mended, the stitches always show. Still, I am Brynhill.”

The woman described herself as if she were a torn piece of cloth. He didn’t like that.

“And… I’ll try. For this year, I’ll do my best. So even if I look very, very lacking, could you please overlook it just a little?”

He had accepted the woman from the beginning knowing she came with shortcomings. She could have been more brazen, saying he had already agreed knowing everything.

And yet, she still says she will try.

For what reason, and for whom?

“I want to spend this year happily. …It may be presumptuous, but I hope you do as well, Your Grace. I want to make it so that you think of it as a happy time.”

“….”

Matthias Nielsen’s happiness.

Not a single person in the world, not even the countless women who said they loved him and admired him, not even his own parents, had ever spoken those words out loud.

It was something he himself had never expected either.

Because no one had ever doubted his happiness.

If not Matthias ‘Nielsen’ of Römern, if not the man who had everything, then who could possibly be happy? Everyone thought that when they looked at him.

He himself had never considered happiness to be something he needed to deliberately confirm and take care of.

The words the woman spoke now opened a space for him to look back on himself. Am I happy? Have I been happy? Have I ever truly possessed it?

“I will make you happy.”

A ticklish promise that one might say to a princess in some fairy tale pressed heavily on his heart.

Not just my happiness, but yours as well.

Those words opened a space for him to look back on himself. Am I happy? Have I been happy? Have I ever truly possessed it?

A woman who possessed nothing more than he did, nothing that would surpass what he already had or would have, confessed that she wanted him to be happy, that she would make it so. He should have scoffed lightly and dismissed it, yet for some reason, his throat felt dry.

Beneath the shade of the tree, the lukewarm summer breeze brushed over the woman’s sweat-dampened forehead and passed over her flushed cheeks. The woman’s eyes, like a cool pond, held only him.

Matthias could not laugh at the woman’s resolve. Before those words, that moment, that scent, he lost his speech like a clumsy country youth. As if he were someone receiving a confession for the first time in his life.

The man who had first suggested this time of confessions fell silent.