Deceived, Yet Drawn to You - Chapter 110

After a brief silence, a pained groan settled over the middle of the alley. Of the three people tangled in a mess, Rufus was pinned at the very bottom, with the women piled on top of him. They lay there for a while, unable to move.

Hannah groaned as she tried to lift her upper body, then suddenly gasped in shock. Her damp palm was stained with bright red blood.

“…What is this?”

Her gaze dropped as if pulled by gravity. A spreading red stain from the back of Rufus’s head soaked into the alley floor. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t move at all.

“H-hey…. Are you okay?”

The woman who reached out shook Rufus. His arm brushed against her calf, then fell limply back to the ground. The weight was strangely slack, devoid of strength. The woman’s lips trembled. The metallic smell of blood began to seep into the air.

“Ugh… Hannah, are you hurt anywhere?”

“…I I’m fine, but this man is strange.”

“What?”

They hurriedly began checking Rufus’s collapsed body. His face, eyes closed as if dead, was one thing, but the rapidly spreading bloodstain was alarming. Looking closer, they saw a sharp rock jutting out beneath his head.

“Wake up… wake up!”

“…Damn it! This isn’t good, Hannah. Let’s run.”

“What? Then what about him?”

“We didn’t even knock him down, so why should we care? He looks like someone high-class. If things go wrong, this could turn into something really serious. Let’s get out of here before we get blamed for nothing.”

Hannah wavered, not knowing what to do. It looked, just for a moment, like Rufus’s fingertips twitched in a spasm.

“W-wait… but shouldn’t we at least call a nearby constable?”

“If you want to call someone, you do it. I don’t want to get involved at all!”

Hannah looked between the fallen Rufus and the woman shaking her head firmly, then seemed to make up her mind and stood up. The two women clasped hands tightly and hurried away without looking back. And from the far end of the alley, the sound of someone’s footsteps began to approach.

***

Isabelle opened her eyes in the early dawn, as the morning sun was slowly brightening.

She flinched and shrugged her shoulders, then threw off the covers and sat up. From very far away came a pounding vibration. At first, it felt hazy, like a dream, but she soon realized it was the sound of someone pounding on the front door. Loud enough to sound as if they might break it down.

The fact that she and Rufus were staying in this townhouse on the outskirts of Borsa was known only to the Marchioness of Rainworth. But the marchioness never set foot here, and the errand runner who brought supplies only came quietly at set times. So it wasn’t hard to guess who would be pounding violently on the door at such an early hour.

‘Damn it…! They’ve tracked us all the way here.’

Clenching her teeth, Isabelle hurriedly slipped her feet into her slippers. Instead of heading for the front door, her steps turned toward the bedroom where Rufus was staying.

“Rufus, my child.”

She called out to her son in a hushed, urgent voice. There was no answer. Rufus was a light sleeper, so he should have woken up long ago from such noise. Growing anxious, Isabelle furrowed her brows, then finally flung open the bedroom door.

“Rufus?”

The bedroom was eerily quiet. The unmade bed was empty, and the window was tightly shut. Rufus was nowhere to be seen.

“…Rufus, where are you! This isn’t the time for games!”

Forgetting even the fact that they were supposed to be in hiding, Isabelle raised her voice. Just then, what caught her eye was the wardrobe standing wide open. She rushed over and looked inside. The wardrobe was completely empty. Even the cloak Rufus had worn when escaping Eldenvale was gone.

Isabelle burst out of the bedroom and began searching every corner of the townhouse in a frenzy. She checked the guest room, the kitchen, and the dining room on the first floor, then ran back up to the second floor and flung open every door.

But her son was nowhere to be found. Since the place had originally been used for secret affairs, it was furnished with only the bare minimum, leaving nowhere suitable to hide, yet Rufus was nowhere in sight.

Bang! Bang bang!

At that moment, along with the sound of the front door being pounded as if it might break down, a familiar voice struck her ears.

“Madam!”

There was no avoiding it now. Isabelle strode to the entrance and yanked the door handle hard. Standing right in front of her was, as expected, the captain of the guard responsible for security at the ducal residence.

“Where is Rufus right now? Where did you take my son!”

Isabelle lunged forward as if she might grab him by the collar, but the captain didn’t flinch.

“This is no time for that. You need to go to the hospital immediately.”

“A hospital? Why….”

“The young master has been in an accident.”

Her heart dropped violently. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what had happened.

“What do you mean… an accident?”

“We took him to the hospital the moment he was found, but his condition is not good. There’s no time to lose, so please hurry.”

How did this even happen? Had Edmund’s people not taken him? Isabelle’s thoughts grew more and more tangled.

She hated Edmund to the point of death for calling her only son a coward, but there was no denying that those words held truth.

Rufus would never have gone out alone in the middle of the night. He wasn’t a child with that kind of nerve. That was why this situation was even harder to understand, and the fear surging in her heart only grew stronger. Something had happened that she couldn’t explain.

Without asking anything further, Isabelle followed the captain of the guard. Around the front gate stood more than a dozen search personnel accompanying him, but none of it registered in her eyes. All the way to the hospital, she could only pray that her son would be safe.

***

The hospital building was enormous, one of the largest in the kingdom. Someone’s voice told her not to worry, that it was a large hospital equipped with state of the art medical equipment and staffed by the finest trained physicians, but Isabelle felt as if her blood were drying up.

“This way.”

The place the captain led her to was in front of the operating room that handled emergency patients. Seeing nurses rushing in and out of the operating room and faint bloodstains smeared across the floor, Isabelle nearly fainted. Was he injured badly enough to need surgery?

“My son… where is Rufus?”

She felt as if she might collapse at any moment. Just then, among the loosely gathered crowd, a man who stood out for his exceptional height caught her eye. He was facing a doctor wearing bloodstained gloves, calmly receiving a report on the situation.

It was Edmund.

Even amid the commotion all around, his characteristic composure didn’t waver at all, and that sight sent a chill crawling down Isabelle’s spine.

“You…!”

Isabelle lunged forward and grabbed Edmund by the collar.

“What did you do to Rufus!”

Yet even as she clung to him, panting harshly, Edmund remained utterly calm.

“The doctor says the surgery hasn’t finished yet, so we need to wait a little longer.”

His tone was mechanical, and even his low voice didn’t waver in the slightest.

“They say the priority right now is preserving his life. Raising your voice won’t improve the situation, so please calm down.”

“Calm down? My son was perfectly fine until last night, so why is he suddenly lying in an operating room! You… you, what did you scheme this time!”

“It wasn’t me, Mother.”

Isabelle froze for a moment. Edmund blinked slowly, looking down at her as he continued.

“Rufus did it himself.”

“What are you saying….”

“It seems he slipped out of the townhouse while you were asleep. The place the Marchioness of Rainworth prepared for her lover is not an area with good public security. Did you not tell Rufus that?”

The dry question sounded less like reproach for Rufus’s ignorance and more like blame toward Isabelle for failing to protect her son.

“…So you’re saying my son snuck out without my knowing and met with misfortune outside? At whose hands?”

“Madam.”

The captain of the guard, who had been listening quietly nearby, spoke up.

“His Grace tracked down the Marchioness of Rainworth’s hiding place and immediately ordered the surrounding area searched. During that process, we found the young master collapsed in an alley. According to the local constable, there were no signs of robbery, but… in any case, if we had found him any later, it would have been difficult for him to receive surgery in time.”

“So am I supposed to be grateful now? To the man who tried to sell my son off to that wretched place and drove him to the brink of death?”

“No. You should wait and hope for a miracle.”

Edmund stated it flatly. Only then did Isabelle fall silent. Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked toward the tightly shut doors of the operating room. As her breathing grew ragged and she swayed, someone standing nearby hurriedly supported her and guided her to a chair along the corridor.

Isabelle hated Edmund beyond words, but she no longer had the strength to argue. It was wiser to pray to God for Rufus’s safe return than to waste breath on quarrels. She clasped her hands together and steadied her breathing. As he said… all she could do now was wait.

“Your Grace, Duke Libert, are you here?”

How much time had passed? It was not long before her attention was drawn again. From the opposite corridor, a doctor approached leisurely, asking after Edmund.

Edmund nodded silently and walked over to him. Though Isabelle couldn’t hear their calm exchange, an inexplicable chill ran through her. Narrowing her eyes, she stared at him, then grabbed the captain of the guard seated beside her.

“Who is that doctor? He doesn’t look like the one performing Rufus’s surgery.”

“Ah… well….”

The captain hesitated, stumbling over his words. Isabelle rose from her seat at once. She would ask someone who wouldn’t avoid answering.

“Who is he?”

Edmund turned around. A very brief silence passed, then his lips moved slowly.

“An obstetrician gynecologist.”

“…An obstetrician?”

My son is fighting for his life right now. What kind of nonsense is this?

“Why would an obstetrician come looking for you?”

Edmund lowered his eyes briefly, then looked back at Isabelle. His reply was cruelly calm.

“Because my wife is here as well.”