Deceived, Yet Drawn to You - Chapter 144

From the moment Edmund took out the report about her mother with visible hesitation, Blair had vaguely sensed it. No, perhaps she’d already foreseen it somewhere in her heart when she received the letter Count Twyford handed her.

That her mother had long since passed away, and that in uncovering her whereabouts, she’d inevitably face a cold truth.

If the contents of that letter were true, if her mother hadn’t abandoned her, then she would never have stopped at a single rescue attempt. If she were alive, she wouldn’t have given up on her even now.

Even if there had been threats from Count Twyford, the fact that no word reached her even after so many years must have had an unavoidable reason. Either something fatal had happened to her, or an insurmountable barrier beyond human will stood in the way.

“In truth, it must have been easier to believe my mother was a heartless woman who abandoned me and left. If I thought of her as a selfish person blinded by love who threw away her own child, then I could excuse myself and say that the reality I faced wasn’t my fault.”

The one who cast aside her young child was the wicked one. It meant she hadn’t been left alone because she was unworthy of love. Without clinging to that belief, she wouldn’t have survived a single day in Glassford with her sanity intact.

Resenting her mother became the pillar that supported Blair’s mind at the time. By resenting her, she found justification for her own life. With the venomous resolve that she would never live like that woman, she endured the switches her father wielded and accepted the suffocating discipline without protest. She kept carving herself down, believing that such pain was only natural if she wished to avoid corruption.

In the process, Blair stopped even recognizing how much she hurt and how lonely she was. She simply refined herself into a polished doll within the world Count Twyford designed.

Her pale fingers brushed the edge of the envelope. Cowardly as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to open it. The moment she confirmed this bundle of papers recording her mother’s desperate struggle, she feared that all the resentment she had hurled would return to her in full.

“I’m really… such a fool.”

“No, Blair.”

As she lowered her head under the weight of guilt, solid warmth covered her hand. Edmund pulled her deeply into his arms and wrapped his embrace around her small shoulders.

“You are not foolish. You survived fiercely.”

“….”

“If an adult deliberately isolates a child, how could that child possibly withstand it?”

Feeling the steady beat of his heart against her ear, Blair closed her eyes. His low voice continued, gentle yet firm, as if soothing a child.

“A child has no means to dig up the truth. You had no choice but to build a defense mechanism in order to understand and endure your reality.”

Waiting doesn’t save a person. Hope without promise slowly gnaws away at life. For the young Blair, hope wouldn’t have been salvation but poison. If she’d held onto the expectation early on that her mother would surely come for her, she would have withered away, staring out the window every morning. Every minute and second without a rescuer would have been torment.

“But Blair, that was not cowardly or foolish behavior. It was resistance to protect yourself in a suffocating environment.”

Blair, who had buried her cheek in his broad chest, lifted her face. In the eyes of the man who had endured a similar loneliness, there rested an unshakable conviction.

Perhaps this comfort didn’t apply to her alone but to Edmund as well. He too was someone who forged himself within the tragedy of his family and its ruthless order. Edmund, more than anyone, understood how desperately she had struggled simply to survive.

With that thought, the crushing sense of debt pressing on Blair’s chest gradually began to fade.

“So please don’t blame yourself too harshly. Just the fact that you didn’t collapse and endured would have given the Countess comfort. Because you survived, the life of the daughter she tried so desperately to protect continues like this.”

Edmund seeped deeply into her and erased the brand of self-reproach that had clung to her for so long. Then an unfamiliar sensation slowly rose within her. It was still too strange to call it joy, too cautious to name it relief, yet it was unmistakably close to liberation.

She would no longer cling to the past or look back. Instead, she would stand side by side with the one she loved and live brilliantly the free life her mother had so fervently wished for. That was the only way she could repay her.

“Thank you, Ed.”

“There’s no need.”

“…If it’s all right, would you read what’s inside that envelope with me? I want to face how my mother lived without turning away.”

“You don’t even need to ask me for such a thing.”

His large hand stroked her hair slowly. Savoring that gentle touch, Blair thought to herself that perhaps now, it would be all right.

***

Blair gazed at the scenery rushing past the window.

It was only the second time she’d boarded a train since reaching adulthood, yet it felt quite different from last year, when she’d followed her father down to the capital without question. It wasn’t simply because the train was heading back north this time. The air felt calmer, the scenery beyond the window gentler, and even her state of mind as she took it all in had changed.

Fortunately, the rattling vibration was less unpleasant than she’d worried. She’d reached the middle stage of pregnancy, and her body had grown quite heavy, so she might easily have tired, yet strangely she felt light, without a single ache. Thanks to Edmund’s excessive care in reserving the entire first-class compartment and arranging it as comfortably as if she were the most fastidious guest in the kingdom, the journey felt less like an ordeal and more like rest.

“Wouldn’t it be better to close your eyes for a while?”

Blair turned her head, having been gazing out at the still-unmelted snow. Edmund, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her for a single moment while she stared out the window, asked softly.

“You haven’t slept at all since we left Borsa.”

“Do you know this is already the third time you’ve said that?”

“I do. I keep saying it because you won’t listen.”

Though he replied in a grumbling tone, Edmund carefully pulled the blanket higher over her knees. His anxious concern that she might feel even the slightest discomfort on the train was evident. Blair answered only with a silent smile.

It was Blair who suggested visiting the monastery where Countess Twyford spent her final days. The thought of her traveling such a long distance by train while not alone in her body didn’t please Edmund, but how could he refuse his wife?

Moreover, when Blair insisted that she wanted to see her mother’s final resting place with her own eyes and face the scenery her mother once saw so she could send the past away without regret, he had no means of overcoming her determination.

“The baby is kicking unusually hard today.”

Blair laughed as she stroked the belly that now formed a clear curve.

“Do you think the baby can already understand its father’s nagging?”

“If the child takes after me, it will value efficiency. It will soon realize that sleeping quietly and letting its mother rest is far more advantageous than kicking.”

“Then perhaps it will be a bit stubborn too? In any case, judging by this strength, it must be a boy.”

“No matter whom the child resembles, could it possibly rival your stubbornness?”

Though he spoke in feigned reproach, the kiss that fell against Blair’s cheek was unbearably sweet. Blair rested her head on Edmund’s shoulder and turned her gaze back out the window. The train was already nearing its destination.

For her mother, who had to leave behind her child, this must have been a sorrowful journey. But for Blair, this trip was a process of healing, undertaken with the most trusted partner at her side while carrying her own child within her.

“We are almost there.”

Through the low-lying mist, the spire of the monastery gradually came into view in the distance. As she gazed at it, Blair tightly clasped Edmund’s hand.