Maylily - Chapter 29

After finishing dinner, Maylily and the Count of Everscourt rode together in a carriage to the Cryer district. Perhaps because they sat side by side in the narrow, enclosed space, a different kind of tension from that at the meal overcame Maylily.

What if the Count tried to touch her? Even as she gazed out the carriage window at the night streets, she didn’t lower her guard, but nothing happened until the carriage arrived in front of the apartment building.

Had her cautious wish been respected?

Or perhaps the Count, through their conversation at dinner, had concluded that Maylily was neither particularly interesting nor extraordinary as a woman. After all, a man so attractive would always be surrounded by beautiful and sophisticated women.

If, by comparing her to those women, the Count had made a cold judgment and withdrawn his interest, it might actually have been fortunate.

“Careful.”

The Count stepped down from the carriage with graceful movements of his long legs and extended his large hand to Maylily. At the moment when the two shadows overlapped briefly and parted on the ground, the fragrance that brushed past her nose tightened Maylily’s tension again.

Until the last moment, the Count maintained the demeanor of a gentleman escorting a lady. Once they passed the entrance, climbed the stairs, and reached the front door, Maylily lowered the hand resting on his arm and stepped back a few paces. Only then did she feel as if she could breathe properly again.

“Thank you so much for today, for everything. Then please, return home safe…”

“I still have something left to do.”

“What? What is it…”

Maylily, who had bent her knees in a polite bow with a courteous smile, straightened awkwardly at the Count’s puzzling words. In the twilight filling the unlit hallway, the Count’s eyes shone darkly as he looked down at her.

“Since I dressed you in that gown with my own hands, it is only fitting that undressing you should also be my task.”

At the Count’s brazen yet composed words, Maylily flinched in shock and glanced around. Even though she confirmed no one was in the hallway, she couldn’t feel at ease and whispered in a small voice.

“I-I can take it off myself.”

“This fabric tears easily if mishandled.”

The Count stroked the sleeve of the dress softly as he spoke.

“If I take care of it myself…”

“If you treat my sincerity like a disposable thing, I might become a little displeased.”

“……”

Struck speechless by the Count’s veiled threat, Maylily wrestled with herself before finally letting him inside. In truth, she wasn’t confident she could take off the dress she had barely managed to put on with his help. Having shown herself to him once already, showing him again didn’t seem likely to bring disaster.

In the bedroom, Maylily lit the lamps and candles one by one. When she lit the small gas lamp on the nightstand beside the bed last, the Count’s low voice echoed in her ear.

“Come here, Maylily.”

Turning her head toward the sound, she saw the Count standing before the vanity.

Ah, that place…

The memory of standing in front of the mirror that afternoon, exposing herself to him so plainly, came rushing back. Maylily closed and opened her eyes tightly.

She so dreaded standing there again, but if she showed that she alone was conscious of what might have meant nothing to the Count, it would be all the more embarrassing. In the end, unable to voice her refusal, Maylily walked to stand before him in very slow steps.

In the mirror, Maylily stood exactly as she had that afternoon. The Count was the same.

His tall, solid body perfectly clad in a flawless suit, and above it, the sharp, smooth angle of his chin, partly revealed.

The Count’s tall face remained outside the mirror’s frame, and once again, only Maylily was reflected starkly in the glass. Every detail—her flushed cheeks tense with nerves, her uneasy, flickering eyes, her chest rising and falling with her breath—was reflected shamefully clear.

She regretted having lit every lamp in the room so brightly out of needless anxiety.

As Maylily bit her lip in distress, unsure what to do, a cold hand slid down the nape of her neck and snapped open the first hook. At the rebound, Maylily flinched slightly and her eyes darted toward the mirror.

Still, the Count’s gaze was not in the reflection. Not knowing what he was watching or what expression he wore made her anxious and afraid.

Would it be all right to say I will take care of it myself from here? How should I word it to send the Count out?

While Maylily searched desperately for a way to escape this predicament smoothly, the hooks of the dress quickly came undone one by one. At the very moment she realized, the bodice slipped from her body and fell to the floor with a thud.

Seeing herself in the mirror clad only in a corset, Maylily’s face drained pale as she wrapped her arms around her chest in haste and spun around. Unable to bear meeting the Count’s eyes in such disarray, she fixed her gaze firmly on his black bow tie.

“N-Now it’s fine. From here, I-I will take care of it myself. So please, just…”

“Maylily.”

At the same time as Maylily’s words were cut off by the low and calm voice, long fingers, with joints protruding, lifted her trembling chin. The Count’s eyes, holding a faint curl of a smile, gleamed darkly.

“Do you really think I came in here just to help with your clothes?”

“If… if not that, then why…”

As if pointing to the answer to her confusion and fear, the fingers supporting her chin slowly slid downward. Tracing along her long, slender neck, passing her collarbone without stopping, the hand that didn’t cease was sharply slapped away by Maylily.

How foolish. To believe she could persuade such an arrogant man who treated people like toys.

With the realization that she had been foolishly deceived by the Count’s gentle eyes and gentlemanly demeanor all throughout dinner, Maylily shuddered with betrayal.

“I…”

In the end, had you too been looking at me with the same eyes as everyone else?

That thought, flashing across her mind in that instant, made Maylily feel more wretched than any humiliation she had suffered at the opera company.

“I…”

“……”

With her shoulders hunched as she crossed her arms tightly over them, Maylily barely managed to part her lips with a tearful face, meeting the Count’s eyes.

“…I am not a prostitute, Count.”

It was both a weak resistance and a desperate plea. Hugh’s face, which had been quietly gazing at Maylily, who even with a face that looked as if it might shatter at a touch still didn’t avert her eyes, was wiped clean of its smile.

“I know. You are my singer.”

When Hugh gently cupped Maylily’s cheek with his palm, a faint ripple stirred in her dazed eyes.

The heart of a woman, weakened to its core by Vanessa Fritz’s attack, wavered helplessly before meaningless kindness. In this cold and ruthless city, a woman with nowhere to lean craved comfort and affection, and to worm his way into such a heart, Hugh could whisper as many sweet words as he wished.

“Not because you are a cheap woman, but because you are a special one with shining talent. That’s why I want you.”

It was the comfort she needed, a woman wounded by scornful gazes and rumors that treated her as cheap. At that hollow word, the woman finally let her tears fall, drop by drop.

“Hhh…”

As Hugh held up her small, weakly drooping face, he realized at last what it meant to feel desperate. Not because he sympathized with Maylily’s sorrow, but because her sorrow-soaked face was so beautiful that he wanted to seize it in his grasp.

To satisfy that destructive desire, Hugh began to lick away Maylily’s tears. The warm, salty tears, with the soft, sweet skin felt beneath them, only left him hungrier in the end.

“P-Please don’t.”

Maylily, who realized a beat late what was happening to her, shook her head fiercely in resistance. As Hugh pulled her face back, he strengthened the hand gripping her chin, and the woman, letting out a thin moan, clutched desperately at his firm forearm.

But the small hands that tried to push him away only fumbled powerlessly, unable to create any change. Just as it had always been in the balance of their relationship.

“Count, please…”

Tears, slipping from eyes clouded with sorrow and fear, slid down her white cheek, gathered like dew at the tip of her slender chin, and fell.

Following them, Hugh’s bluish-gray eyes, which reached the white chest swollen almost to bursting above the corset, now throbbed violently with waves of pure desire, stripped of all pretense. Breathing out a heated sigh, Hugh reached for the corset that strained to contain the woman’s breasts.