Chapter 150

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 150
Chapter Title: Seventeen Years
-----------------------------------------------------------------

“…Why, no, I mean… Why must you do this?”

The question he hadn’t dared to ask earlier spilled from his lips like water he couldn’t swallow. Inez answered, her scowl from when she’d been cursing him still fixed on her face.

“From the very beginning, I intended to stay here for as long as I needed, regardless of what you hoped to achieve by threatening me. Whether you wanted me to leave this place tomorrow or never leave Cassel at all.”

“……”

“And if, as you say, our marriage returns to square one because of my ‘critical flaw,’ that too will happen only when I wish it.”

*If she was going to do it anyway, then it wasn't a price, was it…?* But this was no time for logic.

Alfonso wiped his dazed face with his cold hands. His mind was filled with the divorce of his young master and mistress. Written in red letters, as if they had just crawled out of hell.

“Cassel will one day learn the truth about my illness. And it will be from my own lips, no one else’s. Not because of your pathetic threats…. So you needn’t worry about whether he’ll be deceived by me for the rest of his life.”

“……”

“That won’t happen.”

As if to ask when he had ever worried about such a thing, Alfonso shook his head, aghast. *That's not the problem right now…* But Inez’s train of thought was already far ahead of his.

“If you truly wanted me to disappear from the House of Escalante, you should have examined your master’s nature dozens of times over. My illness will never be a flaw significant enough for him to cast me aside. If anything, it’s more likely to become a leash to bind him to me for life…”

“……”

“Cassel, and only Cassel, must remain ignorant until the very end. That is the only way we can take the right path you desire.”

She stated firmly, her expression now blank, the frown completely gone.

“So if you truly care for Cassel, stop using that stupid head of yours and just help me, Alfonso. I guarantee you, my desire to divorce your master is dozens of times greater than your petty loyalty that wants to kick me out of the House of Escalante.”

Though she had spoken of leaving and disappearing, the shock of hearing the explicit word ‘divorce’ was immense. Alfonso stammered,

“Señora. This, a divorce… it is a grave and dangerous idea. His Grace, the Duke of Escalante, will never allow it…”

“His sister, Her Majesty the Empress, will be the first to try and restrain me. That’s why I’m going to give them a child. A child of Escalante and Ballesteros.”

“……”

“I, too, need at least a minimal defense against ‘them.’”

“…Before a year has passed, you mean the child you said you would leave behind?”

In a world where many children did not survive even half a year, the noble houses of Ortega would only formally name a child after nine months had passed.

It was a prediction and a relief, a way of saying, *It seems you’ll live a while longer.*

And a name often brought with it codified rights. This was especially true for families with many rights and assets to divide among their descendants. The moment a child’s name was entered into the family genealogy, they became, at least in terms of property law, equivalent to an adult noble.

“Surely not…”

As if she could see right through Alfonso's suspicions, Inez gave a faint smile. It was a cool smile, but not one of genuine amusement like when she had mocked him earlier.

“Yes. Just as you think. When the child has a name.”

“…What if the child is a girl?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

*She was the only daughter of the Duke of Ballesteros, after all. What could she possibly lack?* Even so, Alfonso was a little surprised by Inez’s utterly unconcerned reply. He knew that for her, the ‘law’ was far more important than ‘property,’ but still.

“Though if it’s a son, it might be slightly more useful for both Cassel and me…”

“……”

“For now, it just needs to be ‘our’ child.”

*Could everything the Escalantes possessed be reduced to being merely ‘slightly more useful’?*

Of course, from the beginning, their union had been one of equals, with neither elevating the other. It was as if they had married solely to protect their own small, lofty world and noble bloodline.

The inheritance awaiting the eldest legitimate grandson of Escalante would be magnificently grand, even to the imperial family. Yet it made little sense for a woman planning to leave her husband—the heir of Escalante—to greedily calculate the family fortune her son would only inherit in the distant future as if it were her own.

To say it only needed to be ‘a child’ meant something like this: through the child, she likely sought a minimal framework of connection and protection from the Escalantes, and from the Ballesteros, a life free from interference.

If she simply found this marriage so dreadful that she intended to remarry, it would be better to have this marriage annulled and start anew under the name of Ballesteros. A child would be acceptable, but it would be better without one. Especially for a woman. With a child, this marriage could never be undone.

Moreover, the high nobility of the Grandes de Ortega class would rather stay married until the wife killed the husband or the husband killed the wife than get a divorce—or they would have the marriage annulled early on by pinning some disgraceful label on the other party.

For one of the seventeen great houses, divorcing by appearing in a public court was an unthinkable disgrace.

Not all nobles were the same. To them, divorce was something only lesser houses did, oblivious to the shame.

“…So, you aren’t divorcing him because you find my señor dreadful, at least.”

For the child to become a complete legal entity meant that their temporary marriage would have a permanent guarantee. Proof that, even if they were no longer husband and wife, the son of Escalante and the daughter of Ballesteros were once married.

Furthermore, even without Inez, the Ballesteros bloodline would be tied to the House of Escalante. A noble birth—the first grandson of the Duke of Escalante and the first grandson of the Duke of Ballesteros. As long as that child existed, the two families could not betray their faith in each other.

Since that was the original purpose of the marriage, the agreement would essentially be fulfilled, making it somewhat easier for her to exit…

*‘…Though I don’t know if Her Majesty the Empress would stand by and watch that happen…’*

“Why do you think that?”

“Well…”

*Because the way you look at our señor is, at times, incredibly soft...* But having just been threatened with his life, he couldn't possibly dare to say such a thing.

If he had acted according to his usual disposition, Alfonso would have immediately reported her secret to the Duke of Escalante through the butler at the main Esposa estate the moment he learned of it.

But what had sealed his lips that day was seventy percent Cassel Escalante’s soul-selling gaze as he looked at the woman before him, and the other thirty percent was that look in Inez Escalante’s eyes.

Just like her eyes now…

“What makes you so sure I don’t find Cassel Escalante dreadful?”

“It’s…”

“When I’m saying I’ll divorce him.”

“…It’s just something one can tell by looking…”

“And here you were, acting like a man who can’t see a damned thing.”

“The two of you are quite affectionate, after all.”

“What if I’m just a very good actress, like one from the opera?”

“I don’t believe that’s the case…”

Alfonso found himself speaking the truth unwittingly and flinched, expecting his señora to glare at him as if she wanted to kill him again, but she was already looking elsewhere, as if he wasn't even there.

Yes, those exact eyes. The kind that unwittingly let her guard down just by thinking of Cassel Escalante.

And then, the light in them would suddenly sink into a bleak loneliness,

“…You do care for my señor, don’t you?”

It seemed like proof that she cared for Cassel Escalante. Though it couldn’t compare to the extent to which his señor had sold his soul, it seemed to be at least that much.

Because he knew how much joy that would bring his señor.

“I see. So it was that obvious. I shall correct it.”

“Correct what?”

“That my acting was too superb.”

“…Of course, but beyond what I can see, everything you’ve said, Señora… it all sounded as if you simply desire the divorce itself.”

“The stupid fool is only perceptive about useless things.”

“Thank you, but have you thought this through enough?”

“Is being ill-mannered even in old age an incurable disease, like you…?”

Alfonso shrank back habitually and fell silent. Inez let out a short laugh.

“Seventeen years.”

“Pardon?”

“I’ve thought about it for seventeen years.”

Her answer raised many questions. First, the trivial age of six that appeared when one went back seventeen years. The dreadful length of seventeen years. And the point at which their engagement began.

“Isn’t that more than enough?”

Those days of the young lady of Ballesteros, who had supposedly chosen Cassel Escalante because he was dazzlingly handsome, claiming she would only deal with the best.

“……Surely, you didn't plan to ruin it from the very beginning?”

If that were the case, the illness she contracted along the way was hardly the issue. How could she be so impure? He stared at Inez, unable to hide his shock, and she met his gaze with a look that said it was all too obvious.

“Now you know what you should be most resentful of.”

“To Lord Cassel, who knows nothing…”

“I will compensate him.”

“With what?”

“With whatever he desires. The child will be part of that compensation.”

“……”

“Ah. Does that mean I’ll have to keep giving birth until I have a son…”

she added with a nonchalant mutter. For Cassel, freedom meant having his heir without needing to marry again... Alfonso clutched his forehead.

“Then you’d better hope you’re lucky. That a son is born within the next four or five years.”

“You know his heart, Señora.”

“……”

“And yet you intend to do something so terrible. You even plan to abandon the child before a year has passed!”

“I haven't even conceived yet, so put that look away. And I'm not abandoning the child in the middle of some marketplace; I'm leaving them at Esposa, with the Escalantes.”

Inez muttered dryly.

“Cassel and I could take the child in turns each season, or if Cassel finds the child a nuisance, I can take full responsibility. Then he can live as dissolutely as he wishes. The young lord of Escalante will grow up playing not just at Esposa but also on the manors he will one day inherit from me... It’s not as if the child will grow up never knowing their mother.”

He had no idea how far her plans had progressed in her own mind. He asked, just in case.

“……Does my señor also, by any chance, know of this plan…”

“Not in the slightest.”

“……”

“No one knows. Not even Raúl Valan.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Those who are loyal to me oppose everything I want.”

*Anyone in their right mind would...* Alfonso lowered his eyes, which were swarming with irreverent thoughts, but Inez nonchalantly held out her empty teacup again. As he unthinkingly poured her more tea, he was filled with self-doubt.

“No matter how resentful you find me, what’s done is done. So correcting it is the priority... You serve the House of Escalante more than you serve Cassel Escalante, and ultimately, you have a reason to find me unbearable, don’t you? And after your clumsy attempt to threaten me, your life and your family are now mortgaged to me.”

“…But earlier, you said you would spare my family…”

“If you have no intention of betraying me, what does it matter if the lives of your entire family are on the line?”

*Now she was just utterly shameless.*

“You are the first and only one to know of this plan, Don Alfonso.”

“……”

“Ah. That makes you another first man for me, in a way.”

The señora’s elegant face, smiling as she made that absurd analogy, looked like a demon one might see in a dream. A very bad dream, at that.

This plan should have been her weakness, yet just by hearing it, it felt as though it had all become his. Even if he went and told someone, the story was so beyond common sense that no one would believe him.

Right. This was absurd. No matter what impure dreams the daughter of Ballesteros had... Right. Surely not. Alfonso finally nodded, having rationalized that something so ridiculous could never possibly be achieved.

*What could possibly go wrong from just pretending to help that mad señora?*