INDC 25

~Chapter 25~

I Only Need the Duke’s Child Episode 25. The Uncrossable Wall Between Them

His voice, lowered more than usual, seemed to press down even the surrounding air.

Blair first sent Lina, who looked troubled standing between them, to go eat, then entered the room together with Herdin.
“I was worried when you left even the carriage and knights behind.”

At first glance, Herdin sounded as though he were genuinely concerned for her, but the look in his eyes held more suspicion than worry.

The moment she met that gaze, his voice from some time ago resurfaced in her mind.
‘How could I possibly trust you?’

He was suspecting her again.

The moment she realized that fact, her emotions surged up.

The sight of him, who had not shown his face for half a month, now revealing such blatant suspicion after a single outing reminded her of the past.
“Isn’t it simply because you can’t trust me?”

Her voice came out sharp, impossible to hide.

In the past, Blair would have watched his mood anxiously, worried whether she had offended him, but not anymore.

Ignoring his feelings, Blair continued in a sarcastic tone.
“Because you’re uneasy about what I might be plotting behind your back?”

At that, Herdin’s brow slightly furrowed.

It was the first time he had seen Blair look this sharp.

Meeting the violet eyes filled with resentment, he let out a hollow laugh.

If you already know that, why do you keep acting so suspicious?

The doubts that had piled up until now burst out on their own like sharp blades.
“If you know that, then from now on bring knights with you wherever you go.

So I won’t have to feel uneasy anymore.”

Herdin, spitting out each word as if chewing them, stopped when he saw the redness around Blair’s eyes.

He let out a sigh, covered his eyes with a large hand, then slowly opened them again.

His Adam’s apple moved as he forced his emotions down with difficulty.
“I—”

Before Blair could raise her voice further, Herdin spoke in a restrained voice and turned away.
“…Wash up and come down.

You must be hungry.”

Blair watched his back as he left the room before she could stop him.

Over that back, memories of the past suddenly overlapped.

He had always been like this.

They would raise their voices at each other, and then at some point he would stop and walk away.

As if avoiding letting the gulf between their emotions grow deeper.

Even though her heart remained completely tangled and suffocated.

Without realizing that such behavior only dug the emotional gap even deeper.

Blair could only watch his retreating figure.

His broad back growing distant, the door closing coldly.

That was the wall between the two of them that could never be crossed.

Before her regression, she had been too afraid to open that door and had turned away.

She had feared that if she opened the door, grabbed him, shouted, cried, and clashed with him, only their end would remain after that conflict.

So she had never opened that door in the end.

But…

‘I don’t want that anymore.’

In the eyes of the woman who swallowed the tears that threatened to spill at any moment, the extinguished fireplace came into view.

Blair stared at it for a moment, then slowly walked toward it.
* * *
Herdin, who had gone down to the dining room first, was drinking an aperitif while waiting for Blair.

It was already his fifth glass.

As he quenched the burning in his throat, Herdin recalled what had happened earlier.

The reddened eyes, the trembling body, the quickening breath, the woman who looked as if she would collapse at the slightest touch.

Even though he could not have pressed her further for fear she might collapse, why had he revealed his emotions?

How foolish.

Even in that moment, the sight of himself wanting to check whether she carried the scent of another man made him laugh bitterly.

If there was another man, so what?

The moment that thought reached his mind, his blood turned cold.

He gulped down the aperitif like whiskey and set the empty glass down.

But Mason, who had been standing behind him and refilling the glass immediately each time, showed no sign of moving.

Herdin called him in a somewhat irritated voice.
“Mason.”

Only then did Mason approach and skillfully refill the glass.

A concerned remark followed.
“If you keep drinking on an empty stomach, you’ll ruin it.”

At his nagging, Herdin let out a small laugh for the first time since entering the dining room.
“You must still see me as a foolish twelve-year-old child.”

“If you were twelve, you wouldn’t be drinking at all, so I wouldn’t need to worry like this.”

“…You really are like a dull old man.”

Herdin scolded Mason for taking his joke seriously, but there was no anger in his voice.

Because he remembered the effort Mason had made to raise the twelve-year-old boy who had lost his parents into the adult head of a great house he had become today.

But it was just as he lifted the refilled glass.

The closed dining room door suddenly burst open without warning, and Ruth rushed in.
“Your Grace!”

Urgency filled Ruth’s voice.

Herdin stopped tilting the glass and looked at him with a frown.

A bad premonition arose.
“Madam… has collapsed.”

And the premonition proved exactly right.
* * *
Melly waited for her mistress in the bathroom to assist with her bath while Lina had gone to change her clothes after returning from outside.

Blair had said changing clothes was fine and told her to wait in the bathroom.

But even after a long time passed, Blair did not come.

‘Could she be struggling with a difficult dress to change out of?’

With that worried thought, Melly left the bathroom and headed back to the room when suddenly Herdin’s expression from earlier, when he had come out of Blair’s room, came to mind.

Usually, despite his handsome face, Herdin carried a cold aura that made it difficult to approach him, but earlier he had emitted a chill that went beyond coldness.

So cold that even the surrounding air seemed to hold its breath.

And when Melly had entered to attend to Blair, Blair had turned her back to her and refused to show her face.

Yet that back somehow looked unstable.

It even seemed that the voice telling her to wait in the bathroom had trembled.

The uneasy premonition that surfaced belatedly quickened Melly’s steps.

Almost running, Melly reached Blair’s room and knocked on the door, but there was no reply from inside.

Unable to wait any longer, she opened the door and entered, and warm heat brushed against her skin.

The fireplace, which had been extinguished before Melly left, was now burning fiercely.

And in front of it…

“My goodness, Madam!”

Blair lay collapsed in front of the fireplace, unconscious.

Herdin rushed upstairs as soon as he heard the news, followed by the physician.
“It seems she lost consciousness temporarily due to emotional shock.

There are no other abnormalities, so she should be fine if she rests.”

After the physician finished the examination and left, silence fell over the room.

The one who broke that silence was Lina’s crying.
“Your Highness…”

Lina could not bring herself to approach Blair’s side where Herdin sat, and simply sobbed while sniffing back tears and snot.

Herdin’s expression hardened when he heard the title slip from Lina’s mouth.

It had already been more than a month since Blair had become his wife, yet she still called her “Your Highness.”

Even the sniffling sound of crying irritated him.

Without turning around, Herdin gave an order.
“…Ruth.

Take her out.”

Noticing Herdin’s mood was poor, Ruth quickly led Lina and Melly out of the room.

Finally, only the two of them remained.

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Blair’s pale face looked even more bloodless than usual.

Even so, her expression was peaceful.

Seeing the woman who had turned the entire mansion upside down sleeping alone with such a peaceful face made anger rise within him.

A woman who was too afraid of fire to even approach a fireplace had collapsed in front of one.

He could not understand it.

‘Could it be…’

Just as Herdin tried to guess the reason—

Blair’s tightly closed eyelids moved, and she opened her eyes.

Blair’s slowly blinking eyes turned toward Herdin beside her.

The moment their eyes met, the first emotion he felt was relief.

The anger that had been surging moments ago vanished in vain.

Blair stared at him quietly before speaking.
“…Did I faint?”

“You knew this would happen and still approached the fireplace on purpose?”

“I wanted to recover my memories.

It’s not something I can bury forever by pretending not to know…”

The moment the word “memories” left her lips, his heart sank.

A woman who was afraid even to light the fireplace in winter had lit it herself.

Because of those memories.

Because he had suspected and pressured her.

Her voice carried no resentment.

Or perhaps she was simply too exhausted from the earlier incident to become angry anymore.

Herdin clenched his fist so tightly that the veins on the back of his hand bulged.
“Even so, there is no need to find them in such a reckless way.

So don’t ever do something like this again.”

Over his cold voice overlapped memories from her previous life.

It had been the same back then.

When she learned he had pretended to love her in order to uncover the truth from her, and when she realized he was distancing himself because there was no longer any chance of that.

Back then too, Blair had recklessly undergone hypnosis on her own and fallen ill afterward, and Herdin had scolded her when she woke up.

Just like now.
‘Don’t do anything anymore.

Just stay still.

Like you always have.’

The memory of the day she stopped clashing with him any further, afraid of reaching the end with him.

But now, she did not want that anymore.
“…What if I never recover my memories for the rest of my life?”

“There will be other methods.

Isn’t Lady Loreline working on it?”

“So you want me to keep arousing your suspicion while believing that memories that haven’t returned for ten years will come back after a few conversations?”

Blair’s calm voice rose strangely.

At the same time, her breathing grew quicker.