10. I Am Your Husband
2023.11.10
Rumble—.
Dark clouds filled the sky as if a downpour was about to strike. Even the great Evergale estate couldn’t escape the heavens.
Yet, unlike the gloomy exterior, the mansion was as bright as midday. Inside, servants moved busily attending to their tasks. Eugene was no different, locked in his study and immersed in work.
He didn’t even notice a maid quietly entering to set down a cup of tea.
But the steam rising from the teacup briefly broke his focus.
“Why do I feel so uneasy…?”
Eventually, Eugene put down the pen he had been gripping and picked up the cup. Its handle, crafted from pure gold, bore his initials—an intricate, personal touch.
It had been a gift from Helena about half a year after they first met.
She had carefully inscribed each letter of his name, suppressing the swelling emotions inside her with painstaking care.
Her bright smile as she handed it to him now felt blurred in his memory.
“Let’s get a divorce.”
Her calm, emotionless voice kept echoing in his mind.
Eugene set down the cup and leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t even tell when or where things had gone wrong.
It had already been a week since Helena left, and he had thrown himself into work as if nothing had happened.
It had also been a week since she had begun slowly eroding his trust.
At that moment, he heard faint voices from outside—the conversation of the maids who had just delivered the tea.
“Do you think we’ll be making desserts anytime soon?”
“I guess not? The lady’s away. And the Duke doesn’t really like sweets, does he?”
“What a shame… I liked it when we got to eat whatever was left over.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I don’t mind missing out—I just hope the lady comes back soon.”
“Who said I’m missing out?”
A slightly sulking maid poked her colleague in the side. While the other rubbed her side in mock pain, the first continued after a brief pause.
“But where could she have gone on a trip all of a sudden? Alone? Maybe she needed a change of pace?”
“Who knows. Stop the nonsense and go get the ingredients from the back gate.”
The voices gradually faded as the maids walked away.
Eugene stared at his cooling tea, lost in thought.
“Helena… liked desserts?”
She usually drank weakly scented tea when they were alone, never requesting sweets or snacks. He had thought she avoided sugar, but perhaps she had only been accommodating him—making sure the sound of chewing or strong aromas didn’t bother him.
⌜When I was young, I couldn’t have imagined a place where you couldn’t even eat what you liked freely.⌟
Helena had said it as a joke back then, but her face had seemed empty.
He recalled occasional glimpses of that expression in recent times—a sight he now wished he could forget.
Trying to steady his restless mind, Eugene rose, intending to take a walk.
As he stepped outside toward the stair landing, he heard other voices from downstairs—maids carrying laundry.
One of them carefully unfolded a moss-brown satin dress.
“Don’t you think this would suit the lady? She liked this style, even if she rarely wore it to maintain the dignity of Evergale. So, what if I wore it?”
“Dream on. It only suits the lady—on us, we’d just look like fallen leaves.”
“Well, she would look beautiful even draped in rags.”
Eugene watched as the maid returned the dress to the basket.
It was plain, with barely any decoration except some puffed pleats at the waist and sleeves. He realized that, like most aristocratic women, he had always gifted Helena only lavish clothes to uphold her image as the Duchess.
Helena had been happy to receive them, filling her wardrobe with such dresses. He had assumed her tastes were no different from other women’s. Before marriage, she must have worn simple dresses due to limited means.
“I must have been wrong.”
His head grew heavier with thoughts. He quickened his pace toward the garden.
Luckily, the midday sun warmed the greenery, and walking among it helped settle his mind a little.
He stopped at a small flowerbed tucked in one corner of the garden. It wasn’t large, nor were the flowers particularly rare or exotic. Normally, she would have avoided pollen entirely, yet his gaze kept returning to it.
“Hey.”
“Ah, you’re here.”
A few steps away, two men spoke—the gardener trimming branches and the passing stablehand. Eugene hid behind a bush, listening.
When their trivial conversation ended, the stablehand sniffed the air and pointed at the flowerbed.
“Huh, these flowers seem bigger than the ones you’re trimming. They even smell better.”
“Oh, come now. Don’t compare. These are flowers the lady tended herself. She cared for them so much. Even plants can feel that.”
“Ah, these are hers? That makes sense—they’re so lovely. Even a single blade of grass receives her care—how happy the Duke must be.”
Once the men left, Eugene approached the flowerbed as if in a trance.
“Helena… cultivated this.”
The woman he knew had avoided flowers entirely. Before marriage, she had reluctantly accepted bouquets he gave, often refusing to let them be brought in.
In the mansion, she never put flowers in vases, not even in her room or the shared tea area.
This small flowerbed, barely the size of his office desk, was the only trace of Helena left after she had cut herself off from the world.
Eugene left the garden in frustration, thinking it better to bury himself in paperwork than dwell on this.
Yet, traces of Helena were everywhere. Even at the practice yard, she seemed to follow him.
Some knights taking a break from sword practice complained:
“When will the lady return? Sparring with her was our only pleasure.”
“Exactly. It feels so empty without her.”
“Yes, practicing feels pointless.”
Eugene’s pupils dilated.
Even if her taste in flowers was a misunderstanding, this—this was too much to process in half a day.
Were any of the truths he thought he knew even real?
He pushed into the group of knights.
“What’s this? Helena sparring?”
“S-Sir!”
Startled, the knights stood at attention. Eugene’s sharp gaze urged them to speak. Eventually, one stammered out the truth.
“She… has been our sparring partner for quite some time. At first, we couldn’t believe it, but she easily overpowered even the newer knights.”
“So you’re saying… Helena wielded a sword?”
“Yes, the lady—”
“Enough.”
Eugene’s brow tightened.
He, Eugene Evergale, was Helena’s husband. He was the one she loved.
Why did others seem to know her better than he did? Why were there so many sides of her he had never seen?
“Who are you, really?”
Frustration bubbled.
“Why did you hide everything from me?”
The time he had arrogantly assumed all was fine now felt bitter. Her absence grated on him. Only after she left did he notice the emptiness.
“If you won’t teach me anything else, at least teach me how to forget you.”
By the time she alighted from the last carriage, she had only a few coins left. Helena spent most of it in the market, exchanging it for blooms that could neither quench her thirst nor fill her stomach.
Clutching a bouquet, she walked toward the cemetery. The flowers were larger than what she had paid for, layers of marigolds filling the air with fragrance.
“Do you know what these flowers mean? Happiness that will inevitably come. Only good things lie ahead, miss.”
The florist, perhaps concerned about her constant grim expression, smiled and wished her luck.
The people here were always kind, despite being from one of the poorest villages in the north—a place that had sustained her childhood.
Her hometown of Preterita, now distant in memory, where the Owen family had abandoned the harsh village for the larger town of Hier once Helena had come of age, seeking a higher price for her. By chance, Eugene had noticed her.
Helena married the following year, settled briefly in Hier, and then moved to Evergale. During that time, Basil passed away.
Even in death, she could not leave her brother alone. Helena reburied him in Preterita, on land where all those she loved now rested.
Marry Owen and Basil Owen.
Slowly, she knelt before their neatly arranged headstones as gentle sunlight poured over the white marble.
“Mother, Basil. I’m here.”
Naturally, no reply came. Only a childlike, clumsily arranged wildflower bouquet had been left; Helena placed her own bouquet beside it.
“Mother, you liked these flowers, didn’t you? You said just seeing them felt like being buried in a garden. I like them too—your name is in them. Basil would have liked them too; he always said he liked what I liked.”
The day she said she was marrying because she loved Eugene, Basil had genuinely congratulated her.
Helena gently brushed the headstone engraved with Basil’s name, hoping that, though he felt only cold stone, he might sense her touch.
“At the time, I thought protecting Evergale was the only way to save you.”
On the last day of her first life, leaving the Owen household, Basil’s soft, colorful breaths still echoed in her ears.
