Chapter 45: A New Life

One year after Harid divorced Electra, he married Livia.
However, from that point on, their lives began to tumble downward as if falling off a cliff.

They were saddled with debt, many of the servants left, and they found themselves in a harsh situation.
On top of that, the lie exposed at the wedding caused their relationship with Livia to deteriorate.
It was hardly a happy beginning.
He was also forced to hear the truth about Livia’s birth.

Livia was an illegitimate child born between Jack Farmerson, the current Duke of Farmerson, and a common woman.
However, the ducal title formally belonged to the duchess.
As a result, Livia did not carry the blood of the Farmerson house, and there was already a legitimate heir within the family.
Jack himself was originally from a marquis family.

No matter how one looked at it, to the noble houses connected to her bloodline, Livia was nothing more than an obstacle.
Clinging to them recklessly would only corner themselves further.

The reason they were driven into debt and their marriage strained was Livia’s very existence.
Yet they were not permitted to let her go.
That warning had been clearly delivered by the duchess.
If they drew the ire of a ducal house, the newly risen Carlson viscountcy would not stand a chance.
That fact had already been hammered into them thoroughly.
Harid could not oppose the will of the Duchess of Farmerson.

The one small mercy was that the duchess’s “retribution” was not aimed directly at Livia herself.
If Livia had been the true target, her life would have ended long ago.

This was a warning meant to punish Duke Jack Farmerson, who had secretly supported his mistress’s daughter.
Harid was nothing more than a “cage” meant to confine Livia.

Therefore, surely—

Even if they bore what those people considered “hardship,”
It did not mean they were forbidden from their own version of “happiness.”

They were allowed to live modestly and humbly.
It was likely deemed acceptable as “this much.”
They were neither a ducal nor a marquis house, merely a viscountcy, and that was sufficient.
They were simply tasked with enduring a difficult life within the Carlson household.
Harid would not be able to give Livia the glamorous life of a noblewoman.

Even so.

They had met on the battlefield, and Livia had been a healer running tirelessly across it to tend wounded knights.
She had grown up as an orphan, and so she would likely grow accustomed to their current life in time.

“Livia.”

Harid called out to her in the mansion.
The fake Electra, who had served as her conversational partner, was gone, and she did not speak much with the maids either.
The number of servants in the Carlson household had sharply decreased, leaving little room for such leisure.

Still, some remained in the mansion.
The head butler and head maid, who had served the Carlson family for many years, had not left.
It was not the end yet.

“……”

Since the wedding day, Harid had tried to somehow erase the rift between them.
Livia had apparently always been rather willful, but—

As time passed, she grew quieter and quieter.
One might have been glad that she had become “less troublesome,”
Yet an unease lingered.

“…Livia, I was wrong to lie.”

Even alone together, there was no hint of intimacy.
They had never shared a physical relationship, even during their courtship and engagement.
When they first met, it had been on the battlefield, which made sense.
Even during their engagement, avoiding physical intimacy was proper conduct.

After the wedding, the atmosphere between them and the state of the mansion had been so terrible that there was no room for such matters.
But now, Harid and Livia were husband and wife.

It would not have been strange to take that step.
And yet—

“Livia.”

Harid reached out to touch her cheek.
Though they had not gone further, they had shared kisses before.

However, seeing his movement, Livia flinched.
Harid stopped his hand.

In the past, he might have taken offense and grown angry at such rejection.
But now, he no longer had the energy for that.
Their worsening finances and living conditions had exhausted him.
The anxiety about the future and the sense of long hardships ahead weighed heavily on his heart.
Perhaps that was why he could look at her calmly now.

“…Livia?”
“…What?”

The lively, cheerful, devoted woman who seemed like a goddess.
That was the version of her he had fallen in love with.
Yet now, something different came into view.

“Won’t you tell me about yourself?”
“…About me?”
“Yes.
Come to think of it, we only ever told each other how wonderful the other was.
We never really knew each other, did we?”
“…There’s nothing to say about me.”

Was that really so?
Then what was this sense of unease he felt?

Livia was an attractive woman.
She was beautiful, slender though he had no complaint about that.
But what he sensed in her gestures was not rejection, but fear.

“This isn’t something that needs to happen right now.
I just want to hear how you feel and what you think.”
“……”
“…What do you think about the marital bed?”
“…The bed?”

Livia tilted her head.
Harid still found the gesture adorable.

“I mean the act between husband and wife, to have children.
We are married now, after all.
It’s not something we can avoid forever.
But the first night has long passed, so there’s no need to force it now.
Still, when it comes to having children, your thoughts as my wife matter.
I want to know how you feel about it.”

Harid himself was not even sure what he truly wanted to ask.
There was no clear intention.
He had simply sensed something in her behavior while exhausted.

“…I want children.”
“Do you really?”
“…Yes.”

That answer surprised Harid.
Somehow, he had felt that she did not want them.
Yet now she clearly said she did.

That alone made him feel that their relationship was not yet over.

“But I don’t want to do anything ‘scary.’”
“…Scary?”

Harid tilted his head.

“Doing scary things to have children.”
“…Ah.”

At that moment, he understood the source of the unease he had felt.

She was—Livia was—a child.
Her appearance was that of an adult woman.
Her actual age was likely as it appeared.

Yet something was fundamentally lacking.
Her mental growth had stopped somewhere along the way.

He had once asked the head butler and head maid for their views on Livia.
They had described her as having the traits of a “wicked woman.”
That her obsessive search for Electra was born from a desire to triumph over the former wife.
That her strong femininity manifested in such ways.

Though he had denied it verbally, Harid had also suspected that might be true.
Yet the lingering discomfort remained.

If that were the case, then—

Shouldn’t she have abandoned him now, when his future was bleak?
And yet, Livia did not leave.
Even though they were burdened with debt and a luxurious noble life was out of reach.

That was not it.

The outward feminine charm.
The oddly detached values and behavior of someone raised as an orphan.
The gap between them.

That contrast had seemed appealing.
It had certainly been enough to captivate others.
Perhaps it was charm inherited from her birth mother.
If it had been her mother, she might truly have been as she appeared.

But Livia was not.

She still possessed the mind of a child in need of protection.
If so—

“Why… were you so fixated on Electra?”

He had thought it was about triumphing over her as a woman.
But perhaps that was not the truth.

“…I was anxious.”
“Anxious?”
“I wondered what would happen if I married you someday and lived together.
I thought Electra-sama would know many things.
About you, too.
Whether you were someone it would be okay to marry.
And then—”
“And then?”
“That person who wasn’t Electra-sama… she was kind.
She praised me.
That made me happy.
I wanted her to celebrate my wedding.
But then she disappeared, and now I don’t understand anything.”

Harid buried his face in his hands.

“You wanted her to be…”

A mother figure.
From the divorced former wife, no less.
The very woman he had driven away.

“Everything always worked out for me before.
Everything.
If I wished for something, I got it.
Sweets, stuffed animals, dolls.
I was an orphan, but I was satisfied.
Yet no matter how well things went… no one ever gave me a ‘family.’
I married you, Harid-sama, and Electra-sama was kind too… I thought I was happy.
But then she turned out to be someone else, and she disappeared.”

“…Livia.
How tragic.”

What she had wanted most—what she had truly wished for—
Had been cast aside by her own will.
He had chosen his status over her when forced to choose between her and the duchess’s pressure.

There had always been something odd.
The duchess’s retribution, carried out with overwhelming authority.
And yet it resulted only in this slow suffocation through poverty.

It could have been far more severe.
Even if the true target was the duke rather than Livia,
She was still the daughter of a mistress.
There had been no need to show mercy.

It felt… too lenient.
For something done by the duchess.

Perhaps she had understood what kind of person Livia truly was.
Understood the sin and its cause.

That was why simply “not extending a hand” was punishment enough.

The duke had never fulfilled his daughter’s true wishes.
He had thought that satisfying her material desires with money was enough.
What he did was nothing but self-satisfaction.

Livia was not her mother.
No matter how expensive the gifts, what needed to be fulfilled first had never been fulfilled.

Duke Jack had made every wrong choice.
He had believed he could love his daughter the same way he loved his mistress.
That was wrong.
Everything was wrong.

“Livia.
I am your… ‘family.’”

Harid took her hand.
This time, she did not recoil in fear or reject him.

What she needed was not intimacy as lovers.
The one who could give her what she truly wanted now—
Was him alone.

At Harid’s words, Livia nodded faintly and began to cry.
Only then did he realize how exhausted she had been since the wedding day.

The “new life” of Harid and Livia was only just beginning.