‘At this hour…?’
It was far too late for an unmarried man and woman to meet in private.
And not just once, but every day.
The thought of facing this man—whose very presence was suffocating—in this confined space for the foreseeable future was impossible to accept.
“What are we going to do here?” Merdi asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“If the symptoms are physical, then the solution must also be physical, no?” he replied, his tone dismissive.
He spoke as if it were of no consequence.
Insult and shame sent a hot flush across Merdi’s pale cheeks.
He would never have been so crude with a lady from a more reputable family.
“Your symptoms are nothing more than anxiety about the unknown.
As you grow accustomed to it, step by step, the feelings will naturally fade.”
Merdi knew he was wrong.
This wasn’t some simple anxiety; she couldn’t define it precisely, but it was much closer to pure repulsion.
However, since she couldn’t very well scream that she despised him, Merdi swallowed her rage with a quiet sigh.
“How, exactly, do you intend for me to ‘get used to it’?”
“First, we’ll brush against each other.
Then touch.
Later, we’ll hold one another… and intertwine.”
The suggestive explanation made Merdi’s face burn.
In moments like these, she hated how easily her skin betrayed her.
As if sensing her humiliation, Clifton let out a low chuckle.
But the voice that followed was glacial.
“Don’t worry.
Nothing you’re imagining will happen.”
He continued, “I’m not doing this for pleasure.
And for the record, I have little interest in that scrawny body of yours.”
The casual cruelty in his tone, as if he were appraising livestock, made her face flush for an entirely different reason: pure, unadulterated rage.
‘Insufferable man.’
She cursed him in the silence of her mind.
The rage was a tide, flushing her skin and staining her lips a furious red where she bit down on them.
Clifton’s gaze dropped to her mouth, lingering on the stark red of her lips against the white of her teeth.
The look in his narrowed eyes darkened.
“But you had best conduct yourself properly.”
The successive, dagger-like words left Merdi feeling dizzy, as if she’d been struck across the face.
The air around Clifton grew heavy, his earlier coldness settling into something far more menacing.
“From now on, you are forbidden from sleeping in that hut.”
She remained silent, unable to protest.
“The same goes for being unnecessarily familiar with other men.
I have no intention of tolerating any more scandals attached to your name.”
She could accept responsibility for the hut, but his second accusation made Merdi’s brow furrow.
“I have never behaved so poorly as to warrant such a warning, Your Grace.”
He was the only man who had ever existed for her.
In body and in heart, there had only ever been Clifton Mayall de Greenfield—a fact that made her despise her past self.
If there had been even one whisper of scandal with another man, this accusation wouldn’t sting with such injustice.
“If I were you, I would forgo the questions and instead recall the debt my family owes.
I would be more cautious.”
The mention of the debt silenced her.
“That is the very definition of responsibility.”
After a pause, he added, “You may return to your quarters for today.
I still have work to attend to.”
At the abrupt dismissal, Merdi could not muster a retort.
She had no choice but to rise from her seat.
Leaving his office, she trudged down the empty hallway.
A wave of nausea churned in her stomach, more potent than the dread that had plagued her all day.
He hadn’t even touched her, yet she felt sick.
Merdi leaned against a window, fighting to keep the bile down.
“If I were you, I would forgo the questions and instead recall the debt my family owes.”
And compared to what was to come, this was nothing.
The next day, Merdi went to the stables as soon as the sun rose.
She planned to check on the sheep before her art tutor arrived.
The Matriarch, Margaret, loathed her visits to the sheep pen, so Merdi could only go now, while the old woman was still confined to her bedroom.
‘Not that it matters.
She despises nearly everything I do.’
Margaret particularly hated animals.
The mere thought of being near any creature other than a horse made her shudder with disgust.
She was convinced that only butchers and shepherds, the lowest of commoners, associated with beasts.
Even so, Merdi could not abandon this small ritual.
If she lost access to the sheep, the one place she could breathe, she would have suffocated long ago in the gilded cage of Greenfield.
The sheep pen was her lifeline.
Still, wanting to avoid the Grand Dame’s wrath, she had spent a great deal of time perfecting her stealth.
Now, she was caught only once or twice out of every ten attempts—a result Merdi was quite satisfied with.
It was thanks to this routine that she had found the one person in all of tedious Greenfield she could actually talk to.
“Lady Langlen!”
As she walked across the wide, dew-kissed field, someone waved from beyond the white fence.
Merdi returned the wave.
“Vincent!”
It was Vincent, the stableman.
He had arrived at Greenfield around the same time she had, and they were the same age.
Vincent had originally come as a stable hand for the horse trainer, but when Clifton left for the war with most of the staff, he was left to manage the stables alone.
Then one day, Merdi’s sheep took up residence in a corner of his stables, and she naturally became a frequent visitor.
At first, Vincent had been uncomfortable with her presence.
But his wariness proved futile against Merdi’s unexpectedly easygoing nature.
They exchanged a few words, then a few more, and soon became friends.
Merdi had found Vincent peculiar herself—polite one moment, prickly the next—but their frequent encounters revealed a simpler truth: he was a good person.
Above all, she was grateful to him for taking such good care of the sheep, despite the extra work it created.
And thanks to his help, she was still able to visit them in the hut where they’d been moved, away from Margaret’s prying eyes.
As Merdi approached the stables, Vincent vaulted the fence and hurried toward her.
But his agile movements were at odds with the way he nervously clutched his hunting cap in his hands.
“Um, my lady… has everything been alright lately?”
‘Alright?’
It took her only a moment to understand his meaning.
“You traitor!” Her voice rose, the memory of that awful night still fresh.
A few days ago, she had returned to Greenfield unannounced, fallen asleep in the sheep pen, and woken to find Clifton looming over her.
Vincent flinched and bowed low.
“I’m sorry!
But I had no choice.
If the Grand Dame had found you asleep there, you would have been in terrible trouble.
And… you might have been locked in that room again.”
Merdi sighed, her anger deflating.
Who was to blame?
Vincent had been horrified when he learned that her punishment for misbehavior was being locked in the Room of Repentance.
He had overheard the maids discussing it and had turned pale, asking her if it was true.
She could have lied to save her pride, but the truth was too miserable to deny.
Her silence had been his answer.
After that, Vincent always wore a troubled expression whenever she visited the hut.
“Raise your head, Vincent,” she said softly.
“I know you told him because you were worried about me.
But don’t ever do that again.”
He remained silent, looking guilty.
“If I hadn’t gone straight to the sheep that day…” Merdi’s words caught in her throat as the gloomy emotions of that afternoon resurfaced.
‘I might have gone to the top of that high bridge.’
She pushed the memory down.
“It would have been very difficult for me.”
“My lady…” Vincent murmured, his face etched with concern.
Merdi forced a small smile.
“If you’re truly sorry, then promise you’ll never speak of me to anyone else again!”
“Yes!
I swear I’ll never act on my own again,” he declared, his tone as serious as a knight swearing fealty.
The sight made Merdi burst out laughing.
She had tried to hold it in, but his earnest gravity was too much.
“Haha!
All right, that’s enough.
Let’s go to the hut.
I want to brush the sheep’s wool myself today.”
With that, she took off across the field.
As she ran, her reddish-gold hair streamed behind her like a banner in the wind.
Vincent watched, his face flushing the color of a sun-ripened peach.