“Yes. Anna, say hello.”
Anna, who had been behind Rubio, came trotting out and greeted Maria, and the woman smiled with satisfaction. For Maria, who had looked after Téllez since he was a child, the fact that he had finally married Rubio after that long engagement felt like a weight lifted off her own shoulders.
“You must be worn out from the long journey.”
“I expect so. We’ve heated bath water for you, so go on up.” At Téllez’s words, Maria made a fuss and led Rubio up the central staircase.
“Ah…….”
Rubio hesitated for a moment and looked back. Téllez, smiling gently as always, was waving a hand at him.
“Then I’ll see you tonight.”
It was the moment it truly sank in that he had come to this man’s house. Rubio nodded and followed Maria toward the inner chambers on the second floor.
All along the long corridor, portraits of the ancestors hung in a row. Because carpet covered the floor, their footsteps made almost no sound.
Maria walked inward and opened the bedroom door.
Rubio slowly looked over the interior. The spacious room, decorated with splendid tapestries, was a little larger than the room he had used at de la Rosa.
On the walls was the Téllez crest, and here and there stood luxurious furniture decorated with gold leaf and jewels. Perhaps because firewood had been laid in advance, a fire burned in the fireplace and warmth hung in the air.
“This is the room you will use, Lord Rubio.”
Though it was late afternoon, it was somehow dark, and that was one puzzling thing. Without a word, Rubio went to the window and drew the curtain slightly aside.
The sunlight is so bright, so why are the curtains drawn? And what are all these candles, already?
When Rubio, looking around the room, said nothing, Maria grew impatient and asked.
“You don’t like it, by any chance?”
At her question, Rubio murmured, “No, it’s not that…….” and picked up an object that had been by the bed. Something small was inside a silk pouch.
“What’s this?”
“Oh my, I told them to put it in the pillowcase.” Maria answered with an embarrassed smile.
“It’s a charm.”
“A charm?”
“Yes, we prepared one suitable to keep in a bedroom.” Anna was like that too; are prayers not enough?
The servants really were zealous about strange things. Thinking that to himself, Rubio was losing interest and turning his head away when Maria came close to him and whispered.
“They say a baby will take hold in a single try.” “……!”
Seeing Rubio’s cheeks flare red, Maria pulled her head back with a snicker.
“His Grace loathes superstition, so please turn a blind eye. Just think of the retainers who wait only for the day a young heir is born to the master and his spouse…….”
“Ah, I get it, that’s enough. Leave only Anna and go out now.” Only then did Rubio recall the possibility that awaited him tonight. No, rather than a possibility, it was a scheduled event.
So this was why the bedroom had this atmosphere: because of the wedding night.
“We’ve prepared bath water inside, so please use it at your leisure. Then we’ll be waiting outside.” Maria, smiling again as if the young master were adorable, led the servants who had followed her out. Anna, who had been standing behind, quietly glanced around the room and murmured.
“Aren’t the curtain colors too dark? The young master likes bright things.”
“That’s not the problem right now.”
Seeing Rubio buried in the sofa with a bewildered face, she murmured, well, true.
“If the bridal chamber is too bright, it kills the mood. It should be dark and dim like this so you can’t see well and won’t be embarrassed, and also…….”
“Anna! There’s nothing you won’t say, you brazen thing. How dare you tease your master?”
When Rubio glared and raised his voice a little, Anna whispered with a face exactly like Maria’s.
“Now, Lord Rubi. How could I? I’m only saying it because I’m looking forward to tonight.” How could Mother trust a girl like this so completely and attach her to me?
At the sudden thought, Rubio’s head ached, and he sank deep into the back of the sofa. Watching her master squirming about like a caterpillar, Anna offered a comfort that was no comfort.
“Think of it as enjoying something that’s going to happen anyway. And completely, completely unlike what you were worried about, His Grace is so handsome and good-looking, isn’t he? And with that build, his size must be extraordinary too, so like Maria said, in one shot…”
“You get out too!”
Rubio snapped, and Anna slipped out, closing the bedroom door behind her, saying she would send the other servants in.
“Honestly, she’s no help at all…….”
Pressing at his throbbing head, Rubio let out a deep sigh. When he thought about it, everyone had only pushed his marriage forward; there was no one who would pull him out of this swamp of a marriage.
And what about the man he had trusted as his last hope?
He had given him nothing but his name, Pedro, fooled him completely, and brought him all the way here in the end. In Rubio’s view, this was practically a kidnapping. The thought that tonight he would have to give his body to that man, with no way to resist, made his anger flare up all over again.
“He was a bad man.”
Rubio, draped halfway over the sofa, grumbled curses at his husband.
But as Anna said, nothing would change. It was depressing to have to accept this fate, but there was nothing for it. He was the child of a great noble house, raised with a proper family education, and he knew what his duty was.
Though he had never done it, he was an omega, so surely with the help of pheromones he would be able to open his body.
And after taking the man in, he would conceive, as everyone was waiting for…….
His inexperienced imagination skipped nearly the entire middle of the process, but he could roughly predict what the coming night would be like.
When the sun set, that man would enter the inner chamber, and the Téllez retainers and those who had followed Rubio from de la Rosa would stand guard outside the door until the night had fully passed.
It was nothing to be ashamed of. Every political marriage among the nobility was like this, and his case was no different.
So he had no choice but to endure it, however mortifying and embarrassing…….
As Rubio sat brooding, one of the servants who had come in in Anna’s place asked him.
“If you’re tired, shall we come back in a little later?”
“……No.”
If it had to be done anyway, it was better to get it over with quickly.
Having steeled himself, Rubio rose. There was nowhere to run, so he had no choice but to face it head-on.
“Then we’ll prepare the bath water.”
“All right.”
When Rubio nodded, the servants bustled about. And in the blink of an eye, he was sitting in a marble bath, being attended in his bath.
“Is the water too hot?” “…….”
“Lord Rubio?”
The servants spoke to the bride, who was glaring with his eyes wide open as if concentrating on something, but no answer came back. The servants looked at Rubio with puzzled faces.
In truth, Rubio, sitting in the huge bath, had turned composed, as if he had never been troubled at all: The wedding night is nothing special. Nothing special, right?
He was brainwashing himself.
What was the big deal about lying with someone once? As Anna said, if he could conceive in a single try, that would be fine too. The only purpose of the wedding night was to get an heir.
‘I am ready to have sex……!’ Having made his solemn resolution, Rubio shot up out of the bath.
Splash! The servants, drenched by the water from Rubio’s sudden rising, opened their eyes round.
His wet blond hair hung in artful disarray, and only the flush blooming on his soft cheeks, fingertips, and every joint told that he was a living human being. In the steam, his pale body shone like a sculpture.
‘How can he be so beautiful. Lord Rubio really is an angel incarnate…….’ A noisy conversation passed through the servants’ eyes. Maintaining the expressionless faces they had honed over long years, they slathered fragrant oil all over the body of Rubio, who had lain back down.
Only Rubio kept his eyes squeezed shut with a complicated face.
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