To My First Love, With Regret - 47

A hymn leaked out through the tightly closed doors, as if to block Ethan’s path. It cursed him, telling the black phantom that was him to depart, and prayed for the bride’s glorious future.

It must be a truly sacred and noble sight. Just as suits Lady Evelyn.

What must the woman who was finally getting the wedding she deserved be feeling right now? The image of the woman who had once been the wife of a beggar, wearing a worn veil borrowed from someone else, without a single witness, now in the arms of another man—wearing a new dress he couldn’t afford to give her and a long veil amidst countless blessings—was vivid, even with his eyes wide open.

For the noble Lady Evelyn, was this the moment everything had returned to its proper place? Was he, in the end, just the dirty mud she had stumbled into and briefly fallen into on her life’s path?

Does that woman feel like a beggar sought her out again, splashing mud and ruining her real wedding, just when she had washed her dirty clothes clean and was trying to act like a pure bride?

Whatever it was, the truth behind why his mood was as foul as being thrown into a bog was not some unknowable speculation, but one irrefutable fact:

Evelyn Sherwood was now another man’s bride.

Damn it.

Ethan tossed the cigarette he had been nervously smoking onto the stone floor and crushed it with the heel of his boot.

I could have given you a wedding like that too. If you hadn’t abandoned me.

He reached for a new cigarette, paused, and then, unable to control his rage, crumpled the innocent cigarette pack.

So, you abandoned me and chose just a doctor-nobody?

If she had chosen a prince or something, he might have been able to accept it, thinking that his humble self simply didn’t measure up to the level of the Duchess of Kentrell, and that the world was just dirty, as the world often is.

But for her to choose a mere employee who simply lanced his own father’s boils?

Then why wasn’t I good enough? If you were going to live with a wretched bastard like me eventually, then why the hell did you throw me into the mire and abandon me?

Damn it.

He had deceived himself, assuring himself that he was prepared. He had mistakenly thought that ten years of time would serve as an unbreakable dam.

But the moment he saw the face of the traitor he had loved, the dam collapsed without a trace, and all the emotions he had believed he could control surged and swallowed him whole.

This was why. This was why he had simply postponed and postponed the ruin of the Sherwoods, a ruin that could only be completed by meeting Eve.

Ethan roughly ran a hand over his face and sneered.

—Should I lock the doors from the outside and set the inside on fire? It’s the perfect environment for a massacre.

Mikey’s eyes widened. He looked around the church as if he really might light a fire, then asked:

—Should I lock the boss inside with them?

That wouldn’t be revenge, he countered, but mutual destruction. It would utterly ruin the revenge Ethan had spent ten years preparing.

Ethan slung an arm around the shoulder of his grateful subordinate who had just verbally slapped him, and patted it.

—Mikey, you might be the first person to talk about killing your boss and still live to tell the tale.

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In the banquet hall of White Cliff Hall, waiting for the reception to begin, guests clinked champagne glasses and mused over the rather unconventional wedding they had just witnessed.

—I thought that girl would remain single her whole life, you know.

—I’m glad Eve finally has her own family, but how did she end up with a man like that… Tsk, tsk…

It was a wedding that simply had to be discussed. The Duchess of Kentrell, who had once been perfectly suited to be the queen of a foreign nation, was now the wife of a commonplace doctor.

Of course, their family was steadily losing authority, and she was saddled with a scandal—a fatal tag for a lady—which had degraded her into someone who could not become a queen. However, as the Duchess who held the right to succeed to the Dukedom, aristocratic families ambitious for Kentrell would surely have been willing to overlook a fatal flaw.

It was known that she had received quite a few proposals from noble scions because of this, but she had rejected them all, acting as if she would live a solitary life. So why the sudden marriage to the family doctor? The gossips had their suspicions right away.

Could she be pregnant?

But the engagement had been announced quite a while ago, so her stomach should have been swelling by now. Yet, Lady Evelyn’s belly today was perfectly flat. That meant this was a marriage she desired.

—Does the noble young lady have a peculiar habit of falling in love with men who work in her house…

—That is a terribly consistent taste.

—Starting with the stable boy and ending with the doctor.

The only topic of conversation at today’s reception was destined to be this lopsided marriage, that is, until Lady Evelyn’s former lover showed up.

—But what exactly is the truth regarding Ethan Fairchild? Did they run away together because they were in love and are just pretending they weren’t, or was she truly kidnapped, having never been involved with him?

Even now, the truth remained shrouded in mist. At the time, the claims of the Ducal House of Kentrell and Ethan Fairchild clashed. Though the judge ultimately ruled in Fairchild’s favor, there was much controversy over whether the judge had been bribed or not.

Because of this, opinions are still divided and rumors are rampant regarding the nature of the relationship between those two individuals, even today.

Lady Evelyn, the party directly involved, had never once spoken about the incident. It seemed no one dared to ask the unapproachable young lady.

But the man…

—Tomorrow at this time? Isn’t that when the bride will be at the height of her happiness? For a Lady to desire a tryst with me at such an hour, this humble fellow cannot dare refuse. I offer my condolences to your poor groom in advance.

The scandal-monger showed up on the day his scandalous partner was making a fresh start and splattered filth onto a sacred ceremony.

—Whether he was a lover or a kidnapper, he is fundamentally a brazen brute. I feel pity only for Eve…

—We don’t know if he was a kidnapper or not, but he did murder Baron Langdon, didn’t he?

—That’s not certain either, but I believe it. To promptly frame the grandfather who raised him, escape the law, then immediately attach himself to the father who abandoned him and inherit a gang. He must be a villainous scoundrel by nature.

Tsk, tsk. An elderly noblewoman clicked her tongue upon hearing the story.

—But someone said he was wearing an air force officer’s uniform. How did a criminal become an officer?

A middle-aged noblewoman, who was chatting with her, raised her eyebrows as if she, too, found this questionable. Her husband, who had been standing beside her silently listening to the gossip, quickly interjected when a topic he was familiar with arose.

—Strictly speaking, he might not be a criminal. They say he has no record because he was never convicted.

The old woman’s face twisted into a frown.

—No doubt his father bribed someone.

—To become an officer, you need a university degree, and I hear he bought that with money too… There are rumors he bought his rank and medals as well…

—Good heavens. For both the university and the military to sell their pride for a few coins.

—But why did he join the military? A back-alley gangster can’t possibly have loyalty to the nation.

—Well, I wouldn’t know the reason for that.

When unfamiliar speculation came up, the man fell silent again. Just then, the hosts of the party entered, and the topic shifted elsewhere.

Preceding the main figures of the day, the young Duke and the Grand Duchess entered side-by-side. The guests gave the Duke thunderous applause, but they cast looks of chilling disdain toward his mother, the Grand Duchess.

‘That cunning viper.’

She had manipulated the ailing Duke, whose mind was unsound, to become the Duchess. Then, seizing the chaos after the heir’s death, she seated her own son in that position, gaining control of the Ducal House of Kentrell despite being an outsider. It was unthinkable for nobles to look kindly upon a lowborn thief who had stolen a revered family name.

In a way, it was natural for rumors to circulate that the son she bore was not the Duke’s biological child. The rumors were only dispelled because the Duchess of Kentrell herself acknowledged the boy as the legitimate heir.

—Fortunately, he doesn’t resemble his mother.

Looking at the young Duke, they felt the rumors were groundless gossip that would disappear as he grew up.

—He resembles Eve.

—He looks more like her twin than Baron Langdon did.

Lady Evelyn closely resembled her grandfather, except for her unique eye color. Therefore, the boy must have the Sherwood bloodline.

Next, the bride and groom appeared in the reception hall. The bride was so dignified it was hard to believe she was a woman who had been harassed by a gangster just before her wedding.

Like a swan that maintains its grace even in a mud puddle, Lady Evelyn was a woman born with an immaculate purity that could not be stained, no matter how much filth was thrown upon her.

The perfect posture of a lady, as if she had never made a mistake in her life, rendered all the suspicions the guests had entertained just moments ago into embarrassing errors. The moment they faced her, they forgot even what they had doubted.