Anje stared straight ahead without saying a word, but eventually, unable to contain her curiosity, she grabbed Aiden’s arm.
“Sir, what you said in my room earlier, was it true? That you thought I was beautiful all along…?”
“What would I gain by lying?”
He gripped the reins and clenched his teeth. My goodness, saying such words out loud was far more embarrassing than he had imagined.
If he hadn’t seen Anje in shock and despair earlier, he would never have been able to say something so cringe-inducing.
But right now, it was more important to dispel the doubts and anxieties lingering in her heart than to worry about his own embarrassment.
“You’re beautiful no matter what, so you don’t need to worry about whether you’ve gained weight or not, or what your waist measurement is. What matters far more is… your happiness.”
Anje’s lips quivered. No one had ever said such words to her before.
Every time she got skinnier, every inch her waist shrank, people would just compliment her, saying she looked more beautiful.
It wasn’t until she heard these words from Aiden that Anje realized she had longed to hear such things all along.
Words that affirmed her as she was.
Anje pressed her hat down slightly to hide her trembling eyelids.
“If you say so, it must be true. You’re really not the type to flatter anyone.”
“It’s not flattery. From the first moment I saw you until now, I have truly… thought you were beautiful.”
He pressed his lips together, then, trying to lighten the awkward mood, hurriedly made a joke.
“If only you didn’t look like you were smelling sewage at the wedding, you would have looked even better.”
Anje’s eyes suddenly felt dry.
“Smelling sewage? I did not make such a face! It was a sorrowful, pitiable expression, like a tragic heroine.”
“You say that because you didn’t see yourself in the mirror. From your eyes, it seemed like you wanted to kill me right then and there.”
“That thought… definitely crossed my mind. Quite a lot, actually.”
Anje quickly retorted to Aiden.
“You looked like you had swallowed a rotten egg yourself. And you criticize my expression?”
“Still, it was better than yours. Crying so much your eyes were swollen like a frog’s, your nose red as a strawberry, and your makeup smudged everywhere…”
“Ah! Stop bringing up every little detail!”
She reached out and firmly covered Aiden’s mouth. He fell silent, reminiscing quietly.
‘Even then, just a little.’
A much belated thought, but she had been cute. Like a small dog shivering in the rain.
If Anje hadn’t stopped him, he might have let slip that she had looked cute back then.
Mistaking Aiden’s muffled murmurs as him mocking her, Anje pointed out his flaws to prevent him from attacking her again.
“You, sir, wore an old military uniform to the wedding. At least I wore a newly tailored wedding dress. I thought, ‘He must really not want to marry me if he’s doing this.'”
Startled by her unexpected comment, he leaned back and removed her hand from his mouth.
“T-That’s not true.”
At that time, he did have a sense of resentment about the forced marriage. But he hadn’t dressed shabbily on purpose to insult her.
“That uniform… was the best piece of clothing I had.”
“What? Really? You don’t have a suit or anything?”
“On a farm like this, there’s no occasion to wear a suit.”
For commoners, dressing up was reserved for special occasions like weddings, funerals, or church. Since he didn’t mingle much with the villagers, he had no reason for him to spend a lot of money on a suit.
Anje, who thought that everyone had a dress or suit in their closet, stammered in surprise.
“The uniform… it looked good on you too.
Though it would have been better if it was a newer one, his broad shoulders and inverted triangle torso made him look like he was born to wear a uniform.
Despite her attempt at a compliment, Aiden pouted.
“That’s all you have to say? ‘It looked good on you’?”
“What more do you want me to say?”
“Nothing specific… I was just curious about your first impression of me.”
There should be a return for giving. Aiden subtly hoped she would offer some courtesy praise.
“My first impression? Hmm…”
Back then, she was so preoccupied with not wanting to get married that she didn’t even think about looking at him closely. Her eyes were blurred with tears, and she couldn’t see properly. She tried hard to remember his first impression.
“A man who threatened to leave my luggage behind if we didn’t depart quickly and refused to let me bring a maid…”
“That’s not wrong… but wait a minute, you called me a devil back then…”
“You laughed when I got stuck in the door after you told me to sleep outside…”
“If you’re going to edit it like that, aren’t I the only bad guy? Who was the one who warned me to be careful of the pit of hell?”
“…It was just religious advice I gave you out of concern for your afterlife?”
Anje made an awkward excuse and avoided his gaze.
“Ahem, anyway, what’s the big deal with first impressions? What’s more important is the impression you have now. The past is the past.”
He wanted to ask what impression she has of him now, But would pressing for an answer seem too ‘desperate’?
Exercising patience, he replied gently.
“That’s right. The future is more important than the past.”
At the mention of the “future,” Anje fell silent and gripped the blanket on her lap, then quickly changed the subject.
“Yes, you’re right…Ah! These trees on either side of the road, they’re the poplar trees you told me about, right?”
The tall green towers swayed with the wind, creating a soft melody. The leaves rustled, making a sound like waves crashing.
“Yes, that’s right. They look nice now, but they’re especially beautiful when they turn golden in the fall.”
“Really? Oh, and those over there… are those maple trees?”
Not entirely sure from a distance, Anje took a guess.
“Specifically, those are sugar maples. Its sap is collected and made into syrup.”
“Oh, I’ve tried that before.”
It had been syrup bought in a bottle by the cook from a merchant.
“It’s delicious on pancakes.”
Pouring syrup and butter on thin pancakes and topping them with lots of fruit…
Imagining the taste, Anje swallowed her saliva. Damn, there were too many delicious things to maintain a slim waist.
Aiden, also a fan of maple syrup, added his own experience.
“When I was a kid, we’d make taffy by putting snow in a frying pan and then dripping syrup on it.”
“That sounds fun and delicious.”
“And it made a mess of the kitchen.”
“I can imagine.”
Cleaning the sticky syrup-covered kitchen every Christmas was no small task.
Usually, Aiden would have helped his mother or grandfather clean up the kitchen, but ‘maple taffy’ was a special dessert prepared for children at Christmas.
So he was free from the tedious cleaning duty and went outside to make snowmen or snow angels.
The sight of his mother wiping his sticky lips and cheeks with a wet towel and kissing him as he came back from playing was more precious than any Christmas gift
Listening to his story, Anje murmured softly.
“That must have been nice. I envy you, Sir.”
Christmas was typically a family holiday.
But Anje’s father was always drunk and womanizing, regardless of the occasion, and he considered her a nuisance, so he gave her expensive gifts and sent her back to her room early.
The velvet dress like a dark night sea, the fur gloves and cape, the doll that closed its eyes when lying down… All things she had wanted, but she was never happy on those days.
Actually, she felt very lonely. It was the time she missed her late mother the most.
If her mother had been alive, she would have sat by her side and sung lullabies until she fell asleep, just like Aiden’s mother did, watching over her and kissing her forehead.
“This Christmas, let’s make taffy again. We have twice the manpower for cleanup now.”
Noticing her melancholic expression, Aiden suggested before the silence grew too long.
“…Sure. Oh!”
The carriage jolted over a rock on the road.
“Are you alright?”
Anje, who had leaned heavily against Aiden, flailed her arms before managing to sit upright again.
“Oh, yes. Of course.”
She was fine except that she was clinging to him too tightly.
“The weather is hot. Maybe because it’s almost summer.”
She opened her parasol belatedly, her cheeks glowing with a blush like sunlight filtering through petals.
Aiden cleared his throat a few times and then, pulling on the reins, chided the horses needlessly.
“Whoa, slow down a bit. They’re so reckless.”
Having been used to pulling farm equipment recently, the horses were excited to run. If the driver wasn’t careful, they would speed up on their own.
* * * *
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