The Secret Circumstances of the Fake Ducal Couple

Cain looked at Jane’s left hand.

“What are you doing? Don’t want to apply medicine?”

Jane couldn’t believe that Cain had brought her the medicine all by himself to put on her hand.

Jane corrected her thoughts from a moment ago. Cain wasn’t the same man he’d been seven years ago. He was still sweet. He was a good man.

His words about cheap red lines were a lie.

“What are you doing? Take off the bandage. I’ll put it on.”

Cain ignored her and popped the cap off the medicine. He tugged on her hand, and soon Cain’s fingers were running over the wound.

“Don’t be disrespected by the lesser things in the future. It dishonors the name Hastings.”

By insignificant, he meant men like Victor and Hamwulin.

“Answer.”

Cain urged her to answer, but Jane could not bring herself to say

it aloud.

The bluntness of his tone, the bluntness of his words, the carefulness of his touch, made the tip of her nose turn cold.

A small hope stirred inside her. Maybe Cain wanted to get along with her, too.

She wasn’t looking for love. She was content to be friends with him. She soon realized that it was all an illusion.

* * *

“Pack your things.”

The day after she accepted Cain’s offer for marriage, he came for her.

He didn’t enter her house, but stood in the doorway and said.

“What do you mean, pack?”

Jane, who had been working on class materials for Wolfgang, slammed a quill pen down on the table.

Realizing in hindsight that she hadn’t even greeted Cain, she bowed.

“The glory of the goddess be with you.”

Instead of returning the greeting, Cain merely shook his head. It was extremely rude, but it didn’t seem to matter to him.

“What are you doing? I thought I told you to pack your things. You don’t have anything to take with you anyways, it does look like that.”

Jane’s face cracked, but Cain didn’t seem to mind and continued his sour assessment.

“Everything you have is worthless. I’ll throw it all away and buy a new one.”

“Cain, you’ll have to explain. Why I should pack.”

Cain leaned stiffly against the door. He was dressed neatly, buttoned up to the collar, and his ungainly posture juxtaposed with his unkempt appearance was strangely arresting.

He’s really grown up.

The rumors that every woman in Embleon wanted him were now more credible. It wasn’t just the women who craved for him. Men wanted to befriend him, too.

But they wanted him for different reasons. Men wanted him out of greed for success, and women wanted him out of love.

But no one dared to discuss greed and love in front of him.

Cain wielded power and wealth that rivaled with that of a queen.

He was the youngest chairman of the noble council in the kingdom, a war hero, and a man who controlled trade and banking.

A man to be revered, a man whose arrogance was matched only by his wealth, and yet he was in a place where Jane could barely look up.

“Your gaze is unpleasant.”

I must have stared too hard. Jane glared down at him. Cain’s eyes twitched.

It was unpleasant to stare at him, and it was unpleasant to look away.

It had been a long time since he’d felt like losing his composure, and the fact that she was the one to break it made his mood plummet.

Cain knew why. It was the residue.

The drugs of his emotions. It was the kind that could never be labeled with sweet words like affection or love.

It was a mixture of vengeance, or anger, or rage, or resentment for the way she’d crushed him and harmed his family.

Not that Cain wanted revenge on Jane, for he was a gentleman.

This is where Cain cut off the branch of thought that would have led him further.

Any further thought would only lead to the conclusion that Jane was the only wrong answer, the only unsolved puzzle in his life.

It would only make him feel worse, so it was better to stop there.

“About your offer yesterday, I think you should rethink that.”

Cain’s left eyebrow arched.

“There’s nothing in it for you.”

Cain’s eyes narrowed, the pupils visible through the slits glowing with an eerie intensity.

He studied her for a long moment, sizing her up, then clicked his tongue in disbelief.

“Did you think you had a choice just because I made the offer?”

From the beginning, Cain hadn’t thought to ask Jane’s permission.

He’d done what he’d set his mind to, unconditionally, and as long as he had his way, they would marry. Even if it meant breaking up the next day.

The first day he went to visit Jane, he didn’t get her to sign the contract because he didn’t have a desk to put it on.

“Don’t think about it. Your opinion was never a consideration in the first place.”

“Cain…….”

Cain shook his head in disbelief.

“I can’t believe it. Do you still think you can hurt me? Do you believe I have any feelings left for you?”

“No.”

Jane replied dryly. She sounded like she was chopping vegetables.

“I don’t believe there are any feelings between us.”

Cain was stunned. It was ridiculous who was speaking for him.

“It’s true.”

“And I don’t believe there ever will be.”

“That’s what I’m asking, so what’s the problem? Your debt is gone, and all you have to do is make my child act like a normal human.”

I wonder what’s wrong.

My head told me that I should do as Cain said. But I hesitated to take his hand. Cain chewed on his bottom lip.

“There’s no escape on my train. If you want to get off, you’ll have to jump off a moving train, and I don’t have to tell you the consequences. Are you looking for a place to die?”

“No, it’s not something like that.”

Cain studied Jane for a moment.

It was unnerving. Her wiggly fingers.

If he looked at her any longer, he felt like he was going to pinch her fingers.

“You have a way of getting me to say the same thing four times. So Pack up.”

Cain turned away. The sound of the carriage door opening and closing followed.

Cain let out a low sigh.

His irritation was understandable. He’d accepted the offer, only to reverse it a day later.

She’d taken the money, and she’d been so ungracious.
I’d already said I’d do it, so why bother? Jane slapped her cheek with both hands as she moved to pack.

The first thing she did was pull out the duffel bag she’d used when she came up to the capital and set it on the bed.

A few changes of clothes, some of her spare cosmetics, ink and quill pens, and three books filled the bag.

Finally, Jane opened the drawer of her bedside table and pulled out a box.

It was a box wrapped in a fine handkerchief that was far beyond her means.

Her touch was very careful as she stroked the box.

Jane looked at the door as it closed behind her. It was silent outside. It seemed unlikely that Cain would ever come back into this house.

Hesitantly, she unwrapped the handkerchief with determination. Picking up the faded box, Jane lifted the lid.

A pair of pearl earrings lay delicately on the dark velvet.
They were the only jewelry she had left.

The earrings, which she hadn’t even considered selling while starving for food and begging Victor to postpone the interest payment by one day, had been bought for her on her 18th birthday by Cain.

Cain probably forgot all about them, but they were precious enough to Jane that she wrapped them in a handkerchief to protect the box they came in.

Suddenly, it hit her like a wave that the man of seven years ago was a completely different person than the man of today.

After seven years, he had become a completely different person.

There was no sunshine smile, no kind words, no heat in his eyes when he looked at her.

She should have changed as much as he had, but she hadn’t.

Jane let out a small sigh.

She replaced the lid on the box, wrapped it in her handkerchief again, and placed it in the deepest part of her suitcase.

She barely managed to close the overstuffed bag, even though she didn’t think she had anything to bring.

Just the act of packing had drained her of her energy.

She sat for a moment, staring at the many things she couldn’t fit into her bag.

Cain had told her to throw them all away, but Jane wanted to keep them all.

The carpet she’d spent months saving up for, the set of cutlery she’d debated buying hundreds of times, they were more than things to her.

They were proof that she hadn’t fallen to the bottom. They were the things that kept her alive.

“I’ll take them with me.”

Jane muttered, her voice dripping with regret, and then dropped her head in despair.

The last thing she needed was another glance from Cain as he looked around the house.

The dirty look, the unspoken pressure of disrespect, tightened her heart.

She was insensitive to pain, but she wasn’t the kind of woman to go out of her way to make it worse.

“I’m sorry, but goodbye, and thank you for everything.”

And with that, she said goodbye to her things and her home.

It was also a farewell to peace.

The life of the Duchess of Hastings could never coexist with peace.

At least not for Jane.

* * * *

The carriage drawn by four horses had reached the outskirts of town.

“We’ll stop.”

Cain knocked on the wall of the carriage. When the carriage stopped, he dismounted first and looked at Jane.

“Are we getting off here?”

“I have a quick stop to make. Follow me.”

Cain wasn’t going to wait for her, so she had to hurry. Jane diligently followed Cain, who was far ahead of her.

Near the station, there was a line of bums.

“Please help me. I haven’t had a meal yesterday or today.”

With one ear to the begging of the groggy old man, Cain pushed

past him and stood before the prostrate child.

He tapped the bowl of coins in front of him. The child raised his head as slowly as a slug.

“Uh……? Are you…… again?”

The kid’s eyes widened. Cain ignored him and pulled the check out of his arms.

Jane’s eyes widened.

He handed the boy a check of 20,000 marks.

To Cain, twenty thousand marks was literally nothing more than a cheap red line.

As Cain slipped the check into the beggar’s dented begging bowl, he looked straight at Jane.

As if to make sure she knew where she stood.

As if to tell her not to mistake his small kindness as his feelings for her.

She was a beggar to Cain, nothing more, nothing less. Jane’s heart sank.

Cain had no heart left for her. She finally accepted the truth.

* * * *

The carriage pulled up to Somnium House, the Hastings family mansion.