Chapter 27

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“Are you the owner of the bakery?”

He only asked, but the woman dropped what she was holding. Objects fell to the floor which made a dull sound.

At the same time, a sharp pain piercing his head spread throughout his body.

Alexis unconsciously took a step forward to find something to support him.

The woman standing over the bar looked frightened and took a step back from him. Alexis bit his teeth in order to not reveal the pain that engulfed his whole body.

***

The apple pie and milk fell to the floor and made a mess.

It needed to be cleaned quickly, but Kathleen couldn’t move.

Alexis Walten, his eyes seemed to have frozen her whole body.

Taking a step back in fear, Kathleen soon noticed the strangeness.

He didn’t seem to recognize her, even though he saw her head-on from a distance. Besides, what did he mean looking for a cream maker?

Three years passed, and she even dyed her hair, but Kathleen’s face had not changed at all.

Unless he suffered from amnesia, he couldn’t recognize her, someone whom he had spent at least a year with as a couple, and not just a passing person. Alexis treated her like a stranger.

It wasn’t strange for him to come to the bakery and ask how to make cream, but for that to be the first thing to say after seeing his runaway wife for the first time in three years wasn’t normal.

‘Did you drink?’

Alexis Walten, whom Kathleen knew, was not a drinker, but three years was quite a long time, so his tastes may have changed.

If that was the case, then that was good. It meant that he wouldn’t even remember what her hair was like when she was a maid at the Duke’s house, and he wouldn’t notice her voice.

“No. The owner is different…!”

But before she could finish her words, Alexis fell to the floor as soon as he took a step.

His body collapsed on the wooden floor with a rough and horrible sound, and then silence.

Kathleen held her breath and she was frozen. As she stood frozen like that.

She heard a baby’s cry, and the back door opened.

“Kelly, how is your business? Mr. Browning said he couldn’t come because of an urgent matter. So we get to eat more apple pie… huh?”

“Joseph, give me Luci.”

Kathleen was almost running as she snatched her son from Joseph and hugged him. As he felt his mother’s arms, Luci stopped crying, but his heart pounded like a warning sign.

The only thought in her mind was that she couldn’t let Luci be taken by him.

“Wait, Kelly, what is that? Is that a person?”

But when Joseph found the man collapsed on the floor, he bounced off like an arrow. Kathleen couldn’t tell him.

“Uh….”

After checking the man’s face, Joseph froze. At that moment, she explained in a low voice, fearing that Alexis might wake up.

“He suddenly fell down like that while talking to me. But since he didn’t recognize me, I think he’s probably drunk.”

“He didn’t recognize you?”

“Yes. Let’s get out of here before he comes to his senses.”

Joseph immediately followed her and stood up. He supported Kathleen, who was about to fall because of her shaking legs, and took her home.

“Kelly, are you okay?”

While holding Luci for a long time, Joseph anxiously asked her, whose face had turned white.

“Drink some warm water.”

“How did he know?”

The eyes that were staring at her kept coming back to her.

Then he collapsed helplessly.

“He asked me if I was the bakery owner and he was looking for someone to make cream.”

“It’s strange. Was he really drunk? If he was that out of it he must have drunk quite a bit, but he didn’t smell like alcohol.”

Then someone knocked on the door.

Kathleen was visibly startled, wondering if it was him. Then Joseph got up.

“Sit down.”

He whispered, carefully examining the visitor out the window.

“It’s Mr. Browning.”

As he said, Mr. Browning’s voice was heard.

“Joseph, are you home?”

Joseph asked for Kathleen’s permission with his eyes. Kathleen hugged Luci a little tighter and nodded her head slightly. He opened the door part way so that Kathleen could not be seen from the outside.

“Yes, Mr. Browning. How are you doing? I thought you said there was an emergency earlier?”

“Oh, the chickens escaped, and Mr. Anderson’s shepherd dog next door brought them back and found them. The coop is locked, so they won’t be able to escape again.”

“That’s great. But what did you come here for?”

“Ah! So I just came back from the bakery, and someone was collapsed on the floor.”

“Aha. Some drunkard must have entered the wrong house.”

“Well, I wondered if that was the case too, but when I got closer and touched him, his body was boiling hot. He didn’t look like a drunken person. Could it be that he’s a patient who came to see Joseph?”

“What?”

Since Joseph could also perform simple medicine, he would sometimes treat the villagers for bruises, colds, and headaches. So people knew him as a healer.

“He looks like an outsider, but his condition seems rather serious. You better come down and take a look.”

“Oh, I see. Alright.”

Joseph turned around and sent him back.

Kathleen listened to the conversation as she sat motionlessly. Joseph approached her and asked.

“Kelly, what should we do?”

“…..”

“I will do whatever you want.”

His face showed emotions that he could not hide. As if he was worried that she would ask to take the Duke of Walten’s life.

Kathleen repeatedly tried to speak but couldn’t, eventually, she was finally able to open her mouth to answer.

“…Just lower the fever. Don’t make him wake up.”

“Alright.”

A moment of relief flashed across Joseph’s face.

“I will be back soon.”

He went down the hill towards the store. As Kathleen looked at Luci’s sleeping face, she recalled an incident from the past.

A night when Alexis Walten went out of his mind due to a fever.

That day, Kathleen made a mistake due to her wrong choice. The child in her arms was precious enough to bring tears to her eyes as she gazed at him, but not the child’s father.

Alexis Walten was like a soap bubble.

He was so beautiful and enchanting that if you reached out, it would disappear as soon as you touched it.

And since she couldn’t hold it in her hand, she stared at it endlessly, as it passed by her and left.

After a long time of struggling with her heartbreaking vain hopes, Kathleen learned a painful lesson.

‘I’ll never make that mistake again.’

She was determined. She wanted to live only as a mother to her child.

After a while, Joseph returned.

“I brought the fever down. He hasn’t woken up yet. Are you okay Kelly?”

“Yes. Please take care of Luci for a second.”

After handing Luci over to him, Kathleen pulled out one of her old bags and started packing her stuff. She was in a hurry and selected only the essentials.

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m thinking of leaving.”

She said quietly.

“I am leaving this town. As long as he knows about this place, you never know when he’ll come back.”

“So suddenly? Where are you going?”

“Where he can’t find me. I am grateful for your help so far. I will not forget your grace and I will definitely repay you once we meet again later.”

Joseph came closer and grabbed her arm with one hand. It was a rather hasty touch.

“I will go with you.”

“Joseph.”

“Wherever you want to go, I will go with you.”

His yellow-green eyes, which were always softly curved, contained a firmer light unlike before. He was serious.

***

When Alexis opened his eyes, what he saw was a crude wooden ceiling.

‘Where am I?’

After lying for a while blankly, he gradually remembered it.

He came to find the owner of an unnamed bakery and suddenly lost consciousness. It was hard but he seemed to be lying on a bed, someone must have picked him up.

‘Are you the owner of the bakery?’

Alexis slowly got up and sat down. Strangely, his body was fine.

The poison left in his body sometimes ran wild like this. The poison, which had soaked in silence for a long time, was sometimes triggered at unexpected times, he would run out of breath and each time Alexis would lose consciousness.

Whenever he woke up, he would be in excruciating pain, but it was different right now.

‘Did someone treat me?’

Simply taking medicine to lower his fever did not improve his condition easily. It was a rural town, but it seemed that a great healer lived here.

“Oh, are you awake?”

A middle-aged man with straws on his head entered.

“You don’t know how surprised I was to see you collapsed like that in the bakery.”

“You’re the one who found me?”

“That’s right.”

The simple-looking man didn’t seem to know that Alexis was wearing a Duke’s robe. Not wanting to point it out, he got up and handed a silver coin to him.

“For the treatment. Take it.”

“Oh, I just found you, someone else treated you.”

“Please share with him.”

“Oh, Just so you know, I didn’t do that to get money.”

The man did not refuse. Alexis was about to leave the room after making sure his belongings had not disappeared, but he suddenly stopped.

– Kelly, how is…

The moment he lost consciousness after falling, he remembered the name he had heard humming in his ear.

And the woman with her scarlet hair tied high in his blurry vision. Light-blue eyes….

The thought of Kathleen Walten, who had disappeared, suddenly made him short of breath.

She had silver hair, but she had scarlet hair when she was a kitchen maid.

She was always alone and walked around busily with her head bowed down so they rarely exchanged words. But he remembered looking back a few times because it was too over-the-top even for a common hair color.

‘She can’t be here.’

But just because they looked alike didn’t mean he was convinced it was her. Most of all, she had not dyed her hair since she married him.

Even if she tried to cover up her striking silver hair after she ran away, she wouldn’t have chosen the scarlet color that he would have remembered.

“I want to meet the bakery owner. Where should I go?”

“Well, would they be there now? Follow me.”

He tilted his head, but the man led the way. But when they got to the bakery, there was no one there.

“No, did they go? They weren’t even home.”

“It’s fine if they’re not here.”

There was no need to waste time in such an unsure method. Alexis turned to go back and opened the door.

And.

“Goodness, Joseph, this guy. If you were leaving, you should at least say where you’re going.”

Without taking a step, he stopped at the self-talk he heard from behind him.

“What did you just say?”

It was a name he knew so well that he wanted to doubt my ears.

The broken pieces stuck together one by one, and then they came together.

The moment he formed the pieces of the complete truth, the emotion that struck Alexis was, funnily enough, a sense of betrayal.

***