Chapter 142

What I Had to Give Up (2)

“I told you, Edmond, I want to be a real Duchess.”

“You’re already a real Duchess. What are you talking about?”

“I mean, tell me what I have to do as a Duchess.”

“What you want to do is what you have to do, Ezet.”

Edmond smiled significantly, gently stroking from the back of her foot to her shin.

“Are you aware, Milady? To be able to do what you want is power.”

“What?”

“To be able to do what you want to do, say what you want to say, do what you don’t want to do, and turn a blind eye to people you don’t want to meet. It’s the privilege of the powerful.”

“No matter how great a noble is, they have a duty.”

“Yes, even an emperor has duties. It must be necessary.”

Edmond stood up and put his hands on the armrest of the sofa. Leaning his upper body toward Ezet, he looked red-eyed and devoured his lovely wife.

“I’m going to give you a right that even a single emperor can’t get.”

“…what?”

“Do what you want, Ezet; it’s my job to make it the Duchess’ job.”

“Edmond, I’m…”

Active Erit knew many people and liked to challenge anything, so she had a lot of talent, but Ezet didn’t. So it subsided inside.

She didn’t go out very well, was reluctant to meet people, and made frugal living a policy.

Ezet fell in love with reading because it was a hobby that didn’t cost money. After all, it was free to borrow books from the library.

Ezet, who has always thought about not bothering her family, had never thought about what she wanted to do. She thought it was a pipe dream because she couldn’t do it.

Since she was very young, she could only give up, resign, and conform without standing out, but ‘do whatever you want was more of a disaster than an opportunity.

She was afraid; she felt like she was thrown into the open sea. She has to swim everywhere not to drown. However, there is no guarantee that land will exist in the direction of swimming. So she’s at a loss.

“If you don’t know what to do, you can do what you think is right.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

“I’ll make it right for you.”

Ezet was at a loss for words. She had a puzzled look on her face, but it wasn’t because she didn’t understand Edmond’s terms. Because ‘Do what you want from him was more difficult than fulfilling one’s duty.

“Edmond, I don’t want to be a bad person.”

“There is no one in the world who thinks you are bad.”

Edmond took Ezet’s hand, swallowing the words. …because he would not let them exist in the world. A small hand was shaking thin.

“Ezet, don’t you want anything?”

“… it was my seventh birthday.”

“What?”

“I wanted to make a house for the doll. There were three Barbie dolls.”

The three Barbie dolls that my grandmother gave her as a gift when she was young were treasures of Ezet. She wanted to make a doll with a coveted curly hair dress with lace, play with a pretty parasol, and push a baby doll stroller. She also wanted to add a handsome boyfriend. She wanted to give it a lovely house.

“I wanted to set up a pretty two-story house where it could sleep in a bed and cook with kitchen cooking tools. What was popular at the time was a toy house where you could sizzle when you put a frying pan on it, and when it was time to sleep, a cuckoo would pop out and cry.”

“It’s a dollhouse set. From the Marionette Company.”

Ezet nodded her head. At that time, ‘Doll House Set’ was the birthday gift No. 1 that children who played with Barbie dolls wanted to receive.

‘As a gift for this year’s birthday, I must ask them to buy a doll’s house set.’

When she walked into a toy store holding her grandmother’s hand, Ezet decided so.

But Ezet, who confirmed the price of the dollhouse set, couldn’t bear to ask her grandmother to buy it for her birthday.

“The dollhouse was too expensive. It’s more than ten times the price of the Barbie doll my grandmother bought me.”

It was 10 Lunds at the time, so it’s about 25 Lund at the current price. That’s equivalent to one employee’s monthly salary. It was too much to buy a house with a lot of money or a birthday present for a child.

“If I had asked her to buy it for my birthday, she might have bought it for me. But I just couldn’t do it.”

“Why?”

“The astronomical observation set her sister chose was 12 Lund.”

Erit and Ezet’s birthdays were only three days apart, so Grandma always carried them together when she bought birthday presents. Each time Erit chose the most expensive gift, and Ezet chose the cheapest gift. As if she had promised.

“You can’t have two kids using 22 Lund on their toys. I know it’s difficult for the family.”

That’s about 55 Lund for now. Ezet couldn’t have wasted the amount of money that could have been spent on two more employees wasting money on birthday presents. Ezet’s family was not enough; she lost her parents early, and her two-year-old sister was a troublemaker. She learned to put up with something before she craved it. It was bound to be.

“Ezet has been considerate since then.”

“No, I was a coward.”

Grandma didn’t say ‘she couldn’t buy me an expensive gift.’ If Ezet had cried and cried for a doll’s house, she might have bought it for her. She had always seen her grandmother reluctantly buy it for her when her older sister, Erit, would throw a tantrum.

She gave up without even trying because she was a coward. It was an excuse to think about the family’s financial situation. It’s just that she didn’t want to regret being immature.

She didn’t want to feel guilty when she saw her grandmother’s embarrassed face. She didn’t want to blame herself when she heard the butler and housekeeper lamenting while organizing the housekeeping.

“It’s hilarious, isn’t it? I’m going to keep it in my mind for this long, pretending to be nice.”

Ezet always had to put up with, be considerate, and suppress herself. She shouldn’t have worried her grandmother.

She shouldn’t have exacerbated the family situation.

She had to try not to hurt the name of the ‘Harriet Viscounts.’

But it was a bruise she put on herself.

No one is asking Ezet to restrain herself. Around her, the environment didn’t put a leash on her. It was none other than her who locked herself up.