Tamed Monster - Chapter 3
It wasn’t the search party members who opened the door; it was the man inside who opened it himself. Then, a long leg stretched out. He was still wearing the heavy armor, like he was encased in stone as though he had just returned from battle
Thud— crash!
Despite the armor weighing tens of kilograms, he landed lightly on the ground, as if a bird had taken flight.
Everyone held their breath. Contrary to the expectation that he would be carried out of the carriage, badly injured and staggering, he looked more vigorous than ever. The pungent smell of blood, seemed to waft all the way from where he stood to over thirty steps away.
Sylvia stared straight at her husband. In the four years of their marriage, she had never once done so, yet something compelled her to look him in the eye now.
Lancart, however, did not meet her gaze. Instead, like a careless layabout, he staggered towards her, walking unsteadily before stopping right in front of one of the handmaids next to her.
“Hello. Are you my wife?”
Lady Rossa, Sylvia, the thirty or so search party members, and the retainers, all were stunned. The black haired handmaid who was directly addressed by the question widened her eyes in disbelief, unable to even breathe properly.
“…Hah.”
Of them all, Lady Rossa came to her composure first. She shot a vicious glare at the stunned search party leader before he swiftly grabbed the arm of the dazed handmaid and pulled her behind her. With a sharp, irritated glare, she sent the handmaid scurrying off into the crowd of retainers.
Throughout all of this, Sylvia could only stare at her husband’s smirking face with confusion. He seemed to be observing each person in front of him, as if he was carefully considering them.
“…Then who?”
He briefly met Sylvia’s gaze, but he didn’t recognize her in the least.
He didn’t even recognize his own mother. The woman who had just been shouting his name, whose voice had nearly torn her throat, was completely unacknowledged as he hastily searched for his wife and was completely focused on finding her.
It was as if, with his memory lost, his intelligence had regressed as well.
Sylvia had no choice but to reach this conclusion. Her husband had become an idiot. Why was he laughing in this situation? Why was he desperately searching for a wife he had never even called by name? And why, of all things, was he referring to her casually, calling her ‘wife’?
In that brief moment, he had discarded every formality, breaking etiquette and causing his own mother to fall apart in despair.
Sylvia wasn’t sad, but she certainly wasn’t pleased with the situation either. She was in no position to divorce her husband, no matter what happened.
She now fully understood why the men who had brought her husband back looked so flustered, why they kept saying they needed to call a physician immediately. Her husband had lost his mind, and it seemed like it was her responsibility to remove him from people’s sight and take him somewhere out of view.
“Your Highness Alexander.”
“Hmm.”
“Your Highness…? No, Duke.”
The titles that slipped from her lips felt distant and cold. As a former princess of a fallen kingdom, Sylvia had once been of noble birth, which had allowed her to marry him for political reasons.
But in reality, she was nothing more than the Duke’s figurehead wife. Their relationship was neither good nor bad.
She had spent her years being utterly ignored by him. ‘Neither good nor bad” was an understatement.
It had been so long since she had called him, but even now, with his regression, he still wasn’t looking at her. Lady Rossa, who was unusually silent, didn’t give Sylvia any judgment.
Sylvia gathered her courage and called out to her husband with a slightly louder voice.
“Duke!”
Having been married to a man from a foreign kingdom and trying to understand the Empire’s customs for four years, Sylvia, like her husband currently, was still ignorant of many Imperial etiquettes.
When she had lived silently with her ignorance, it had gone unnoticed, but now, raising her voice, no one could fail to see it. Sylvia’s handling of titles and her attitude toward her husband were far from the refined manners of an Imperial noble.
Just as all eyes were on her, Sylvia’s face went red with embarrassment. It was at that exact moment that the Duke turned toward her and let out a small exclamation.
“So, you’re my wife.”
At that moment, Sylvia found herself almost grateful for her husband’s regression. At least she didn’t appear as foolish as him.
Lady Rossa grabbed the back of her neck, and Sylvia bit her lip.
The oblivious Duke walked right up to her, extending his hand as though greeting an old friend. Sylvia, unable to either take his hand or push him away, could only stare at the ground as the search party members tactfully climbed into their horses and disappeared over the estate’s horizon.
“…”
“…Could you hold my hand?”
Unable to resist her husband’s persistent request, Sylvia lightly held his index and middle fingers. With the bewildered retainers and the Duke’s mother at her side, she hurriedly led him into the Duke’s residence.
* * *
The house was annoyingly vast, with an overwhelming number of rooms.
He had felt it as soon as he climbed the more than one hundred and fifty steps of stairs— the building was unnecessarily large and high.
‘Well, it’s still not as impressive as my domain in the swamp.’
After climbing three flights of stairs, ‘Lancart’ finally entered the Duke’s bedroom. He looked around, then fixed his eyes on his wife’s face.
The old woman who had been trailing behind him and shouting his name earlier reluctantly fell away from the group when a man, who seemed to be a servant, called her from the second floor.
