The Nanny of House Herzen - Chapter 25
His father was cold. He claimed they were nothing, not true Herzens. For none of them shared Carius’s black hair and eyes.
To young Carius, this sounded absurd. If they were his father’s children, their hair color should not negate their Herzen lineage.
But what mattered was the Duke, his father’s belief. If his father saw it that way, no one dared contradict him.
Most of these half-siblings were sent away with a sum of money, but those who persistently came back faced punishment, typically decreed not by his father but by his mother.
His mother, usually powerless, seemed to find strength in such moments. If anger kept her alive, then perhaps that was acceptable in its own right, he had once thought.
Looking back, it was a profoundly misguided thought.
To exact revenge on his father, his mother hung herself from the chandelier at a banquet. This happened when Carius was just eleven.
It was his first time witnessing death. But the boy was so thoroughly steeped in misery that even this terrible demise could not devour him.
The first death he saw ironically left him with a sense of superiority.
Hundreds of rooms, more walls, even more pillars… Beyond those, his mother had always been a figure trying to test and control him throughout his short life.
She both loved and hated his father, projecting those feelings onto Carius. She loved him because he resembled his father, and she hated him for the same reason.
Caught between his father’s neglect and his mother’s manipulations, their tug-of-war seemed endless.
It ultimately ended in Carius’s victory. Because he survived.
After that, Carius became obsessed with hunting.
Witnessing death. That was what kept him alive.
His father liked that his son hunted. Without knowing what part of it thrilled him, he praised it as a fitting hobby for a nobleman.
One day, his father gave him a proper gift. He hired a taxidermist to stuff a fox Carius had hunted.
When the taxidermist inserted glass beads where the fox’s eyes had been, it seemed as though the fox had opened its eyes, alive again.
Fake glass eyes that were brighter than real. It captivated Carius deeply.
For a while, the taxidermist became a frequent visitor at the Herzen household.
When Carius said he wanted to learn taxidermy, his father slapped him. Apparently, taxidermy was not deemed an appropriate hobby for a noble of the kingdom, unlike hunting.
Carius apologized to his father without a fuss and then secretly paid the taxidermist for private lessons.
His father wouldn’t know what he was up to in an unused room. After all, he barely visited his son’s quarters, perhaps once a year.
After mastering taxidermy, Carius grew interested in what was discarded—the organs removed to empty the animal carcasses.
He didn’t ask his father when he started dissecting these with a surgeon. There was no need.
Carius became engrossed in this work for a while.
It was during these times with the surgeon that he learned why his siblings died young—it was because his parents were cousins.
He was told that his own healthy, disease-free birth was a tremendous blessing.
Carius couldn’t be sure. He doubted he was blessed in any way, thinking that not all illnesses are visible.
And so, he grew up.
Around this time, strange rumors began about the large estate. His father was furious, but Carius secretly fueled these rumors.
It was convenient. No one approached him, and unnecessary invitations decreased.
But misfortune, not knowing its bounds, sought to consume him again as an adult.
When his father demanded that Carius marry his cousin, Hestina, that he had played with as a child, Carius rebelled for the first time. He had just realized that his father, despite the facade of being a grand noble, was a madman.
His father, who had married his own cousin and lived miserably, failed to produce more than one heir. He blamed his mother for their stillbirths, not acknowledging it wasn’t her fault, and resented her his whole life.
Yet, he told his son to follow the same path.
For the first time, Carius spoke his truth.
Father, you caused mother’s death, I hate you. I wish you were dead.
At that moment, his father really died. Shocked and enraged by his son’s words, he succumbed to a heart attack.
Carius scoffed at his father’s death.
It was a pathetic death, left with no sense of superiority. A bear would have been more formidable than his feeble father.
* * *
Carius inherited the title of Duke. All that remained was the legacy his dead father had left behind.
Calling off the arranged marriage would mean breaking off the engagement. For him, now a Duke, it held little significance. Whether he broke off his engagement once or multiple times, it was merely a speck of a flaw for a young Duke.
But then, his pitiful cousin could only hope to marry some old nobleman as a second wife.
Unlike his dead father, the living cousin was to be pitied. Carius went to Hestina and asked her,
“What do you want to do?”
Even just being asked this question seemed to insult her, and she blushed with humiliation.
