The Nanny of House Herzen - Chapter 6
It was bearable until that point.
The situation escalated when the young knight, with whom the Count’s new wife had an affair, conspired to overthrow the Vyche estate. Unfortunately, the Count naively supported the king’s nephew.
Though the nephew was merely an infant, Count Vyche was falsely accused of treason and stripped of his title and lands. The stepmother, as if she had been waiting for the opportunity, promptly fled to her lover.
Evelyn suddenly found herself in the role of a peasant, responsible for supporting her elderly father.
Despite having endured a childhood with all kinds of neglect and abuse, she had received nothing but a thorough noble education.
She was adept at embroidery but had never once sewn her own dress. She could play several instruments but knew nothing about selecting ingredients.
Even in that absurd situation, her father, Count Vyche, was demanding. He sat idly at home, dictating even the direction in which the curtain ties should hang, making Evelyn’s life miserable.
It was her father who had turned a blind eye to her stepmother’s cruelty for half her life. Evelyn despised him.
However, that life did not last long. As soon as the opportunity arose, her father swiftly sold her off.
When Evelyn married Marquis Luke, a man as old as her father and becoming his third wife, she did not cry. She thought nothing could be harder than supporting her father alone.
But her marriage was even more terrible than her life with her father. The Marquis, despite his age, had lecherous tendencies.
“Though fallen, the Vyche lineage is noble, yet you smell like a cheap prostitute. I like that.”
The Marquis often said that in the bedroom. As if to prove his point, he demanded from Evelyn the kind of acts akin to those found in a brothel. She had even vomited on the bed in disgust.
On that day, Evelyn was beaten. It was she who had been insulted, yet the Marquis accused her of insulting him.
He cursed her for her insolence, considering her position, and struck her until her cheeks swelled. This was a different kind of cruelty compared to the subtle torments from her stepmother.
Only then did Evelyn fully realize the depth of the mire she had fallen into. There was no bottom there.
Fortunately, despite the misfortune, she soon became pregnant, which changed the Marquis’s attitude completely. He stopped all forms of physical abuse and even refrained from the s-xual relations he had so enjoyed.
The Marquis needed an heir desperately. His first wife’s children had all died young, and his second wife had died along with the stillborn child.
To make matters worse, his much younger half-brother was eagerly eyeing his title. If the Marquis failed to produce an heir, his half-brother would naturally inherit everything belonging to Luke.
Marquis Luke despised his half-brother. His need for an heir grew more urgent as he sought to discredit his brother as inadequate and incompetent.
As Evelyn’s pregnancy progressed and her belly grew, the midwife predicted the child would be a boy based on the shape of her belly.
The Marquis was overjoyed and showered Evelyn with affection. He bought her extravagant dresses that she couldn’t possibly wear immediately.
However, this only lasted until the day of the childbirth. That day, Evelyn delivered a stillborn child.
“Useless woman!”
The Marquis expelled her immediately. He accused her of disloyalty by failing to deliver a living child, telling her if she had any objections, she should formally request a trial.
She had no money for a trial. Only then did Evelyn suspect that the death of the Marquis’s previous wife during childbirth might not have been accidental.
Chased out penniless, but the thugs followed. It had all been planned from the start. The aging Marquis intended to kill Evelyn to prevent any potential scandal.
Perhaps then he would portray himself as the unfortunate widower who had lost two wives along with their children. Next, he might seek a young and pitiable fourth wife to try for another son.
She crossed the fields in the middle of the night, just hours after the stillbirth.
Had it not been for the rain, she might have been caught. Had the weather been colder, she might have frozen to death. But Evelyn survived.
When she finally knocked on the Duchy’s gate, it was the head maid who found her. The head maid’s decision not to turn away a bloodied woman who arrived in a downpour was driven by sympathy, but she soon realized who Evelyn was.
She recognized that the desperate woman seeking refuge was the wet nurse summoned from the earth itself.
* * *
Evelyn had long forgotten about the kettle. Even after returning to the young lady’s room, she could not calm her racing heart.
She hastily untied the front of her dress again. As she thought about the Duke’s breath on her swollen chest, her n–ples tingled and milk started to flow once more.
Visions of his red tongue and dark eyes surfaced, and inexplicably, she felt a wetness from between her legs.
‘Oh, no.’
She must be out of her mind. To harbor such unseemly thoughts after gazing into the eyes of a predator. Did she really not want to live?
Johanson was still soundly asleep.
Evelyn blushed at the thought of having shown her body to the baby’s father while the baby slept, but her body seemed disconnected from her mind.
As she lay in bed, she couldn’t sleep. Only the Duke’s piercing dark eyes haunted her thoughts. It was as if the desires in his eyes had somehow transferred to her.
The only man Evelyn had ever experienced with was the old Marquis. During those times, she had always forced herself to close her eyes, so these new impulses were all the more alien to her.
The other person was the notorious Duke, the very man who held her life in his hands. She could not understand why her heart fluttered so much.
