Violet Zerotta's Hasty Marriage - Chapter 10
And it seemed Aldrick felt the same.
In fact, he had been pacing around the bedroom with a very troubled expression for a while now.
“Aldrick.”
She only called his name, but he flinched in surprise.
What’s with him?
“How are you going to sleep?”
“Huh? What do you mean, ‘how’?”
“I mean, where are you going to sleep.”
“Of… Of course, the bed.”
Of course. He had just returned home after a long time. He wouldn’t want to sleep on the floor like he had on the battlefield.
It was a little unfair to have her bed taken away overnight, but still, he had come back after three years of rolling through mud. She could let this much slide. Violet decided to be generous about it.
And tomorrow, she would go to the furniture shop and buy a bigger bed.
No matter how she looked at it, this bed was too small for two people. Especially with Aldrick’s large frame, even sleeping alone might be cramped.
Violet began pulling down the blanket to lay it out on the floor. Since she was giving up the bed, she figured she could at least use the blanket.
“What are you doing, putting the blanket on the floor?”
Aldrick, who had been watching her silently, frowned as he asked.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to make you sleep there.”
“So you’re going to sleep there?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He opened and closed his mouth for a moment, searching for words.
“It’s cold.”
“What?”
“The floor. It’s cold.”
“So what?”
“…Forget it. You sleep on the bed. I’ll take the floor.”
“No. I’m not the kind of heartless person who makes her husband, just back from war, sleep on the floor.”
“Well, I don’t want to be the kind of man who makes his wife sleep on the floor either.”
The two bickered for a while over the sleeping arrangements. There was no compromise.
In the end, because Aldrick refused to give in, Violet found herself lying in the same bed with him.
“It’s way too small. One of us is definitely going to fall out.”
She muttered while lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
“I’ll scoot over a bit.”
As he shifted, the old bed groaned under his weight.
“Stop. The bed’s going to break.”
At her words, he froze.
The quiet night felt completely different from the atmosphere of the day.
In the dark room, on the narrow bed, Aldrick’s warm body kept brushing against hers despite her efforts to avoid it, making Violet toss and turn.
“If you keep moving, I won’t be able to sleep…”
Aldrick whispered softly, as if sharing a secret. His voice, now that she was hearing it again, really was nice. Violet ignored her fluttering heart and grumbled on purpose.
“It’s the bed that’s too small. It was fine when I was sleeping alone…”
As soon as she said it, Violet regretted it a little. It sounded like she was telling him to leave the house again.
She was about to clarify that she hadn’t meant it that way when Aldrick spoke first.
“…Weren’t you scared?”
He asked without any sign of hurt in his tone.
For a moment, Violet felt a pang deep in her chest. That one quiet question made it feel like everything she’d bottled up inside her heart was about to spill out.
But Violet couldn’t say anything. How could she sum up all those countless nights in just one sentence?
The silence. How she felt a bit scared when it thundered. How it was sometimes cold in the winter. How spring brought a quiet kind of loneliness.
“Not really.”
With those blunt words, Violet swept away her thoughts and feelings.
Because if she didn’t, she felt like she’d end up crying in front of Aldrick, whom she was only meeting for the second time, and start pouring out everything that had happened.
She didn’t dislike him, but she didn’t trust him enough yet either. The relationship between them couldn’t be defined just yet. To be exact, it was still close to being nothing at all.
“It feels strange.”
When Violet said that, Aldrick flinched again.
Why does this guy keep getting startled like that? Doesn’t suit his size at all.
“This is only the second time we’ve seen each other, but it feels like we’ve known each other for a long time. That’s weird.”
“I feel the same. I never imagined you’d still be here.”
“You keep making me sound like someone who broke her wedding vows. Why? Weren’t you the one walking around barehanded, playing bachelor without even wearing a ring?”
He looked visibly flustered at her words.
“Every knight who goes to war is married!”
“Oh, right.”
“And the ring didn’t fit on my finger.”
“…I forgot about that.”
Thinking of that cheap ring her father had given her, Violet regretted bringing it up.
“So I tied it to a string and wore it around my neck. Look.”
He showed her the ring, strung on a thread and worn around his neck.
Eng.1268
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