Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Her love for him was unchanging. However, she was exhausted, and now that her body was getting worse, she didn’t want to have anything else to worry about.

Meanwhile, she received a letter from Princess Elizabeth. The letter invited her to the tea time she talked about earlier.

Chloe didn’t want to go, but refusing the princess’s invitation meant she was going to rebel against the Royal Family. Of course, as she has been close with the royal family, she could have refused if there was a justifiable reason though there was no good excuse, so she had to attend.

“Then shouldn’t we make the dress?”

As Andrea suggested, Chloe shook her head.

“There are dresses from when I went to Madame Lizen’s shop the other day and had them made. You can choose the right one among them. There is no need to spend money on useless things.”

“What do you mean useless?”

Andrea asked in surprise.

“A lot of Madams will be there. Of course, the thing that should shine the most among them is the princess, but the next thing that should shine has to be Madam. Because Madam is the Marchioness. What is useless for Madam? There is no one in the kingdom as great as Madam, right? So you have to be prepared accordingly. As your one and only handmaid, I think so.”

Chloe felt her head throb and hurt.

There was nothing wrong with Andrea’s words. The tea time she was invited to would not be a place. It would be a place where carefully selected wives gather and brag. So, considering her husband’s status, Chloe had to go out with appropriate care.

However…

“I don’t want to be indebted to my husband anymore.”

With the divorce already decided, she didn’t want to spend a single penny of Eric’s money. She then shook her head.

“I have a lot of dresses I have never worn before. So, how about that beige dress over there? It seems appropriate.”

“Still, it’s too modest!”

“There is a saying that modesty is a virtue. Well, I’ll do that. I don’t want to talk anymore about this. I’m already paying attention to a lot of things, and I think my headaches will get worse if I put this thing in my head.”

“That won’t do!”

Andrea was startled at the thought that Chloe might get sick again, so she shut her mouth. Although her face still looked like she had a lot to say, she swallowed it well like a handmaid who served the mistress well.

Chloe was delighted with this silence. She took a sip of the bitter tea, feeling the stillness.

She quietly glanced at the door.

This was a habit that came after waking up, and it came from the desire that Eric would come to visit, but she had not yet been able to figure out what her feelings were. She only thought that the closed door looked pretty heavy.

Meanwhile, Eric, who was holding the nipper and tightening the screw, narrowed his brow and lifted his head.

“Chloe is going out?”

“Yes, Andrea delivered that.”

At those words, he put down the nipper nervously and wiped his sweaty face with a towel. His face behind the rolled-up towel was wrinkled. Daniel took a step back, realizing that Eric was in a bad mood.

“Where is she going?”

“I heard that she was invited to Princess Elizabeth’s tea time. I think she can’t afford to decline the invitation, so she accepted it.”

Daniel guessed. It seems that Eric also thought the same, so he didn’t refute his words.

“She didn’t come out of the room for about a fortnight, and now she’s going to the Royal Palace? Ha, unbelievable.”

As he muttered in annoyance, Daniel easily found the reason for his annoyance.

“Are you worried about the Third Prince?”

“What?”

“No, you are getting annoyed by the expectation that the Third Prince and Madam will meet.”

“Nonsense!”

Eric was furious.

“Chloe and I are getting a divorce anyway. Isn’t there any reason to be concerned about that?”

He spoke in a firm tone as if speaking to himself. Daniel’s eyes narrowed. He took a step closer to Eric and asked.

“Are you really going to divorce Madam?”

“So what?”

Eric replied instantly.

“No matter how hard I try, Chloe doesn’t recognize me. Even if I do a hundred good things, when I don’t do it once, everything is my fault… I’m tired. I don’t want to match Chloe’s rhythm anymore!”

As he said so, he felt that the efforts he had done were his best, so consequently, he was greatly hurt by Chloe. She didn’t seem to appreciate his efforts at all — no, she seemed to call him the bad guy who didn’t even try in the first place…

Eric could feel a tingling pain in the corner of his chest. It’s a pain he has often felt after announcing his divorce from Chloe.

At times like this, he had to concentrate and he grabbed his thrown nipper again. Nevertheless, Daniel didn’t seem to want to end the conversation.

“But didn’t you still love Madam?”

“Love?!”

Eric finally couldn’t stand it and shouted.

“I don’t know what love is. I can’t even imagine what that feeling is… I’m not doing this because I don’t know what it is! If I really loved Chloe, I’d be sad she left! But now I’m not sad! I’m just mad! The very fact that she dared to leave me!”

His face swelled up. He gritted his teeth as he replayed the conversation with Chloe.

“How can she leave me? How, how can she say such a thing?”

Saying that, Eric looked really sad.

Tears should have come out, but he was not sad. He was shedding his own sorrow.

At that moment, he suddenly remembered the tears Chloe had shed as she begged him to divorce her. In fact, it wasn’t something that suddenly came to mind though her crying face was an afterimage that had been etched in his mind the whole time.

A woman who never cried, a woman who was arrogant enough to cry profusely and demand a divorce from him…

Eric could assert that there had never been a more terrible time than that.

“I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he muttered.

Nonetheless, he had to believe… Chloe had abandoned him, and he knew that he must separate from her.

Chloe stared intently at the door Andrea had opened. It’s been a whole month since she went out. While the doctor said that regular walks were helpful, the bad weather prevented her from even imagining going for a walk.

But luckily, the snow had stopped today, and the weather was perfect for Elizabeth’s tea time. She stepped slowly outside the door.

Andrea mentioned that she had hired three more maids. For some reason, the mansion was clean in its own way. The dust that had been rolling had disappeared, and the musty smell had also disappeared.

Chloe noticed that these were Eric’s considerations, so she could feel her heart pound even more.

The first thing she saw as soon as she left the room was Eric. He was supposed to be in the laboratory in the annex, but for some reason, he was in the main building.

Startled, she still tried not to make it obvious and approached him.

“I didn’t know you were in the main building.”

Eric slowly turned his eyes to look at her. His gaze was very cold, as frozen as before, or perhaps even more frozen than before.

Chloe clasped her hands.

“I have something to do, so I came out for a while. Then you came out after a long time.”

The tone was also surprisingly cold. She felt her heart pound again and tried to answer casually.

“I was invited by the princess. I want to go to the Royal Palace.”

Eric nodded his head lightly before glancing out the window. He didn’t look delighted, as his brows were narrowed.

“It’s a good day.”

“What?”

Chloe followed his gaze and turned her head out the window. What was not good? The sun was shining brightly after a long time.

As she was puzzled, she soon realized that Eric didn’t like her going to the palace.

Why…

The question didn’t last long. It was probably because of William. Eric had always doubted her relationship with him. Still, wasn’t the divorce already finalized? Even if there was something between William and her—which was none—it shouldn’t matter to him anyway.

Chloe decided that Eric’s desire was to control her, the greed he talked about before, ‘did not want to miss,’ solidified her choice for the future.

She didn’t like this.

Because she was a human being, she was never meant to be controlled by anyone. She had already gone through control countless times through her parents, so she was sick of it.

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