Chapter 93: Chapter 93

When he merely swept his wet hair once, the shape of his bones and tendons leading to the back of his hands and forearms, his nape and shoulders, his back and the waist were clearly visible. Just as he couldn’t immerse himself because of his back injury, the surface of the bath tickled his knees and shins. The water drops on his elbows dipped onto his firm thighs. His figure was was like a picture. His masculine but not rough build was better than the exotic sculpture she once saw and admired.

“… Marianne!”

Marianne came to her senses suddenly after hearing his voice.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was afraid you were very sick again…”

While saying so, her gaze was fixed on him.

As a normal lady, she would have immediately turned or left the room. Or, she would not have pushed the deputy chamberlain aside to come in forcibly.

Eckart looked at Marianne while narrowing his eyebrows.

“… Why are you looking at me so intensely even after you said you were sorry?”

“Ah…”

Marianne quickly raised her hands and covered her eyes.

“I didn’t see anything.”

What she said sounded cute, but it was a ridiculous lie. She seemed to act like a blatant fraud rather than tell a lie.

Eckart sighed with a perplexed look. Kloud, who hastily held his gown and splint, bit his lip while trying to hold back laughter and looked out the window.

“It’s too late. I wish you would rather not lie when you were so easily caught.”

“Well…let me assume I’ve not seen you then.”

“That’s enough. It’s not the first time you saw me naked anyway.”

“Well, that’s…”

Clink!

After hesitating for a second, she rolled her eyes freely out of curiosity. She pulled away her fingers covering her eyes one by one, creating a gap between them. She now knew where the noise was coming from.

Curtis, standing by the right side of the bathtub, next to Eckart, looked between his master and Marianne with a confused expression. A metal bowl of herbs and a bunch of bandages rolled on the carpet, perhaps slipping out of his hand.

“Curtis.”

“… Sorry. I’ll put new stuff on it.”

Curtis hastily picked up a bunch of new bandages. Soon he began to wrap a white cloth around the wounds on his back applied with ointment. Kloud placed the splint, which he had removed for a while, on his arm and wrapped it repeatedly.

While rubbing her green eyes through her fingers, she asked belatedly,

“Would you want me to go out for a moment and come back …?”

Eckart, who let Curtis and Kloud take care of his security, turned his head again with a slight frown.

“Why?”

“Well, I think you might feel shy…”

“Me?”

Eckart made a more mysterious look.

‘No, I won’t. Of course, I’m naked at the moment, but you’re not a minor who doesn’t know anything, and we’ll be engaged tomorrow. Why do you think only I will feel shy? Isn’t it usually a woman who is supposed to be shy? Even if you’ve seen me naked just once before, you and I are not a couple at this point but just a man and a woman…’

Thinking as far as that, he narrowed his eyebrows all the more.

When he looked back, she had a similar attitude in the cave. Without hesitation, she pushed her arms through his sides, untied the collar, and unbuttoned the shirt. She was not reluctant to hug him naked, and did not blink an eye while wiping his almost naked body.

Given the unique situation he was in, she stayed too calm as if she couldn’t find her type of man or she didn’t care at all about a man’s nudity.

“No, not at all,” answered Eckart, pretending to be casual on purpose. His long eyelashes trembled faintly like her.

“Then, is it okay for me not to hide my eyes?” she asked without reading his mind.

Then his blue eyes trembled more than before.

“I never ordered you to cover your eyes from the beginning. Besides, you are not covering your eyes, but around your eyes, aren’t you?”

Surprised at that, she closed the gap between her fingers quickly. Her vision was dark again.

“That’s because… I just wanted to confirm what it was because Lord Curtis dropped something.

“… I’m sorry.”

Blamed without any reason, Curtis apologized readily, though. In fact, he thought that his reaction was excessive.

“I didn’t mean to come in on purpose. I would’ve waited outside if Lord Kloud had let me know before I came in.”

Kloud was about to say, ‘I tried, but you didn’t give me any time to do so.’

He made a very regrettable look, but couldn’t tell the emperor honestly.

“… Sorry.” In the end, Kloud willingly apologized twice.

“O, I didn’t mean for you to apologize for that.”

She was very grateful that Jed or Countess Renault, who were hot-tempered, were not here at the moment. As soon as he was done with the rough treatment, Eckart asked, “So, what business has brought you here?”

“Oh, I want to show you something. I received it a little while ago…”

Mariane put down her hands covering her eyes and searched her dress pocket.

As soon as she took out the vial, he suddenly stood up without notice.

The towel on his pelvis fell on the water. Almost at the same time, he put on a comfortable gown on his shoulders, which Kloud opened for him.

Marianne, who stayed calm all along, had no choice but to look away.

She turned her green eyes toward the other side of the room.

Thanks to that, she couldn’t see the long horizontal scar under his long bone, covered by a towel.

Standing with her back against the empty bed, she looked at the decorations on the wall and the patterns of the blankets meaninglessly. Although she couldn’t see, she heard the sound of splashing water and the rustling sound of towels. The sound of knotting a silky robe tickled her ears as if it was a cosmetic brush.

Things that didn’t bother her until a moment ago suddenly annoyed her like a thorn in her fingertips. It was not a big deal, but her heart began to beat. Her scratched face turned red.

‘Let me think about other stuff…”

She desperately tried to divert her attention. Sick and tired of observing the texture of the woven bed frame, she now kept counting the number of tassels on the pillowcase. In the meantime, she kept hearing robes bumping into each other and the metal noise of fitting his buckle.

“Marianne!”

In no time, she heard his slow footsteps. His large hands wrapped her shoulders. As if all her efforts were in vain, she had to take a deep breath the moment she looked back.

Eckart was so close. He was dressed in a relatively comfortable dressing gown. His hair was still a bit wet, and his shirt was buttoned only halfway up over the triangle bandages around the splint arm.

Because of the height difference, she naturally came to look at his collarbone. Every time he moved his collar, she smelled his cool and refreshing body odor.

“It looks like you are blushing. Are you sick?” he asked.

Human imagination had power with enormous potential. When she mixed what she saw today with what she had already seen, heard, touched, and smelled a few days ago, it had an enormous destructive power on her.

“Me? Oh, no. It looks like the room is too hot. Would you like some ventilation?”

She rushed to the side and fanned her face with her hands. Hearing what she said, Curtis opened the window while cleaning up the bathtub.

Soon, the cool breeze outside dispersed the hot air in the room. The fragrance of wild roses dispersed the scent of strong herbs gradually. And the heat on her cheeks subsided a bit.

“By the way…”

While sensing the scent of the medicine slowly disappearing, Marianne suddenly looked up.

“Is it okay for you to stand like this?”

“Well. It’s okay right now, but there’s no guarantee that I’ll keep standing.”

“Then sit down first. It’s going to be a long story.”

Marianne put the vial in his left hand, and helped him move to the bed.

Again, she didn’t hesitate to make physical contact with him.

Eckart frowned a bit, but soon followed her guidance.

While he walked a short distance, he looked closely at the small glass bottle.

As soon as he was seated, he pushed it back to Marianne.

“What is this?”

“It’s the proof that Barton brought me.”

“Barton? The evidence he brought?”

While he was contemplating the connection of the two words that he could not easily understand, she opened the lid of the vial.

“Barton said he found it while cleaning up the stables in the residence. He said he found it in some of the horse feeders.”

Eckart picked up what Marianne poured over the palm of her hand. It was a small white mass almost half the size of a fingernail.

“It looks like some debris. For example, that of latex, or something like a plant…”

“Right. Barton and I think it’s the petal of anesthetic grass.”

“Petals of anesthetic grass?”

Eckart frowned slightly. In fact, he was ignorant about grass and trees, but he knew the plant she just mentioned