Chapter 39.2

“It’s going to be difficult for a couple of days,” Ian said, laying Lia on her bed.

He took the bandages from Pepe, who had followed them in.

Back in the present, freed from her thoughts, Lia looked at Ian, skillfully preparing her treatment.

“Let Pepe do it. I’m fine,” Lia said.

“Don’t worry. I’m confident I can do a better job than your maid.”

“Ian. Please… .”

“Why the hell did you do such a stupid, not to mention, dangerous thing?” he asked, ignoring her pleads for him to let Pepe treat her.

She never explained it to him, but Ian knew everything. She knew that the source of Ian’s information must have been Prince Wade.

“It was something I could do to help,” she responded.

Each time the alcohol-soaked cloth brushed her open wound, tears trickled down her face.

“You’re a liar,” he said matter of factly.

“Why do you think that?”

“Your actions are obvious. I can see right through you, even if you try to hide.”

Ian treated all of her visible wounds meticulously.

Lia, lost in thought at Ian’s words, flinched, trembling, each time he touched her wounds.

After finding an ointment for her bruise, and applying it, Ian wiped his hands with a wet towel.

Lia hadn’t changed her clothes yet, and the smell of gunpowder and blood wafted from her body.

“I like the way you look when you are dressed so femininely. But I hate that you attract other men,” Ian said looking into her eyes.

“You’re joking right?”

“I hate jokes, Canillia,” Ian said smiling, bending to kiss her cheek.

However, rather than looking ashamed, Lia looked like she had been drenched in cold water.

Leaving her frozen faced, Ian left the room, telling Pepe, “Change your master’s clothes. If you see any serious wounds on her body, be sure to tell me,”

Pepe nodded, glaring at Ian as she entered Lia’s room. She did not care if he was a prince, she treated him like the rogue he was.

However, Ian was unfazed and smiled happily while looking around the room.

***

He stood inside a small, yet cosy, house. This home, much like all the others where the middle class lived, wasn’t suitable for a nobleman.

Canillia had appeared separated from the nobility. She was unlike anyone else he knew. This house suited her well, unfamiliar and warm, just like her.

On his way to take a bath, Ian passed by a window. Glancing out of it, he saw a horse standing in front of the house.

Postponing his bath, Ian made his way down to the first floor.

As he reached the front door, Ian saw it was already open. Claude Del Ihar stood there confidently, looking as if he owned the house.

“It’s rude to enter a house without at least ringing the doorbell first,” Ian said, glaring at the man.

Claude remained expressionless, looking past Ian into the rest of the house. None of the days earlier experiences seemed to have fazed the man whatsoever. He was clean, calm and composed.

“Canillian is mine, ” Ian remembered Claude saying earlier that day before they had found her.

Sighing to himself, Ian thought that Claude was an unnecessary pain. He did not want there to be a rival for Canillia.

He wondered if the duke knew that she was actually a woman. But of course, because he never actually asked the question, Claude did not answer.

After Canillia had been kidnapped, the two men became increasingly agitated time passed with no sign of her. A knife could have cut the tension that hung between them.

They had been walking towards a fishing boat moored at the end of a short road when they both heard something. Simultaneously, they shot into the near darkness. They fought for her. They killed for her. It was all for her.

Claude, climbing the two remaining steps, met Ian’s gaze.

“It seems as if you are here to call upon your prince,” Ian said.

Appearing from the shadows, Ian’s attendant walked to his side. Ian’s face harden at the sight of the man, but he kept his reaction to himself.

At Claude’s side stood his own attendant, a man Ian believed to be named Ivan.

“I don’t care that you are a prince, you cannot control the actions of another country’s nobility. I’m disappointed that you think you can control Canillian,” Claude said, not sounding angry or frustrated, only tired.

Ian looked at his attendant for a second, before laughing. He took a step back and made room for Claude to pass. Claude entered the house and, without the slightest hesitation, walked up the stairs to the second floor, where Lia’s bedroom was located.

“Is that why he was so relaxed? He thought that he could come in and out of her house at any time?” he thought to himself.

It all started to make sense to Ian. Claude did not see Canillia as a lady. Perhaps he thought that she was really a man.

Unable to come to a conclusion about the duke and his motives, Ian took out a cigarette from his silver case and walked out the open door.

As he approached, the eyes of the attendant who stood in front of him trembled in fear. But Ian only smiled softly.