Chapter 72
How Dare You

By chance, Matthias caught sight of her beyond the carriage window.

Layla.

Dressed with unusual care, she walked down the busy street with women her age. Among them was a familiar face—yes, the teacher who had once come to Arvis with her students. Greber, was it?

Matthias narrowed his eyes, watching Layla’s heels click smartly against the cobbled street. She had grown visibly thinner, but her face looked bright, almost soft. She smiled easily. She laughed with ease. So different from the Layla he saw these days, so much so that it felt like watching another woman altogether.

The car carrying Matthias passed, but even after she disappeared from sight, he continued staring blankly out the window.

At least she doesn’t look like she’s dying anymore.

The thought gave him relief. And strangely, irritation.

For weeks, the Layla who came to him had been listless, hollow. She entered the annex with the expression of someone burdened with dull clerical work, stripped off her own clothes, and sat quietly at the edge of the bed. She acted like a woman jaded by experience, yet the moment he drew near, she couldn’t hide her fear, her unease.

And Matthias had indulged her pitiful request.

If she wished to be treated like a whore bought and paid for, so be it. She had chosen it herself. But often, the more he humiliated her, the more it felt as though it was himself being trampled.

When that doll-like mask of hers finally cracked—when her face twisted with pain, shame, and tears—then at least she could no longer pretend he was invisible. So he pursued it relentlessly, wrung her until she wept. And when it was over, when she lay silent and still, what remained was not triumph, but the bleak weight of a man left holding what he already possessed, unable to do anything with it.

How dare you. How dare you, Layla, treat me so.

Every time that cold fury surged, he remembered one night—last spring in Latz, when roses were in bloom. His mother had told him then: Layla Llewellyn was to marry Kyle Etman. For the first time in his life, Matthias had felt the desire to kill. And sometimes he wondered—was it truly the doctor’s son he wanted to kill, or the woman herself, who dared defy him?

Even so, he could not deny it: whatever she was, Layla Llewellyn gave him pleasure enough to call her back again and again. She provoked with insolence, then trembled like a block of wood, and still—she drove him to madness. For a man who had never placed such desires at the forefront of his life, who had never been swayed by them, it was a bewildering truth.

“Sir…?”

At his attendant’s careful voice, Matthias turned. The car door had been opened; the man stood waiting.

He composed his breath, stepped down. Executives of the company were lined up outside the grand lobby to greet him.

Before ascending the steps beneath the classical colonnade, Matthias glanced once more toward the sunlit street—knowing, of course, that she would not be there.

He allowed himself a faint, bitter smile, and resumed his walk, composed as ever.

Bill Remmer was gone. He had left with a heavy trunk, striding away like a soldier marching to war.

Layla escorted him all the way to the end of the plane-tree avenue. The road bustled with voices; it wasn’t just Bill, but the other gardeners as well, leaving with him.

The shattered glass walls of the greenhouse had been rebuilt, but the plants had withered under winter’s fury. Rare, precious species, not easily replaced. Bill carried the duty of restoring them.

Layla worried for him, but he insisted the labor eased his guilt. One only had to see his face to know he meant it.

“It’s cold, Layla! Go back inside!”

He had turned the corner when he suddenly stopped, shouting over his shoulder.

Layla nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to turn away. He would travel for weeks to visit botanical gardens, noble estates, and renowned horticulturists to gather the needed plants. The thought of being left alone in Arvis that long filled her with dread. She wanted, desperately, to go with him. But she knew how strange—how suspicious—that would sound. She could never say it aloud.

The noisy goodbyes ended soon enough.

And then Layla was alone, staring down the empty road.

The hum of an approaching motor jolted her. A car. She turned quickly, hurrying away. She didn’t want to face the Duke. But a machine could always outrun her legs.

A sleek black car swept past, brushing so close she felt the wind of it. She clasped her hands tight, head turned firmly aside, waiting until it disappeared through Arvis’s gates.

It’s nothing. Nothing at all.

She repeated it with desperate conviction. Bill’s absence had nothing to do with him.

When the car was gone, she fled back to the cottage. Cleaning the house, ironing laundry—such small tasks calmed her. These days, the quiet rhythm of chores was her greatest comfort. If life could continue on so simply, then she could believe Matthias von Herhardt was nothing to her at all.

She had thought he would cast her off before his marriage. Watching him with Claudine one day had confirmed it. Together, they looked made for each other. Even from a distance, Layla had felt the care, the affection in the way he attended her. She had slipped away unseen, circling back to the cottage. The cold air had kept her cheeks flushed long after.

That evening, Phoebe had brought another letter. Earlier than usual. His command inside was blunt as ever.

Layla shredded it into scraps and threw them into the fire. Then she prepared the livestock’s feed and locked up for the night. Her steps to the annex were steady—neither hurried nor hesitant. As always, she distracted herself with daydreams:

Leave Arvis with Uncle Bill. Maybe to Robita, or somewhere south, near the Border. Later, travel far away, to the tropics or the frozen north, to see rare birds. Someday, tend a small garden, in a little home, with Uncle Bill beside me…

The thought frayed, unraveled. By then she had reached the path where the annex rose against the backdrop of the Schulte at sunset. The riverbank was bathed in gold. Beautiful, she told herself. Think only of that.

If this is temporary, then so is the pain. Enduring it—I’ve done that all my life. I can do it again.

Resolute, she stepped forward. A thin shadow stretched long behind her.

Except for the light of day, the bedroom looked as it always did: the great bed, the firelit hearth, the polished furniture, the woman stripped bare.

Now she seemed part of the room itself. Matthias glanced at her once, then lowered his eyes to the stack of documents on his knee.

The Herhardt fortune had long since outgrown the family estate. His grandfather and father had poured their energy into shaping it into a corporate empire, its structure stabilized now. Matthias’s task was not to manage each part, but to govern as a whole. It was something he had been trained in since youth, but the times were volatile, the world shifting swiftly.

He reviewed reports on mining rights abroad, oil concessions. Now and then, he lifted his gaze, glanced at the small naked figure perched on the bed, then returned to his work. The room was filled not with gasps and cries, but with the quiet crackle of firewood and the flutter of paper.

Only when the sunset had fully yielded to night did Layla dare raise her head. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t spoken. He had looked right through her, as though she were invisible.

She pulled her arms across her chest, trembling. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him still calmly reading. He had watched her undress, yes—but only that. Hours had passed, and he had done nothing else.

When he finally set down the thick file, their eyes met. She flinched, hunched smaller, dropped her gaze. When he stood, absurdly, she felt relief. If pain was inevitable, better it begin and end quickly.

But Matthias did not approach. He left the bedroom. Stunned, she blinked at the door. She heard his voice in the hall, low and even, issuing instructions over the telephone. Business. Only business.

He returned. She forgot to look away, and their eyes met again. He merely regarded her with the mild interest of a man contemplating an artwork, then resumed his seat.

He lounged, long legs stretched over the ottoman, and opened another file. From the parlor beyond, faint strains of a waltz drifted in. Layla stiffened.

What is this…?

She snatched up her glasses from the nightstand and slid them on. His pen twirled idly between his fingers as he read.

Even through her lenses, she could not read his expression. She could only see her own nakedness more clearly, and the shame of it burned.

Matthias tilted his head slightly, watching.

Blushing furiously, she scrambled to dress. Underwear first, then blouse, then skirt—each layer pulled on beneath his steady gaze, and the redder her cheeks grew.

Calm as stone when bare, but flustered like this once clothed… ridiculous.

He tapped his papers in rhythm with the waltz while she fidgeted. Finally, Layla stood, fully dressed. She bit her lip, lowered her head, opened her mouth, then closed it. Again, her eyes flickered away. At last, she forced herself to look at him directly.

He stilled his pen. Their eyes locked.

Bathed in moonlight through the half-drawn curtains, Layla spoke, her voice trembling yet clear:

“What exactly are you doing right now?”