There Is No Paradise Where You Escaped - Chapter 59

Edwin stayed with Sarah Chadwick until the end of the performance.

Having forgotten about Vivianne’s presence, he responded politely to Sarah Chadwick’s conversation and enjoyed the collaboration between the orchestra and the cello.

Since neither of them showed any sign of surprise at seeing each other there, it was safe to assume their meeting had been prearranged.

Given that both the Baroness and the Queen had personally involved themselves in arranging the match, Sarah was clearly someone important to Edwin.

What Vivianne questioned, however, was why he had dragged her along on this outing. Only after the performance ended did Edwin acknowledge her presence and lead her out of the theater.

Even then, Vivianne followed without expression, simply being dragged along.

Once inside the carriage, the first thing Vivianne did was open the curtain on the window.

The two-seater carriage was cramped, and the only hope of enduring the suffocating space was the brightly soaked night view of Farrington.

The sound of a whip cracked, and the wheels began to roll.

Inside the small carriage, running through the pouring rain, it was dark and damp, filled with a heavy, clammy silence.

It was a persistent and relentless silence, one that no one dared to break.

In a few days, there would be a royal event, one where Lady Danvers and Sarah Chadwick would undoubtedly be in attendance.

For Vivianne, distant from Neway’s high society, there was no reason to attend.

It would be fortunate enough if she simply managed not to make a mistake in front of the royal family.

“I won’t go to the royal event,” Vivianne broke the heavy, humid silence with her voice.

But her eyes remained fixed on the rain-soaked scenery outside.

“Please let me skip it.”

With dry eyes, she glanced at Edwin’s reflection in the window, then turned her gaze back to the blur of rain.

When Edwin chuckled and turned his head, her vacant, ash-gray eyes returned to his reflection.

“Why? So you can plan to seat me with Miss Chadwick again?”

Vivianne’s lips pressed tightly together.

She wasn’t in any position to sneer sarcastically, as if mocking him.

At the Count of Thurston’s ballroom, he had danced with Sarah Chadwick as if he had been waiting for it—and had promised her this very evening to watch the cello performance together.

“If I get married… do you think anything will change?”

The mocking question struck her heart like a foreboding wound.

When she looked at Edwin, she was met with a cold and cruel smile.

“… What do you mean?”

“Whether I marry Chadwick or another woman, nothing will change for you. You’ll still be by my side.”

It was a perfect paradox.

Even while having a beloved wife, Edwin intended to keep Vivianne—the woman he supposedly desired—by his side.

She had heard of such husbands before: Men who, despite having wives and children, lost both body and heart to their mistresses—shameless and unfaithful.

“No. When Your Grace is about to marry, that’s when you should kill me—this shameless woman—without pardon. That’s how this relationship should end.”

After days of lifelessness, Vivianne’s voice now carried an unexpected power—anger. Her eyes blazed fiercely, reddening quickly, and her thin fingers clenched tightly into a fist.

“Says who?”

Edwin scoffed and crushed her with his reply.

“I have no such plans.”

But Vivianne wasn’t someone who would break easily—not here, not now.

“… Didn’t you say you desired me, Your Grace? You said you’d take me if you wanted to. And now you say you’ll keep such a person by your side even after you marry? Then what about me? Are you telling me to live with even heavier guilt, like some mistress? Is this something the man who called me disgusting and contradictory would say?”

“Who knows.”

While Vivianne was on the verge of madness from anxiety, Edwin remained calm and relaxed, leaning back lazily, sticky as the humid air, as he tilted his head.

“That’s for you to deal with. So don’t bother feeling guilty in the first place. The more you do, the harder it will be for you.”

She bit down on the inside of her cheek until the metallic tang of blood bloomed across her tongue.

But Edwin only continued—more composed, colder than ever.

“Once I marry, you won’t just feel like a mistress—you’ll actually be one. And you’ll stay by my side.”

In his cold, bluish eyes, the nightscape of Farrington shimmered for a moment.

Faced with that mocking smirk and his venomous, serpent-like gaze, Vivianne’s composure shattered.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

She pounded furiously against the carriage wall, and it came to an urgent halt.

Even then, Edwin sat lazily and watched her, amused by her loss of control.

Vivianne turned her body, breathing raggedly.

The carriage had stopped—all she had to do was get out.

“Move. I’m getting out,” she muttered through her gritted teeth.

“Says who?”

Someone like Vivianne, no matter how angry, didn’t even faze him. In fact, Edwin deliberately stretched his legs out further in the cramped carriage, almost in defiance.

The cramped space left no room for escape.

“Move. I’m leaving.”

Her only choice now was to fight louder and harder.

“I said move! I’m getting out! I’m leaving!”

As Edwin scoffed, the coachman opened the door.

A gust of cold autumn wind, damp with rain, rushed into the carriage, chilling her skin.

The coachman glanced between Edwin and Vivianne, trying to understand what was going on.

“Your Grace?”

“It’s nothing. Just keep going.”

“No! I said I’m getting out. Don’t go!”

Vivianne pleaded with the coachman, but he hesitated, then obeyed Edwin. With a stiff smile, the coachman closed the door and vanished.

Soon after, the wheels started turning again.

Vivianne bit her trembling lips in rage and glared at Edwin.

“I said I was getting out. Why are you doing this to me?”

“Why? Do you really not know?”

“Then go ahead and threaten to kill me! Strangle me! Use me for target practice, if that’s what you want! Torture me if you must—I’ll accept it all without complaint!”

“Without complaint? Then I have even less reason not to.”

“Your Grace!”

Vivianne’s voice was almost a scream now.

The heat of her anger had swept away the damp air in the carriage—a clear sign of how far her fury had come.

“I will never be your mistress. I won’t be anyone’s mistress. I’d rather die. I’ll throw myself into the deepest part of the ocean, so you won’t even get the satisfaction of killing me or finding my body.”

“Do you really think that will work out the way you want?”

“Then will it happen the way you want, Your Grace?”

The challenge—unexpected even to herself—struck like a blade.

Vivianne should have known that if she showed a new side of herself now and then, it would only amuse Edwin more.

“You can’t die or run away until I say you can. If that’s what you wanted, you shouldn’t have let me live back then. So go ahead and regret it. Regret the choice you made that led you to this moment.”

Even now, Edwin has crushed Vivianne’s sincerity without mercy.

Having lost all sense of reason, Vivianne reached for the carriage door handle without hesitation.

It didn’t matter that the carriage was moving.

Right now, all that mattered to Vivianne was escaping from Edwin.

But Edwin grabbed her wrist.

She struggled, trying to shake him off, but her efforts were futile against his iron grip.

Vivianne, robbed of her freedom, reached her limit.

Clenching her other fist—the only part of her still her own—she aimed to strike Edwin’s face.

But Edwin, who could dodge even the swiftest needle, was not someone who would be hit by Vivianne’s slow fist.

“Let go! I said let go! You awful man! You womanizer! You vile murderer!”

Despite Edwin’s coldly rational advice, Vivianne, cornered and stripped of every means of defense, struggled desperately.

The cramped carriage had become a battlefield, chaos boiling over in every corner.

“Didn’t you tell me to prove it? That I’m nothing special, even if you take me, that I’m just a dull, worthless woman? Fine. Try me, Your Grace. Do as you please and see what happens. If you kiss me, I’ll tear your lips off. If you touch me, I’ll break your hands. I will never—not even for a moment—act like some obedient mistress and kneel before you.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to find out—whether you can really tear my lips off, whether my hands really break.”

She tried with all her strength to break free from his grip, but Edwin, without any effort, continued to restrain her with ease.

Vivianne needed to defeat him—to shatter that condescending smile, to make sure he never laughed in front of her like that again.

With her hands pinned, she had only one means of attack left.

She lunged at him and sank her teeth into the exposed skin of his neck, biting down so hard her jaw trembled.

It was an act of ruinous defiance—to end everything amid an uncontrollable destruction. 

Despite the pain that should have made him scream, Edwin didn’t make a single sound.

Instead, he bound her wrists behind her back, tangled a hand in her disheveled hair, and yanked hard.

Vivianne, her face still buried in his neck, let out a cry as her head was wrenched backward.

Her hands were useless. Even her mouth—her last weapon—had been neutralized.

Now, with even her waist pinned, she was completely trapped atop him.

“This—ugh.”

Her crushed throat barely made a sound, the words escaping like a strangled moan.

As Edwin’s grip tightened around her wrists and head with each struggling movement, Vivianne began to sob.

Edwin’s calm eyes drifted to the bare nape of her neck.

In the chaos, her dress had slipped from her left shoulder, exposing the pale skin of her chest, heaving with ragged breaths.

Then he pressed his lips gently against her soft flesh.

Vivianne flinched and tried to resist again—

—But then, a scream loud enough to tear the heavens rang out, filling the small carriage. It was swallowed by the pounding rain outside.

“It hurts! It hurts! Ah! Your Grace! Ah!”

She tried to escape the pain as if her flesh were being ripped apart. But with her body completely overpowered, the only thing Vivianne could do now was provoke him further.

His teeth, which had been about to tear into her skin, relaxed their grip.

The fleeting relief of respite that felt like heaven vanished as his warm breath dampened the marks he’d left. Then his lips pressed softly to the mark he had left with his bite.

Where his mouth met her skin, a tingling heat bloomed.

It was a foreign touch—the tickle of his mouth on her skin, the strange sensation, the soft smack, smack of lips against her skin—that sent her blood racing hotter still.

Edwin’s lips trailed down from her collarbone to her neck.

The intense musk of his cologne jolted her back to clarity, and Vivianne finally managed to speak through her dry, cracked lips.

“P-Please… Your Grace… stop…”

The spot where his lips had touched still burned—so much so that Vivianne wondered if it had been a branding iron, not lips, against her skin.

Her hands, which had been bound behind her back, were finally released. The grip in her hair loosened as well—yet his lips continued their path upward, now nearing her ear.

Just as she managed to straighten her sore neck, his lips stopped, hovering just above hers.

Edwin’s eyes, clear as ice and cold as frost, locked onto hers with unyielding intensity.

In the rain-drenched carriage, their heated breaths and tangled stares swirled together like vines.

As the carriage jostled over uneven ground, their nearly touching lips brushed in a fleeting contact.

Vivianne swallowed a wet, suffocating breath, tucking her trembling bottom lip into her mouth.

“I didn’t kill him.”

His deep voice whispered softly, vibrating in Vivianne’s heart. 

His large hand reached up, gently brushing away the hair clinging to her face, and cupped her small head. It was a tenderness completely different from when he had gripped her hair before—so unlike the force he had used.

“I didn’t kill Lawrence.”

Vivianne’s heart dropped, and her breath shattered, ragged.

The tension drained from her body, melting her into a puddle of relief.

“Really…?”

Tears welled in her eyes.

They spilled over in a rush, gathering at her chin.

Edwin nodded slowly, watching her cry with the mournful calm of a cello’s sad tone.

“You really… really didn’t kill my father?”

Instead of answering with words, Edwin pulled her closer by the back of her head.

As Vivianne collapsed into his chest, the broken-down lady burst into half-relieved sobs.

And then, like a child, she cried—quietly, messily, in his arms.

Her tears soaked through his shoulder, but Edwin didn’t seem to care. He kissed Vivianne’s exposed shoulders, waiting for her to pour everything out.

Outside the carriage, the harsh autumn rain poured down.

The carriage, the rain, and the night with Aveline—all three were in place, like a memory reborn.

But Edwin’s mind didn’t return to that night 14 years ago.

All he could think of was Vivianne, who was in front of him.