I'd Rather You Were Impotent

So he has no intention of ever letting me into his bedroom.

I had no wish to share a bed with a man I barely knew, either. Arms folded, I waited for my own room to be put in order. How much time passed that way, I couldn't say, before he asked me in a heavy voice.

"Why doesn't it matter to you if I'm impotent?"

The question caught me off guard. I blinked rapidly.

Why?

I had a reason, plainly enough. But—

Can I actually tell him the truth?

Before I knew it, I was studying Ian through narrowed eyes. My reason was fatal for a noblewoman. Unless I truly trusted the person listening, it was something I must never confess.

But what does it matter? The man is the National Impotent.

What reason could possibly be more damning than a husband who was impotent? Having settled that in my mind, I shrugged. The words came out far lighter than I had expected.

"I don't like children. I don't want to have any."

Simple enough—and fatal for any noble obliged to produce an heir.

James and I had two children. One was nine, the next seven. People said a child born of one's own body was bound to be precious, but the truth was I had never been able to give them my heart.

I nearly died.

The first birth had been a nightmare of a labor. I suffered for a full twenty hours before the child came, and from pushing so long something went wrong in the muscles around my hips. Even afterward I had to lie in bed wearing diapers. I fought bedsores that ate into my back and, terrified I might never walk again, wept without a sound night after night.

The moment those hideous aftereffects eased, James came at me.

For a woman who had nearly died giving birth, the marriage bed was nothing more and nothing less than terror. When I refused him, James said this:

"I've held back quite enough."

When I told him that if he absolutely had to have me, he should at least see to it I didn't conceive, he answered like this:

"A woman doesn't conceive while she's still nursing."

Didn't conceive, my foot. That was how the second child took root without warning—twenty-three months later, as good as back-to-back. People said a second birth was easier than the first, so I had allowed myself a little reassurance. And then—

When I came to, a fortnight had passed.

I fainted in the middle of labor. The child nearly died, and so did I. The physician had been certain I would never regain consciousness; he called it a miracle. That grueling birth ruined my womb. I would never be able to bear another child.

The instant he pronounced me barren, I let out a secret breath of relief. I thought it was for the best.

I'll pass on ever going through something that dreadful again.

"I know perfectly well how wretched the later years are for noblewomen who have no children. Even so, I don't want to give birth. I'd rather prepare myself so I never end up in that state."

Shoving the returning pain and fear of childbirth into a corner of my mind, I spoke with certainty.

"So it doesn't matter to me if you're impotent. No—I'd rather you were."

I met the gaze of Ian, who was staring straight through me. His blue eyes were cold as ice, but I had no wish to look away. For a moment he faced me without so much as a blink. Then, slowly, he lowered his eyes.

"......Is that so."

Oh?

He accepted it so easily that the strength went out of my shoulders all at once, and I swayed. Sweeping back a lock of hair that had slipped forward, I asked,

"Why answer so readily? An heir matters to you too, doesn't it?"

I might have developed a phobia of the act itself after enduring childbirth twice, but Ian hadn't.

Men trust nothing but their own experience.

That miserable generalization was something I had learned over ten years with James. Not once had he asked whether I was satisfied. I knew why.

Because he was.

A capable wife who ran the household without a hitch, cleaned up after every venture he launched, conjured money from somewhere whenever the family lacked it, and drove out every mother-in-law who was of no use to the house.

He never lifted a finger. He reaped every benefit with both hands in his pockets.

And in the end, wasn't I the one who took all the blame? The most unfilial wretch alive, a rotten daughter-in-law, a cold-blooded duchess without blood or tears. Through all of it, James believed that because he was satisfied, I must be satisfied too. That was the man I knew.

So why aren't you arguing with me?

In that sense, Ian was peculiar in more ways than one. The National Impotent—he let a nickname that humiliating stand as if it were nothing, and he even nodded when a woman who looked like a flighty girl of twenty said she had no need of children.

"It isn't my place to say so, but if you agree to everything, the deed to the house and the deed to the land will both be gone before you know it. The more important the matter, the more careful you ought to be."

However much younger I might look on the outside, I was forty on the inside, wasn't I? Watching a man so much younger, I grew worried in spite of myself, and a strange bit of nagging slipped out.

At my words Ian looked visibly flustered. A moment later he set his jaw hard and answered.

"I didn't nod because I agree to everything. I nodded because it truly doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter? Even when it's a question of your own child?"

"Well. I don't particularly feel like answering."

"Well, well."

I clicked my tongue, dumbfounded—and then, all at once, I understood what sort of man stood before me.

Ah. Right. This man can't get it up.

Oh dear. Oh dear. It wasn't that he didn't want one. He couldn't have one.

That's why he doesn't want to talk about it.

Once I knew the reason, I had never seen anyone look so pitiful. I gazed at Ian with sorrowful eyes, and his brows gave a thick twitch.

"Don't look at me like that."

Aigoo. Caught, was I? Built like a brick wall, and sharper than he looked. I turned my head ever so gently and pouted.

"N-no. What did I even do?"

"You were looking at me as if I were someone profoundly pitiable."

"Ahem. A misunderstanding. A misunderstanding. Why would I pity you, Your Grace?"

"Hm."

As if he meant to interrogate the lie, Ian kept staring a hole through my cheek.

Why does it feel as if that gaze is coming closer...?

I slid my eyes toward him—and nearly jumped out of my skin.

It wasn't a feeling! When did he get this close!

That handsome face was watching me from a distance so near our breaths might have tangled. A thick forearm had passed my shoulder and taken hold of the back of the sofa. In an instant I was trapped inside his arms.

Heavens! I don't even have room to look away!

Tension seized me before I knew it. Rigid, I stared at Ian. I had known he was handsome, but face to face like this, the sight was enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I clapped both palms over my mouth.

I take back the brick. How is this face a brick? If it's a brick at all, it's one carved from marble.

James had been a reasonably fine-looking man, but this one seemed to belong to an entirely different species. A nose so straight it might cut, thick and beautiful brows, blue eyes that shone like jewels according to the light. The man's apricot lips, which had been regarding me steadily, parted slowly.

"Where did a woman like this drop from, all of a sudden?"

"What?"

I blinked at words whose meaning I couldn't grasp.

The strange sensuality he had been giving off vanished. His face hardened again, and he drew well back from me. Then, brushing the creases from his jacket with a few sharp pats, he said,

"Then I'll see to my own business. There's a mountain of things to handle before our wedding."

"That's..."

Well, yes, there would be. But—

Shouldn't you explain the wall-pin first?!

The reason I didn't shriek was surely that I was far too flustered. My heart, still startled by that beautiful face, was thudding wildly, driving blood through my whole body. Toward me, still in that state, he offered a plain farewell with a face that held no trace of a smile.

"I'll see you later, Olivia."

Frozen like ice, I watched Ian's back as he left the drawing room. The door opened with a creak and shut with a bang. At the same moment my tension unraveled as if by magic.

"Phew."

Ten years of coaxing and managing a single man! I had thought that by now I understood men, and here I was, helplessly tense!

Is he really impotent?

It felt a little wrong to say so, but the Ian of a moment ago had been intensely attractive. The lazily curved mouth, the faint flush at the corners of his eyes, even the clean line of his bared forehead. Could a man who truly couldn't get it up give off a sensuality like that?

But in the real future, that man stays alone the whole time. No scandals, either.

Suspicion flared for an instant, then I shook it off. I knew the future twenty years from now, after all.

A little later the butler came and showed me to my room. I lay down in a chamber so vast and luxurious it could not be compared in the slightest with the Parnel ducal house. I was so tired I didn't even toss. I simply slept well.

A bear of a man with black hair and blue eyes closer to gray looked down at me. James.

"My dear, open your eyes. My dear."

I nearly laughed. What was this? He never used to manage more than three words at a time.

He could make a voice that desperate?

The situation was so impossible that I knew it was a dream. James would never do this. He was the sort of man who wouldn't raise his voice even if I collapsed vomiting blood before his eyes.

And I'm no different.

If James were to stop breathing without warning, I would be a little startled, nothing more. I wouldn't be particularly sad, or particularly pained. The only reason I wouldn't applaud a death well deserved was the habit of the years we had lived.

Then what was our marriage?

A person one wouldn't miss, whenever they vanished. Twenty years since we became husband and wife. Ten years of living together. All that time, and the only intimacy we had shared was a bedtime routine no different from exercise.

Why did you and I ever meet?

If we had met with no meaning, and were only to spend time with no meaning—if that was truly what a life was—

We needn't have met at all.

I thought that far, and opened my eyes.

It was the morning of the wedding.

Which was to say, the emperor was far more alert to his cousin's marriage than I had imagined.