For the Lady's Wise Regression - Chapter 1

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 1
“Very well. Since your resolve is so steadfast, you shall marry. But I set conditions.”
Ian Ruscliffe—the “flawed duke” who had lived unmarried and alone well into his forties—wore a face far younger than his years.
Following the quill’s path across the paper, Vanessa inhaled sharply as she read the conditions being written without pause.
1. No Conjugal Relations after marriage.
2. No heir shall be produced.
3. Under no circumstance shall contact occur.
……
Conditions filled from beginning to end with nothing but “No Contact Condition,” “No Approach Condition”—her dismay was plain.
‘……Could it be… that he expects me to make the first move? There’s no other reason these terms would be so—’
Then, suddenly, a memory surfaced. An event from a week prior.
The day she had lost everything to the man she believed was her husband, Clair Leonard. The day he had killed her.
***
“What is this… what is this?”
From Clair Leonard—that name alone made her tear open the envelope with trembling fingers, and the moment she saw what was inside, all color drained from her face.
[Title Transfer Agreement]
An agreement.
By whose authority?
If he meant to threaten her with this, he had another thing coming. With that thought, she reached to tear the document savagely—when she froze.
[Signature: Vanessa Sharose]
Her name in the signature line. And beside it, her own signature.
Her hands went rigid.
She had never signed anything.
She would never surrender her dukedom to a madman.
Not to the man who had crippled her, then branded her an adulteress besides.
“The Imperial Palace. I must go to the Imperial Palace.”
If she requested a handwriting analysis, it would buy time—the transfer would be halted pending verification.
Vanessa paced through Ian’s Mansion, her face drained white, teeth clenched.
She could not let herself be robbed blind like this.
“Does he think I have no evidence?”
Throughout their marriage, the Leonard Marquis House had committed countless crimes and corruptions to seize her dukedom.
She possessed the Ledger documenting them all.
She would have to go at first light. Yet something made her spine prickle with unease.
The back of her neck prickled; goosebumps rose along her skin.
Somehow, she felt she could not stay here.
Vanessa hastily gathered her things.
Into the Document Envelope she placed the Ledger recording the Leonard Marquis House’s crimes and corruptions, the Title Transfer Agreement she had never signed, and keeping her lips sealed, she fled the mansion.
She had barely taken a few steps.
Slash!
A blade of pain, sharp as metal, pierced from her spine outward and bloomed across her back.
“Ah… ugh—”
She could not even breathe.
Sharp steel tore through flesh, crushed and rended—and Vanessa’s body crumpled.
“Wh… what…”
Her breath came in short, severed gasps.
Each time she tried to speak, something welled up in her throat, and she could form no words.
Her eyes snapped wide open.
Had the blow come from the front, she might have seen who wielded the blade.
But she could not even turn to look behind her.
“No… I can’t…”
The Document Envelope she clutched grew slick with blood.
Footsteps—heavy, deliberate—approached from behind. Without any great effort, someone took the Document Envelope from her arms.
And then—
‘Your sin will be repaid later. Rest well, Vanessa.’
That voice, heard from above her head, was unmistakable.
“Cl… air Leonard…!”
She felt something—tears, perhaps, or something else—streaming down her face.
Before her eyes closed for the last time, the blurred figure she saw was Clair Leonard’s.
As he examined the contents of the Document Envelope, the memory overlapped: the moment her legs had crippled, when she tumbled down the Staircase, when his hand did not reach out to catch her.
That same hand which had shoved her in feigned accident, which had never stretched forth to save her, was now the hand that had pierced her through and taken the papers—she understood at last.
Before her eyes could fully close, no hand reached out to save her.
***
“Gasp……!”
When she opened her eyes, an unfamiliar ceiling greeted her. Or rather, she was lying in a bed.
‘I…… didn’t die?’
Before Clair Leonard’s hand claimed her life, what flickered through her mind was unmistakably the Lantern of Life.
All of it — regret and hatred, resentment woven through every thread. Mulling over her own foolish choices, she’d wished for another chance, from anyone at all. That’s what she’d been hoping for.
Had someone heard her wish and pulled her back before death could claim her?
If so, was the person lying beside her……?
The thought reached Vanessa, and she turned her head at once, finding the figure sleeping in the space beside her.
‘……It’s a dream. Dying and coming back to life. That’s impossible.’
At the sight of the man’s face, Vanessa decided this was all a dream she’d spun after death.
His sleeping face was younger than her memory held it, fresher, unmarked by a single line—smooth and beautiful.
Though admittedly, in her memory too, his face had seldom been creased with age.
A face that looked at least ten years younger than his actual years—Vanessa had known it for a very long time.
Ian Ruscliffe.
A man who, approaching forty, had never indulged in romance, let alone marriage.
He bore a nickname that contradicted his noble, refined appearance entirely.
‘The Flawed Duke.’
The nature of the flaw was debated among the nobility, but it chiefly concerned something unmentionable in a certain place.
‘Could that rumor be true? That down there…….’
‘I heard he couldn’t perform his duty.’
‘Perhaps the Ruscliffe Family will begin searching for a new heir soon.’
Whenever three unwed noblewomen gathered, they could publish an entire scandal sheet.
The joke was crude enough to fit that description perfectly, but Vanessa had paid it no mind.
Why concern herself with Ian’s nickname when she herself bore one no less damning?
Or rather, since hers was fact rather than mere suspicion, wasn’t it the more pathetic epithet?
‘The Crippled Duchess.’
It was an expression that seemed to prove her failed marriage, a blemish deep enough to drag both her honor and reputation through the mud.
‘She took to wearing shoes again after so long, and that’s when the accident happened, wasn’t it?’
‘If she fell down the stairs just from putting on shoes, one has to wonder about the education in a duke’s house.’
‘She had no one to teach her. Perhaps that’s why there’s no heir? Without proper instruction, what could one expect…….’
Each word was a blade, driven deep.
No amount of refined instruction could have withstood a deliberate push. The two were entirely separate matters.
Vanessa was no knight, and the relentless, burdensome days had left her so gaunt she couldn’t even manage regular meals—she had no strength to speak of.
Because of it, she’d wanted to protest, filled only with a sense of injustice, but what had happened occurred within the mansion.
Within that house, she had been utterly isolated. With no one to take her side, she couldn’t even correct the distorted accounts.
Everyone but herself stood against her.
Yes, against her.
When even the husband she’d trusted refused to take her part, Vanessa had nothing to lean on—only to sway.
And just recently…….
‘Didn’t something similar happen before we married? If you show that face around the same person twice, I can only think you’ve taken a lover. Betraying me with your childhood friend while I’m your husband. Your leg gave way and you’ve gone where there’s no coming back, Vanessa.’
The memory, fresh as yesterday, brought tears to her eyes, but she swallowed them down hard and carefully pushed herself upright.
What a cruel dream this is.
To show her the very reason for her divorce, near enough to touch.
Was it meant to force her to relive that awful moment? If not, there was no sense in dreaming like this.
She had never harbored any desire or feeling for Ian, not even in her youth—before marriage, certainly.
After she’d decided to marry, they’d grown distant from each other, had barely any point of contact. Not until the incident that would become the grounds for divorce.
‘……Now that I think of it, why did we grow distant?’
There had been a reason they’d become strained……. Up to that point Vanessa’s thoughts went before she jolted, having begun to push herself up only to stop mid-motion.
‘……My leg?’
After the bone had healed crooked, moving her leg had brought strange, piercing pain. But now it was as though…….
Vanessa carefully pulled back the quilt and her jaw went slack.
“Ack……!”
A leg without a scar in sight appeared before her.
Not only that—her toes, which should have been immobile, were moving perfectly well at her command.
Rather than joy at the sensation she hadn’t felt in so long, cold sweat streamed down her face.
‘What, what is this……?’
Was her leg working because it was a dream?
Vanessa gazed at Ian’s youthful face sleeping beside her with a face drained of all color, then slowly turned her head away.
But to call it a dream……
Vanessa carefully flexed her toes again.
‘……moving, they’re moving!’
Biting down on her lip to stifle the cry threatening to escape, Vanessa finally lifted her hand and pinched her cheek hard.
“Ah……!”
A final gasp of pain torn from her lips, Vanessa reflexively turned to look at Ian beside her.
Fortunately, he seemed to be sleeping soundly—he didn’t so much as stir.
His face softer with sleep, her toes moving at will, the ache blooming across her cheek—
All of it pointed to one singular truth.
‘This isn’t……a dream.’
What was happening to her was no dream.
***
She was grateful she hadn’t fainted on the spot.
Returned to the past? It was absurd, impossible.
Yet having seen Ian’s softer face in sleep and her own legs—which should have been lame—moving freely beneath her, she had to accept it.
That she had truly returned to the past.
Once she’d grasped that much, a new question surfaced: how on earth had she ended up sharing a bed with Ian, of all people?
But she had no time to wake him and ask.
If she truly had returned to the past, there was one person she needed to see before anyone else.
‘Father……!’
Leaving Ian sleeping, Vanessa checked her appearance.
Her clothes were rumpled, but nothing that would draw particular notice.
After glancing around the room, she hastily wrapped the scarf from around her neck over her head like a helm and slipped quietly from the bedroom.
Now she could see it clearly. This was Ian’s Mansion.
The window was dark with pre-dawn light, which meant she had to leave before the sun fully rose—then she could slip away without meeting a soul.
Even as she walked with hurried steps, the strange sensation of her legs obeying her commands made her stop several times over.
Descending the Staircase toward the mansion’s entrance, she moved like a mouse hiding in shadows, her breath held tight.
The cold seeping through her palm made her grip on the banister tremble.
‘What if rumors start?’
No matter what had or hadn’t happened, the fact remained: an unmarried man and woman had slept in the same bed.
And she didn’t even know what words had passed between them before they’d fallen asleep together.
The thought that this must remain hidden from everyone sent a spike of tension through her.
‘Almost there now. Everyone’s still lost in dreams at this hour……I’ll be fine.’
The end was within reach.
The moment she caught sight of the great doors, she felt a wave of relief—
“Haven’t seen you in ages, and you’d leave without so much as a greeting?”
“Hah!”
A voice from behind made Vanessa freeze mid-breath, her entire body going rigid.
“Vanessa.”
The voice that reached her seemed drowsy, unfamiliar in its softness.
As the sound of approaching footsteps drew closer, Vanessa shut her eyes tight.
“You should at least give me an explanation—otherwise I’m bound to misunderstand.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————