For the Lady's Wise Regression - Chapter 65

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

Chapter 65
If she was being honest, Vanessa found the proposal rather costly.
Still, thanks to Ian, she’d escaped marriage to Calail Leonard—so this much was manageable.
She’d simply take a small island or two as compensation later, then divorce him cleanly.
……Surely she deserved that much in royalties?
Without him, she’d have spent every year wasting time on pointless lawsuits.
Especially ridding herself of House Leonard, who filed the most suits and had the subtlest way of needling her—that was good not just for her, but for him as well.
Hmm. An island was the bare minimum for royalties.
Vanessa had no doubt that the new medicine they’d develop this time would receive His Majesty’s seal of approval.
In fact, wouldn’t His Majesty be forced to stamp it?
Unless he preferred the experience of standing in line to purchase goods.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot the most important part.’
When any new product launched, there was one thing most essential.
Marketing.
Whether people thought it was truly that wonderful depended entirely on how eagerly and passionately someone promoted it—how willing they were to bleed for it and buy it themselves.
And there was one person who excelled at precisely that……
Vanessa’s eyes glinted.
How convenient—she’d need to recruit someone from House Leonard after all.
Vanessa’s smile deepened like a coachman wielding a whip down a road with no escape.
Sorry about this. Looks like you won’t even become a noble in this life.
Ian caught sight of Vanessa gazing at the Jeongjeong Flower, grinning to herself.
……Whenever she made that expression, she always caused trouble.
When she was young and curious about the taste of apples picked fresh from the tree rather than those sold at the fruit shop in the Capital, she’d worn that same face as she climbed the branches.
It appeared again when she’d questioned why only the coachman should drive the carriage, then bungled the whip and struck a horse’s rump so hard that the animal reared.
She’d had that look when she suddenly announced she’d walk the path of the blade instead of her father, then lost her grip on the Real Sword and embedded it in a log like an axe splitting kindling.
It had surfaced too when she was so captivated by the sight of a falling star that she’d practically shaken down every jeweler across the Empire, demanding “Why don’t you sell fallen stars?” like a child throwing a fit.
……She might not realize it, but those who’d known her since childhood—His Majesty, Ian, and Duke Sharoze—would all share the same assessment.
Reckless.
A time bomb, never knowing when it would explode.
No wonder she was Duke Sharoze’s daughter; whenever she and her father both fixed their attention on something, they charged forward like wild horses with blinders on, seeing nothing but their goal.
Duke Sharoze, at least, had channeled all that mad recklessness into his duties, but Vanessa had not.
She’d exhaust every conceivable method until her curiosity was satisfied, no matter how many days it took.
Once she’d become obsessed with why horses only ran when whipped.
And on that very day, the etiquette lesson she’d learned happened to include the maxim: “Use both the whip and the carrot together.”
So if horses ran because being whipped hurt, and she’d jump when struck too, wouldn’t she treat the horse differently? With that logic, she’d spent a month visiting the stables, determined to train one horse her own way—gently stroking it with her palm, offering it carrots, crooning “Good girl, shall we take one lap around?” until finally……
the stubborn horse bit off a chunk of her hair, and she’d wept.
‘All maxims are lies!’
She still remembered the expression on Duke Sharoze’s face as he’d watched from a distance.
That look in his eyes—as if to ask: Is that really what I taught you to do?
Next to him, her etiquette tutor had worn a face that transcended resignation into outright surrender.
The look of someone wondering if she’d ever become human at all.
Yet she had grown into a person.
……Just one no one could predict.
Where once she’d caused such chaos that everyone around her had been in constant uproar, her youthful recklessness had transformed into sharp, sparkling ideas paired with unstoppable execution.
Ian found that admirable.
The bloodline clearly ran deep—he’d lost count of how many times she’d astonished him.
Even this current proposal was no exception.
A royal seal was valuable to acquire.
It would help settle the annual avalanche of lawsuits that descended on them like clockwork each year.
Moreover, House Leonard—that constant irritant—could be rendered invisible, utterly beneath notice.
He didn’t know if she’d thought that far ahead when she made the suggestion to him.
Jealousy was an emotion that had lived within him long before this.
Once, she had not been his, so he’d swallowed it in silence. But things were different now.
Nominally, at least, she was his.
The fact that her name carried the surname Ruscliffe was enough to satisfy Ian completely.
Now that she was in his grasp, her name would never change.
He would ensure it. He would make it so.
Vanessa Ruscliffe.
Merely remembering how close it had come to being Vanessa Leonard made his teeth clench.
When she hadn’t proposed marriage first, he’d resigned himself to never having her, but that was no longer the case.
It was mine.
……Even if it was a Contract Marriage.
‘Not yet.’ That was all.
Kirious had said so, after all.
How it starts with ‘Who are you?’ and becomes ‘Well, friend,’ then ‘Darling,’ and finally ends as ‘My dear’—that’s how it goes.
When he’d said that, I’d dismissed it as just another flight of fancy, but now…
‘……My dear.’
Crunch. Ian’s jaw tightened as he stared at the Jeongjeong Flower.
Brief as it was, Vanessa had called him ‘my dear.’
My dear.
The moment he thought of it again, he felt an involuntary cough rise in his throat.
Ian’s gaze shifted restlessly.
His vision filled with Vanessa beside Karn, laboring to sort out the Jeongjeong Flowers.
……Because others were present.
When it was just the two of them, he might use her name, but now with Karn right there, it felt different…….
Why did this make him so tense?
Ian rehearsed the term in his mind over and over, his fists clenched, his lips moving silently.
The word—that particular word he needed to call her by—moved soundlessly in his mouth alone.
“Ian!”
It was then, without warning, that Vanessa spun around and their eyes met.
This was it.
Just shut his eyes and say it once—that was all it would take.
The very word she’d forced through gritted teeth in front of her own father.
Resolve crystallized in Ian’s gaze.
“Say it. My de…….”
“……Dear?”
The way she repeated his words looked just like she was trying to remember whether ‘dear’ fit into her own name somehow.
Tilt. Vanessa’s head inclined slightly to one side.
“My de…….”
“……?”
“My d… dear…….”
“…….”
“……Vanessa.”
After all that buildup, that was what came out.
……For the first time, Ian felt with bone-deep clarity what it meant to want to curse.
Out of all the words in the world—’my dear,’ ‘Vanessa’?
“……Pfft!”
In the garden where only the soft sound of plucking Jeongjeong Flowers had been heard, Vanessa’s bright laughter burst like a soap bubble, popping with a clear sound.
She must have been piecing together what Ian had said in her mind.
“My de… dear… Vanessa…… Heh…….”
As she giggled, Karn beside her, silently picking flowers, felt the corners of his mouth twitch as well.
“……Why did you call me?”
In the end, Ian swallowed the term that had been circling in his throat, then threw out his words again in that same flat, emotionless tone.
“Oh, right—lunch time’s almost here. I was going to say let’s go eat.”
Was it really that funny?
Ian looked at Vanessa with some annoyance as she wiped her eyes with her index finger, but then he found her grinning widely, her teeth showing.
“……Well then. Let’s finish the rest this afternoon.”
Ian let out a small cough, and his ears flushed a faint red.
‘An ideal type is like that. Once you’re hooked, there’s no escape. You probably won’t forget it your whole life? Just like I still can’t forget that woman with the straight black hair and those eyes deep as autumn nights. She’s probably from the Eastern Empire—it’s hopeless love, the kind that hurts because it can never happen. ……Saying it out loud really drives home how I’ve betrayed myself. How did someone who seemed even more hopeless than me end up married?’
A memory surfaced of the time Kirious had laid bare his views on ‘what is an ideal type’ to Tese and Ian.
Tese, who’d never really had an ideal type to begin with, had just listened as though it didn’t matter, but Ian had thought then that this was the only piece of Kirious’s countless rambling that was actually worth hearing.
Until now, Ian had never truly considered what his ideal type was, but if someone were to ask him at this very moment what his ideal type was…
Hair the color of roses, a nose that wrinkled just slightly when she smiled. Those fresh pink eyes…… he knew all of it would come flooding back without hesitation.
And all of it had taken root in Ian’s mind as Vanessa Sharoze.
There was no such thing as an ideal type existing first—rather, because she existed, an ideal type existed for Ian.
That one truth alone was the only logic by which Ian Ruscliffe and Kirious Parbian had ever found common ground.
Once you’re hooked, there’s no escape.
Ian was feeling that sentence now with unbearable clarity, down to his very skin.
Unlike when he’d watched someone else linger long by her side, now that she was his, there truly was no escape.

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