For the Lady's Wise Regression - Chapter 66

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 66
‘…… Was this what it felt like when a person broke down while still alive?’
Every time he moved his body, every time he opened his mouth.
When Vanessa was beside him, he could hear it even in his own ears—that creak, creak of a rusted hinge.
No, it was more like the sensation of a poorly-oiled bolt screwing tighter, squeaking with each turn.
Clearly, things weren’t like this even when he first received the proposal for the Contract Marriage.
The longer they lived together, the more ironically Ian continued to deteriorate.
Unable to know how this would appear to Vanessa, his anxiety only grew alongside it.
‘I’m losing it.’
Ian glanced sidelong at Vanessa, matching her pace even as their clothes never brushed against each other.
Hadn’t there been times before when, if a contract or document contained many conditions to uphold, he’d simply forget a few of them?
Even now, the instruction to tell the butler beforehand was barely being followed.
Yet why did he follow the no-contact condition so thoroughly?
Of course, it was he who had first erected that solid barrier because of his constitution……
And it was true that his expression had stiffened the moment their hands touched……
‘…… Wouldn’t it be all right if, just once, I forgot?’
The fact that all of this stemmed not from disliking Vanessa, but from caring for her far too much—Ian was far too clumsy to reveal such a thing.
Far too much so.

***
“This one won’t last long before it collapses, and that one…… No, it won’t do. A year isn’t enough time to see any light.”
After finishing lunch, Ian headed to the Imperial Palace to submit budget reports on new ventures—he was resolved to strike while the iron was hot.
Thanks to that, Vanessa, whose afternoon schedule had been cleared entirely, was organizing on parchment the ventures that House Leonard had acquired or touched in her previous life, one by one.
There were so many ventures House Leonard had been involved with that she’d wondered if she could possibly remember them all, but fortunately her hands moved faster than her thoughts.
To the point where she almost wondered if she’d been returned in regression simply to take revenge on House Leonard.
Striking while the iron was hot applied to her as well.
One year. She had to settle the score within that time.
How long Third Prince Gardelmore’s body could hold out remained uncertain, and she needed to contact the Grandmother’s granddaughter before House Leonard did.
Since Marquis Leonard’s Wife began her exchanges with the Grandmother, her influence had grown within high society—more precisely, among the nobility’s ladies.
Those attending courses on succession had begun mixing in little by little, but Vanessa’s own generation hadn’t yet become well-versed in politics, factional strife, or the state of affairs.
In that regard, choosing Ian as her marriage partner was, upon further reflection, the finest and most perfect choice Vanessa could have made.
He was her age, yet he already stood firm at a place where his peers among the young nobility still had to reach toward.
Securing the one man among those father-aged nobles who held the only remaining Dukedom, despite his youth, would have been impossible without the favor of regression itself.
At first, she’d wondered if it was a demon rather than God who had granted her wish.
What did it matter whether it was God or demon?
She had returned to the past the very day after that drinking session with Ian, which had taken place more than fifteen years ago—so perhaps it had been a demon granting her wish.
Without that drinking session, marriage to Ian might have been difficult.
Of course, it was an action taken because she hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might have a woman he secretly loved.
Even if she had known, she didn’t think her choice would have changed.
Still, if she could wear away some of that wooden stiffness during their marriage, she wouldn’t end up as a bachelor at forty like in her previous life, bearing the epithet “Duke with a flaw”.
Even as her mind raced with other thoughts ceaselessly, Vanessa’s hand did not stop.
The more she moved her pen, the more she recalled in fragmentary detail how each venture would fare in the future.
A true blessing, truly.
Vanessa continued writing with a smile playing at her lips.
The parchment was about half-filled now.
Suddenly, a voice that surfaced in her mind halted her hand.
‘…… Hey, Vanessa.’
Laughter escaped between Vanessa’s teeth like air from a deflated balloon.
A devout believer of the Holy Nation, dignified and upright, with no connection to frivolity—imagining him at night with his hair swept up and sitting astride a jewel-studded carriage, saying “Say, miss. On this night, you, this star, and how……” felt like witnessing the impossible.
A nuance only Kirious would be capable of—hearing it from that wooden man’s lips was something else entirely.
“…… Still, it wasn’t bad.”
Whenever he’d always called her “Vanessa” in that same indifferent, low tone, there were moments when she couldn’t tell if he was a person or a towering tree moving about in human skin.
She never imagined that just one interjection could flood him with such a thoroughly human scent.
Come to think of it, he seemed to have grown a bit softer lately? There was a sense that something about him had changed.
He was being more careful now out of reluctance to break this contract through his own mistake, but even when he occasionally forgot the condition and touched her lightly, it was apparent.
Before marriage, he’d drawn the line immediately, but instead of adding words, he’d simply refrained—and the frequency of his refraining had increased.
Though it was only ever the slightest degree.
“…… Well, they say that living together creates familiarity where there was none before. Perhaps Ian’s the same way.”
Yet she still couldn’t let her guard down.
After all, the reason she had married Ian Ruscliffe in the first place was for her own Revenge.
Having clawed her way back from death itself, she couldn’t allow divorce to snatch away her revenge before it was complete.
……Yes, she’d admit it. Lately she’d been letting her guard down far too much.
Ian’s reactions were more entertaining than she’d expected, never dull, and didn’t feel like a waste of time at all.
She’d known he was emotionally dense, but not to this degree.
Of course, that sharp tongue of his that flared up now and then did irritate her.
But that was the nature of romance.
First love was always the clumsiest, and one grew more practiced with experience.
Casanovas and philanderers weren’t called pros for nothing.
Not that she was actually in love with Ian. But contract marriage or not, emotions were bound to collide when two people came together.
His fumbling expressions she could find endearing enough, but if that blunt manner of his from his youth had persisted into his older years—
‘If he weren’t a Duke, he’d already be notorious by now.’
Spewing fire from his mouth, they’d say.
What good did it do that he was clumsy, emotionally obtuse, and entertaining to watch?
Every word that left his mouth became a burning coal that reduced everything to ash.
That wasn’t merely halving his appeal—it was a talent for dragging what little affection she’d managed to build straight into the negative.
‘……Yet sometimes he’s genuinely tender.’
Vanessa’s hand, which had been moving rapidly across the parchment, slowed.
Without realizing it, her thoughts of Ian had overflowed her mind, pushing revenge to the margins.
‘It’s strange, really.’
The Ian of his twenties had clung to that brash way of speaking.
But the Ian of his forties—at least his words no longer damaged his reputation.
He wasn’t gentlemanly, nor did he soften toward others.
Though he’d built his walls thick and high, he’d never fallen into the realm of contempt among the society ladies.
Rather, it was closer to them stealing glances at something they knew they could never possess.
Many a woman found herself hoping he’d become a saint, since he could never be hers.
True, the consensus was that he was reserved, taciturn, cold as winter, and unapproachable.
Vanessa had thought the same.
Until she heard him speak his birthday wishes in Pommeldes, on the streets of her past life—before her death and return.
Behind those carefully erected walls lay a tenderness she hadn’t expected.
One could see his near-obsessive, almost compulsive nature in the precisely knotted necktie and meticulously buttoned shirt, yet what lay beneath the armor he’d peeled back was unmistakably, clearly kind.
Honestly……she hadn’t known he’d been remembering her birthday all along.
By the time Vanessa noticed, her hand had written something on the parchment that had nothing to do with revenge.
[Ian Ruscliffe.]
Her husband now, and the name of a man who’d lived as a bachelor in her past life.

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