Marriage With A Suspiciously Demure Husband - Chapter 85

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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 85

A certain middle-aged noblewoman sat at a garden table with the other ladies, watching me intently.
Yet strangely, she felt familiar—not like a first meeting at all.
I’d seen younger ladies and unmarried daughters before when I’d gone to guard the ballroom during my Knight Order days, and since I moved about so actively, their faces stuck with me. But this middle-aged woman—no.
Where had I seen this person before?
More troubling still.
My heart had begun to race with an unease I couldn’t explain.
The moment our eyes met, I felt as though I’d committed some grave wrong—my breath grew short, and an overwhelming urge to hide seized me.
I’d never felt this way around Kailas, so why here—
I couldn’t understand it, and it infuriated me.
I usually recalled things quickly, but I couldn’t place her. Who was she?
I must have seen her somewhere, since her face wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.
As I stood wrestling with the question, the middle-aged noblewoman rose and approached me.
I expected a greeting once she drew near, but instead she simply stared at me, her mouth hidden behind an open fan.
Was it because I came from commoner stock?
I had no wish to accept a greeting from someone I hadn’t invited to approach, so I stood watching her. After a moment, as if she’d thought better of it, her hand holding the closed fan dropped to her dress.
She stepped back and offered me a proper curtsy.
Only then did I bow in return, respectfully.
The noblewoman moved closer still.
She glanced at the ladies seated at the table, who were watching with unconcealed curiosity, before turning to me.
“It’s been a long time.”
A long time?
Been a long time since what?
The moment I heard her voice, my heart hammered even harder.
And then—a memory surfaced in my mind like something breaking through water.
“Oh.”
This woman.
“Hello… it’s been a while.”
Or was that the right thing to say?
This woman had claimed a significant place in Hazel Love’s childhood memories. To be precise: Countess Gardiel.
“I heard you’d entered the Knight Order, but this latest news did surprise me.”
“Ah… yes.”
“I should have paid you more attention back then. I never expected things would turn out like this…”
There was a note of regret in her voice—a sense of inevitability—and before I could stop myself, my expression hardened.
My eyes fell on the hand of Countess Gardiel, still covered to the wrist in Lace Gloves.
Though Hazel Love’s body recoiled and trembled before her, I forced my mouth into a smile.
Her body feared Countess Gardiel—but I didn’t.
“Your concern is unnecessary. I’m very happy now, Countess Gardiel.”
The noblewoman’s eyes widened slightly.
“…Yes, that’s… wonderful. I do hope we might have tea together next time, Duchess.”
Fortunately, she asked only a few more questions before offering a half-hearted suggestion to have tea, then returned to her seat.
Her questions amounted to whether I still didn’t visit the Temple, whether I truly had no regrets—that sort of thing.
Her tone, which had once treated me as a lesser, had changed.
I walked away from that gathering with quickened steps.
Displeasure spread through my entire body, and irritation was rising to a boil.
For the first time, I felt completely synchronized with Hazel Love’s own emotions.
The source of my nightmares.
The architects of my nightmares had always been faceless.
Someone was always instilling beliefs into me, suppressing my power, calling it a force I should never possess, tormenting me.
That only by extracting the wicked Black Magic that dwelt throughout my body could I receive the blessing of the Divine.
That though the Elkium Empire had no established State Religion, I must still follow faith and observe its practices.
Beyond these nightmares, I also dreamed strange dreams summoned by darkness itself, but mostly my nightmares consisted of being suppressed and manipulated by someone.
This wasn’t in the original story.
There was no reason to write down the past of a mere short-lived extra character.
In any case, Hazel had spent her earliest years moving from one Orphanage to another, until she’d once been temporarily placed in the care of nobles for about five years.
Those nobles were Countess and Count Gardiel.
The couple, who had no children of their own, seemed to have been preparing for adoption by visiting the Orphanage.
Then Hazel Love was adopted, and from age ten until fifteen, she lived under the protection of Countess and Count Gardiel.
Throughout her childhood, she had never gone hungry for a single meal, had always worn new clothes, and received support without limit.
Hazel Love was not shameless by nature, so she made steady efforts to obey the Countess and Count Gardiel’s wishes.
She wanted to grow into an exemplary child, the kind of child they desired—one who would never make them regret their choice.
Yet no matter how hard they both tried, there was something that could never be satisfied.
“…Ah, this is infuriating.”
I eventually stopped walking, unable to do anything about my trembling body.
Even with my fists clenched tight, my hands would not stop shaking.
As if I had lived through those years myself, the memories came through untouched, sharp and clear.
I hadn’t known such memories would resurface.
At the thought that nightmares ahead would surely bring those faces into crisp focus, I was already seized with dread.
Affinity.
Yes, that affinity was the problem.
The Countess and Count Gardiel were deeply faithful believers of the Temple.
What’s more, though they were neither priests nor holy knights, they wielded Holy Power weakly.
Hazel Love, by contrast, was born with Black Magic flowing through her veins—they were fundamentally incompatible from the start.
The Countess and Count Gardiel, driven by that relentless faith, tried to change Hazel Love.
They called in priests and sought every method they could find to suppress her power, hoping the Black Magic would vanish from her body.
Though they did it with the sole conviction that they were saving Hazel Love, it was abuse pure and simple.
There is no way it could be anything but abuse when you inflict unwanted suffering on someone without end.
That suffering lasted five years, and in the end, the Countess and Count Gardiel never succeeded.
Unable to fulfill their wishes, Hazel Love eventually left them.
She was fifteen years old.
It was painfully obvious what kind of difficult life she lived until adulthood.
Realizing at last that what they had done was abuse, the Countess and Count Gardiel, on the condition that she would keep silent, made one final gesture—they allowed Hazel Love to attend the Academy.
After that, Hazel pushed herself like a woman possessed until she enrolled in the Knight Order as top of her class.
To do so, she first had to eliminate her own fears, and one of those fears was of priests and the Temple.
Hazel Love visited the Temple once a week without fail.
Regardless of location, she forced herself to enter and overcome her terror.
That’s why, when I went to the Temple for a donation, I didn’t feel particularly uncomfortable.
“Haah.”
As all the memories buried deep within me rose to the surface, it felt as though I now carried the weight of all that suffering.
I found myself wishing I could simply collapse right here.
“Ah, why is this happening to me?”
My hands still trembled.
This had never happened before—why did I have to face it now?
The timing was terrible. It was surely true that Hazel Love, in reality, feared the Countess and Count Gardiel far more than I had ever imagined.
I would have to postpone meeting Dylan by a day.

“I should have looked after you more carefully back then. I never imagined you would remain unchanged like this.”

To have let you grow as a Summoner, and even failed to stop you before becoming the Duchess of that notorious House Hadid.
The look in those eyes—as if gazing upon someone who had fallen into the abyss of hell itself—kept returning to my thoughts.
If not for the man approaching in such haste, I might have collapsed right then.
“Hazel.”
The man who closed the distance in a single stride was Kailas.
My trembling body, which had looked almost pathetic, slowly began to find its stability again.
“What… Why are you here?”
His crimson eyes scanned my face down to my feet with sharp attention.
“Did someone bother you?”
He appeared as if dropping from nowhere and approached, yet all he asked was that—and I let out a hollow laugh despite myself.
“Bother me? Really, why are you here? How did you even—?”
“I figured the conversation would be done by now, so I came to pick you up.”
“What if I’d been late?”
“Then I would have waited.”
“You came just for that reason?”
At that, Kailas’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“…Next time, tell me beforehand.”
…….
At those words, my eyes widened a little in surprise.
It seemed he had taken my question not as a simple query, but as an interrogation—why had you come?
I thought I’d die facing the fear that had consumed my childhood, but now there’s someone far more terrifying fumbling in front of me, and suddenly everything that happened moments ago feels like nothing at all.
Good heavens, what is this.
What is this man.
“Something seems to have happened…….”
Without thinking, I caught my own hand as it drifted toward my eyes.
Our gazes met.
“No, I’m glad you’re here. Really, nothing happened. I’m just tired.”
At that, Kailas’s taut expression melted away all at once.
Seizing the moment, I wound my arms around his waist before I could stop myself, though I nearly glared at him for it—but I decided to let it slide just this once.
I could still feel eyes on me from behind.
“Go to the carriage and eat something you like—that should help.”
“Something sweet?”
“Or would my wife prefer I take her somewhere for fresh air?”
“…Don’t flirt with me.”
Kailas wore a look of genuine disappointment.

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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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