Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 1

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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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Let the reward be marriage, please!
Chapter 1
“This is the one I promised to marry!”
Above the central lobby on the second floor of the sprawling banquet hall.
Her head leaned gently against the shoulder of Leonard, which had gone stiff as a board, the woman clinging to his arm with her face tilted toward him.
No one sensed anything strange in that tender scene. The crowd gathered in the banquet hall below poured out applause, every one of them eager to join in.
“Congratulations on your engagement, Marquis!”
“You two look wonderful together!”
‘Wonderful together? Me and this woman?’
It seemed no one had noticed that the two of them weren’t engaged at all, and had only met twice, today included.
Well, no wonder. Here I am, playing the fiancé of the Blair Marquis at an event this grand, and even I think I’ve lost my mind.
‘How on earth did it come to this?’
Leonard could hardly believe that the source of all this was nothing more than a single sunflower.
Trying to escape the stares that were fixed on him, Leonard thought back to the day he had received a sunflower from a fountain in the Capital Plaza.

* * *
A handcart with a wheel torn clean off, and flowers scattered everywhere around it.
No one came to help the tearful girl. Instead, they simply stepped daintily over the fallen blossoms and walked on.
Clicking his tongue at the indifference of the crowd, Leonard helped the girl pick up the flowers she had dropped.
“Thank you for your help, sir knight. But I have nothing to give you… so please accept this flower as my repayment.”
“No, it’s fine. The flowers are ruined anyway, you’d better sell them.”
“No! Please, let me repay my kind knight. Won’t you? Please?”
Even as he politely refused, the girl stubbornly pressed a sunflower into his hand.
In the end, with no way out, he accepted the sunflower, and the girl beamed and said to Leonard,
“That flower will bring you a good match.”
I thought it was just the sort of thing people say out of habit.
Leonard didn’t know. A man standing by the fountain in the capital holding a sunflower was a signal that he was looking for a date.
By the time he realized this and tossed the flower away, more than five women were already chasing after him.
“Hey, stop right there, handsome! You said you’re looking for a date!”
“Dammit, no! It’s a misunderstanding, how many times do I have to say it!”
“Oh my, so shy! I like men who play coy, you know!”
“Or do you enjoy being fought over by women? I’m all for it! I love a man who makes me work for him!”
“Let’s play tag! Whoever catches him first gets the date!”
Their giggling sent a chill crawling down his spine.
He felt like a deer being hunted down by a pack of hunters. Leonard ducked into a dark back alley to shake off the women.
“Stop right there!”
But the women, seemingly unbothered by the gloomy atmosphere, followed him right into the back alley.
‘Why are they so relentless?’
If they had been men, he could have knocked them out cold, but these were women.
All he could do was run, so Leonard dashed around one twisting corner after another for what felt like ages.
Then, all at once, like sunlight breaking through dark clouds, an open road appeared before his eyes.
Seeing a woman standing in the middle of that road, Leonard stopped short in surprise.
‘What’s this?’
In front of a dilapidated, falling-down house stood her, a large bonnet pulled low, her face hidden behind a thick ribbon tied in a bold knot.
All that showed was the slender line of her jaw. Perhaps because of that, an unfamiliar air seemed to hang about her as she turned her head toward him.
“Where did he go?”
“That way, over there!”
Leonard, who had been staring at her as if bewitched, jolted at the shout from behind him and flinched.
Maybe his frightened, rabbit-like reaction amused her. The woman lifted a hand gloved in pristine white to her mouth and let out a small laugh.
‘What’s this woman…?’
He had been mocked in every way imaginable. Yet he had never before felt his whole body prickle with embarrassment just from hearing someone laugh.
As he flushed helplessly at a sensation he had never known, she came padding lightly over from where she had been standing at a distance and rested her hand on his elbow.
“Shall I help you, my lord?”
“Help me with what…?”
“There he is! Oh?”
Just then, one of the women rounding the corner spotted Leonard and called out loudly.
As if telling her it was already too late, the woman chuckled and slipped her arm through Leonard’s.
“You’re too late, ladies. I caught this man first.”
“Ah, what?! And he was such a rare catch!”
“Catch…”
Looking for a date partner, aren’t you?
The thought of what would have become of him had those women caught him sent a chill straight down his spine.
Seeing the woman who had linked arms with him, the others had backed off without a fuss. He was truly grateful.
“There. Come along, Count.”
And so, with the help of the woman who had taken his arm, Leonard made it safely back to Capital Plaza.
Without thinking, he let out a breath of relief and bowed deeply to the woman who had come to his aid.
“Thank you for your help, my lady. Thanks to you, I was able to escape that predicament.”
His tone turned courteous because he had noticed she was of high rank.
Her graceful, even steps and her back held perfectly straight. She appeared to be clinging to his arm as if seducing him, but in truth she was holding his arm the way a gentleman escorts a lady.
As if confirming his guess, the woman let out a short, delighted laugh.
“If you truly regard my help as a debt of gratitude, may I ask you to repay me?”
“Repay you, my lady?”
“Yes, repay me.”
Releasing Leonard’s arm, she spread the skirts of her gown wide with both hands and dipped into a low curtsy before him.
“You who won the Honor of Anuf. Before long, I’ll send someone to the lodgings where you’re staying. Please don’t refuse my invitation.”
“…Do you know who I am?”
“Of course.”
She merely nodded in acknowledgment and left without telling him how she had known.
If she had done it on purpose, it was a truly sly little trick. Because of her, he had found himself thinking of a woman whose face he didn’t even know, for two full days and nights.

* * *
And finally, on the third day.
An elderly gentleman arrived at the lodgings where he was staying, carrying a single invitation card and a large garment box.
“We will send a carriage on the appointed date and time. We would be grateful if you would wear the formal attire we’ve prepared. Would you care to try it on, just to be sure?”
The elderly gentleman, who introduced himself as Damond, helped Leonard fit the formal wear.
The black formal coat, embroidered with gold thread and fastened with red ruby buttons, fit him so perfectly it might have been tailored from direct measurements of his body.
“Fortunate that the fit is exact. Is there anywhere it pinches or feels uncomfortable?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Please, do speak to me informally.”
Damond bowed courteously and departed, enormously pleased to hear that the coat had no flaws.
After he had gone, Edward, the aide who had quietly assisted with the fitting alongside Damond, leaned in and whispered belatedly, his voice tight with fear.
“The clothes fit this perfectly, so they must have looked into you beforehand. What if the whole business of helping the Count was planned too?”
“How could they have known I’d be chased off by women and end up there?”
“The women must have been put up to it too!”
“Enough with that nonsense. Do you know what sort of banquet is being held here?”
Edward turned over the address written on the invitation a few times, then said with a small “Ah” of realization.
“It’s a banquet being held at the Blair Marquis Residence. I read in the papers that Marquis Blair, who inherited her title and worked herself half to death for three years, is finally announcing her betrothed.”
“Marquis Blair?”
Every time he heard that name, Leonard felt a tangle of conflicting emotions. One of them was a sense of kinship.
“They say the previous marquis and his wife died in a carriage accident.”
“Yes. Their deaths were sudden, so there was plenty of talk and trouble. The previous marquis’s younger brother tried to snatch the title for himself and ended up getting thoroughly burned for it.”
Having safeguarded her parents’ title and estate from her uncle’s schemes, Marquis Blair immediately plunged into business.
Her moves were so bold that many watched her with keen, eager eyes, waiting, with a certain anticipation, to see when she would fall.
‘Business is hardly something just anyone can do. She’ll lose every last coin within a year, I’d bet my entire fortune on it.’
‘She might as well donate it. At least then the beggars would have something in their bellies.’
That year, in society, people mocked Marquis Blair as though competing to see who could laugh the loudest.
Yet in the end they had no choice but to hold their tongues, for every venture she touched turned into a windfall.
It began with her buying iron and coal mines at inflated prices and investing wholeheartedly in the railway project led by the Emperor.
In return, she received the support of the Imperial army and wiped out the pirates who had been running rampant along the southern coast. She then immediately opened the sea routes and began trading with the Kingdom of Milos and the Kingdom of Parodia, the two nations to the west of the continent.
Her shrewdness was such that she cured a tropical disease that had been plaguing Parodia, earning the trust of the Parodian royal family. Using Parodia as a stepping stone, she came to trade with the Con-Isle-Tem Union, a confederation of three islands, and with Ilum in the polar regions as well.
And Marquis Blair then launched cruise ventures along the harbors of those nations, eventually developing her own domain, the seven islands of Debora Coast in the south of the continent, into the finest resort in the Empire.
From dessert ventures on a small scale to brokered trade between nations on a grand one, she rode a relentless winning streak day after day, scooping up money from every direction.
Blair Trading House, already sturdy at its core, had risen to stand alongside the Empire’s three great trading houses, and now no one objected to calling it the fourth.
“Judging by Marquis Blair’s interviews, she’s promised that her future husband won’t lift a finger and will be free to indulge in every luxury. I’m curious who that lucky fellow will be.”
Edward kept chattering on beside him without pause, but Leonard had only one thing on his mind.
So who on earth is the lady who asked me to escort her?

* * *
And so, at last, the day of the appointment arrived.

The carriage carrying Leonard slowed little by little, came to a stop, and soon the door swung open.
Leonard fell silent for a moment at the sight of the grand mansion spread out before him. One could almost believe it was a royal palace.
‘Indeed, they say the wealth they’ve amassed is enormous…’
“Are you Count Elpias?”
Just then, a footman in impeccable livery approached Leonard and asked, bowing his head respectfully.
When Leonard nodded, the footman said he had been expecting him and led the way.
“This way, if you please.”
The lady who had invited him must have already arrived. Leonard tugged at the clothes that now felt uncomfortably unfamiliar to him and followed the footman.
“My lord. Are you really all right with this?”
“With what?”
“With what, you ask! I’ve told you a dozen times, one wrong move and you could end up with a ring through your nose!”
Leonard scoffed as he watched Edward thump his chest in exasperation.
“If they have any sense at all, they won’t go putting a ring through my nose.”
He was not unaware of how it would look for a man of marriageable age, with no fiancée, to escort an unmarried woman.
But he was an illegitimate child, a former mercenary, and burdened with an enormous debt.
Any one of those would be disqualifying enough, yet three had piled up at once. No noble in their right mind would ever consider him as a son-in-law or a husband for their daughter.
Leonard had learned that reality three years ago, firsthand and painfully.
‘An escort request for a banquet held at the Blair Marquis Residence, and not even a masquerade… That young lady must have been truly desperate for someone to escort her.’
Leonard felt a small pang of pity for a woman whose face he didn’t even know.
Just five minutes, then.
“Thank you for accepting my invitation, Sir Leonard.”
Presumably, this was the reception room of the mansion.
The lady who had been waiting for him, dressed in a resplendent gown, bowed her knee in greeting, just as she had a few days ago.
Unlike that day, she wasn’t hiding her face behind a bonnet and ribbons today.
Silver hair, thickly braided and pinned up with glittering jeweled clips, and eyes as blue as the deep sea.
The moment Leonard saw that face, where the mysterious hues and the pure, clear air blended into something even more beautiful, he understood. Why this lady had kept her face so carefully concealed.
At the same time, he grew puzzled.
‘Why would she ask me to escort her?’
With looks like these, any man would come running, unless he already had a fiancée, and even then, I’d think he’d abandon her to hurry over.
“…I’m the one who should thank you for the invitation.”
Flustered more than surprised, his voice came out a little unsteady.
Fortunately, the lady who had invited him didn’t sneer that street-born men were beneath her, but smiled graciously instead.
“Think nothing of it. I can’t possibly express enough gratitude to you, my lord, for indulging my whim, but time is short, so may I ask you to escort me?”
It sounded like she was asking his consent, yet she was already holding out her hand to him. Leonard took it without even a moment to deliberate.
“If I’m the one you want, then gladly.”
On the way to the banquet hall, as Leonard escorted the lady with her hand resting on his arm, he caught sight of Edward, his face flustered, moving his lips as though trying to tell him something.
‘Why is he acting like that?’
Well, I can always ask him later.
Leonard let it pass without a second thought, and he had no idea.
“This is the man I have promised to marry!”
In exchange for such a small favor, he was about to find himself very firmly led by the nose by the woman now clinging to his arm.

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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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