Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 10

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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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Please repay me by marrying me!
Chapter 10
“There are several reasons, but… that man is rather sly, you know. If we accuse him of something he didn’t do, I’ll be the one who ends up getting hurt.”
“That man, you mean?”
Leonard wore a sour expression, recalling Viscount Kalio, who had ranted and raved about being insulted over a single glass of wine.
“But didn’t he put something into your glass tonight? It’s not as if we’d be framing him for something he didn’t do.”
“Not today. If that comes to light, my benefactor will be the one to suffer.”
I doubt she did it on purpose, but she’s lucky all the same.
At her muttered words, the sharpness in Leonard’s eyes softened a little.
If that’s the reason, there’s nothing to be done.
“Is that all the questions you have?”
“No. One most important question remains.”
“Ah, I think I know what it is.”
Irene’s eyes sparkled, as though she were holding a jewel-like flutter of excitement somewhere deep within her chest.
“You want to ask about what comes next, don’t you?”
“Since you’ve guessed it, we can skip the preamble. Tomorrow morning, I expect both your name and the Marquis’s will be printed side by side in the newspaper.”
Of course they would be. For the past week, I’d read nothing but article after article speculating on who the Blair Marquis would marry.
“I assume you don’t intend to break the engagement the moment it’s made. So what are your plans from here?”
“I’d like to ask you to marry me.”
“Is that so?”
Leonard asked back, his face showing he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly.
“You’d like to ask me to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“Asking whom, exactly?”
“Whom else? Sir Leonard, whose name will be printed beside mine in the paper.”
The name she had least expected came bursting from Irene’s bright smile. Leonard’s face laid bare everything he was feeling as he asked, flustered.
“Now, wait, you’re… proposing to me?”
“Yes!”
Irene beamed and nodded.
“You so readily agreed to play my fiancé, so I assume there’s no one you’ve set your heart on, and no fiancée either? But as a noble, you’ll have to marry eventually for the sake of an heir anyway. So how about me as your match? I can accommodate nearly any condition you’d like. Provided it excludes divorce and adultery, of course.”
It came out so fast that one might wonder if she was breathing at all. Leonard barely caught half of what she said, but he understood well enough what she meant.
‘So, she’s proposing marriage?’
Leonard could not make sense of it at all.
‘If she knows my measurements, she must have looked into my background thoroughly.’
Wondering if her research had been lacking after all, Leonard made sure to point it out plainly.
“You don’t seem to know much about me. I am an illegitimate child.”
“Is that Sir Leonard’s fault? No child in this world gets to choose their parents.”
“That’s not all. When I was young, I survived by begging for food, and when I grew a little older, I was sold to a mercenary company…”
“Let me say it once more. All of that is the fault of parents who had children and then refused to take responsibility for them. Sir Leonard merely lived a life that grown-ups decided for him on a whim. What wrong could you possibly have done?”
Her eyes, fixed straight on Leonard, were clear as glass, as if she truly believed every word.
Before those lake-like eyes, which reflected his own face so plainly, Leonard helplessly lowered his gaze. It was to hide his own eyes, which threatened to waver like water.
“Do you truly… not regard that as a flaw of mine?”
“Does Sir Leonard consider it a flaw?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
How could he not? Everyone around him had pointed at it and called it a flaw.
“If you marry me, I’ll make sure you never think such things again.”
Irene pressed a hand to her chest, as if to say she was confident and he could leave it all to her.
“Not only Sir Leonard, but everyone who has made you think that way.”

* * *
‘Everything I’ve said is sincere, so I hope Sir Leonard will truly consider my proposal.’
With those words, Irene rose from her seat, bade him a peaceful night, and left.
But contrary to her wish, Leonard did not sleep a wink.
He had only just closed his eyes when dawn began to break, and then Edward came calling early in the morning, forcing him awake after only a few hours of sleep.
“My lord, get up, please, my lord!”
“Quiet… What is it this time, a bug in the room again…?”
“Aaargh! That’s an extremely rude thing to say about Marquis Blair, who gave us the guest room!”
“Marquis Blair…”
Only then did Leonard remember that this was not the inn where he was staying, and his eyes snapped wide open. But he was not fully awake yet.
Clutching his head, which throbbed from the lack of sleep, he sluggishly pushed himself up.
“What time is it now?”
“A little past ten. But, Count, take a look at this!”
Edward thrust out a newspaper, practically bouncing with excitement.
Across the headline, the names of Marquis Blair and Leonard stood side by side.

Who had taken the photograph, and when, Leonard couldn’t tell, but beneath a picture of him standing beside Irene, the article laid out in full detail how the Marquis had announced him as her marriage partner at last night’s ball.
And that was hardly the end of it.

Unlike the Marquis, whose every move drew attention, Leonard was not especially well known. Perhaps for that reason, every paper ran at least one piece introducing him.
Surely the reporters hadn’t slept a wink writing all this. The thought crossed his mind as he flipped through the pages, and then one article caught his eye.

An article that used the harsh word “illegitimate,” stirring up a strange sort of suspicion.
Leonard checked the name of the press outlet that had written it.
Lotus Press.
“Of course. Mathias again.”
“Hm? What do you mean by that… Whoa!”
Edward, belatedly catching sight of the headline Leonard had read, hurriedly snatched the newspaper from his hand.
“I’m sorry, Count. I thought I’d filtered them all out, but it seems I missed one.”
No wonder the papers had all left out his origins and focused solely on the fact that he was the head of House Elpias and had claimed the Honor of Anuf for the first time in a hundred years. Edward must have already weeded out the worst of them.
Then the papers Edward had quietly set aside were probably the ones harping on Leonard’s illegitimate birth and his past as a mercenary, dragging his reputation through the mud.
“Never mind the apology. Hand that over.”
“Eh? This one? Why? You don’t mean you actually want to read it?”
“I’m curious what they’re going on about.”
“No, why would you bother with….”
Leonard plucked the paper straight from Edward’s hesitant grip and scanned the article himself.
The content was far worse than he had expected.
That a man born illegitimate, who had wandered the continent as a mercenary, could suddenly become Count of Elpias, was the reason.
The answer, they claimed, was that he’d had an affair with the Late Countess Elpias.
“Isn’t this just completely insane?”
“Gasp…! A-an affair? How dare these people regard our lady that way! Count! File a complaint for spreading false claims! Right now!”
Edward had been sponsored by the Late Countess Elpias to attend the academy, and he regarded her as the greatest benefactor of his life. That was why he worked under Leonard for a paltry salary, not minding it in the least, so he could repay the debt of gratitude he still owed her.
It was only natural that Edward would be up in arms upon seeing an article that tarnished the honor of the Late Countess Elpias.
“How can reporters have the nerve to print in the newspaper such vile rumors fit only for drinking tables? Count, let’s ruin every last one of them. Please?”
“And then I get thrown in prison?”
“You could just challenge them to a duel of honor!”
“If Mathias himself had been spouting that nonsense, I’d have thrown my gauntlet at him on the spot. But don’t you see this?”
At the bottom of the article, where Leonard tapped with his fingers, the space where a reporter’s signature should have been was left blank.
“Anonymous submission…”
In the press industry, where every scoop becomes a reporter’s career, writers always signed their names at the end of their articles.
There was only one reason to publish an article anonymously: fear of retaliation from the powerful figure whose wrongdoing they had exposed, which made them unable to reveal their name.
“If I go to Mathias and throw down my gauntlet, people will just say, ‘He’s acting like that because he’s got something to hide.’ Better to leave it alone.”
“B-but…”
Leonard crumpled the newspaper and tossed it into the wastebasket, then gently soothed Edward, whose face had crumpled into a pout.
“Once I get a solid lead, I’ll throw my gauntlet and tear him apart. Will that do?”
Though the words themselves were anything but gentle.
“Yes! I’ll put all my faith in you, Count!”
Edward sniffled once and nodded vigorously. Still, his anger refused to settle, and under his breath he cursed Lloyd Mathias a little.
‘What a cowardly, petty man!’
Lloyd had already challenged Leonard to a duel and suffered an undignified defeat.
That was precisely why he was itching to devour Leonard whole, and the fact that he would run such a filthy article through the press his family operated said plenty about how small-minded the man really was.
If he’d lost a duel and his honor had suffered, he should be thinking about challenging again to win it back!
Muttering that it was a pity the Count had gotten tangled up with a man like this, Edward tidied up the newspaper Leonard had finished reading.
“Um, Count…”
Just as he was about to ask what had become of the engagement to Marquis Blair, Leonard glanced at the date printed at the top of the paper and let out a soft “Ah.”
“Now that you mention it, isn’t it this evening?”
“This evening? …Ah! You mean the auction? Yes. It’s this evening.”
Edward nodded, then cautiously studied Leonard’s expression before asking.
“I know it’s a late question to ask now… but Count, are you truly all right with putting the Family Heirloom Sword up for auction? It’s the symbol of House Elpias.”
The moment that item is brought onto the auction stage, people will surely start cursing Leonard all over again, saying how wonderful it is.
Even if money was tight, selling the family heirloom… This is exactly why you shouldn’t take in a bastard with that lowborn blood.
“The house is about to go under, and you’re fussing over a sword? Survival comes first, doesn’t it?”
Right, come to think of it, he had no room to dwell on that bolt-from-the-blue marriage proposal.
If the sword he had put up for auction this evening sold at the price agreed with his employer, there would be a great deal to do.
The first thing he had to do was pay off the Count’s household’s enormous debts.
Leonard let out a small sigh, thinking of the employer who had somehow learned his secret and made him a covert offer.

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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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