Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 16

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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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Your reward had better be marriage!
Chapter 16
“Oh, look at that. Another article today?”
“Yeah. Another article today.”
“But they really overdo it in this paper. Even so, five hundred million is a bit much.”
Five hundred million rarc. The number was so astronomical that Edward couldn’t even picture it.
The limit of Edward’s wildest dreams of striking it rich was about ten million rarc, wasn’t it?
He had always wanted to save exactly that much and head back to his hometown. Land there was cheap, so with what was left over after building a house, he could live out a comfortable retirement.
Edward lingered in that sweet daydream for a moment, then was yanked back to reality as if someone had dumped cold water over his head.
It was a single sentence that had caught his eye as he skimmed the newspaper.
The Reize Messer that Count Elpias had put up for auction was won by Marquis Blair for five hundred million rarc…
“Five hundred million?”
Edward blinked. But the figure printed in the newspaper didn’t change.
This time he rubbed his eyes hard with his clenched fists. Even when he looked again through his stinging eyes, the figure in the paper was still five hundred million.
“Huh, hah, hah…! Five, five hundred million! Five hundred million!”
To calm his startled heart, Edward hurriedly took a deep breath and looked up at Leonard.
Leonard grinned mischievously, as if he had been waiting for Edward’s gaze to land on him.
“What are you going to do? Looks like you’ll be working for free until you’re old and dying, with no chance to retire.”
“Huh? …Huh? Huh?”
‘At least until the House of Elpias goes bankrupt, sure! I’ll work without pay!’
“Aaagh! That’s ridiculous!”
“Don’t go around signing things carelessly. Something like today could happen again.”
While Leonard was offering life advice drawn from his own experience, a knock sounded at the door once more.
Leonard handed the newspaper he’d been holding to Edward, then opened the door himself.
Standing there was the man he had seen once before, the chief butler of the House of Blair’s townhouse, Damond.
“It’s an honor to greet you again, Count Elpias.”
“Did the Marquis send you?”
“Yes, he did.”
Damond took an invitation from inside his coat and handed it to him.
For the chief butler to deliver the invitation personally meant that Leonard was a very important guest to Marquis Blair.
Considering that he had delivered formal attire along with an invitation before, it seemed the Marquis had already marked him as a prospective son-in-law back then.
No, perhaps from the very moment the Marquis had mentioned repaying a debt.
“The Marquis hopes you will visit the Marquis Residence as soon as possible, whenever it suits you.”
“Then would right now be acceptable?”
Damond smiled faintly, as if he had been waiting for those very words.
“This way, please. Allow me to escort you.”
Leonard followed Damond’s courteous gesture and set off, but then he stopped with a small “Ah” and turned back.
“Pack your things while I’m gone.”
“Huh?”
Edward, who had been standing dumbfounded and had no idea what was going on, finally snapped out of it.
“W-why would I pack? Y-you’re not firing me, are you?”
“Why would I fire you? I can keep working you without pay until you’re old and dying.”
Edward’s jaw dropped. Then, his face flushing red, he cried out as if wounded.
“Count!”
Leonard chuckled and then told him the real reason.
“Now that we have money, we need to go pay off the debt.”
“…Oh, right! The repayment date is coming up soon, isn’t it?”
Leonard nodded once.
“And once we’re back in the capital, we’ll be moving lodgings, so while I’m gone, go find a place without bugs. And finish reading that newspaper.”
Leonard pressed a small slip of paper into Edward’s hand and walked out.
Only after his legs gave out and he sank to the floor did Edward realize that the paper in his hand was a cheque, and that the amount written on it was ten million rarc.
“Huff… Good heavens, our Count really has become a sudden millionaire…”
Surely he didn’t mean for me to spend all that money on moving lodgings. This must be a bonus for all my hard work so far, right? Right…?
Edward counted and recounted the zeros on the cheque endlessly, and then belatedly remembered something.
“Then why did he tell me to finish reading the newspaper?”
Could there be any news more shocking than this? Could there possibly be?
His heart pounded with curiosity and anticipation. Edward skimmed the paper quickly and soon understood why Leonard had told him to finish reading it.
<Spreading Rumors Under the Guise of Anonymity: Is This Acceptable?>
The Marquis Blair issued a scathing warning to the irresponsible press.
Marquis Blair revealed that the article printed in the L press’s newspaper on the xth of x month was baseless rumor, and took action to file charges against the L press for damaging the honor of his fiancé (Leonard Elpias) and his family.
Blair the Marquis declared that no settlement would ever be reached, so that no one else would suffer as he had. He also barred the name of the House of Blair from appearing in that press outlet, saying he could not possibly trust a newspaper that spread baseless rumors under the cover of anonymity.
He added that he would not forgive those who repeated or spread the rumor secondhand, either…
“W-whoa…!”
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!
“What is this? Whoa, whoa!”
He wasn’t going to forgive them, not ever. He would fight Lotus Press until the day it shut its doors. The justice Edward had once dreamed of was being carried out flawlessly by the Marquis of Blair.
Edward bounced in his seat like a kid, unable to keep still.
“Isn’t the House of Blair hiring a new aide?”
For this moment alone, the ten-million-rarc cheque didn’t catch his eye at all. Edward forgot all about looking for a new place to live and sank down into his chair, reading the article over and over until the words wore thin.

* * *
“How do you plan to clean up this mess?!”
The newspaper flung from Count Mathias’s hand struck Lloyd across the face and dropped to the floor.
Paper hadn’t hurt much. But the humiliation that surged up in him kept Lloyd from lifting his head.
“Every press outlet in the country is condemning us now! Is that all? The interviews we had lined up are being canceled one after another, and our sponsors have pulled out. Today’s paper couldn’t even go to print!”
Even Count Mathias had only learned today how many times the Marquis of Blair’s name could fit into a sixteen-page newspaper.
“What’s going to happen next? Every outlet the Marquis of Blair refuses to trust will be banned from reporting on us, too! Our press has nothing left but the road to ruin, and it’s all because of you!”
“But, Father…”
“You still have something to say, after all this? Fine, go on then. Let’s hear what you have to say.”
Count Mathias already looked as if he had lost all hope in his son.
Lloyd found the reaction painfully unfair. Isn’t it normal for a person to make a mistake now and then?
Besides, this wasn’t a mistake. Maybe if the Marquis of Blair were being unreasonable, but still!
“I never spread any rumor. That article is true!”
“And can you prove it?”
Lloyd nodded vigorously.
“I heard it from a servant who used to work at the Elpias Count House.”
Buried in debt, the Elpias Count Residence had dismissed most of its staff.
Lloyd had called a few of them to his mansion and gathered weaknesses on Leonard from their stories. The affair rumor with the late Countess was pieced together from what he heard then.
“And? Are you going to interview that servant and write an article about it?”
“If I do that, then I can prove that the article is true…”
“Argh, you idiot!”
This time, the paperweight from the desk came flying straight at Lloyd’s head.
Barely dodging the deadly object, Lloyd pressed a hand to his pounding chest and shouted at Count Mathias.
“Father!”
“And? You think the Marquis of Blair will just sit back and watch you prove the article’s truth that way? Do you really think she’ll withdraw the charges?”
“B-but what if the Marquis of Blair truly doesn’t know? She might even be grateful to me, isn’t that possible?!”
“Of all the things! Do you really think a figure like the Marquis of Blair would have gone ahead with an engagement without knowing a thing about her own fiancé?”
Count Mathias looked around for something else to throw, and Lloyd, already terrified, shrank into himself.
Seeing that pitiful sight, Count Mathias beat his chest and lamented.
When you graduated top of your class from the Military Academy, you were a son anyone would envy. How on earth did you turn into this?!
“Listen carefully. If the Marquis of Blair says it’s a lie, then from that moment on, it is a lie.”
The result was the boycott aimed at Lotus.
“Do you have the strength to reverse that?”
After a long while, the answer Lloyd came up with was this:
“If I receive help from the Second Prince…”
“The Second Prince, not even the Crown Princess? What could he possibly do to help you?”
Count Mathias had every reason to scoff. The Second Prince’s faction was nothing more than a gathering of misfits who had failed to win a place among the Crown Princess’s supporters.
If Lloyd had been under the Crown Princess’s protection, the Marquis of Blair wouldn’t have pushed so hard.
The more he thought about it, the more Lloyd felt he might die of regret. Why on earth had he thrown down the gauntlet without any cause, only to be defeated in such a miserable way?!
“…Still, he is a member of the Imperial Family. He’ll surely help me.”
“Fine, go and see him, then. Not that he’d have any clever solution.”
If it were the Crown Princess, she could summon the Marquis of Blair and mediate things properly. But there was no way the Second Prince had that kind of power.
Once Lloyd came back empty-handed, he would surely realize that he had grabbed a rotten rope.
Yet even Count Mathias could not have foreseen this: that his son would not only fail to meet the Second Prince, but would be turned away before he even got past the front gate of the Imperial Palace.

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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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