Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 18

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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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Pay me back with marriage, please!
Chapter 18
I had no idea what to say. Leonard bit down on his dry lips, idly, and finally opened his mouth.
“Why are you going this far for me?”
“Going this far? Do I need some other reason to protect my own husband?”
“It’s not as if this is a marriage born of love, is it.”
For a moment, Irene’s face flickered with hurt. But the expression vanished in an instant.
Had he imagined it? As Leonard studied her face, she was already wearing a look of thinly veiled irritation.
“Hmph. So that’s how you’re going to play it.”
“No, what I mean is—”
“Don’t you like me? It’s not that you dislike me. Right?”
Her face, demanding an answer, looked faintly anxious. Leonard, feeling flustered in turn, evaded the question.
“I think it’s still too early to talk about liking or disliking anyone.”
“Play hard to get all you want. You’re going to fall for me anyway.”
It wasn’t said out of overconfidence in her own charm. It sounded more like she was trying to soothe herself.
“You’ve seen the papers, right? Word’s already spread across the entire Empire that you’re my man. With every marriage prospect shut off tight, you’d better come quietly and marry me.”
Surely she wasn’t calling this a threat.
Feeling a sudden urge to tease her a little, Leonard hesitated briefly before speaking.
“As you know, thanks to the Marquis, the ship routes to other countries haven’t been properly arranged, have they? I suppose I could just leave for a country where the rumors haven’t reached.”
“What…?”
Her lips parted in a shocked little O, and they were rather cute. Leonard barely managed to hold back a burst of laughter.
“Listen, you clearly don’t understand. To board a ship, you need a Boarding Certificate, you know?”
“I know. I’ve heard it was created to prevent illegal immigration.”
“Good, then this will be quick. In the Empire, issuing that certificate falls under my jurisdiction. Without my permission, you can’t leave for another country!”
“I can. All I have to do is cross the Great Forest.”
“……”
A silence settled between them.
Under the silence, which stretched on longer than he’d expected, Leonard propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his hand.
Whether or not she noticed his openly fixed gaze, as though he were studying her, Irene only worried her lower lip between her teeth.
Seeing her face, which was almost pitiable, Leonard reached across the table toward her and tapped the tabletop lightly, as if knocking.
“Marquis Blair, why don’t you just threaten me instead?”
“…What did you say?”
“Corner me, then. Leave me no room to say no.”
Whether the intent was good or bad, Leonard had lived his entire life being nothing but whipped.
That was the most efficient way to handle him, and since this woman’s offering of carrots was exasperating, I’d simply told her the right answer.
And yet.
“…How could I do that to you?”
Though she had countless whips at her disposal, she stubbornly insisted on offering nothing but carrots.
Still, Leonard wasn’t moved by it. He had witnessed Irene’s downcast eyes grow wet with a wistful longing.
‘Who is she thinking of?’
One thing was certain: it wasn’t him, sitting right across from her.
…Just as I thought. It seems I’m standing in for someone else once again.
Unaware of Leonard’s self-mocking certainty, Irene drew out a document and pushed it toward him, as though she had made up her mind.
“Fine. No matter what you say, my answer will stay the same. I’ll refuse every refusal, so don’t waste time and just sign here.”
“……”
Leonard had meant to argue, but first he checked the document Irene had handed him. The word printed in large letters at the top was ‘Pledge.’
“A pledge?”
“Yes. It lists the promises we’ll keep to each other for the sake of our married life. Read it over, and if there’s anything you want to remove or add, say so without holding back.”
“If I say so without holding back, will you agree to everything?”
“We’ll work out the details gradually. Oh, and for your information, you can’t delete Items 1 and 2, so don’t touch those.”
Irene insisted on it so firmly that Leonard, for the time being, looked over Items 1 and 2.
1. No divorce. No adultery. No infidelity. No private time spent with anyone of the opposite sex other than each other. The sole exception is family.
2. From the moment the wedding ceremony is held, no separate bedrooms. Except for unavoidable circumstances such as business trips, we must share the same bedchamber without fail.
Faced with items so unlike what he had imagined, Leonard could not hide his bewilderment.
‘Wasn’t there a real lover she couldn’t marry, after all?’
I’d assumed she was proposing this because she needed a sham husband to put forward in public: someone tight-lipped, immune to Count Kalio’s schemes, and who wouldn’t meddle in her business.
Unable to make sense of it, Leonard pressed a finger to Item 1.
“About what you mean by adultery and infidelity here…”
“Exactly what the word means in common usage. No physical contact with other women. No emotional exchanges.”
“Is meeting in secret forbidden as well?”
*Thud!* The tiny fist slammed against the table, making the saucer tremble and the teaspoon resting on it roll off.
Leonard stared at the teaspoon, then at Irene’s fist, his eyes slightly wide. As he did, the corner of her mouth, lifted only on one side, twitched.
“Are you saying… that there’s someone you’ve been meeting in secret? Is that what this is about?”
Even as a joke, it was the sort of chill that made it feel as though someone would die if he so much as nodded. Leonard hastily shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I was asking about your situation, my lady, not mine.”
“Me? *Me?* Ha, what do you take me for? Do I look like the sort of woman who keeps one husband and one lover on the side?”
She reacted as though she’d been gravely insulted, so it seemed that wasn’t the case.
“I don’t see why you’d even ask that. If I were seeing some man on the side, I’d have proposed to him, not gone to all this trouble over you, Sir Leonard.”
“Not that Marquis Blair would have any trouble making a husband of whatever she pleased, be it a slave from some foreign kingdom or a vagrant from the Back Alley.”
Why, she was even willing to make a husband out of someone like me, an illegitimate child and former mercenary, without a second thought.
‘She really doesn’t have another man?’
Then who was that face I saw earlier? Had I just imagined it?
Leonard skimmed the papers in his hand without really reading them. His mind was so muddled that the clause stating she wouldn’t interfere with how he spent the dowry gold she’d given him in advance didn’t even register.
“So you mean you’ll only share physical intimacy and emotional connection with me…”
“Is that all I’m going to do? I plan to have children, too, you know?”
“Excuse me?”
Leonard belatedly realized he had voiced aloud what he’d only been thinking to himself, lost in thought, and only then did he grasp the meaning of Irene’s reply.
“Excuse me? Do what?”
“I said I plan to have children. I want to have them as soon as possible.”
Under that bashful expression, the agreement crumpled hideously in Leonard’s hand. He was so flustered that he could only blink rapidly.
“You’re busy with your business, aren’t you? Pregnancy comes with all sorts of restrictions. Are you really so desperate for an heir that you’d take on such a risk?”
“I don’t want an heir. I want to have a child who will become our family.”
Irene’s hand slipped beneath the table and cradled her own stomach. Unaware that Leonard’s face had gone scarlet from some misplaced fantasy, she wore a faraway smile.
“It’s been my lifelong wish.”
“Lifelong wish…”
For a wish to be called lifelong, it was a rather modest one.
But Leonard knew. For some people, nothing could be more out of reach than this.
‘So you want to buy this child? Hmm… Fine. Then hand over three gold coins.’
‘I bought you with money. At the very least, you should be worth those gold coins.’
‘Play the son for my daughter’s sake. Then I’ll hand over as much money as you like.’
The place he had always been given was built on trades and contracts. That was why, though he might regard the people around him as “like family,” he had never been able to consider them family.
‘Come to think of it…’
Not a contract, but a pledge.
Perhaps Irene hadn’t thought much of it. It might have been nothing more than a play on words.
But she wouldn’t know that the fact that the document he had to sign was a pledge rather than a contract had made Leonard take the meaning of this marriage in a different light.
“…To be honest, I still don’t quite understand why you’ve gone to such lengths for me, my lady.”
“That’s because-”
Leonard raised a hand to cut off Irene’s words and took the fountain pen from her. Then, without even reading the papers carefully, he flipped to the last page and signed his name.
“Eh?”
“If what you truly desire from the Marquis is marriage to me, then I’ll gladly become your husband. You helped me when I needed it most.”
Fortunately, Leonard had no illusions about marriage. So if it could be of help to his benefactor, he could make this decision for the same reason.
Marquise Blair was to become his wife. She would bear his child and build the shape of a family…
Honestly, it didn’t feel real. Yet if it came to pass, wouldn’t it be a rather wonderful thing? He would finally have the family he had wanted so desperately.
“…Did you actually sign it?”
“I did.”
“You didn’t do it as a joke, did you? You wrote Leonard Elpias properly, didn’t you?”
“I only wrote my name. Once next year comes, I won’t be an Elpias anymore. If you’d like, I can write my surname now as well.”
“No! Once you return the title to your younger brother, write it again then. Leonard Blair!”
Irene received the papers back, confirmed that Leonard had signed them properly, and cheered with her arms raised.
“No backing out now! From this moment on, Sir Leonard is truly my fiancé!”
As though afraid he might change his mind, Irene shut the signed papers into her desk drawer and locked it with a key.
Then she returned to the table and took out a ring set with a blue gemstone from a box.
“Give me your left hand, quickly.”
Her fair cheeks had already flushed pink as she looked down at him seated in his chair. Her sparkling eyes, the gentle upturn of her lips, and the way she could hardly contain her joy all showed plainly.
Leonard wondered whether this was really worth being so overjoyed about, yet his chest felt oddly ticklish, and he silently held out his left hand.
Leonard wondered whether this was really worth being so overjoyed about, yet his chest felt oddly ticklish, and he silently held out his left hand.

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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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