Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 20

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Make it a marriage as my reward!
Chapter 20
Summoned by the Emperor, Irene was promptly led to his private reception room within the Imperial Palace.
“His Majesty is currently in an Advisory Council meeting, so please wait a moment.”
All the way in the carriage, Leonard had fretted that the Emperor might have taken a dislike to her because of him. But if that had been the case, Irene would never have been shown into a private reception room.
She would have been dragged into the waiting hall that all the nobles shared and put on display for everyone to see. She certainly wouldn’t have been told to “wait a moment,” nor would she have been served tea first as a special courtesy.
So she loosened the tension she’d been holding and sipped her tea at ease.
-Knock, knock
“His Majesty is here.”
Before she had even finished her cup, the Chamberlain announced the Emperor’s arrival.
No sooner had Irene risen and smoothed her clothes than the Emperor strode into the room, his eyes narrowed sharply.
Irene bowed respectfully to the Emperor as he took the seat across from her.
“Irene Blair greets the Sun of the Empire.”
“Sit.”
He flicked a careless hand toward her, then pressed his fingers to his forehead as though it ached, letting out a long sigh.
A deep crease formed between her brows. Pretending not to notice him, the Chamberlain poured tea into the Emperor’s cup, and the maids wheeled in a trolley and set out fresh desserts.
“All of you, leave us.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Everyone in the Imperial Palace knew that the Emperor doted on the Marquis of Blair so much that he always met with her alone.
The moment the knights, the Chamberlain, and the maids filed out without a word, the Emperor let his rigidly straight back fall.
“Honestly, every last one of these fools thinks the Imperial treasury is their personal storehouse. Irene, why don’t you go somewhere and give a lecture on the joys of being a law-abiding taxpayer?”
“I’d love to collect a lecture fee myself, but that’s not something anyone can teach. One has to figure it out on one’s own.”
“Then teach me the secret to that enlightenment. I’m not asking for much. If only five more nobles paid taxes like you, or, no, three, I’d have nothing left to wish for.”
Irene covered her mouth with one hand and gave a short laugh at the Emperor’s groan.
“My secret is far too expensive, I’m afraid. No one would ever buy it.”
Of course not. You’d have to die and be reborn to get it.
“Are you going to sell that at a premium too, you little rascal, just because you call yourself a merchant?”
Though he clicked his tongue, his hand was tender as he slid the dessert dish toward her, insisting that it was delicious.
Well, those men had hardly paid their taxes honestly. They had come at her with talk of drought and landslides and poor territory folk starving, scheming only how to squeeze more money out of the treasury. No wonder Irene looked all the lovelier to the Emperor today after having traded words with them.
She was even grateful to them. Yes, go on and rile the Emperor further! That way he’ll dote on me all the more!
“By the way, Irene, I’m sure you already know why I summoned you at such an early hour.”
The Emperor tossed the newspapers onto the table one after another, thump, thump, thump.
The headline of the newspaper on top read as follows.

“The press has clearly made up its mind to tear into you. Here, read this newspaper’s article.”

The tone was clear from the headlines alone. There was hardly any reason to read the articles, but since the Emperor had told her to, Irene unfolded the newspaper.
Of course, all she read was the name of the publisher.
‘So this is backed by Duke William.’
If he was the one backing it, it was no surprise that it would publish an article condemning her so openly. Duke William loathed Irene, after all, loathed her to the very bone.
“Right about now, I imagine some of the nobles are gleefully putting their heads together, trying to decide what to petition me with.”
“Likely they’ll submit a petition claiming that I grew so arrogant from Your Majesty’s excessive affection that I’ve diminished the dignity of the Imperial Family.”
At Irene’s smooth reply, the Emperor made no effort to hide his displeasure.
“Knowing full well that, you still went and did something that gave them ammunition against you? Why? Did you think I’d naturally cover for you?”
“How could I think such a thing, Your Majesty? Your servant Irene is well aware that you hold me dear, and for that very reason I have clearly distinguished between what may be done and what must never be done. So I would ask only that you understand this: what I did was not done without thought.”
“Not done without thought?”
The Emperor gave a small jerk of his chin, as if to say, then let’s hear what thought lay behind it.
Irene began speaking without hesitation.
“When I first saw the catalogue from the Roelle Auction House, I was terribly shocked, I’ll tell you. Can you imagine? My own fiancé put up a Family Heirloom Sword for auction without a word to me.”
“You had no idea your fiancé was putting a family heirloom up for auction?”
“Had I known, I would have stopped him. Putting up a Family Heirloom Sword of all things, it’s like dragging the family’s honor through the mud.”
“Then why did your fiancé drag his family’s honor through the mud? Because of the family’s debts?”
If he already knew that much, he might as well have known every detail. Irene went straight to the heart of the matter.
“Well, apparently he was threatened into putting it up. And not by just anyone, either. By the Second Prince, Your Majesty.”
Irene wore an expression of wounded indignation, as though the very thought of it still stung her.
Whether it was because he had not expected such words, or because he could not quite believe her, the Emperor’s brows drew together slightly.
“Al threatened him? Why would that boy do such a thing?”
“I couldn’t make sense of it either, so I looked into it myself. And would you believe it? As it turns out, Young Master Mathias is involved in this matter.”
“Young Master Mathias?”
The Emperor knew precisely who belonged to the factions of the Crown Princess and the Second Prince, down to every face. Of course, that was not the reason he knew it.
The emperor did not add a single word while the Crown Princess built her own faction. He recommended no one, and he didn’t throw a tantrum over anyone he disliked. He simply watched.
With the Second Prince, however, it was a little different. The emperor checked the faces of the people who kept company with his son and quietly weeded out anyone he didn’t care for.
Lloyd Mathias was likewise someone the emperor had deliberated over and finally allowed to play with his son, deeming it acceptable.
Her criteria were as follows.
Someone neither too incompetent nor too outstanding.
“Lloyd Mathias, is it? I remember that name well. Isn’t he the fellow who went down with a single punch in a duel with your fiancé? Because of that, a complaint even got filed questioning whether the Military Academy’s graduation exam had been fair, and from what I hear, the academy’s headmaster had quite a headache over it.”
That was precisely what made Lloyd Mathias neither incompetent nor outstanding.
“Yes. Lloyd Mathias holds a grudge against my fiancé because of that. On top of that, he proposed to me and got turned down… I suspect he heard about our engagement somewhere and drew up a scheme to make fools of the two of us.”
It had only been the day before yesterday that Irene announced Leonard as her fiancé.
Before that, the two of them had no connection, so no matter how capable Mathias was, learning of the engagement in advance would have been impossible.
However, Irene had prepared a banquet to announce her fiancé two months ago, so the emperor, who suspected the two had already been betrothed by then, found her words credible.
“So that bastard used my son to take revenge on you two? A prince of this Empire?”
“Have you heard about what happened at the auction house? The other nobles hesitated to put a price on it right in front of the Second Prince. Yet Young Master Mathias bid a mere 110,000 rarc.”
The reason no one else bought the sword was simply that it looked far too shabby. Irene knew this full well, yet she spun the story to her own advantage.
“On top of that, Young Master Mathias even snickered and laughed while watching the paddle go unraised. Your Majesty, I truly feel wronged. It was Lloyd Mathias who exploited the prestige of the Great Emperor merely to mock my fiancé.”
“Hah! So Al went along with such a ridiculous trick?”
Irene lowered her eyes, looking dejected, as the emperor frowned. Of course, it was an act.
“I don’t understand the reason either. But Your Highness clearly saw the Great Emperor’s sword and still chose not to bid at the auction, didn’t he?”
Unless he had some scheme of his own, the Second Prince would never have failed to win the First Emperor’s sword. Irene calculated that this argument would work on the emperor.
The current emperor admired the First Emperor more than anyone, and so he was utterly devoted to tracing the First Emperor’s footsteps.
Sure enough.
“In other words, you’re saying you took the blame to protect your fiancé’s honor from the schemes of Lloyd Mathias and Al?”
“Yes. I couldn’t very well ask Your Highness the Second Prince why he threatened my fiancé. This was the best I could do.”
Irene’s sincere words drew a heavy sigh from the emperor.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“If I had evidence, I would have. Frankly speaking, even now I have no evidence.”
Unfortunately, Selen failed to secure evidence. The collusion between the Second Prince and Mathias had taken place within the Imperial Palace.
Selen had said it was possible to infiltrate the Imperial Palace as well, but Irene stopped her from doing so. If the emperor ever discovered that she had planted someone inside the palace, there would be no excuse she could offer.
“Still, the circumstances that remain tell me clearly that the two of them plotted this together.”
Rather than nodding along, Irene bowed her head deeply. Watching her, the emperor sighed and took a long gulp of cold tea, as though trying to soothe his stifled chest.
“I know that Al summoned your fiancé to the palace. When I asked him why, he merely said he wanted to hear a mercenary’s stories.”
He suddenly grew curious about mercenary tales and summoned a noble who had been holed up in his own territory?
It was a clumsy excuse indeed. Even the emperor himself thought so.
“Do you know why I let it pass without pressing him further?”
Irene nodded.