Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 27

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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 27
Thanks to his thoroughly scrubbed identity, no one knew he had come from the Back Alley Arena. Kalio, Viscount, might, though.
“Not that I’m putting on airs as a baronet or anything. I’ve heard the bit about being polite until my ears went numb, and now it makes me sick. From here on, I’ll only be polite to my master. So just think of me as a rude bastard and leave it at that.”
“…You came from the arena?”
It wasn’t Michel, sitting beside Hawk, who asked. It was Hiss, perched on a flat boulder off in the distance, working over a huge axe blade.
He was holding a woodcutter’s axe, not a battle axe, yet somehow he looked more like a bandit than a lumberjack. I couldn’t say why.
Hawk let Michel’s startled stare, boring into the side of his face, slide right past him, and nodded.
“How did you know?”
The answer came not from Hiss but from Michel.
“That fellow’s apprentice said the exact same thing you’re saying.”
Her voice had gone somehow dark.
Hawk, dragged down by a memory that had surfaced on its own, let out a bitter smile.
“Well, he did brag about it. Said the arena’s instructors are picked for their foul tempers and vicious hands.”
Not one of the arena’s fighters has gone without a broken limb. The moment you’re dragged into the training room, they break your arms and legs one by one and only then begin the lessons.
Since they’re meant to be worked like battle slaves, they usually take care not to leave lasting damage. Still, every so often an instructor would lose his temper and reduce someone to a cripple.
“I didn’t expect to hear word of a fellow trainee in a place like this. What was that apprentice’s name?”
“You wouldn’t know him even if I told you. He took that apprentice more than ten years ago… and he’s dead now.”
“Ah, is that so?”
Hawk scratched the back of his neck a few times.
“May he rest in peace.”
With those words, the air around them sank, heavy as lead.
‘Huh… It’s not like a single death should make things this grim.’
Hawk was quick-witted enough to know what should and shouldn’t be said.
Not that he was the sort to tiptoe around an awkward mood, but these were people who had raised his lord’s fiancée.
Rather than stumble over his words and make the atmosphere worse, Hawk threw his mouth wide in a theatrical yawn.
“I’m exhausted, so I’ll be turning in…”
“Before that, tell us something about the job. Why do we have to rush to Elpias County? And with a carriage this big, no less.”
“Well…”
“Obvious, isn’t it? What other reason would a knight have to drive a carriage like a coachman?”
That curt voice belonged to Bin, who lay on a blanket with his fingers laced and rested neatly on his stomach.
‘Wasn’t he asleep?’
As though he’d read the question Hawk had silently formed, Bin stirred and pushed himself up with a grunt.
He glared at Hawk with sharp, bulging eyes, as if protesting that he’d been woken from his nap because of him. No, it looked more like he was staring at a sworn enemy.
“You’re here to fetch Lady Zenis, aren’t you?”
It wasn’t a secret, so Hawk nodded.
“That’s right.”
“But what I want to know is that. Is there some reason to haul the lady off in such a hurry? And sending a knight instead of a servant, no less.”
Bin looked Hawk up and down, his eyes full of suspicion.
“Of course, it’s not unheard of to send a knight to invite a guest. But in that case, they’d take great care to dress up properly for the eyes of others. I’ve never once heard of sending a single knight, and hiring a mercenary as a guide besides.”
“Hoo… You know a lot about how noble houses work, don’t you?”
“You should try rolling around as a mercenary for twenty years. You’ll pick up plenty you’d rather not know. Anyway.”
Perhaps it wasn’t a pleasant subject, because Bin asked again, as if trying to change the course of the conversation.
“The job the baronet hired us for was to guide us to Elpias County, right? Which means once we reach Elpias County, the contract dissolves on its own.”
Hawk knew full well that the words were aimed at him as a threat. Michel, looking flustered and stealing glances at him, only strengthened that suspicion.
“Hey, Bin.”
“Baronet or no baronet, if you so much as lay a finger on Lady Zenis in some strange way, I won’t let you off. Understand?”
“Are you on familiar terms with the Count’s daughter?”
“It’s not just familiar, it’s…”
“Goodness, I think there’s a wild boar in those woods! Bin! Let’s go hunt it! First thing tomorrow morning!”
Michel leapt to her feet, hoisted Bin up by the scruff and slung him over her shoulder, then charged off into the forest.
“Put me down! You brute! Mark my words! If you so much as try anything foolish on our lady…!”
First he’d been dragged off by Hiss, and now by Michel as well. Watching Bin vanish once more into someone else’s grip, Hawk scratched the back of his head.
“…”
With only Hawk and Hiss left in the small clearing, a heavy silence settled over them.
‘This isn’t what I wanted…’
He’d meant to dig up information on Count Elpias, but once he came to his senses, he found himself alone with this taciturn man.
It seemed there was no way to pry anything out of him.
Hawk stole sidelong glances at Hiss, who said nothing and only kept working over his axe, then gave up with a ‘Well, whatever,’ and stretched out on the ground.
‘These mercenaries seem to be on good terms with the Count’s daughter, too. That’s unexpected.’
Count Elpias was a mercenary from the start, so I suppose that much is understandable.
Zenis Elpias had been born a noblewoman. There was no way she would ever bother with friendships among lowly mercenaries.
‘Did Count Elpias serve as the stepping stone? If so, then the Count and his daughter must get along well, too…’
Regardless, one thing was certain.
‘If I told them why they had to hurry this much, they would rush to the Elpias County without even time to sleep.
‘Count Miles pressured him over the debt from the very beginning, planning to take the young lady for himself. His second son is quite the wastrel… And nobody wants to hand over their daughter to him.’
‘They haven’t even considered that Ray might repay the debt. They’ve probably sent men to the county by now, meaning to drag the young lady off by force.’
‘I think there’s still some time left… But if you’re too late, rush straight to the Miles estate. If you explain the situation to the mercenaries, they’ll likely help you.’
‘Use it if you need to. Abuse it to your heart’s content.’
‘I wonder if it’ll really come to using it…’
Hawk fiddled with the bag hanging at his waist and let out a sigh.
Pretending not to notice the glance that settled on his cheek at the sound.

* * *
Thirty million larc.
Count Miles’s gaze, fixed on the cheque, wavered like water.
“Is this… genuine?”
“If you can’t bring yourself to believe it, go to the bank and check for yourself.”
Leonard gave a slight nod, his face brimming with confidence. That face said it all. The cheque was real.
Still, Count Miles simply could not believe it.
It wasn’t three hundred thousand larc, nor three million. The sum written on the cheque was thirty million larc. Thirty million, no less.
He knew all too well the state of the Elpias household, and he couldn’t bring himself to believe the golden seal of Jacqueline Bank stamped on the cheque was genuine.
In the end, he studied the cheque with a half-convinced expression and summoned his secretary.
“You called for me, my lord.”
“Take this cheque to Jacqueline Bank and confirm whether it’s authentic.”
The secretary, too, widened his eyes at the sum of thirty million larc as he accepted the cheque.
“Understood, my lord. I’ll be back shortly.”
After the secretary had gone out, Count Miles looked at Leonard, his face still clouded with doubt.
“Forgive my suspicion, but I hope you understand. It’s simply too large a sum to accept without hesitation.”
“I understand. I would have done the same.”
While the secretary was away at the bank, Leonard took a sip of the drink Count Miles had poured for him.
Fortunately, Ryulton Castle had a branch of Jacqueline Bank. The secretary shouldn’t take long to verify the cheque and return.
“Care for another glass?”
“I’ll pass. Once this business is concluded, I intend to head straight back to my territory.”
“I see.”
A silence settled between Count Miles and Leonard.
It was the first time this silence hadn’t felt uncomfortable or burdensome. Leonard gazed down at the ice in his glass, lost in thought.
He had visited this place three or four times because of his debt. He had been served drinks then, too, but he had never been able to raise his glass so calmly as he did now.
Now that magic had vanished from the world and mages had become exceedingly rare, ice in midsummer and flowers in midwinter had turned into costly luxuries.
Jewels could be resold later, but flowers wilt and ice melts.
To Leonard, who had come bearing money he could not even spend on a single chunk of ice, the drink Count Miles offered so casually was the most elegant mockery imaginable.
Leonard hadn’t even realized it was mockery. This was true not only here, but also at the social gatherings he had attended over the past year since becoming a count.
What shamed Leonard was not the mockery itself, but those moments when he belatedly realized that it had been mockery.
“Have you finally found the late countess’s inheritance?”
“Pardon?”
“Otherwise, I can’t see how you’d have managed to bring thirty million larc.”
With a light wave of his hand, Count Miles summoned a servant and ordered a fresh glass.
The glass holding ice that had not yet melted by half was taken away, and a fresh glass of ice was filled with amber liquor.
Count Miles swirled his glass until the ice clinked, letting out a low “Hmm.”
“You wouldn’t know, but the dowry the late countess brought when she married was quite the talk of the time. It was a full fifty million larc.”
Fifty million larc twenty years ago. Accounting for inflation, that sum would be worth about one hundred million larc today.
Only a daughter of a duke’s house or an imperial princess could bring a dowry of that size.
Or, well, perhaps Marquis Blair.

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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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