Please Repay Me with Marriage! - Chapter 5

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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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Repay me by marrying me!
Chapter 5
Either way, Irene never forgot that debt of gratitude. She broke the power of the Silent Swamp and rescued the alchemist who had been exploited by them, then entrusted his person to Selen.
Thanks to that, he
lived happily under Irene’s patronage, pursuing whatever research he wished.
“Most likely Viscount Kalio will try to feed that potion to the lady and marry her off to whomever he wants.”
“Yes, that’s what he’ll do. Uncle has no options left but that one.”
If he could control the Marquis Consort as he pleased, Viscount Kalio would gain considerable influence within the Marquis Residence.
Replacing the chief butler and the head maid would be child’s play. Slipping poison into Irene’s meals would become remarkably easy, too.
“That was a close call.”
“It was indeed. Good thing Viscount Kalio couldn’t get near anyone but our Wood, the alchemist.”
Selen’s face, with its sly little smirk, looked unmistakably pleased with itself.
She was the type who claimed credit for every good thing her people did, so instead of pointing out her boasting, Irene simply shook her head.
“So what potion did Wood make for my uncle?”
“A tonic. Still, avoid it if you can. If he drinks it and nothing happens, Wood’s reputation takes a hit.”
“Wood? He’s worried about his reputation falling?”
“Not at all. Wood frets over whether a single strand of our benefactor’s hair might get harmed.”
The waltz, which had felt endlessly long, finally ended. After they bowed to each other and parted, Selen strode up and toyed with Irene’s bonnet, grinning.
Irene swatted away her hand, saying that a strand of that hair might be damaged because of you, and as she recalled Wood’s clear, bright smile, her shoulders sagged.
“Wood must have had a rough time dealing with someone like my uncle.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’re hardly going to expose the precious alchemist to just anyone, are we? Naturally, one of our veterans entertained him instead.”
The wink of one eye was so playful that it made you wonder just how he had “entertained” him.
‘So this is the man who was once a cold-blooded, heartless fiend.’
Irene shot Selen a pointed glare, then led her toward the edge of the banquet hall.
With a whisky glass in hand, she pressed herself against the wall, and the other guild members, as if they’d been waiting for the cue, spilled out into the center and began dancing of their own accord.
There was no unity to it at all. Frankly, it looked more like flailing than dancing, but their faces and movements radiated such glee that a smile crept onto Irene’s lips too.
Of course, the smile was mostly hidden behind the bonnet’s ribbon. Yet Selen, as though she could see it without looking, popped a chocolate into her mouth and returned a similar smile.
“You really are a strange young lady, you know that.”
“What?”
Her stare, which seemed to say, Did you just badmouth me again? was so piercing it nearly stung Selen’s cheek. Selen sighed and shrugged, lamenting that she couldn’t figure out when she’d lost so much of Irene’s trust.
“Let’s talk business. You’ve got another question, don’t you?”
“Oh, right. So what happened to your grand boast that I could just trust you? You do know the banquet is only two weeks away now?”
“My lady, you don’t trust me?”
“I do. So stop dragging it out and tell me already. Where’s my man right now?”
There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in Irene’s voice as she called someone “my man.”
Had anyone else overheard her, they would have had no doubt that the man was Irene’s lover.
Selen had assumed as much at first. But after investigating, it turned out that could never have been the case.
‘They’ve only met once… and not even properly, from what I hear.’
He was, after all, the man Irene had singled out as her future husband. Selen summoned the guild’s executives and gathered every scrap of information they could get.
She could swear on it: there wasn’t a single detail about Leonard Elpias she had overlooked.
Yet no matter how many times she combined and recombined the information she had gathered, the only point of contact between Irene Blair and Leonard Elpias was one. Long ago, they had debuted into society on the same day, at the same place.
But both had paid their respects to the Emperor and returned home immediately afterward. They had been in the same place at the same time, so they might have exchanged glances, but the fact that the two had not shared a single conversation that day had already been confirmed through cross-checking.
Of course, it might be possible to fall for someone at a glance in passing. Leonard Elpias was, even to Selen’s eyes, a considerably handsome man.
But this was no ordinary person. It was Irene, the Marquis of Blair.
Had she really chosen a husband based on nothing more than his looks?
“It’s a bit late to ask this now, but…”
“What?”
If she weren’t careful, poisoned darts might shoot out of her eyes. Her gaze, hidden behind the bonnet and yet so sharp, stung so badly that Selen hastily waved her hand.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. You didn’t mix up the person, did you? The one you asked me to look into?”
“How can you even say that? Do I look like the kind of woman who’d mix up a person?”
“Of course not.”
In the end, only one conclusion could be drawn.
That at some point, the two of them had a point of contact that neither she nor any of the Dalgeurimja informants had managed to uncover.
“Hah… my pride is wounded.”
“Are you going to keep changing the subject? I’m asking what happened! Can you arrange a meeting with Leonard Elpias or not?”
The reason why Irene, a Marquis of Blair no less, had to summon the head of the Information Guild just to meet Leonard Elpias.
The answer was simple. After a brief year of social activity, Leonard Elpias had returned to his territory and, from then on, never once appeared at any gathering, shutting himself away from the world.
Even the invitations, letters, and greeting cards sent to his estate were all being returned.
‘I will absolutely invite him to the banquet and introduce him as the man who will become my husband. Can you make that happen?’
As head of the Information Guild, I have my pride! How could I possibly shake my head and say I can’t do it!
Even if he weren’t the one who had saved everyone in the Back Alley, Selen wanted to give this young lady, who ran ahead as if she would die the moment she stopped, a moment to breathe.
If it were a date with her fiancé, that would be the best of all.
Selen smiled with a quiet satisfaction, like a husband who had come home from the market with beef.
“Of course you can.”
“When? How?”
“Now. Right this instant.”
“What?”
At Irene’s dazed question, Selen pulled a pocket watch from her coat and pretended to check the time.
“Go wait outside for a bit. My people will drive him right to you like rabbits into a snare.”
“…Really? If I go out there now, I can see that man again?”
Her faint voice from beneath the bonnet told Selen exactly what expression she must be wearing.
Selen, who had somehow started to feel a lump in her own throat, nodded without hesitation. Irene gathered up her full skirts and dashed out the door.
Selen was dying to know how the two of them had met without her knowing, and what form this reunion would take, but…
She decided not to interfere with Irene out of idle curiosity. She genuinely hoped Irene would be happy.

* * *
‘He’s here? Truly? So suddenly?’
Irene stepped out of the building and stood before the door, quickly scanning her surroundings as she tried to catch her ragged breath.
Shadowed alleys opened into the street, and there were three passages branching off between them.
I should have checked which direction he was coming from. I really must have been out of my mind, Irene scolded herself.
‘So he was in the capital after all.’
Irene calmly retraced everything she knew of Leonard’s whereabouts.
Around this time, having lost his count title through some incident, he returned to mercenary work, became captain of the company he had once belonged to, and made his name known in no time.
How he came to lose his title, his honor, and even his only family, and returned to the mercenary life, she knew from hearing it firsthand.
Irene did not want to let Leonard lose what he had. To that end, she had to meet him no matter what.
Though, of course, the wish to see him again had weighed on her far more.
-Thud, thud
Just then, heavy, quick footsteps echoed from the alley behind her.
Footsteps drawing closer, step by step. Irene pressed a hand against her pounding chest and turned around.
He was there.
Looking so much like the figure she had dreamed of every night for fear of forgetting him, though his face was a little younger than the one she knew.
‘Ah…’
Irene bit down on her lower lip and stared at Leonard’s face, dazed.
His golden hair stirred slightly in the wind. Those scarlet eyes, which had felt like blood when he cut down his enemies without mercy, and like a warm campfire when he comforted her.
His eyes, which seemed to meet hers for a moment, widened into round surprise.
In that instant, Irene fell into an illusion. The thought that he, too, remembered her, that he had been waiting only to see her again.
‘Lin.’
But no tender call reached her. Nowhere in his gaze was there a trace of longing. He merely looked her up and down, the way one studies a stranger.
There was no time to be hurt by that gap, not when she was so captivated by how much fresher and healthier he looked than the man she had known.
‘So this is what you look like now…’
No matter how much he rested, the shadows beneath his eyes and the haggard air about him had never once disappeared.
Irene knew better than anyone that the emptiness left by misfortune that fell like a sudden storm could never be filled by anything.
Perhaps because we both carry holes of similar size in our hearts, the two of us could share the same passing wind.
Irene barely held back the tears welling up at the corners of her eyes.
“It’s over there, over there!”
Just then, at the voice from behind him, Leonard started violently and his shoulders jolted.
Had this man, once called iron and blood itself, ever been startled by something so trivial? Even with her eyes stinging with the warmth of this newly discovered fact, a laugh escaped her.
‘To meet you again like this…’
Irene was truly grateful that she was wearing a bonnet that half-hid her face.
If Leonard could see her face, he would have wondered what kind of woman looked at a stranger like that.
‘Yes, this is our first meeting.’
So what if he had no memory of her?
If anything, it was for the best. With no need to comfort or pity each other, we could write our story anew from the very beginning.
The Irene of the past had already died. And before her, the Leonard of the past had died, protecting her.
My cruel knight, the one vow you ever broke was the promise not to die first and leave me behind.
Hiding the heart that threatened to burst from how overwhelming it all was, Irene stepped closer to him, one pace and then another.
As the distance shrank, Leonard raised one eyebrow slightly, as if taken aback. Afraid he might startle and flee, she hurriedly took the last step.
The moment her hand finally rested on his arm, she broke into a bright smile inside her bonnet.

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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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