The Male Lead Is Trying To Tame Me With Money - Chapter 119

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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119.

The conversation at the bistro that day didn’t continue further, thanks to a server approaching us to ask questions like ‘How is the food to your taste?’

After all, it was a topic related to Casian’s mother, and I didn’t want to remain tactlessly absorbed in serious conversation either.

So we temporarily set aside the stiff conversation and filled that time with the evening scenery and the pleasant things we had seen while traveling through Riorden Estate.

Since it remained quiet until we returned to the inn afterward, I had no intention of bringing up this topic with Casian.

However, perhaps he had sympathized with my questions, as he handed me Maribel’s diary when we returned to the inn that day.

“Why don’t you read it properly?”

“I thought you were uncomfortable with it.”

“Not at all.”

Casian sat beside me as I sprawled drowsily on the sofa after my shower, drying my still-wet hair as he spoke.

“I just wanted to enjoy the evening time with Rose, so I postponed it a bit.”

“And to organize your thoughts too?”

“Yeah.”

He naturally and meticulously dried even the moisture from the ends of my hair while smiling.

His face looked peaceful, which put my mind at ease a little.

“Were you worried?”

“Yes, I felt like I had pried too insensitively.”

“Even though you know I’m not that fragile?”

Your current personality is different from your original nature, changed by the influence of what I said in childhood.

As I gazed at him with such thoughts, he set the wet towel aside and extended his hand.

When I habitually placed my hand on his, he gently clasped it and smiled.

“I feel the same way, Rose. I want to know even a little more about Mother. You simply organized and told me what I might have questioned.”

“Ian is too generous with me.”

“Because it’s you.”

He intertwined his fingers with mine.

“Because you’re someone who’s allowed to interfere with me that much.”

My heart skipped a beat.

I should think of it as his usual playful words, words meant to tease me.

But it didn’t feel like something he was saying simply because I was his advisor.

Knowing his gaze that had changed quite some time ago, I looked at him silently for a long while.

Casian didn’t avoid my gaze and quietly stared at me before calmly opening his mouth.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m teasing you?”

At his question that was flat yet subtly tinged with tension, I answered as if entranced.

“Do you want me to?”

His gaze that had been directed straight at me turned away as if avoiding, then soon contained bitterness.

“Right now, yes.”

At his question filled with much anguish, I paused my deepening thoughts and asked as he wished.

“Were you teasing me?”

The corners of his mouth curved into an arc.

Containing both regret and relief.

“No.”

It really seems like he’s teasing me though.

When I squinted slightly, he pressed his lips to the back of my hand.

“I’m serious.”

I thought there would be mischief mixed in.

But he spoke with heavy seriousness, as if he wouldn’t miss this opportunity.

“So in your head that’s filled with work and other things.”

His lips moved up to near the scroll on my wrist, leaving traces.

It was a movement as if asking me to share the weight of the scroll I was trying to embrace alone, as if telling me not to exclude him.

In the atmosphere where time that should flow at a constant pace seemed to have stopped, he looked at me penetratingly.

“Leave some mystery about me too.”

That way, you’ll dig into me.

I felt an indescribable emotion toward him, who had been serious throughout but added playfulness only to those words.

Because it seemed like his contradictory consideration of leaving me a corner to escape to.

*

It was also him who returned my head, filled with his strange behavior, back to normal.

“But Rose, right now it’s okay if your priority pushes me aside.”

“…What?”

“So solve what you’re curious about first.”

He opened Maribel’s diary for me, who was answering stupidly, reminding me what we were originally talking about.

“Because I also want to know Mother’s secrets.”

Even adding an appropriate reason.

It was also him saying that if I was going to dig into him, I should think about it properly later, not now.

So I pretended to give in and turned my head to the diary.

Because I knew he was saying this because Casian understood me too well.

Because there was nothing more important to me right now than solving the scroll.

“-Ian really wants too much from me.”

I could just speak honestly.

At my grumbling, he tightly embraced my waist as I began reading the diary.

“I know, but that way you won’t run away.”

Does he think I’ll run away if he tells me now?

Doesn’t this person really see me as too irresponsible?

When I shuddered in disbelief, Casian laughed low and redirected my attention again.

“After you finish reading the diary, I’ll take you to the Count’s manor.”

While cunningly dangling bait I couldn’t refuse.

*

Since it was a diary Maribel had written in her teens, the volume was quite substantial.

She had decorated it by drying and pasting pretty flower petals and leaves here and there, and had also pasted short letters received from someone.

Thanks to this, I was unable to sleep until quite late, concentrating on reading.

“You should sleep, Rose.”

“Just a moment, Ian, eek!”

Eventually Casian intervened, forcibly laying me down on the bed and covering me with blankets.

However, my reading continued until morning after that.

“Really, Rose doesn’t rest even when told to.”

He clicked his tongue but didn’t try to stop me further.

Instead, he waited until I finished reading while quietly checking the borrowed aristocratic almanac and Riorden ducal family genealogy beside me.

Those books were lent by Mr. Parker, the inn manager.

When Casian showed interest, he enthusiastically recommended them, emphasizing they were important materials.

‘To learn about Riorden Estate, examining the ducal family’s history will surely be helpful!’

Perhaps his affection for the Riorden ducal family was no less than Casian’s?

Only after spending such a quiet morning did I unfold the scroll that had been asserting its presence.

It wasn’t the first time I had opened Maribel’s diary.

Unlike when planning the Riorden Estate trip with Casian, perhaps because I had properly read the diary, the scroll began raising its temperature from some point as if asking me to look at it.

As soon as I opened it, I naturally expected information about the parent generation to emerge first.

But information popped out from the basic settings section.

‘Saint, mage, temple… These are all weighty keywords.’

Each one could be called a mastermind of the world, and all of this is connected to the Riorden ducal family?

Even Casian, who looked at the scroll with me, made an expression as if he couldn’t believe it.

“It seems Mother was an even more remarkable person than we thought.”

“Really, this seems related to why the Riorden countesses only lived within the estate, doesn’t it?”

At my question, Casian nodded while setting down the two books he had been holding.

That meant he had confirmed it clearly.

That there had never been a single case of a Riarden duchess leaving the estate.

“There were quite a few Riarden dukes who left for political marriages though.”

“It really is strange, isn’t it?”

“Right, as you read too, unlike the previous duchess who was said to be frail but often went on trips abroad.”

I nodded in agreement with his words.

Indeed, the settings in Maribel’s diary were entirely within Riedern County.

As if that was how she was supposed to live.

Because of this pattern, it wasn’t noticeable unless you paid conscious attention, but you could quickly recognize that phrases like “I should visit there next time” never appeared even once.

Casian extended his hand toward me as I was lost in thought.

“Shall we go to the Count’s Manor?”

I stared at his hand for a moment, then nodded.

“This side is chaotic too.”

Taking his hand, I shook the scroll hanging on my other wrist to show him.

I felt that was the solution for now.

*

The garden was similar to the Winter Palace I had seen in the past, when I saw seven-year-old Casian.

The subtly maintained appearance here and there among the overgrown vegetation felt strangely eerie.

But it was curious that it still didn’t feel desolate.

Not only the building’s exterior, but traces of maintenance could be seen throughout the interior as well.

“It seems the villagers must have come to maintain it from time to time.”

Buildings like this quickly deteriorate and turn into ruins if people don’t maintain them even a little.

It looked like someone had come in to repair and clean at least once a week.

“It’s been passed down that the Riarden Ducal Family really treated the estate residents well all this time. Right?”

“Indeed.”

Though it was a casual remark, there was relief mixed in those words.

Since it was a family that had been exterminated, he must have been prepared to see something worse than this.

The Riarden Town House in the capital had no traces left except for the garden.

With special emotions in mind, we looked around various parts of the interior of Riarden Manor.

The interior was old, but there were no places where dust had accumulated very thickly.

Even the white cloth covering the furniture to prevent damage was relatively clean.

For quite a while, until we finished touring the fairly spacious first floor, despite all the commotion, neither the scroll’s reaction nor the air flow changed.

‘Is it not the Count’s Manor?’

It was when I was thinking that and going up to the second floor with Casian’s escort.

When I climbed three or four steps of the old, creaking stairs,

“…Ian.”

“Yeah.”

The sound that had been continuously grating on my ears suddenly disappeared.

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