The Male Lead Is Trying To Tame Me With Money - Chapter 179

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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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Side Story 02-9.

The wedding day had arrived.
Maribel Reardon was seized by a strange premonition that today might be the last time she would see the two of them together.
‘It’s a shame, somehow.’
If she was being honest, there was also a part of her that wanted to settle here for good.
Most of what she had longed for and admired while growing up as a young countess of Reardon was present in this place.
Even now, after spending a month and a half here, Casian Artez felt less like ‘that sort of person’ and more like a younger brother she’d gained late in life, but her affection for Rozelita had soared endlessly.
Mixed with the joy of becoming family and her admiration for the woman, there persisted a desire to watch their time together unfold.
‘But I can’t stay.’
Maribel gazed at the bracelet she had carefully set aside.
For six weeks, it was striking how little she had yearned for her parents from the original timeline or anyone else.
That was because she held a deep certainty that she would be able to return.
Thanks to that, she had been able to spend time here as though on a somewhat extended journey.
Aside from her own room, the capital city and the lord’s manor had changed considerably, and there was much she could learn and master here, which pleased her.
Maribel gazed at her mother’s bracelet, which she had never separated from her bosom, then covered it with the lid.
At just seventeen, it still felt strange to her, but perhaps this was also the last opportunity for her to pass on something like this to them in its entirety.
Before summoning the attending maid, she took one more moment to slowly soak in the sight of her room, committing it to memory.
Now she was quite composed about it.
Perhaps it would be considerable suffering—accepting her own timeline, which might be quite painful, and acknowledging what work lay ahead of her.
If she could obtain the very landscape she had so longed for, she could bear anything.
*
Marion Dil’s seat was positioned slightly toward the back of the middle section.
Rozelita had introduced Maribel to everyone as a very distant collateral relative of Reardon who had come to learn various things before the wedding, so this seating arrangement was appropriate.
Most importantly, Maribel herself was perfectly pleased with this seat.
From the moment she first saw him, there had been something unsettling about the Emperor, and this seat cleverly avoided meeting his gaze directly while also being physically distant from him.
‘…Am I really going to marry someone so disagreeable? And he’s even taking other women into the Imperial Harem?’
The Empress Trisha she had met this time was truly, truly a good person. Which made it all the more incomprehensible why the Emperor behaved as he did.
There existed someone so good, yet why did he insist on taking multiple partners and making everyone suffer?
Though this hadn’t happened to her yet, its consequence was the protagonist of today’s ceremony, so it was a future she had to acknowledge.
Moreover, Maribel was resolved that even if her mood soured considerably, when she returned to her original timeline, she would likely marry that man while he was still young.
With a future arriving for Reardon where no breakthrough was visible, she was prepared to endure at least that much as the sole heir.
Perhaps age had altered him into someone so unsettling, when in his youth he might not have been quite so ruined.
As she was deep in thought about her own future, the hall doors opened once more and music began.
Maribel cast aside all her tangled thoughts and quickly turned her attention to the ceremony.
Though she hadn’t asked directly, she had come to understand that Rozelita and Casian Artez wanted to show her their wedding as family.
The two who entered together were truly a perfect match—radiant and beautiful.
‘To think that someone who shines so brilliantly is becoming my family….’
Rather than joy at witnessing Casian Artez’s wedding, Maribel was utterly immersed in the happiness of becoming family with Rozelita.
As a Priestess of Reardon, she possessed the innate ability to perceive the aura of a person.
Rozelita possessed a luminescence more beautiful than anyone else in this place.
It was radiant and righteous, suffused with such tremendous vitality that one could not help but feel awe.
Of course, since Maribel did not wish to leave any regrets behind, she earnestly committed to memory Casian Artez’s appearance as well, thinking of a much later time.
Though she felt more of the affectionate exasperation one has for a younger brother than tender sentiment, watching him radiate such happiness was not entirely unpleasant to behold.
‘I hope they remain happy for a long, long time. Especially that Rozelita never abandons Casian….’
Since he, too, carried Reardon blood, he wouldn’t look twice at anyone but Rozelita, and he’d surely find his own path to survival?
When the entire ceremony concluded, the two exited and turned their gaze toward Maribel’s direction, meeting her eyes.
Watching Rozelita’s smile, Maribel found herself contemplating once more.
‘How much of young Casian’s life will I be able to see? Will I be able to nurture him into the sort of person Rozelita would love?’
A strange sense of purpose rose within her.
Had she not witnessed it, she might never have known—but a future where Rozelita did not become her family was truly dreadful.
‘And might I perhaps see young Rozelita as well?’
That seemed rather nice. Even now she was impossibly beautiful, but as a child she must have been even more lovely.
With these thoughts, Maribel accepted the maid’s guidance and proceeded to the Banquet Hall.
As originally planned, she would eat simply in a quiet corner where she would scarcely be noticed, exchange pleasantries with the people she had come to know during her stay here, and then return to her room.
Thanks to Wilhelmina’s meticulous attention to the seating arrangements in the banquet hall, there was little chance that Maribel would catch the Emperor’s eye under normal circumstances.
But the Emperor began reminiscing about old times and wandering about, finding fault with everything, which became a problem.
*
“Do you know how refined the Reardon Ducal Palace was, Empress? Children these days lack such discernment.”
“Discernment like that requires leisure and time to cultivate. But it’s not as though one way alone holds all the answers. Particularly this timber we’ve recently brought in—”
Even as Empress Trisha offered him appropriate counterargument each time he spoke, the Emperor continued to move about, keen to display his superiority, and before long he had drawn near to Maribel.
Maribel, unlike the Emperor, was concentrating on the bride and groom, and thus hadn’t noticed his approach.
Empress Trisha was the first to realize it and attempted to shift her position, but by then she was already in the Emperor’s line of sight as he scanned everything meticulously.
The Emperor’s gaze, which had been filled with pettiness, changed.
It was not the light, nostalgic look he had displayed while wandering through the Riedern Manor, but a deep, lingering gaze that even made Empress Trisha feel a chill.
Since Empress Trisha had memories of when Maribel was alive, that gaze struck her with an uncanny sense of recognition, prompting her to try to calmly guide the Emperor elsewhere.
“The sculpture over there seems to have been here for some time, Your Majesty.”
“Empress, the purpose of a banquet is not to admire the objects placed about, but to socialize with people. I should engage in conversation. These young people may well need my assistance, should they not?”
“As Your Majesty, I would more strongly recommend conversing with dignitaries from the Duchy or Kingdom.”
“Tsk, Empress. You’ve grasped what this is about—why pretend otherwise? I harbor no ill intent in greeting her.”
At the Emperor’s words, Empress Trisha barely suppressed a sigh that threatened to escape.
From Maribel’s perspective—indeed, from the perspective of any young nobility around her age making their debut—an aged Emperor’s approach would only be burdensome.
But the Emperor was a man who feigned consideration itself for his own purposes and had no intention of harboring such delicate feelings.
“Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. It’s pleasant to see.”
As Empress Trisha had predicted, the moment the Emperor approached Maribel, the conversation among the young nobles ceased abruptly.
Though he surely felt that atmosphere, the Emperor, as though it were no concern of his, turned his gaze directly upon Maribel and asked:
“And who might you be? I won’t consider it improper if you introduce yourself.”
The instant Maribel realized the Emperor was approaching, she hastily lowered her head and tried to step back, but she clenched her fists and comported herself with propriety.
“I am Marion Dil. A distant collateral relative of the Reardon Ducal Family, and my father serves as a Royal Guard protecting the Border Region of Reardon.”
“From a knight’s lineage, then….”
The Emperor narrowed his eyes as though gauging something in that introduction.
Then, as though seized by a pleasant notion, his face brightened and he spoke:
“You should come to the Imperial Palace!”
“Pardon?”
“Casian, the groom today, is my one and only son. And his mother was an extraordinarily cherished wife of mine and the rightful heir of this Reardon. Yet in my youth, my ability fell short, and I was unable to provide her with much.”
His voice carried a poignant remorse that would move anyone who heard it.
“Sadly, Reardon’s kin are few, and young ones like yourself are rarer still. Living in the Border Region must bring much inconvenience, so I wish to offer you my patronage—as a way of honoring the memory of my beloved wife.”
Yet at the Emperor’s subsequent proposal, Maribel felt not gratification but only absurdity.
During her six weeks here, she had seen and heard certain things.
Maribel was no fool, and Rozelita had never obstructed or forbidden her from viewing whatever she wished.
Yet that did not mean she could know everything.
Strangely, information about when she herself had died and how her parents had crumbled was impossible to find, no matter how she searched.
As though that knowledge was not permitted to her.
But at least it was not difficult to infer how utterly deficient the Emperor was as a father.
And now he would ease his debt by treating her well?
No, it wasn’t even about easing his debt.
Since arriving at Reardon, the Emperor seemed intent on recovering the glory he remembered from old times, and his patronage of Maribel herself was merely another attempt to chase that gleam.
Moreover, considering the delicate relationship between himself, Casian Artez, and Rozelita, it became clear that this calculating Emperor intended to use her as a sort of hostage.
The fact that he’d insisted she attend this wedding reception despite being merely collateral suggests he calculated her to be someone of significance to the new Count and Countess.
So Maribel straightened her spine and opened her mouth.
“I do not wish for it, Your Majesty.”
“You do not wish for it? That cannot be!”
“Pardon?”
“Though Reardon is a domain and vast, it is distant from the center of the Empire and fraught with inconvenience. It seems you have not experienced life in the Capital, which is why you think this way.”
At those words, Maribel recalled what it meant to be Emperor, and then called to mind the faces of Rozelita and Casian Artez, barely managing to maintain her composure.
To insult the very land she cherished with such arrogance about where one lived being the best!
“Convenience and comfort are irrelevant to me. I love the Reardon Domain and see no need to venture to an unfamiliar place. Above all….”
“Above all?”
The Emperor leaned in, his face suggesting he meant to extract at least one answer from her.
At first, he had proposed his patronage intending to see the pleased faces of his son and Rozelita crumple, and to keep by his side this child resembling that woman, so that he could negate and bury what Casian Artez had spoken of before leaving the Capital.
His wife Bel should be the person who loved him most. How could such a person betray him? It was unthinkable.
It was the Emperor’s prerogative alone to deceive, manipulate, and choose whom to favor.
Yet the moment Maribel fixed him with her steady gaze, the Emperor felt a profound sense of recognition.
“I don’t understand why I should leave this land where the people I love most reside. Those I love most would never change.”
As if a seal were breaking, the voice from deep within his distant memory suddenly overlapped with hers.
At the same moment, the Emperor felt the world before his eyes turn white and all strength drain from his body.

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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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