Why Is My Husband the Villainous Schemer! - Chapter 1

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

Episode 1
“Now that we’re to be married, I thought I should tell you…”
“Yes.”
I swallowed hard.
What kind of secret could a husband possibly reveal on the wedding night?
Karsel, my contractual husband, fit perfectly into every condition I needed at present.
‘The background to protect Rinea, and he needs a wife to show his mother.’
Our contract marriage had proceeded as naturally as water flowing downhill.
But there was no Bluebeard clause hidden secretly in our agreement.
As the bride on our wedding night, I waited for his words with an anxious heart.
“…It’s possible I’ve been hiding one of my titles.”
“Hiding it? So you’re saying you’re not the Marquis of Ribendel?”
That couldn’t be. I’d actually commissioned the Information Guild to confirm that detail.
I asked him hesitantly.
“But… but if you need a Marquis title or higher to bring Rinea, then the contract marriage wouldn’t make sense…!”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“How can I not worry?”
The core condition I’d set for this contract marriage was a title higher than Count.
Only then could I legally obtain custody and parental rights over Rinea, my stepdaughter.
Only two people in the Empire hold a Duke title.
Grand Duke Deashulie, the Emperor’s younger brother, and Duke Karsel.
But I’d never even considered the unmarried Duke Karsel in the first place.
That left only Marquis.
Yet there were only three Marquis-holders in all the nobility, and the only unmarried one was the Marquis of Ribendel!
‘What do I do?’
I’d finally brought Rinea here.
The thought of that child’s heart, which had only begun to open to someone, crumbling now already pained me.
Perhaps it was because my brows had drooped with worry. Karsel began to comfort me.
“…Asha, you have nothing to worry about. I’ve never lied to you for a single moment.”
“Then how exactly do your titles stand?”
“I am…”
Karsel’s lips curved into a smile.
He leaned forward, drawing closer, and whispered.
“Duke Karsel.”
“….”
For a moment I thought my ears had deceived me, and I blinked slowly.
“Duke Karsel, you say…?”
So, *that* Duke Karsel?
The cruel butcher who left funeral dirges and blood in his wake wherever he went.
The obsessed second male lead in the heroine’s story.
And…, the final shadow mastermind in this novel.
“Karsel Karsel,” commonly called Duke Karsel.
“Wait, what?!”
That couldn’t be right.
True, their names were similar, but the two of them had such different personalities!
The memories that flashed through my mind of Karsel Ribendel were only polite and gentle ones!
“That’s… that can’t be.”
“Why couldn’t it be?”
Why? Because you—!
“You’re supposed to be the obsessed second male lead with a crush on Rinea! We would have been on track to become in-laws down the line!”
Well, of course in the original story there was no romance beyond the obsession, probably because of the age gap!
But this crosses every line!
“What are you talking about?”
At my words about in-laws, he furrowed his brow and asked as if confused.
I had no spare breath to answer and shook my head desperately.
“We can’t do this! This is rock-bottom melodrama!”
“We can’t, you say, Asha.”
Karsel’s lips curved into a sweet arc.
“This was the plan from the very beginning, so we most certainly can.”
Why was it?
Why did all the nonsense I’d once spouted to him keep echoing in my ears?
—I’m grateful you only share a name with Duke Karsel! Ugh, if he were that frightening man, I’d have already died of a heart attack.
—As long as you’re not a man as fearsome as Duke Karsel, it’s fine.
—Because you’re not Duke Karsel…
I’d thoughtlessly spouted all manner of things about how he mustn’t be Duke Karsel.
“Don’t say such things now, Asha. Didn’t you cling to me and say you needed me, that you couldn’t live without me?”
“That was before I knew you were Duke Karsel! You deceiver! No, take that back—liar!”
I’d called him a liar, then suddenly felt awkward and shook my head, taking back my words.
Regardless, Karsel’s eyes, already lazily triumphant with his objective achieved, grew even more drowsy and heavy.
“We are already husband and wife. You yourself signed before the priest to spend your life with me until death parts us.”
“That was…”
My words caught in my throat.
Even as I was astonished and couldn’t process what situation I was in, I shook my head and spoke.
“That was merely a formality, paperwork…”
“A liar, aren’t you? The real deceiver was here all along.”
“What?!”
Karsel gazed at me with easy composure and continued with fluid grace.
“You never asked me if I was Duke Karsel, so I simply didn’t answer. But you yourself said those words, and now you call them false?”
“Concealing the truth by implication is deception too!”
This is exactly why you need to read the full contract before you sign!
“Asha, we are now a couple recognized by God Himself, so you absolutely cannot escape from me.”
He extended his hand and gently lifted mine.
Then, as if to prove a point, he pressed a light kiss to the back of my hand.
Karsel gazed at me slowly with eyes like pomegranate seeds, and that ferocious stare gripped me so tightly that I could only gape at him.
But one thing became crystal clear.
‘I’m ruined.’
All of this had begun mere moments ago.
* * *
“I need to borrow some money.”
“…Excuse me?”
At my blunt opener, the Master’s eyes widened.
Right. An ordinary Countess would never walk into the Information Guild and boldly ask to borrow money.
‘But I’m not the Countess of Delmore—I’m a Transmigrated person!’
Transmigration, now too weary even to explain in words.
Who could have guessed that I’d win the “Return Transmigration Roulette” one of those random things, all because I’d read some Romance Fantasy Web Novel on the subway with nothing better to do?
‘If you were going to do that, you could’ve made me win the lottery!’
But regardless, I’d been transmigrated into a Romance Fantasy Web Novel and become the villain.
Asha Delmore, the former Countess from .
My husband had died of sudden illness in his mistress’s bed a month after our wedding.
And my original role was to be the cruel stepmother tormenting “Rinea Delmore”—my husband’s daughter.
Rinea was the typical Cinderella protagonist: a girl abused by her stepmother and family, then noticed by the Crown Prince and a Duke, eventually marrying the Crown Prince.
The problem was that I, the stepmother who had tormented Rinea relentlessly, would be brutally murdered by the obsessed second male lead Duke. That was about it.
What I was grateful for was that I hadn’t yet tormented Rinea.
‘That is, I could start a new relationship with her!’
Thinking about the abuse Rinea would suffer over the next dozen years, wouldn’t it be better to get close quickly and leave the Delmore house together?
I could have left alone, honestly.
That I was going to the trouble of taking Rinea with me must have been because I remembered my past self.
A lonely, unloved child in need of someone to protect her.
I wasn’t trying to clumsily take responsibility for a child who had no one to love her.
But the problem was…
‘I was broke!’
To take Rinea away—a stepdaughter, not even my biological child—I needed enormous amounts of money.
Fortunately, Rinea hadn’t lost her good nature, but left as things stood, she’d grow into a tragic heroine carrying the scars of her abuse.
So I intended to escape this household with Rinea as quickly as possible.
And the most urgent necessity for that was, of course, money.
But no bank would extend credit to a former Countess with nothing to her name.
The Master of the Information Guild was little different. He soon asked me back,
“This isn’t a bank, you know.”
“Of course. I also know this is a place where information is bought and sold. Hasn’t our recent transaction been quite profitable for both sides?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
I smiled smoothly and continued.
“The Perrel Merchant Group made quite a bit of money from the information I gave them—a sum incomparable to the value of the information itself.”
I brazenly pushed my proposal further on the Master.
I asked him, watching as he gazed at me with interest through his mask’s shadow, his eyes deep in thought.
“Honestly, you have plenty of money. Just lend me two thousand Gold. You already know I only bring high-grade information.”
I knew it myself. It sounded insane.
‘In Korean currency, that’s basically asking to borrow 200 million won on the spot.’
I had zero Gold right now, but I was confident I could pay back double within a year—no, I was certain of it!
Besides, knowing future information and not using it felt like a waste!
“I’ll pay back double in exactly one year.”
“What if you lose the two thousand Gold?”
“Then you can take everything.”
The Master looked at me as if I were mad, the way I said it so boldly.
But sometimes for the sake of a goal, you have to put on a thick skin.
‘Rinea, Mom’s going to make a lot of money!’
Suddenly I recalled the day I first saw Rinea.