FRL 5

Chapter 5

“Unexpected.”

“Hm?”

“I thought you would put the dress shop run by your mother’s friend first on your list.”

“……”

“You’re a son who thinks terribly highly of his mother, after all.”

“……Vanessa. That implication is a little difficult to laugh off.”

The moment I saw him call my name with his face stiffened, my body instinctively flinched.

It was a fear I had learned throughout our marriage.

Whenever he spoke with that expression, shouting usually followed.

“……Did I perhaps do something wrong?”

But when I saw him stop himself just as he was about to unleash his rising anger, only to quickly back down, all the tension drained out of me.

“If I did, please tell me. So I can fix it.”

Haha. Once again, I couldn’t hold back my laughter.

Carlisle looked at Vanessa with a strange expression, and when he awkwardly laughed along with her, Vanessa’s laughter only grew louder.

“Carlisle.”

“Yes, Vanet.”

“What do you like about me?”

For just a moment, Carlisle’s face was colored with bewilderment at my question.

“……All of a sudden? Do I really have to answer that?”

Seeing how unusually long his tongue had become, I could be certain of the opposite.

Even at this very moment, when he was talking about marriage, he wasn’t seeing me as Vanessa.

“Never mind. I think I already know the answer, so you don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can marry you after all.”

The smile Carlisle had barely managed to maintain eventually disappeared, and his face hardened once again.

I might have shrunk back just as I had earlier, but the moment he backed down, I knew.

Carlisle Leonard still wouldn’t dare treat Vanessa Sharose carelessly.

And I also realized just how long I had endured before finally saying these words.

“Is it because I hesitated over your question? Or because of Ian?”

I nearly burst out laughing again, unable to read the mood, but the moment I heard that name from his lips, the smile vanished from Vanessa’s face.

“I happened to see you…… leaving the Ruthcliffe ducal residence. Your father doesn’t seem to know yet, so I made up some excuse for the time being.”

“So?”

“If your father and the people around you find out that you left your longtime lover and spent a night with another man…… wouldn’t they be terribly disappointed? For now, I’m the only one who saw you, so I’ll let it go. But if your trail gets too long, someone might catch on.”

“Ah.”

Vanessa let out a small sigh.

Right. That was the reason.

It had been so long that I had forgotten, but thanks to him, I remembered.

Back when I had recklessly left home because my father opposed my marriage to Carlisle Leonard.

I don’t remember exactly how I ended up drinking with Ian, but at the time, I had hastily accepted Carlisle’s proposal because I was afraid he would misunderstand.

That’s right. This was why things became awkward between Ian and me, too.

And that wasn’t all.

Because I believed I had wronged Carlisle, I went even further and did everything he wanted me to.

I was such an idiot.

If only I had thought a little more deeply about how Carlisle had managed to witness me leaving at exactly that time.

Carlisle noticed the change in my expression and seemed to think this was his chance, so he spoke again.

“I didn’t bring this up to criticize you. I won’t make this long. Vanet, my love, I’ll consider it a brief lapse in judgment before our marriage, so come with me today to look at dresses.”

He had hurt in his eyes and was forcing the corners of his lips upward. To anyone who didn’t know him, he looked so heartbroken that they might have fallen for it without question.

Yet despite putting on such a convincing expression, what he actually wanted was utterly materialistic.

Seeing him like that made the corners of my mouth tremble.

“I’m asking you to marry me.”

Carlisle Leonard, looking this desperate.

His acting was so magnificent that I almost wanted to applaud him simply because it seemed a shame for only me to witness it.

If I hadn’t returned to this place with all my memories intact, I would have chosen him again.

In the end, the problem had been love.

I had been blinded by love and unable to see him for who he truly was.

How fortunate.

I was glad that I had finally realized that those strange moments I had occasionally noticed were simply his true feelings slipping through because he didn’t love me.

Anyway, because of this incident, my previous self ended up marrying Carlisle Leonard.

I wish I had returned a little further into the past…….

But the moment Carlisle had brought up marriage, I had to settle the matter.

If I hesitated here, a wedding dress might arrive at the mansion the very next day.

In an empire that did not permit concubines or mistresses, fidelity was important, and adultery was regarded as a grave offense.

It was a disgrace capable of destroying even the reputation of the highest-ranking noble family in an instant. Since he had seen me leaving Ian’s residence today, he was undoubtedly thinking that he had gotten hold of my weakness.

As proof, for the briefest moment, a sharp glint flashed in Carlisle Leonard’s eyes.

But what can I do about that? I’ve already experienced everything once and come back.

I wasn’t particularly afraid of being branded with some ridiculous accusation of adultery.

In my previous life, I had even been accused of adultery and ended up as a crippled duchess. What was I supposed to be afraid of now?

What should I do? There’s nowhere near enough time to find a husband right now.

If I was going to return to the past, couldn’t I have come back just a little earlier?

……No.

Returning at all was already a blessing.

What if I had returned after the wedding?

Then I truly would have been trapped.

A rumor or two wasn’t a big deal. It was certainly better than my previous life, when I had been branded both an adulteress and a cripple.

Besides, if there was a reason he wanted to marry me now, it was probably……

The founding of a knight order, right?

The Sharose ducal family was the only place in the entire empire that did not have a knight order composed of private soldiers.

In fact, the very first thing Carlisle had demanded immediately after marrying me was a guarantee concerning the knight order he planned to establish.

A knight order composed of private soldiers prioritized the personal commands of a noble over the emperor’s orders, making it a military force in its own right.

Having a knight order meant possessing enough military power that even the imperial family could not act against you recklessly.

That was why it must have been desperately important to the Leonard Marquess family, who coveted the ducal title.

Especially because imperial law strictly prohibited anyone below the rank of duke from maintaining a private military force.

But no matter how blinded by love I had been, I knew that providing such a guarantee was dangerous.

Moreover, with my father still alive and well, I couldn’t simply establish a knight order on my own when I hadn’t even inherited the title.

That was why I refused.

And considering how the Marchioness of Leonard had changed her attitude toward me afterward, perhaps that was when she began to hate me.

Could it have been because of that that my father died?

Thinking about it now, it didn’t seem like a completely absurd suspicion.

After sorting through her thoughts, Vanessa twisted her face as if in pain.

“I’m sorry, Carlisle.”

“……There’s nothing for you to apologize for. It must have been an accident. I understand.”

The moment I saw Carlisle forcing a smile despite his drooping shoulders, I almost laughed again. I barely managed to stop myself by biting down hard on my lip.

“I mean the marriage.”

“I’ll take care of all the preparations. All you have to do is accept.”

At his gentle tone, Vanessa felt like vomiting inwardly.

He thought he had a weakness to hold over me, so of course he would use it to his advantage as much as he could.

The thought alone made me want to slap him across the face right then and there, but I had to endure it.

If the bomb was going to explode anyway, then now—before I had time to prepare—was the perfect moment.

Let’s just do it first.

I could find someone else afterward.

What mattered right now was not marrying Carlisle Leonard!

“I already have someone else in mind for marriage, though. What should I do?”

“……Sharose. That joke has gone too far.”

At my words, delivered with an apologetic expression, the smile that had covered his face like a mask throughout our conversation finally shattered.

Unable to calm his ragged breathing, Carlisle left the ducal residence without having accomplished anything.

Vanessa Sharose, you’ll definitely regret this.

And he did so after uttering a line straight out of a third-rate villain.

Vanessa raised her middle finger toward Carlisle’s retreating back as he stomped away.

Do you think I’m going to regret it?

Despite having so much revenge left to carry out, she already felt incredibly refreshed.

There was just one small problem.

The “marriage partner” she had boldly claimed to have…… didn’t actually exist.

Under imperial law, when a marriage involved a significant difference in social status, an enormous dowry was required.

But that wasn’t important.

I could pay the dowry myself, no matter how much it was.

The real problem was……

Her father knew it, she knew it, and Carlisle knew it too: she was not the sort of person who would willingly endure a difference in status for the sake of love alone.

The groom was on his way to the wedding venue in a carriage?

Oh? I heard he died in a carriage accident.

That was not something the Leonard Marquess family would be able to dismiss as a joke.

And would that even be the end of it?

What if the groom who appeared on the wedding day turned out to be Carlisle himself?

Only after Carlisle had disappeared into the distance did Vanessa lower her middle finger and let out a deep sigh.

Maybe I should have made some friends.

Her background was one thing, but because Carlisle had accompanied her as her partner at every ball, no one in high society doubted that she and Carlisle were going to marry.

And with the Marquess family watching her with both eyes wide open, there wasn’t a man bold enough to pretend that he had some kind of relationship with her.

Vanessa mentally went through the names of unmarried men at this point in time, one after another, and groaned.

Were there really this few eligible men in the entire empire?

How was it that every single unmarried man seemed to be someone who would cause some major or minor incident in the future……?!

A man with enough power, no interest in marriage, still unmarried in the future, and unlikely to suddenly change his mind and stubbornly refuse to divorce her later.

Was there really no one like that?

Crunch, crunch.

Vanessa was biting her nails when she suddenly let out a small gasp.

……Wait.