Translator: Nox

Chapter 7

“A proposal?”

“I want to buy you.”

“Buy me?”

“Literally. I want to spend the night with you. I’ll pay you… a certain amount of money.”

Theodore let out a sharp, annoyed laugh, and Lady Vanessa’s cheeks turned pale in an instant. It was a ridiculous piece of hypocrisy. To make such a blunt proposal to someone she had only just met, yet act the part of an innocent maiden who knew nothing of men.

Theodore’s gaze slanted as he slowly swept his eyes over her from head to toe. Caked in mud and trembling to her fingertips, the woman’s face was white as a sheet, as if she might faint at any moment. It was a face that held neither love, nor lust, nor blind devotion.

“Lady Vanessa.”

When he called her name like a weary sigh, Vanessa flinched, her shoulders trembling.

“Now that we’ve heard that much, I think we’re past the point of needing itchy pleasantries. Tell me the reason.”

The woman, growing paler by the second with shame, swallowed hard. Perhaps she saw potential in the fact that he hadn’t rejected her outright, or perhaps it was something else.

“I need a child.”

“A child?”

“I suppose any man would do, but I want you to be the father. Of course, I’ll compensate you handsomely. I’ll raise the child with all the love I have. So much so that the absence of a biological father won’t matter at all. And I will never contact you again.”

The things she rattled off were one more absurd than the last. Theodore let out a hollow laugh.

“So, you’re asking me to take money in exchange for selling you my seed? Do I understand you correctly?”

At his more graphic phrasing, the woman’s face flushed a deep crimson in an instant.

“Well, that is… technically correct, but… put that way, it sounds…”

“If I wrap it in elegant words, does the meaning change?”

“That… no, it doesn’t… but…”

“Vanessa.”

His voice as he called her name was exceedingly tender and refined. For a moment, it was enough to create an illusion.

“Has the heat driven you mad?”

Theodore leisurely lit a cigar while waiting for Vanessa’s answer. Normally, he wouldn’t have looked twice at a woman spewing such insanity. The only reason he hadn’t walked away was that he’d been a bit bored the last few days, the Rose Garden was refreshing under the May sun, and Lady Vanessa—pleading desperately while soaked in dew—looked rather pretty.

She was like a summer rose drenched in rain. As if water would pool in your palm the moment you touched her.

“I am a lady, you should… show proper respect….”

“If you wanted respect, you should have made a better proposal. Instead of trying to sell yourself cheap while offering money.”

Lady Vanessa was now shaking helplessly, as if she had encountered a common thug. It seemed she could handle acting vulgar, but couldn’t bear it when vulgar words were thrown back in her face. Theodore looked down at her with a cynical tilt to his head.

The golden hair spilling over her slender neck was like sunlight, and her flushed cheeks were vibrant. Her eyes were upturned like those of a sensitive kitten, her nose was finely shaped, her lips were red, and her jawline had a classic elegance. Even her skin was exceptionally white, as if it would come off like cream if touched.

Even to his eyes, having seen the beauties of the capital all his life, Vanessa was a woman of peerless beauty. If their initial conversation had been born of curiosity toward someone who looked desperate, her face had now bought the rest of his patience.

“Is your life that boring?” he asked, lazily averting his gaze from her reddened ears. “Enough that you’d want to waste it sleeping with a man like me?”

“…Yes.”

Theodore watched the woman playing the villain with a feeling that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. In truth, he could guess why Lady Vanessa wanted a child so desperately. Rumors that the Earl of Somerset was putting his niece up for sale were rampant throughout Ingram’s high society.

The custom of premarital chastity had long been broken in secret, and only a child would create a scandal irrevocable enough to ruin her standing in society. She must be desperate and terrified in her own way. If she were sold off like this, she would spend her life nursing some old man.

Human sympathy. If not for that, he would have dismissed her as a madwoman and never entertained her at all.

“It won’t be such a bad deal for you either. I have an annual pension of thirty thousand pounds in my name, and I can request payment once I have a child. I’ll pay you twenty thousand pounds every year for five years in return.”

“Ah, for a mere pittance like that.”

“If you think it’s not enough, I’m willing to pay more later. We can even sign a contract to pay you a percentage of my future earnings.”

The conditions she laid out, one after another, were nothing but pathetic. Theodore wore a languid smile.

“What a shame. I’m not a man who’s particularly desperate for money.”

The malice sparked again in the woman’s face, which had been sinking into despair.

“I know your uncle, Mr. Ross, is embezzling maintenance funds. I’ve even secured evidence.”

Ah, so now she was moving on to blackmail. He let out a short burst of laughter. The longer the conversation went on, the more this situation felt like a delightful, ridiculous play.

“Embezzlement?”

“The money he receives under the pretext of maintaining the garden.”

“And how did you find out about that?”

“…I saw the ledger.”

“You even did a background check on an old gardener just to blackmail me?”

He was the one being blackmailed, yet the more they spoke, the paler her complexion became. She bit her lip hard.

“I thought you might refuse. I looked into it… just in case, to be prepared for that.”

“So if I refuse in the end, the poor gardener goes to prison.”

“That—that wasn’t why I looked into it!”

Her face flushed crimson all the way to the tips of her ears as she stammered out an excuse.

“It’s fine if you hear me out and refuse. But it would be a problem if you went around spreading rumors, so I looked into it. My intention was to keep you quiet so you couldn’t talk….”

It was unexpected that her goal for the blackmail was merely to keep a secret, but her innocence in confessing her entire plan just because he sounded a little pitiful was astounding.

“But is it really not possible? I don’t intend to trouble you. I won’t take up much of your time. If we just meet a few times first…”

“Vanessa. Shall I give you a piece of advice?”

“Yes?”

“Before you blackmail someone, you should size them up properly. You should know what cards you’re holding and what those cards mean to the other person.”

The woman’s innocent eyes now looked completely bewildered. He wondered if she even understood. Theodore continued with a crooked smile.

“I suppose I’d be sad if that old man was dragged away because of your accusation. But since when is that such a great weakness?”

In the first place, the embezzled amount couldn’t be that much. In a poor castle tucked away in the countryside, he might have pocketed a few thousand pounds at most. Such a thing could simply be paid back several times over.

This lady before him apparently didn’t know that problems solvable with money were the easiest problems in the world.

“But Mr. Ross is your uncle.”

“Has it never occurred to you that family might not be a significant weakness?”

The woman looked strangely shocked. Despite being the one making all sorts of scandalous and shocking proposals, she reacted as if those simple words were something profound.

“Is it really out of the question?”

“Do you think it would be in?”

“Men… usually want to do it with me, even if they have to pay….”

The words she uttered with a vacant expression were, ironically, sincere. Only now did he understand the source of her initial confidence. Even the calculation that she was so pretty she couldn’t possibly be rejected.

In the first place, Lady Vanessa’s proposal was merely a variation of a tedious story he’d heard before. From the moment he first stepped into high society until now, the women who flocked around him always said the same thing. I can give you more wealth, more honor, more children….

Presuming that he would gladly sacrifice his body for the sake of wealth, honor, or the continuation of his family line.

Of course, compared to the women who suddenly burst into tears talking about how they’d always adored him or mentioning childhood wounds, Lady Vanessa had offered a rather interesting choice. Blackmail, of all things.

“If you wanted to tumble with me that badly, you should have just confessed your love instead.”

That was why. Why he wanted to know this woman.

“If you had, I might have fallen for it.”

And that was why he gave her an answer that was definitely not the right one. Vanessa’s eyes widened as if she had never even considered such a thought.

“But, Lieutenant… that would be a deception. To say you love someone when you don’t.”

Unlike the worn-out proposal she had made, his reflection was captured in her clear, purely sparkling eyes. He looked at her with narrowed eyes, as if facing the sun, before letting out a hollow laugh. So, seducing him by saying she loved him when she didn’t was a deception and therefore wrong, but buying his body with money was a fair trade? She was a woman whose way of thinking was strangely rigid, yet radical at the same time.

“Then the negotiations have failed.”

“Wa-wait. Is all I have to do is love you?”

Vanessa urgently grabbed his sleeve as he turned away. Cold sweat was breaking out on the forehead of the woman who had limped closer. It seemed the pain in her sprained ankle was worsening.

“I wonder.”

Her trembling, flushed lips and piteous eyes stirred a low, cruel impulse. Theodore stared quietly at Vanessa’s pretty face, now pale from enduring the pain, and then smiled, his lips curving at a slant.

“No matter what you offer as compensation, or how much you blackmail me, or how stubborn you are. If I’m not moved by you, isn’t that the end of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think whether I can feel lust for you or not is more important.”

Vanessa blinked her wide eyes. She looked like she hadn’t understood even half of what he was saying. Theodore took a deep drag of the cigar held between his forefinger and middle finger, then used that same hand to cup the woman’s white cheek.

The strong smoke drifted, making his mind feel languid. Only then did a look of bewilderment color Vanessa’s face as she looked up at him. Was he mad for finding that satisfying?

“Really, what are you…?”

Tilting his head, he pressed his lips against hers, which had parted to protest.