MDCHC 06

Chapter :〈006〉

“I’ll try.”

The words that came out of his mouth were so exemplary and proper.

“What will you try?”

“I’ll try to like you, Miss Naery.”

“Why?”

But it wasn’t an answer I could accept.
At least, not for me.

“Isn’t liking someone a feeling that doesn’t work just because you decide to? I don’t think it’s something you can force through effort. Marrying someone you don’t even like will only bring unhappiness to both sides.”

“From my parents’ case, I know that very well.”

Did he mean the late Earl of Winchester’s marriage had been unhappy?
Lord Winchester answered calmly.
So that’s why he turned out like…

Ah—no, wait! That’s not what’s important right now!
This isn’t about his parents’ marriage, this is about mine!

“Then what do you mean by saying you still want to marry me?”

The moment I asked that question, my heart skipped just a little.

When I realized that Lord Winchester’s clear blue eyes were fixed on me without the slightest tremor—when I realized that unwavering gaze was directed entirely at me—my heart pounded.

As I waited for the answer of this man I barely knew, I realized that I was… just a little bit expectant.

“Possibility.”

“Possibility?”

“I thought there might be a possibility that I could come to like you.”

It wasn’t some dreamy story of “I fell for you at first sight.”
It wasn’t some far-fetched claim of “I’ve secretly loved you all along.”

Just a vague statement that… maybe.
That it might be possible.

“If it’s you, Miss Naery.”

But it was a truly sincere thing to say.

Maybe—just maybe—I might come to like you.

And so, I could no longer bring myself to say no.

“Oh my, oh my, oh my! You sly fox! You said no! You said it was nothing! You told me it was just one night and to forget it, and now you’re actually marrying Lord Winchester?!”

Thanks to my sister repeatedly smacking my arm, my arm hurt.

“Stop hitting me.”

“Oh my, oh my, oh my! You’re embarrassed, aren’t you?”

No, I am not! I’m wincing because it hurts!

“It’s fine, it’s fine! I know everything. I’ve been through all this before you, remember?”

I tried twisting my body away to escape her hand, but this time she just thumped my side several times in a row.

“Enough, now. Hurry up and pick your dress and dowry items. That’s what we came for, isn’t it?”

Mother, who was flipping through a catalog beside us, chided my sister and handed her a different one.
For days she’d been wearing a worried expression, but the moment I told her I was marrying Lord Winchester, her face finally relaxed. That was one positive effect of this marriage.

“Oh, right, right. That was why we came.”

Sister Sophia nodded and picked up a catalog.
A glance showed a drawing of a pure white wedding dress.
When I peeked toward Mother, she was seriously examining a jewelry catalog.

Am I… really getting married?

Even though they were looking at my wedding dress and my dowry, it still didn’t feel real.

Then I’ll be Daniel’s new stepmother?

In the original novel, Daniel’s stepmother was certainly not a plain baron’s daughter like me. Was she an earl’s daughter? A marquis’s daughter? I can’t quite remember, but she was glamorous and extravagant.

And despite being an adult, she actually envied little Daniel’s beautiful platinum-blonde hair, calling herself a “dirty blonde.” So she bullied him and eventually sold him off to that wastrel man.

Novel or not, how could anyone pretend not to see a child that scrawny standing right in front of them! And there are still fourteen years until he turns twenty! And if you think about the years he’ll suffer under that wastrel husband, the poor kid has twenty years of thorns ahead of him! How can I leave him like that knowing all this?!

I was justifying to myself why I had accepted Lord Winchester’s proposal.
To be honest, Daniel—who came with the marriage—was far more tempting to me than Lord Winchester himself. Like buying a magazine just for the freebie.

After all, my love for the child was much clearer than for a man who might come to love me someday.

Yes. I’ll just keep him and cherish him for about ten years. Then I can get divorced or run away, and Lord Winchester—now a single man—can find another wife. Probably that awful stepmother from the original story. That way, the plot will go back to its original path. And then the time Daniel has to endure her will be…

“Have you spoken to Baron Goffort?”

Mother’s sudden voice cut off my mental calculations.

“Oh! That.”

As she flipped through the catalog, Mother tossed the question casually.
My sister immediately looked up.

“He said he can manage around fifty million pard.”

“Really?”

Unlike her earlier offhand tone, Mother’s face brightened at my sister’s reply.

“That means we have about thirty million pard on hand, so with a little arranging, we can raise about a hundred million.”

“Did Lord Winchester demand such a large dowry? For someone with such wealth, that’s excessive.”

“No, we haven’t discussed that yet.”

“If they haven’t asked for that much, then wouldn’t fifty million be enough? That was the average when I got married.”

“This is the Earl of Winchester’s family. The dowry must match their level.”

“W-wait a second!”

Listening quietly, I finally realized they were talking about my dowry.
Oh, right—this world had dowries for brides, didn’t it?
Wasn’t that the very thing that made the stepmother marry Daniel off to that wastrel?

My god! One hundred million pard?
The expensive strawberry cake I bought for my nephew’s birthday didn’t even cost fifty thousand!
One hundred million for a dowry? One marriage and the whole household will be gutted!

“Isn’t that too much? You said we also need to get the wedding dress, the wedding gifts, and lots of other things. Those all cost money too, and on top of that, prepare a hundred million for the dowry?”

“All of that is necessary for a wedding. Anyway, what do you think of this?”

Mother pushed the catalog she’d been looking at toward me, pointing at a picture.
It was a men’s ring.

But my eyes went straight past the design to the number written below.

“Fifteen million pard?”

“Oh, look at this too! Isn’t this wedding dress beautiful?”

Not to be outdone, Sister Sophia shoved a catalog at me as well.
Again, the price caught my eye before the dress did.

“Six million pard?”

“No.”

Phew… I must have misread.
Right—six million for one dress would be ridiculous…

“That’s just the dress. The set with the wedding shoes and veil is seven million. You’ll need them anyway, so it’s better to get the set.”

“That’s too expensive!”

“But the set knocks off five hundred thousand pard…”

She said it in a slightly deflated voice.

“I’ll speak to Lord Winchester.”

“Speak to him about what?”

“About whether a wedding really needs to cost this much.”

“Don’t. If you talk like that before the marriage, they might look down on our family. If he looks down on his in-laws from the start, how do you think he’ll treat his wife? I won’t allow that.”

Mother’s expression was firm as she said it.
And seeing her like that made something swell up in my chest.

I honestly wanted to throw myself at her feet and confess that I wasn’t really her daughter—that she didn’t need to go this far for me.

“Either way, we need to discuss it. At the very least, we should know Lord Winchester’s tastes.”

But without the courage, I couldn’t tell her the truth.

“At the very least, shouldn’t he have the freedom to choose the ring he’ll wear? And what dress his bride will stand beside him in?”

I snatched the catalogs from their hands.
The more you look at nice things, the more greed grows.

“So, I’ll go see Lord Winchester.”