Chapter 14
Chloe was in an awkward posture, neither sitting properly nor fully standing, half-crouched. She moved her hands carefully to avoid damaging her stockings, but the tightly stretched fabric wouldn’t budge.
“What’s wrong?”
“My stockings got caught on the chair.”
Kaiden sprang up from his seat and approached her. Chloe was still wrestling with the chair.
“Can’t you just tear it off?”
“No!”
The snag was around her calf. Since her skirt wasn’t that long, a hole in that spot would be quite conspicuous.
“What’s the big deal about a hole in your stockings?”
“It wouldn’t look neat.”
Kaiden shook his head and knelt in front of Chloe.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
With his much larger hands, he grabbed her stockings. Their skin touched through the thin fabric.
The spot where he touched felt strangely hot. The way Kaiden knelt before her, his hands carefully working at her leg—it made her increasingly aware of him.
“I-it’s fine now,” she stammered and tried to push him away out of embarrassment. But Kaiden, firmly holding her leg, caused her to lose balance and collapse onto the chair.
That was when an uninvited guest appeared.
“Kaiden!”
A thin but loud voice rang out, and the door burst open. Rosetta stepped in.
“I couldn’t understand no matter how much I thought about it…”
Her bold voice trailed off until it became inaudible. She had frozen in place after seeing Kaiden and Chloe.
“What… are you two doing?”
Her shock lasted only a moment. Soon, Rosetta’s face turned as red as her hair.
Chloe slumped on the chair, and Kaiden kneeling while holding her leg—it was a sight that could easily be misinterpreted.
“W-wait! It’s not what it looks like!”
Realizing the situation too late, Chloe hurriedly pulled her leg away from Kaiden’s grasp.
At the same time, the stocking, precariously caught on the chair, tore. She had moved too hastily.
“…”
A large hole had formed in the stocking. What was meant to smooth over the situation had only made it seem more indecent.
“H-how could you do something so improper in public?!”
“I told you, it’s not like that. Kaiden, say something!”
“What is there to explain? I was just touching a stocking, as you can see.”
Kaiden’s comment was no help at all. In the end, a horrified Rosetta ran out of the room, covering her mouth.
“Wait! Miss Crimson!”
Chloe called after her to clear up the misunderstanding, but Rosetta had already vanished like the wind.
“This is a disaster. An absolute disaster…”
As if the engagement rumors with Kaiden weren’t enough, now people would be saying they behaved inappropriately in public.
“It’s not over yet. Not if you accept my proposal.”
“You’re saying that even after knowing how we’re being misunderstood?”
“What’s so embarrassing about it?”
Kaiden shrugged with a genuinely puzzled expression.
“Our first meeting was at a hotel. When a young man and woman are alone in a hotel, there’s only one reason.”
“…”
As annoying as it was, he wasn’t wrong. In fact, Scent Hotel was a popular spot for young noble couples. On top of that, she and Kaiden had played the part of an inseparable cockroach couple that day.
But Chloe was twenty-seven. She wasn’t at an age to be embarrassed about being alone with a man in a hotel. Her previous marriage had made her indifferent to such things. That didn’t mean she welcomed scandalous rumors, though.
“I really brought this upon myself.”
“Exactly. We’ve crossed the point of no return.”
Kaiden smiled beautifully, lifting the corners of his lips.
“Thanks to you, Chloe.”
“Ha…”
She could no longer blame Kaiden. After all, she’d added fuel to the fire he had lit.
“Now I’m in a situation where I must marry you, or things will get complicated.”
“…”
“So you’ll have to take responsibility for me, don’t you think?”
She wanted to argue, but he wasn’t wrong. Someone else might have just walked away, but Chloe wasn’t that kind of person.
What she hated most in the world was irresponsibility.
[Chloe, I’ll love you for the rest of my life.]
Others might say she was being foolish, but Chloe didn’t want to become someone like Dur.
“…Fine.”
She made her decision and opened her mouth with a resolute expression.
“I’ll do it. I’ll marry you.”
“Such responsibility. Very admirable.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“I mean it. I’m hurt you think otherwise.”
Kaiden laughed, his eyes gently narrowing. His normally sharp eyes curved softly.
‘The child we have will be stunning.’
If the baby inherited Kaiden’s genes, whether boy or girl, they’d surely be gorgeous.
“Oh, right.”
As she thought of that, something suddenly occurred to her, and she clapped her hands.
“What is it?”
“There’s something very important we need to discuss before we get married.”
Kaiden returned to his seat and looked at her expectantly, as if telling her to go ahead.
“Children.”
But his expression broke the moment Chloe spoke.
“…What?”
Kaiden asked, sounding a little dazed.
“Children. Offspring. Are you not planning to have any?”
Drip.
Yellow tea dribbled down Kaiden’s chin. Chloe pulled a tissue and handed it to him, just like she had last time.
Kaiden wiped his mouth and finally responded.
“Chloe, you’re… quite extreme.”
He had barely gotten past her rejection. And now she was already bringing up children. He couldn’t predict her next move at all.
“Think about it. How can you talk about marriage without also talking about kids?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
Chloe watched Kaiden curiously. His earlobes were strangely red.
“Are you embarrassed? Because I brought it up? Don’t tell me you asked me to marry you without thinking about this?”
“That’s not it, but you skipped everything and jumped straight to children—of course it’s embarrassing!”
Chloe crossed her arms and looked at Kaiden, who was now covering his ears. She had initially thought he was a slick guy, but maybe he wasn’t so sly after all.
“Try getting married once. Then you’ll end up like me.”
Of course, that came with the prerequisite of surviving a lot of hardship.
“Your goal is to become the family’s successor, right? Naturally, you’d need an heir. But I have no intention of doing… those kinds of things with you.”
“Ahem. Then I’ll respect your wishes. I have no intention of burdening you with such a major responsibility.”
“You’re really okay with that?”
“What I want is to become a duke—not to have my child inherit the title. Once I get the title, we can adopt someone from a side branch of the family.”
His tone was calm, but strangely cold. There was no affection in his voice when he talked about blood relations.
‘Well, if you’re busy fighting your siblings over a title, there’s no room for family affection.’
She and Melvin were practically on the verge of falling apart themselves.
“Is there anything else you expect from me?”
“Let’s see. There’s too much to think about to name just one.”
Marriage wasn’t a joke. It bound people and families together legally. Doing this in secret, like a business transaction, meant there were endless things to consider.
“We should draft a document.”
Chloe pulled a pen and paper from her tote bag. Despite coming out of a small bag, the paper was pristine.
“I expected a pen, but not paper.”
“My job involves a lot of writing.”
Chloe wrote neatly in block letters on the clean white paper.
<Premarital Agreement>
Only five words were written, but they revealed the writer’s personality perfectly.
Just like Chloe herself, the handwriting was clean and precise. Kaiden let out a soft breath of laughter at the resolute period at the end, like she’d made some big decision.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Your handwriting is similar to my father’s.”
Chloe frowned slightly.
“…That’s a compliment, right?”
Was he calling her old-fashioned? But if it was the handwriting of the Duke of Verder himself, there shouldn’t be anything to criticize.
“Well, kind of.”
She didn’t like the vague answer, but she didn’t argue. There were more important matters at hand.
