I Was Tricked into This Fake Marriage!

Chapter 6

It was surreal. It felt strangely bizarre to see my own name written on an official form alongside the name of another man, especially one I’d least expected to be in this situation with.

The fact that Sir Heiden and I had grown up together only amplified the absurdity of it all.

I suddenly recalled how Sir Heiden had broken a finger as a squire while practicing his swordsmanship on a training dummy.

After that, memories of my childhood with Sir Heiden came flooding back one after another.

Him as a scared young boy stuck on top of the roof after some of the senior knights had played a prank on him. A young, grimey Sir Heiden clutching a trowel, on the verge of tears after my mother had put him to work all day digging up her flower beds so she could replant her garden.

And, of course, my cousin Schutand, who was always right there with him. Seira and I would also invariably be close by, watching it all unfold.

Why in the world had Seira ever agreed to marry this guy? Perhaps because I was already mentally in my twenties at the time, these vignettes felt more like observing children at play rather than treasured childhood memories of my own.

I sighed.

“We have few options,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“...No apology necessary.”

This was why I’d had Sir Heiden accompany me on this journey from the beginning.

I slipped my signet ring off my finger and pressed it into the inkpad.

Countess Leyrin Efran.

Then with my left hand, I held the paper with my name written on it firmly to make sure it was perfectly aligned.

The door abruptly swung open.

“My lady! There’s someone here from Nine Nights!”

It was the squire. Then, a faint mixture of lavender and earthy-green mugwort started to fill the air.

I started at the sudden interruption and stamped my signet without thinking. When I looked down, I found the Efran County seal pressed squarely not on the official form but on a pale hand that wasn’t my own.

“Too impatient to wait, I see.”

“You...”

The heavily robed man who had caught my signet before I could make the form official tutted disapprovingly.

I noticed the familiarity of his voice. He was the man who had taken my commission in Efran. He held a sedative in his mouth, just as he had back then.

I searched my memory for his name before realizing that we had never formally introduced ourselves.

Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like we were going to become best of friends anyway.

“Who are you calling impatient? Some might argue that I had waited long enough,” I replied.

Startled by the man’s sudden intrusion, Sir Heiden stood alert with his sword half unsheathed until he heard me speak.

A month and a half had passed since I’d made the commission, with only two more days left to go. I wasn’t acting impatiently. I was just trying to make a choice before it was too late. In fact, it might already be too late.

I glared at the man, and the rolled smoke dangled from his lips as they curved upward.

Is he smirking? You think this is funny, huh?

I lifted my signet and he withdrew his hand. He placed the file he held in front of me.

“My lady...” Sir Heiden called out to me.

“Sir Heiden, if you’ll excuse us. I’d like to speak with him privately.”

Sir Heiden wavered. He was reluctant but unwilling to disobey a direct order in the presence of an outsider. Finally, he bowed stiffly and left the room.

Now that I think about it, these were temporary accommodations, but this was still a hotel room.

It wasn’t as though the two of us were sending each other signals or making googly-eyes at each other, but... As someone with zero relationship experience, this felt... It felt oddly, um...?

Actually, I didn’t feel odd at all! In fact, I felt remarkably calm.

Could I be getting a contact high from the sedative this man was smoking?

No, that couldn’t be it. I’d just been alone in this room with Sir Heiden mere moments ago!

Apparently being single for so long had made my romantic instincts completely waste away!

Feeling somewhat uncertain with myself, I gingerly opened the first file out of the stack the man had given me. The cover was marked with a large number one. I read the first lines of the file:

Baronet

Age: 20

A tall imperial soldier with no family other than his pet cat, fending for himself. Used to cooking his own meals, dark hair... I was taken aback somewhat by the six mugshot portraits that captured his likeness from all angles.

“You’re not late because you were drawing all these portraits, were you?” I asked.

“Wow, how’d you know?”

I could only hope he was kidding... Anyway, in spite of the uncomfortable angle of the man’s portraits, he seemed quite likable. He was also quite young.

I was honestly surprised. He seemed like an exceedingly fine, normal guy. So normal, in fact, that I felt quite comfortable with the prospect of dating him.

“He’s not bad,” I said.

“So it’s settled then?”

But he’s 20 years old. That’s way too young...

“I want to take a look at the rest first,” I replied.

“There’s an additional charge for each file.”

“How much?”

“Ten pieces,” the man replied.

Oh, that was nothing. I set the first file aside and sized up the rest before selecting file number four from the bottom of the stack.

“Hey...” the man objected, sounding somewhat bewildered.

I looked up at him.

“What?”

“We usually number those by order of recommendation. We try to meet a quota, but the options tend to get worse as they go on.”

It sounded like he was trying to hedge my expectations.

“But these suitors all meet the pre-established conditions, right?”

“Sort of.”

The man shrugged.

“Then what if I choose a candidate and he refuses? I need a backup, right?”

“That would never happen.”

“What makes you say that?”

He elected not to answer my question. I opened file number four.

Baronet, 26-years-old. Highly motivated by money but not a womanizer, and his pastime was collecting documents. He was an imperial official, and under special interests was “cooking.”

He also ran a small side business.

Wow, this one must really like money. A government official and a businessman?

He also had a decent height and build for someone in civil service.

I mean, just, wow! He was taller than 180 cm and loved to cook? The image of a regular cast member on the competitive-cooking show Fridge Raid! from my past life crossed my mind.

Now I really wanted to know what he looked like. I’d bet his side business was something related to food and hospitality.

And collecting documents as a hobby? I wonder what that could mean. Maybe he saved and cataloged every single bill he’d received in his entire life?

Not wanting to seem too eager to evaluate the candidate based on his looks, I forced myself to scan through the first part of the file one more time. But then I started to fret that I might be setting myself up for disappointment once I did see what he looked like.

So I took another look at the dewy-faced young suitor from file number one. I was drawn to both, but I preferred the latter.

I didn’t want anyone younger than me. Cradle robbing was not something I was comfortable with. I decided that I’d probably still prefer number four even if he wasn’t as handsome.

Who cares? Looks aren’t everything. Might as well take a look at the others as well.

I opened file number two. It was more of the same.

He was a tall, dark-haired, quasi-viscount knight. Compared to the first suitor who had been given a higher rank for his achievements in battle, this second one had no such military distinctions.

However, he was supposedly known for his kindness and generosity, especially for his frequent charity work with orphans. But then the next thing I read caught me so off guard that I nearly choked over my own words.

“A pedophile?! What a piece of human garbage!”

I closed the file. Then I opened it again. I needed to take a good look at this scumbag. I wanted to be able to present him with a well-aimed kick in the nuts should I happen to run into him. But what I saw shocked me...

“Good heavens...”

He was absolutely gorgeous. His face was angelic in every sense of the word with eyes so big that you could get lost in them for ages. But a pedophile?! I guess you really couldn’t judge a book by its cover.

But I had zero intention of getting married to human waste, even if it was just for appearances, so I opened file number three. This was the last one.

This man was a soldier as well. He was 29 years old.

How old was the scumbag again? Good lord, he was also 29 years old. Really? With a face like that?! He could practically pass for 19!

“Are these portraits reliable?” I asked, casting a dubious look over at the man until he gave me a belated response.

“What was that?” he said.

“How trustworthy are these portraits?”

“They’re good enough to be commissioned by the emperor himself.”

But didn’t that just mean that they were ridiculously retouched, facetuned, and filtered?

Like, obviously the emperor would commission an artist who could make the subject look three times better than normal, right? Either way, this last candidate was said to love animals and have a kind and affectionate disposition. He was also quite the philanderer, shacking up with three separate women.

It was noted that he had not filed an official marriage certificate with any of them, and thus had no official wife to speak of. It seemed that in spite of his skirt-chasing ways, he still held a sense of responsibility toward his harem of lovers and was looking for a way to financially support them.

He had average looks—just an ordinary man in his late twenties like any other you might pass on the streets.

In some ways, this suitor might be the best fit for my purposes. Someone who knew their place, who knew when their presence was and wasn’t wanted.

But even though I’d claimed that I didn’t mind a womanizer, the idea of partnering with a man who already had three paramours was hard to digest.

My thoughts went back to candidate number four. Despite being drawn to him most, I felt vaguely scared that actually seeing what he looked like would force me to choose the younger first candidate instead.

All of the suitors had above-average looks with manly features. But each also had a catch.

Number one was too young, and number three was a creep. Number two wasn’t a creep, but he was still a sleazeball. As for number four? He seemed too good on paper to be true. So what was the catch? It had to be his looks, right?

“Hmm...”

“Baronet Sur-rey seems the most promising, no?”

Surrey who? I opened file 1 and glanced at the name spelled “Suret,” then closed the file and reopened it again.

Of course it was the imperial-style pronunciation.

I’d been reading it in the Sopen-style pronunciation. No wonder it’d taken me a while to understand.

“Do you know anything else about these people besides what’s detailed here?”

“Like what?”

“Like, what’s their reputation with their subordinates?”

“They’re all soldiers. They’re all more or less the same.”

“But this one’s a government official.”

Did he just flinch when I pointed at file four, or was that my imagination? Why was he acting so strangely? Perhaps he and candidate four were acquaintances?

“Who cares? Soldiers, bureaucrats, they work for the empire all the same.”

The Nine Nights agent’s face was impossible to read beneath the shroud of his hood.

His demeanor, which had already been inscrutable the last time we met due to the hair covering his face, was even more indecipherable. I couldn’t so much as see his lips moving.

I understood the need for obscurity given his position as an intelligence agent, but it still made him frustrating to talk to.

“What about how they treat women? I understand that candidate three’s got the moves with the ladies, but...”

“He’s got the moves in the bedroom as well,” the man replied.

“...Oh.”

I was hoping to gloss over that part due to my bashfulness, but he just had to say that part out loud, didn’t he? I opened and closed my mouth like a fish out of water, and I heard a wheeze escape from under the hood.

Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?

“Baronet Suret has always shown the utmost respect toward his superiors. It makes sense that he’d show the same to his countess wife, doesn’t it? And Sir Phillip may be a lolicon, but he doesn’t mistreat or abuse his paramours.”

“Sweet-talking children into being your lover is quite literally the definition of abuse.”

“Touché.”

“And why would he want to marry a countess who’s clearly too old to be his type anyway?”

“Apparently it’s his dream to found an orphanage with the money.”

I flung file number two across the room.

An orphanage?!

It was flagrantly obvious what his true intentions were.

The man didn’t so much as blink when the file sailed past his head. He shrugged and placed a rolled smoke in his mouth. With a snap of his fingers, the tip lit up with a spark.

Watching that move fascinated me no matter how many times I saw it.

“What about number four?”

“...What?” I said.

“Candidate number four. His name is...”

I spread open the file.

Del-ice Kell-ard?

No, that was the Sopen-style way to pronounce it. How was it supposed to be pronounced in the empire? Had I even gotten it close?

Feeling too self-conscious to ask the man to clarify my pronunciation, I flipped through the file and froze.

“Omigod, shut up.”

My brain went on autopilot, and the words left my lips before I could even process what I’d said.

“What a total studmuffin.”

“...Come again?”

The man was visibly confused by my literally out-of-this-world lingo. I closed the file. I needed a moment to regain my composure.

Whew. Breathe in.... breathe out...

I repeated to myself over and over again, That’s facetuned. That’s facetuned. That has to be facetuned!

All right. I finally felt like I could give it a second look without letting myself get carried away. I opened the file again.

“Omigod, that’s crazy! That’s so freakin’ crazy!”

Not get carried away, my ass! He looked even handsomer than before!

The man before me started sputtering violently, as if he had inhaled some smoke down the wrong pipe.

He was absolutely outrageous. From his chiseled jawline to the smoldering gaze of his eyes.

In a word, insane! He even had not just one but two saucy little beauty marks underneath his left eye.

The man depicted in the drawings looked somewhat disdainful, as if he resented having to sit for a portrait in the first place. But even that only further added to his apathetic charm.

In fact, it made him look like a sleepy, pouty Dionysus who had been unwillingly roused from his nap!

“Now, what are you going to do to make it up to me?” his sultry eyes seemed to say.

Yes! Anything!

“Just say the word!”