Chapter 2

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: An Efficient Proposal
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A proposal with no bouquet and no ring felt utterly surreal. Aileen hoped she had misheard, or that he would say he was joking.
But Aileen’s hearing was perfectly fine, and Cesare was not the type to make such jokes.
Why?
Her mind spun with countless questions, making her dizzy. Aileen took a slow breath in and out. After steadying her ragged breathing, she answered.
“I… do not wish to marry you, Your Excellency.”
He asked gently, his smile never fading.
“You’d rather be beheaded at the guillotine than marry me?”
“…That’s not it.”
Fear made her throat constrict, but she summoned every last ounce of courage and managed to spit out the words on her mind.
“You don’t even like me, Your Excellency. You just see me as a child.”
“That’s right. You are my child.”
His words, defining their relationship as if stating a simple truth, made her heart sting.
“That’s why I don’t want to. You’ll need an heir, and you’d have to… do *that* sort of thing with me.”
Aileen bit her lip hard before speaking in a trembling voice.
“You wouldn’t be able to…”
A large hand snatched the nape of her neck. Cesare tilted his head and pressed his lips firmly against hers. Aileen flinched as a soft tongue pushed into her mouth, and she shoved him away.
Their lips parted with a wet sound. Her heart pounded as if it would burst. Aileen stared at Cesare with wavering eyes.
He was no longer smiling. His deep, crimson eyes met hers.
“Well.”
A languid voice slipped from between his slowly moving lips.
“Convinced?”
***
Their first meeting was when Aileen was ten and Cesare was seventeen.
Aileen would occasionally visit the imperial palace with her mother, who was the prince’s wet nurse.
The ever-curious Aileen explored the gardens every time she went to the palace. She usually held her mother’s hand tightly, but that day, while her mother was distracted, she chased a small butterfly and got lost.
She wandered the vast gardens alone for a long time and was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion when she happened upon Cesare.
“*Waaaah…!*”
The moment she saw Cesare, she burst into tears, relieved to have finally found a grown-up. Aileen ran straight into his arms. After sobbing into his broad chest, she sniffled and looked up at the ‘grown-up’ she was clinging to.
The man, backlit by the early summer sun, was dazzlingly handsome. The moment her eyes met his, which were as red as flower petals, Aileen was so stunned she forgot to cry.
Wondering if he might be an angel, she scanned his back, searching for wings. But instead of white wings, she only found that there were even bigger grown-ups standing behind the ‘grown-up’.
Unlike the clueless Aileen, Cesare immediately recognized the sniffling girl as his wet nurse’s young daughter. He smiled, a slight twist to his lips.
“So you’re Lily.”
It was a pet name only her mother used. As Aileen’s eyes widened, he plucked a nearby lily and gave it to her. Then, he carried her in his arms, led her out of the garden, and returned her to her mother.
Aileen received a harsh scolding that day, but she wasn’t sad at all. She just giggled as she looked at the lily, beautifully arranged in a vase.
Before falling asleep, she meticulously recorded the encounter with the angel from the palace in her diary, hoping to see him again on her next visit.
Afterward, Cesare would occasionally ask his wet nurse about Aileen, and each time, it created an opportunity for them to meet. For young Aileen, this was a true delight.
The little girl would sit across from the man who was nearing adulthood, enjoying afternoon tea. Most of the time, it was Aileen who did all the chattering.
Unlike other children her age, Aileen’s interests were focused entirely on plants. Cesare would patiently listen to the little girl talk about all sorts of flora. Though it must have been incredibly dull and uninteresting, he never once stopped her from prattling on.
The relationship that began that day continued to the present.
*To think I thought he was an angel, not a devil.*
She may have been young, but she had been utterly clueless. At the time, Cesare was already a seasoned soldier, having long fought on the battlefield. He had an aura that made ordinary people hesitant to approach.
To think she had run up and hugged someone as beautiful yet as chilling as a well-honed blade. And she’d done it while ignoring all the other perfectly normal adults standing behind him.
*I should have run to Sir Rotan back then.*
If she had, something like today would never have happened. Aileen walked out of the inn in a daze.
A pricey black car, completely out of place on the shabby road, was parked in front of the inn. Rotan supported the staggering Aileen and helped her into the car.
“We will escort you, Lady Aileen.”
Aileen let him guide her into the car. With a *thud*, the door closed, and the soldier in the driver’s seat took the wheel.
Rotan sat next to Aileen. Normally, he would have sat beside the driver. She glanced at him, wondering at the change, and he promptly offered her a handkerchief and a lemon-flavored candy.
“…”
Was it because their first meeting had been with her as a crying child? Both Cesare and his knights had a tendency to treat Aileen like a crybaby and a little girl.
Aileen was a proper adult now, and she didn’t cry easily. The candy… well, she still ate it from time to time.
Not wanting to refuse Rotan’s kindness to his face, she accepted them and placed them on her lap. Then, she informed him of the momentous news.
“Sir Rotan. His Excellency proposed to me.”
“I see.”
His reaction was far too nonchalant. Aileen clutched the candy and handkerchief tightly. She couldn’t bring herself to mention the kiss, so she just emphasized the proposal a little more.
“…He *proposed* to me, you know?”
Rotan raised a thick eyebrow. He looked as if he didn’t know what to say. Even though His Excellency had suddenly proposed to the girl he had treated as a child for over a decade, Rotan showed no sign of surprise.
“Aren’t you surprised?”
“Of course not. Lady Aileen was facing execution.”
Rotan laid out his absurd logic in a perfectly rational tone.
“It was a situation where you had to be saved one way or another, and as it happens, His Excellency needs a Grand Duchess. He simply chose the most efficient method.”
“Efficient…”
Despite her dumbfounded mumble, Rotan’s expression didn’t change. It seemed Aileen was the only one who thought this situation was insane.
Aileen thought back to the ‘proposal’ she had just received.
Be executed, or get married.
It was hardly a choice. She could more or less understand why Cesare had done this.
Within the empire, House Elorde was classified as pro-Grand Duke. They had no money, no power, no honor—truly nothing—but they were classified as such because Aileen’s mother had been the Grand Duke’s wet nurse.
The existence of the barony of Elorde offered the Grand Duke no benefit. However, if she were executed for drug-related crimes, Cesare would be disgraced. The anti-Grand Duke faction would use it as a pretext to tear him down in any way they could.
He likely intended to use the sensational topics of his victory celebration and his own marriage to divert public attention, then erase Aileen’s transgressions completely.
But his calculations likely weren’t purely political. To Cesare, Aileen was someone he could trust. Her family couldn’t bolster his power through marriage, but she was, at the very least, someone who would never stab him in the back.
Cesare’s trust in Aileen stemmed entirely from her mother.
Originally, Aileen was not the first child of House Elorde. Aileen’s mother had lost her firstborn shortly after giving birth.
Afterward, when she entered the palace and became a wet nurse, she saw Cesare and believed it was fate. Her mother revered Cesare as if he were a child sent to her by God, serving him with devotional worship.
Normally, a mother whose child had died would never have been brought in as a wet nurse for a prince.
The reason Aileen’s mother was chosen despite this was obvious. It meant Cesare was an abandoned prince.
The former emperor already had too many children. Even counting only the officially recognized ones, there were more than a dozen. Born into such a situation, Cesare was welcomed by no one.
To survive, Cesare betrayed and was betrayed by countless people.
Amidst an endless sea of traitors, Aileen’s mother maintained a fanatical loyalty to Cesare until the day she died.
She was one of the very few people Cesare truly trusted. Thanks to her, her daughter Aileen was also brought within his circle of protection.