ARPTCF 02

Chapter 2

Beatrice was absolutely certain for a moment that she had just hallucinated.

After all, there was no way Clyde would propose to her!

To snap herself back to reality, she crunched down on the ice in her iced tea and pressed her temples firmly.

“Ah, sorry. I must be a bit tired. Could you say that again? What did you just say?”

“Let’s get married.”

“…Mar—riage? You’re talking about marriage right now?”

“Yeah.”

Oh my God. It wasn’t a hallucination.

Beatrice had to suppress the urge to jump up and down on the spot and instead forced herself to stay composed.

She didn’t fully understand what was going on, but the direction of things was—surprisingly—very favorable to her.

She cleared her throat lightly, straightened her back, and looked at Clyde.

Even though she was suppressing her emotions, a faint hint of satisfaction leaked into her prim voice.

“…You idiot. Who proposes like that? Any girl who liked you would’ve run away. But fine. Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”

“…What?”

Clyde’s expression cracked slightly at how fast she accepted. He seemed to be doubting whether he had heard her correctly.

Of course, Beatrice had no intention of waiting for him to regain his composure.

“Let’s get married. Actually, I came here to propose to you too.”

“…You?”

“Yeah.”

Ignoring Clyde’s doubtful tone, Beatrice pulled a crumpled proposal letter from her pocket and held it out.

She even smoothed out the wrinkles so he could read it properly.

“……”

“Haah… good thing you said it first. I was wondering how I was supposed to bring this up.”

As if relieved, she stretched her arms and casually reached for a cookie beside her iced tea. Now that the tension was gone, she suddenly felt hungry.

“…So you were also planning to propose to me? Today?”

“Yep.”

Beatrice nodded while crunching on the cookie and raised one eyebrow.

“Now that I think about it, that’s suspicious. Why were you going to propose to me?”

“Well, you’d probably be told to marry soon anyway, so we could use each other as shields…”

“Don’t give me nonsense like that.”

“Then I was going to—”

“Oh, and for reference, ‘because I’m handsome’ and ‘let’s treat it like saving a life’ are both banned answers.”

“…What are you?”

Clyde let out a dry laugh, as if wondering how she had already guessed everything, and leaned back in his chair with both hands raised.

After thinking for a moment, he leaned forward again and met her eyes.

His famously beautiful blue eyes shone with unusual seriousness.

“Bia, this is going to sound ridiculous, but just listen.”

“Go ahead.”

“…I think I might have regressed.”

His gaze was completely serious.

Beatrice listened to his low voice, then shrugged lightly and made a small snort.

“Oh, what a coincidence. Me too.”

“Bia, I’m not joking. I saw your family home burn down with my own eyes.”

Beatrice’s hand, which had been reaching for a cookie, froze slightly.

She blinked quickly, hiding the faint shake in her light green eyes, and muttered without realizing it:

“…Huh. So it’s real.”

“Huh?”

“Well, mine’s real too. Your family was accused of treason and executed.”

Their green and blue eyes met in the air.

They understood each other very well.

Which meant—there was no lie in what they were saying.

Beatrice stared at Clyde with unusually serious eyes, then pressed a hand to her forehead and lowered her head.

Her tightly pressed lips and tense jaw looked heavy with thought.

So much so that Clyde instinctively stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey…”

The moment his warmth touched her shoulder, Beatrice let out a short sigh.

“Tch… ah, what is this.”

“Huh?”

“Normally, when you find out something like this, shouldn’t you feel relieved that you’re not alone?”

She lifted her head again, still sounding unconvinced, and looked Clyde up and down.

“Ugh, why do you feel so unreliable? Is it because you’re all looks and no substance?”

“What did you say?”

“I mean, it’s a relief our engagement didn’t get messed up, but still… if we’re going to send someone else back in time, they could’ve picked someone better than—”

Clyde, visibly offended, grabbed the top of her head and started pressing down.

A surprisingly rough action for someone known as the embodiment of a gentleman in high society and the imperial knight order.

“Which mouth said that? Huh? All looks and no substance? Want me to show you how amazing I am?”

“Ack! I don’t care, you idiot! You couldn’t even come up with a proper proposal excuse and just spilled your secrets to me—ow! Get your hand off!”

“I’m not taking it off.”

“So that’s how you want to play it?”

Beatrice stopped struggling. Instead, she clenched her fist and swung forward—aimed precisely at his solar plexus.

“Ugh!”

“Drama queen.”

Watching Clyde double over as if in pain, she snorted and brushed her messy hair back.

“Serves you right.”

“…You—”

“Alright, enough! No one’s watching, so stop wasting time and sit down again. We need to stop a family collapse first.”

At her urging tap on the table, Clyde quickly straightened up as if nothing had happened.

He sat down again with a calmer expression, treating it like a serious matter.

“Fine. Let’s start with the core issue. You know there’s a faction that drove a wedge between our families, right? And that the key figure is ‘that person’.”

“Yeah.”

Of course she knew. After everything had already collapsed beyond repair, she had learned of that faction too late.

‘Whatever. This time will be different.’

Beatrice pushed those memories aside.

What mattered now wasn’t the past.

“This time it won’t work. So we—”

“If we get married and turn our two families into one, basically.”

“Yeah.”

They met eyes again and shook hands at the same time.

The contact was only for a moment.

There was no need to hold Clyde Dalton’s hand any longer than necessary.

After confirming their alliance, Clyde calmly pulled out a piece of paper from his coat.

“As you can guess, there’s one big obstacle before we can get married.”

“Yeah. We both have older brothers.”

“I thought of something to speed things up.”

“That paper is… don’t tell me!”

“Yep. That ‘don’t tell me.’”

A crisp marriage registration form was placed next to Beatrice’s crumpled proposal letter.

“If things get delayed too much, we just submit this first.”

At Clyde’s bold “let’s cause chaos first” strategy, Beatrice applauded enthusiastically.

Then she added seriously:

“Let’s do it now. Got another copy?”

“I do.”

“We each hold one. If anything goes wrong, we submit it immediately.”

“Good.”

Satisfied, both of them picked up pens and began filling out the marriage registration forms.

“Wow, writing your name next to mine is honestly creepy. Can you see? My arm’s getting goosebumps.”

“Same here. How am I supposed to live with someone like you?”

“Live? My mom says divorce isn’t even a big deal these days. We’ll just split cleanly after the job’s done. My family’s rich anyway, so no alimony needed.”

“You’re the only person who accepts a proposal and immediately talks about divorce.”

“Be grateful I even accepted that kind of proposal.”

The marriage registration they filled out while bickering would later prove extremely useful.

“Aah, why does it matter if it’s now or three years later? I’m going to marry Clyde anyway—just let me get married!”

It was only that the way it was eventually used became far more humiliating than they had ever imagined.

“What is this girl doing?! She went all the way to the duke’s residence without permission to meet Clyde—what kind of behavior is this?! Did I raise you like this?!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know! If you don’t allow it, I might just do something drastic!”

It was also used far earlier than expected.

Beatrice, holding her neck while lying dramatically in front of her mother, secretly glanced at Clyde.

The only saving grace was that she wasn’t the only one enduring this embarrassment.

“Although it may be presumptuous, wouldn’t it be better for you to hear about our marriage through official documents or newspapers rather than being congratulated at the wedding itself?”

Well—this side wasn’t exactly innocent either.