The End of the Special Contract Romance (7)
She had spoken too hastily, blurting it out without any preamble or context.
A suffocating silence settled over the drawing room. The marchioness, caught off guard by her daughter’s sudden bombshell, moved her lips soundlessly, stammering incoherently.
“Ah, Iris, what on earth do you mean by that? No, you can’t possibly mean… you won’t get married…?”
“I’m truly sorry to both of you. The truth is, Viscount Roberts and I have been seeing each other without any intention of marriage. That’s why I have no plans to marry.”
Iris confessed the truth, her fists clenched tight. She hadn’t meant to reveal it like this, but once the words were out, there was no taking them back—like water spilled from a cup.
“Why… why tell us only now?”
The marchioness’s body and voice trembled with profound shock. She clutched her forehead in disbelief, shaking her head, then gripped Iris’s shoulders firmly as she spoke.
“Madame Kelly introduced you and Viscount Roberts with the explicit understanding that marriage was on the table! If you had no intention of marrying, then why were you even courting? Why didn’t you tell us beforehand?”
“That was…”
“Iris, don’t tell me… you’ve been deliberately deceiving your mother all this time? Tell me, please?”
Iris couldn’t bring herself to deny it and bowed her head like a guilty criminal. Seeing her daughter like that, the marchioness let out a hollow sigh of despair, then staggered as if struck by dizziness.
Iris reached out in alarm to steady her, but the marchioness waved her off and sank onto the sofa as if her strength had utterly failed her.
The countess, fanning her flushed face with a fan she’d pulled out, murmured in a voice thick with disappointment.
“I simply can’t believe it. I thought you two were just getting along so well, but to think you’ve been deceiving your parents all along…”
“Mother, let me explain.”
“No, Eric! I’m so furious I can hardly speak. How old are you, to deceive your parents with lies like this? Is this how I raised you?”
The countess fixed her son with a sharp, piercing glare. Eric must have been thrown into utter confusion by Iris’s unilateral decision to set things in motion, yet he responded with remarkable composure.
He made every effort to shift the atmosphere, heavy with grief and anger, and to offer some explanation for their actions.
“Please, calm down. We had our reasons. Just hear us out once…”
“I have no interest in hearing it, Viscount Roberts.”
But the response that came back was icy cold. Until the Roberts pair had arrived at the estate, the marchioness had been warmly affectionate toward Eric. Now, not a trace of a smile remained on her face.
It was only natural for her to feel betrayed and turn frigid upon learning that the man she’d firmly believed would become her son-in-law had been conspiring with her daughter all along.
“Who started it in the first place? Ah, so you two ‘got along so well’ in that particular way, did you?”
“Please, compose yourself, Marchioness. It was my idea first—I proposed to Lady Hugo that we pretend to court to escape the marriage pressure. She bears no blame.”
Iris looked at Eric with a flustered expression. It was true that he had made the suggestion, but they had both agreed wholeheartedly. There was no reason for him to shoulder all the responsibility alone.
Yet when their eyes met, Eric gave a subtle shake of his head, as if to say she shouldn’t intervene, and spoke again.
“I’m sorry. We got so caught up in the act of pretending to court with marriage as the premise, just buying time, that we lost sight of everything else. Telling you now… I truly regret it.”
Had they discussed it beforehand, they might have prepared a more convincing excuse. But with events unfolding so rapidly, Eric could do nothing but apologize.
In the end, the furious countess stormed out of the room. Eric offered one final apology to the marchioness before following after his mother.
*It’s all right.*
He mouthed those words alone to Iris before leaving. The gentle warmth in his eyes as she last saw them only made her feel all the more sorry.
As Iris stared gloomily at the doorway, the marchioness’s voice—sharp as a blade—reached her ears.
“I never dreamed you’d do this to me, Iris.”
“Mother…”
“I could understand if it were Aracila, but you too—deceiving me like this? I truly never imagined it.”
The marchioness’s face was etched with genuine betrayal. Unable to meet her mother’s gaze, Iris dropped her head.
With her own hands, she had undone all the efforts she’d made up to now, turning them to nothing. She felt a vast emptiness from it herself, but for the others, it must have been even worse.
As if someone had placed a boulder on her shoulders, strength drained from Iris’s entire body. Soon after, the marchioness complained of a headache and left the room.
In the drawing room, left as if a fierce storm had swept through, Iris stood alone in a daze.
This wasn’t what she had wanted.
She had never wished for an ending that only wounded everyone around her.
*…It’s all my fault.*
Overwhelmed by guilt, she couldn’t bear to stay there any longer and fled the house. She had no face left to show her family.
She hadn’t even had the chance to earnestly convey her true wishes to her parents before the lie was exposed, disappointing them first. Now, no matter what she said next, it wouldn’t ring true in their ears.
On top of that, she’d caused Eric immense trouble, making it unlikely she’d ever see him again. Feeling as though her impulsiveness had ruined everything, Iris let tears fall in quiet drops.
After wandering outside for a long while, sobbing to herself, she realized the day was beginning to fade into dusk.
It was dangerous for a noble lady to roam alone once night fell. But returning to the marquisate felt like something she no longer deserved, and she had nowhere else to go. As for Aracila’s place, she couldn’t bear the thought of facing her sister’s husband, Damian, out of sheer embarrassment.
Torn by indecision, Iris made her way to a social club that operated through the night. She claimed a table in the most secluded corner and ordered a drink, though she could hardly stomach alcohol.
She lingered there for hours, but as time passed, the club’s interior grew steeped in indulgence and revelry, turning noisy and chaotic. Iris, unable to adapt, hunched her shoulders protectively.
A few people approached, inviting her to join them, but she politely refused them all. Even so, one drunken man kept returning, pestering her insistently, which left her in a bind.
“Come on, don’t be like that—let’s have some fun together! Isn’t that why you’re here so late at night?”
“No. I’m sorry, but please leave. I want to be alone.”
“Ah, you’re such a boring woman. What family are you from, anyway? Huh?”
The man, beyond reason in his intoxication, couldn’t even properly recognize Iris. The grip he had on her wrist was iron-strong, impossible to shake off.
Iris frantically scanned the room for someone who might help, but most were men, drunk and absorbed in their own amusements, paying her no heed at all.
“Do you even know who I am? That’s why you’re playing hard to get, huh? Me? I’m the eldest son of the Cruise family!”
The man, barely able to stand straight and stumbling about, thumped his chest emphatically.
When it came to family prestige, Iris’s lineage clearly outranked his, but the problem was that a slender young woman like her would have a hard time fending off a drunken lout.
“You look like you just came up from some backwater village—why don’t you know your place and come with me—”
“Oh, yeah, why don’t you know your place and just get lost?”
At that moment, a familiar voice cut through the air like a beam of light, coming to Iris’s rescue in her moment of distress.
Aracila, who had used a spell to pry the man’s hand from her sister’s wrist, grabbed a glass of water and dumped it over his head.
Splash.
“Still not figuring out who we are?”
“What the—? Ah! S-s-s-sorry!”
Snapped awake by the cold water, the man recognized the sisters and scrambled to apologize before fleeing in a panic. Aracila clicked her tongue in disdain at his pathetic retreating figure, then extended a hand to her sister.
“Let’s get out of here, Sis.”
“…Okay.”
Iris followed her sister out of the social club in silence and, once inside the carriage, asked cautiously,
“How did you know to come find me here?”
“Dad contacted me. He said you fought with Mom and left, and you haven’t come home. So I used a tracking spell to locate you.”
“I see… So you’ve heard everything, then.”
Aracila nodded. Iris’s face darkened, and she lowered her gaze. A furrow formed between Aracila’s brows.
“Why are you acting like you’ve committed some grave sin, Sis?”
“…Because I did something wrong.”
“But you only did that because Mom and Dad kept pressuring you to marry without even asking for your opinion.”
So this whole mess wasn’t the fault of one side alone—it was mutual wrongdoing all around.
Aracila let out a quiet sigh and looked her sister straight in the eye.
“You’re the eldest daughter to Mom and Dad, my sister to me, and Adrian’s big sister—and you don’t have to meet everyone’s expectations just because of that.”
“…”
“I don’t want you to keep living shackled by those chains anymore.”
Delivering the words she hadn’t been able to say last time, Aracila gripped Iris’s hand firmly, offering her steady reassurance.
“It’s okay to disappoint the family, Sis. Live the way you want. I’ll love you forever no matter what, and I know Mom, Dad, and Adrian will too.”
Transparent tears traced down Iris’s cheeks. Aracila pulled her into a silent embrace, patting her back soothingly.
She’d had that conversation with her sister before, but considering how Iris’s life had been filled with nothing but duty and burden all this time, it couldn’t have been easy to change her heart and bare her soul to their parents in just one go.
At this point, it seemed healthy enough—not even full-blown wandering astray. With that thought, Aracila focused solely on comforting her sister.
* * *
The night spent at the Vanderimir estate felt both fleeting and endless.
Iris hadn’t slept a wink, but in its place, she’d sorted through the tangle in her mind and managed to steel her resolve.
“Thank you for letting me stay. I apologize for the imposition, Your Grace.”
As she prepared to leave the estate, Iris bowed to her sister and brother-in-law, who had come to see her off.
Damian had his arm draped around Aracila’s shoulders, and she leaned into him ever so slightly—they looked utterly at ease, like two puzzle pieces fitted perfectly together.
Aracila reached out for a light embrace, then let go as she said,
“When you get home, Mom and Dad will be waiting for you. Try talking it out with them.”
“Got it.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Buoyed by the well-wishes from her sister and her husband, Iris made her way back home.
The moment she arrived, the marquis and marchioness rushed out to meet her. They, too, looked as though they hadn’t slept a wink, dark circles shadowing their eyes.
The marchioness scrutinized her daughter’s face from every angle before suddenly bursting out,
“Iris! Do you have any idea how worried we were? How could you run off just because we found out you lied to me!”
“I’m sorry—that was my mistake.”
Iris apologized calmly. No longer wanting to put off what she had to say, she continued,
“Mom, Dad—I have something to tell you.”
The couple gazed at their daughter with puzzlement. Iris, who had always smiled with gentle warmth, now met their eyes with a resolute gaze.
“I don’t want to get married. Not to Young Lord Roberts, and not to anyone else in the future. So please, stop pressuring me about it.”
Iris declared it with unwavering confidence. The marquis and marchioness were utterly flustered. It wasn’t just that she had no feelings for Eric—it was that she had no intention of marrying at all.
The marchioness, who had pinned especially high hopes on her eldest daughter’s wedding, was at a complete loss.
“Why on earth are you saying this all of a sudden, Iris?”
“It’s not sudden. It’s how I’ve always felt. But I knew what you both wanted from me, so I never said anything.”
Hearing her innermost thoughts laid bare for the first time, the couple drew in a sharp breath. They’d never even dreamed that Iris harbored such feelings.
As layer after layer of this unfamiliar side of their daughter peeled back, they found themselves at a loss for how to respond.
Supporting his wife, who swayed dizzily, the marquis managed to ask with relative composure,
“Iris, why don’t you want to marry?”
“Because I just want to live as Iris Hugo. I want to work in the marquisate, not some other household, and build a life where I’m valued for who I am.”
The image of his capable daughter assisting him so ably in his duties flashed through the marquis’s mind, leaving his heart in sudden turmoil; he fell silent.
Iris watched her bewildered parents quietly, then dipped her head ever so slightly.
“This whole thing must have disappointed you so much.”
“…Is that all you have to say, Iris?”
The marchioness approached her daughter with a hardened expression and clasped both her hands tightly.
“I am truly, deeply disappointed.”
Iris bowed her head low, absorbing her mother’s words, each one layered with emphasis. She’d braced herself for this, but the pain cut deeper than she’d expected.
Having grown up as the daughter who never disappointed them, it could hardly be otherwise.
Just as the sting reached the tip of her nose and tears threatened to well up, which she fought to hold back—
“I’m disappointed in myself.”
The marchioness gently caressed her daughter’s cheek as she spoke. Startled, Iris lifted her head a fraction, only to see her mother’s eyes rimmed red with emotion.
