“If it makes no sense, then make it make sense.”

Liz moved only her lips, keeping her voice inaudible to those around her, and felt herself burning inside.

He was completely impossible to reason with.

She had helped countless women escape unwanted marriages. The men’s reactions had varied every time. Some had stormed off, too proud to endure the humiliation. Others had caused scenes demanding the bride be found. One had even threatened to take the matter to court.

But no man had ever demanded she take the bride’s place.

“Ugh. Let go of my arm.”

The end of the wedding aisle and the priest were drawing terrifyingly close. Liz gave in to panic and brought her other hand into the effort to pull her arm free, but it was useless. How could a man who worked with a pen be this strong.

This won’t do.

The thought that she would be married off on the spot if this continued made Liz lift her foot beneath the long skirt, out of sight, and press the heel of her shoe firmly down onto the back of his foot.

She expected the pain to slacken his grip so she could make a run for it, but he kept moving with one of her feet lifted and her body pitched sideways.

“Oh……”

Just before she went down completely, the hand gripping her arm wrapped around her waist. Saved from an embarrassing fall, Liz looked up at him and flinched.

“Careful. Keep squirming like that and you’ll hurt yourself.”

Behind the gentle, unhurried voice, his eyes curved softly at the corners. She hesitated for a moment, then felt her stomach drop when she saw him smiling despite having just had his foot stamped on.

Worse still, he was no longer holding her arm. He had his arm almost fully around her waist, which left her with even less room to move than before.

“Oh my. Did you see that? The duke just caught his nervous bride. How tender.”

The guests who had no idea what was actually happening made it even more absurd.

She was weighing whether to cause a scene in keeping with her reputation when, mercifully, Amelia’s friends scattering flowers ahead of them seemed to sense something was wrong.

“Oh……”

They stopped, forgetting to throw the petals entirely, and the guests picked up on the strangeness and began to murmur.

“That’s……. That isn’t Lady Amelia Bonecia.”

Even through the veil, the silhouette was clearly not Amelia’s. Amelia stood under 160 centimeters, with a delicate, slender frame. Liz had the height and build of an ordinary noblewoman. On top of that, the woman beside Johann had plain, wheat-colored hair rather than the signature red of the Bonecia family. There was no mistaking it.

“Who…… is she? Has the bride been switched?”

“Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen a single member of the Bonecia family since earlier.”

The guests erupted at the sudden change of bride. The whispering reached a peak, but Johann seemed not to hear a word of it and continued to guide Liz forward.

Before long, they arrived at the altar.

The officiating priest was too flustered to call out the name written in his prepared remarks.

“Th… that is……”

“The bride’s name is Liz Clairemont.”

The man standing beside her calmly provided the name in place of the floundering priest. The priest looked at the duke with a relieved, grateful nod.

I’m standing right here.

Absurd as it was, the duke’s announcement of the bride’s name sent a wave through the room.

“Good heavens. Miss Liz Clairemont?”

“The wedding saboteur herself?”

A collective gasp swept through the stunned hall. Over the gentle organ music, a swell of noise began to rise.

By now the reporters waiting outside for photographs must have heard as well.

“How dare she come to ruin the Duke of Ashworth’s wedding.”

The revelation that the bride was Liz Clairemont turned the pews upside down. Several glares with long-held grievances jabbed at her from all sides.

Johann sent a single cold glance across the room, and the crowd sucked in a breath and fell silent, though the restless atmosphere refused to settle.

She had caused enough of a scene. Surely he wouldn’t go through with it.

Liz had just begun to feel a thread of relief, telling herself the duke was clearly pushing forward only to avoid the humiliation of being abandoned at the altar, when Johann suddenly turned her by the shoulders to face the murmuring guests behind them.

“Today is a day of the deepest meaning to me, the day I finally take as my wife the woman I have pursued my whole life. I ask that you bless this happy couple’s future with joy.”

The moment those words, which went beyond pretense into outright brazenness, came to an end, the reporters outside unleashed a barrage of camera flashes that washed the hall white.

Liz barely managed to part her lips through the dizzying blur.

“…What on earth are you saying.”

Her stunned question received no answer. Instead, the priest, who had rushed through his solemn address, made his declaration.

“Now, you may kiss the bride.”

Surely not.

Liz blinked at the priest’s words and began to edge away, and the duke turned toward her.

“…Liz.”

“W… wait. Ugh.”

An arm yanked her by the waist, and the sound was knocked out of her. Before the pain could turn into a cry, his lips came down and silenced her.

“Mmph……”

The shock of a first kiss barely registered before a warm, pressing tongue swept away every thought. It stirred through her, caught her tongue as it tried to retreat, and tangled with it again and again before finally letting her breathe.

“Liz, I’ll make you a happy bride.”

His eyes curved downward in a graceful line, and her heart lurched. Words that were almost certainly a lie landed with unexpected weight.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

New inventions flooded the world every day, yet in the Kingdom of Bellum, where the class system remained firmly in place, marriage still followed the old ways. Arranged unions between families were the norm.

Once, this had been accepted without question among the upper classes, but the tide had shifted as liberalism and romanticism poured in from all sides. Free-love ideals spread like wildfire among young nobles, and a romantic sensibility that valued personal choice over family prestige began to take root.

Here, arranged marriages, which prioritized matching family standing, and the new ideology of free love, which prioritized individual feeling, collided sharply, and a host of problems sprang from that collision.

Into that landscape stepped Liz Clairemont, standing up for women who had neither the right nor the courage to refuse their families’ wishes.

It had not begun with any grand belief or ideology.

It had begun with a tearful plea from a classmate at Bellum Girls’ Academy.

‘Liz, what am I supposed to do. My parents are telling me to break things off with Mikhail right away. They want to push me into becoming the second wife of some old count who already has a daughter my age.’

At the time, it had been nothing more than pure defiance against the injustice of a girl being forced into life as some nobleman’s second wife at her parents’ insistence.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.’

Unable to turn away from her friend’s heartbreaking situation, Liz had smuggled the bride out of the wedding hall and helped her elope with the man she loved.

The problem started when that escape succeeded.

Noble ladies facing unhappy arranged marriages began seeking out Liz in secret. She was unusually sociable and well-connected at Bellum Girls’ Academy, and the quiet consultations started pouring in.

‘Sob, please help me. I’d rather die than be separated from the person I love.’

Love. What was it about love.

Every single one of them clung to her swearing they would die without this particular man, and helping them had turned into a disaster. One or two became many, and before long, the shameful nicknames “audacious broker” and “wedding saboteur” had attached themselves to Liz Clairemont.

Her pure intentions on behalf of her friends were twisted beyond recognition, and in the end her name became synonymous with a villainess who interfered with perfectly good marriages and tore them apart.

One family threatened to take her to court. A nobleman showed up at her parents’ home in person to lodge a complaint. Her friends’ gratitude gave her a moment of pride, but Liz’s reputation plummeted in return, and marriage proposals dried up entirely.

The person who had stepped in to handle all of it was Amelia Bonecia, the highest-born lady at Bellum Girls’ Academy.

‘I know what you’ve done, standing up for lower-ranked classmates all this time. I’ve heard you’re in a difficult position with lawsuits and compensation claims. I’ll take care of all of it.’

Those were words from Amelia, a woman so famously particular about pedigree that she was said not to make eye contact with anyone below a count.

Amelia had offered her a seat at a tea party despite having barely exchanged a proper word with Liz before, and the generosity felt suspicious. As expected, it came with a price.

‘I’ll help you, Miss Liz Clairemont. In exchange, I need you to ruin one more wedding for me.’

‘I’m sorry, but I’ve already promised my parents I would stop doing that.’

‘That is precisely why I’m asking you to help me just one last time. If you ruin my wedding, I can personally visit the families who filed suits against you and ask them to withdraw.’

It was an offer that felt like a lifeline, but Liz could not answer easily. Even by her own standards, this was an opponent she could not afford to cross.

The ladies and their intended husbands Liz had helped before had mostly been minor nobility, barons or viscounts. She had been well-liked for her outgoing nature, but even she had little connection to the higher nobility at school.

The Bonecia marquisate alone would have been daunting enough. And the other party in this marriage was the Ashworth Dukedom.

A man with a ruthless reputation, meticulous about money and merciless toward anyone who caused him a loss. One wrong move in his eyes and her family could be in genuine danger. She had been about to refuse when Amelia had turned desperate.

‘Please. I have someone I love.’

Love was the problem again, as always.

‘Even if I help you, that man will never harm you, Miss Liz.’