Having regained half of his usual composure, he embraced her. Her body, which usually responded naturally, pulled away with a groan.

“Tell me clearly. Did you really believe it?”

“Of course not. I trust you, Rosaline.”

“Then why did you react like that?”

Lucas, staring at Rosaline’s cute, discontented eyebrows, brought his forehead to hers.

Her body was always warm. Soft and flexible. The warmth and softness were so reassuring. He had almost forgotten the memory of holding a cold, stiff body and sobbing.

He thought he would never forget the scars from that time for his entire life, but they were fading. So how could he dare lie to Rosaline’s question?

“I was just a bit worried.”

“About what?”

“Isn’t he the man you were once engaged to? I heard you got along well during your engagement… It’s inevitable that he loves you. There’s no one who wouldn’t love you.”

“Hah. So?”

“I was worried about what if… what if you still had feelings for him. After all, you didn’t break up because you disliked each other.”

“It’s not like we got engaged because we liked each other.”

Rosaline could feel her voice, which had been sharp, softening a bit. She was still dissatisfied, but she could understand his worry. She thought that Lucas might have thought that way, not knowing how much she hated Kallen.

“But I… wasn’t I the one who took you away?”

“Took me away? What do you mean? By that time, I had already broken off the engagement, and you were the one who proposed to me, Lucas. I accepted it.”

Just as Lucas didn’t know how much Rosaline hated Kallen, Rosaline didn’t know what Lucas had done to Kallen to marry her.

As the Marquis of Addis had guessed, the brothel incident involving Kallen was orchestrated by Lucas. The archmage Lucas, who had reached near transcendence, interfered with Kallen’s consciousness, making him walk into that horrid place on his own. The two people who witnessed and testified were also Lucas’s people.

Other people couldn’t recognize Kallen due to the illusion magic cast on him. Honestly, it was a troublesome and tedious task. If he had only wanted to break off the engagement, he could have just ordered it without such hassle.

But that would have made the Addis family the victim. Lucas couldn’t stand that. So he created a weakness to prevent Kallen and the Addis family from acting out openly. Each person involved had their reasons to keep silent, but it was a fatal weakness.

However, Lucas felt justified. In his previous life, Kallen had eventually crawled into a brothel on his own, seeking stronger stimuli. Lucas merely expedited the process.

Choosing Amelia Cherda as Kallen’s new fiancée was also part of the plan. He couldn’t push an innocent person into ruin, so trash had to be collected by trash.

In that sense, Kallen Addis and Amelia Cherda were a perfect match. Everything had gone smoothly up to that point, but Lucas couldn’t interfere with them any further. He couldn’t create a situation where Rosaline would remember her prematurely deceased ex-fiancé for the rest of her life.

The idea of the kind and moral Rosaline sympathizing with Amelia was even more dreadful. A sudden death at a young age was a tragedy that would tug at anyone’s heartstrings.

So he hoped they would live miserably, hurting each other. He hadn’t expected Kallen to get Amelia pregnant before marriage. And he certainly didn’t expect Kallen to covet Rosaline.

“Luke, I hate Kallen. And probably… Kallen doesn’t love me either.”

“That…”

“I know. All Kallen Addis has is lust. If he loved me, if he respected me, he couldn’t have done that. He didn’t love me.”

Rosaline’s voice, which had been flowing calmly, started to tremble towards the end. Her breath became rough, and Lucas carefully embraced her tightly, stroking her back. He buried her face in his shoulder and rubbed his cheek against the back of her head.

His demeanor, as if he was sorrowful and pained by the precious person he treasured being hurt, quickly calmed and embarrassed Rosaline. She hadn’t meant to get so emotional.

Sniffling softly, Rosaline felt her eyes heat up. She showed a melancholic expression but didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to cry in front of her beloved husband because of that beastly man.

She didn’t want Lucas to think she was overreacting to something trivial and find it strange. Or worse, she didn’t want him to worry about her over such matters.

She wanted to be strong, but it wasn’t easy, and it frustrated her. The deception she faced, the wounds she received, the fatal betrayal—none of it mattered anymore. Now, she and that man were strangers, and Lucas was so devoted and kind, but she hated how she kept dwelling on Kallen.

In truth, she didn’t even want to hate Kallen. She didn’t want to loathe him. She just wanted to forget and be indifferent. She was annoyed with herself for thinking about him.

Yet, she kept thinking about it, she kept getting angry and scared. She feared waking up one day to find herself in the Marquis’s house instead of the Grand Duke’s, clutching her stillborn belly in misery.

Lucas’s warmth was her comfort during those anxious moments. He never asked her anything, he only gently embraced her and soothed her until she fell asleep, saying she must have had a nightmare.

Rosaline never told Lucas, but she always felt a sense of self-loathing at those times. Why was she so weak that she couldn’t overcome this? She wished she were stronger. Rosaline wanted to become more resilient.

Lucas’s eyes deepened as he held her tightly. Embracing her was partly to comfort her but also to hide his own turmoil. Lucas had just confirmed his suspicions.

Rosaline undoubtedly had those terrible memories from that time.

07.

Lucas gazed at the trembling yet affectionate figure in his arms. Her full breasts and slender waist were covered in red marks from the love they had just shared. He admired her body, marked with bite and handprints, but soon let out a complicated sigh.

“I only wanted you to be happy.”

He had prepared many things for her perfect marriage. He orchestrated the engagement’s dissolution due to her fiancé’s mistake and proposed grandly to fend off social gossip. He supported everything she wanted to do, placing her above himself both inside and outside.

Even in front of the Emperor, who knew him better than anyone, he acted that way. The perceptive Emperor understood and always prioritized the Grand Duchess over him. With the Emperor setting the example, the subordinates naturally followed suit. Even the Crown Prince, who inherited his father’s perceptiveness, treated the Grand Duchess with utmost respect.

But what did it matter? Everything had been off from the start.

‘I should have noticed sooner.’

Rosaline had memories of her past life.

Lucas had just closed his eyes and ears to it, but there were signs of discord everywhere. It wasn’t just their conversations. On their wedding night, the original Rosaline wasn’t that proactive. Unlike before, when she endured out of a sense of duty and responsibility, this time she was as active as he was. He thought it was because he was more skilled than before…