I No Longer Have Love to Offer You - Chapter 3

The news arrived just as Mirabelle was nearing graduation.

It was around the time when Ludovic and Marietta, who had graduated a year ahead of her, were preparing for their wedding a year later.

Mirabelle had assumed Ludovic and Marietta would marry shortly after her own graduation. But contrary to her expectations, their wedding was set for two and a half years after Marietta’s graduation because Ludovic had declared he needed more time to study before taking over as head of his family and managing their territory.

As a result, Mirabelle could no longer use school as an excuse to avoid attending their wedding.

By then, she had firmly sealed away her feelings and believed she could face Ricardo with nothing but the face of a good childhood friend.

Still, it pained her to think of how shocked Ricardo would be when Ludovic and Marietta finally married. Worse, she knew she wouldn’t be able to comfort him.

The more Ricardo suffered, the more Mirabelle would be tormented by the depth of his feelings.

Yet, in hindsight, even that time spent agonizing over her future with her childhood friends had been a kind of happiness for her.

Then, with just half a month left until graduation, an express letter arrived for Mirabelle.

It carried news of her parents’ fatal accident and with it, the unavoidable declaration that she had to grow up now, whether she was ready or not.

The memories of the following two weeks remain hazy even now.

With her uncle’s help, she held her parents’ funeral, and before she could even begin to process her grief, she somehow made it through her academy’s graduation ceremony.

Mirabelle was the only daughter of House Lumière, but in the Kingdom of Esperanza, women were not permitted to inherit noble titles. The only way for a house with no male heirs to continue was through taking in a son-in-law.

In other words, for Mirabelle to inherit House Lumière, she had to marry but for the marriage to be recognized, the approval of the family head was required.

With her father gone, House Lumière now had no head, leaving no one to authorize Mirabelle’s marriage. As a result, she found herself in a situation where she could no longer inherit her family’s name, no matter what she did.

Fortunately, her uncle—her father’s younger brother was sympathetic toward her. Given that their families had always been close, Mirabelle arranged for him to take over House Lumière.

But that meant she now had to consider her own future.

Mirabelle had no fiancé. Partly because her parents had been carefully vetting potential matches since she would eventually need to take a husband and partly because Mirabelle herself had wanted to learn about managing the territory, even if she left the role of family head to her future spouse.

There was also the matter of guarding against opportunistic takeovers. It wasn’t uncommon for noble daughters set to inherit their houses to delay engagements for this reason. In fact, among the academy’s female students, those preparing to marry out usually had fiancés, while those set to inherit rarely did.

Early engagements risked complacency. Future heads growing lazy, assured of their position. Families in need of a son-in-law generally preferred to wait until their daughters were more mature, when their aptitude and character had fully developed.

Her uncle, mindful of Mirabelle’s grief, assured her there was no need to rush into marriage. She could take her time, he said, and think things through once her heart had settled.

But Mirabelle was no longer a child. In noble society, graduating from the academy marked one as an adult.

She understood all too well that being without a fiancé when she needed to marry was not a situation to take lightly.

So when the unexpected proposal came, she was stunned.

And at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel overjoyed as though this offer was her salvation.

“Mirabel, if you’ll have me… would you walk the rest of your life with me?”

Ricardo had knelt before her and asked for her hand. Looking back now, she realizes that moment was the happiest she would ever be in this marriage.

She had locked away her feelings, pretending she had forgotten but her love for Ricardo had never faded. His proposal broke the seal, and her emotions spilled over in tears.

“If you’ll have me…”

When she took Ricardo’s hand, Mirabelle was filled with nothing but happiness.

To become the bride of the boy she had loved since childhood such a dreamlike turn of events was something she had never dared imagine.

From the depths of losing her parents, the greatest misfortune, to marrying the one she had loved for years her greatest happiness.

Though her heart had been tossed between extremes in such a short time, Mirabelle found hope for the future.

She could believe she could trust that happiness lay ahead.

But she would soon learn just how fleeting that hope would be.