Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 285

Hope accumulates based on emotion. Expectation erodes reason and prompts people toward poor judgment.

Guinevere’s hope is strong and tenacious. It wasn’t built in a day, so it’s extremely solid. That’s why she’s formidable when on the offensive, but on defense, she’s inevitably fragile.

The current situation, which seems to be going just as she wishes, and the hope that rises to the surface because of it. Those very things will easily create openings and collapse her stronghold all at once.

However… all of this is ultimately Nigel’s scheme.

If Cecilia steps onto the stage he has set, she will have to bear an inescapable guilt. She would have to stain her own hands to bring down Guinevere herself.

To face Guinevere alone, on the Rosencrantz estate—that is what it really means. There, she would have almost no pieces to use.

‘You set up a board and put me on it without even consulting me?’

From the moment she proposed the deal to Nigel, all the plans had been in her hands. From breaking off her engagement with Logan to dealing with Guinevere as Nigel wished—it was all up to her.

Without those plans, she never would have approached him so recklessly. Weighing profit and loss isn’t a privilege reserved for the other side.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to refuse your proposal.”

“…What?”

“I mean I can’t leave for the Rosencrantz estate with you.”

Nigel’s gaze turned cold, a murderous glint in his eyes.

“Are you prepared for the consequences of this?”

“Don’t get angry so quickly—just hear me out to the end.”

Cecilia glanced around and lowered her voice.

“Even without you putting your title up as collateral or going out of your way to create a stage, the revenge you’ve long awaited can be completed perfectly.”

Not at Rosencrantz, but right here at the Coffret Manor in Lasphilla—

“And I no longer need your help in the process.”

“…What are you planning to do all by yourself?”

Cecilia smiled brightly.

“All by myself? There are plenty of people here willing to help me.”

Cecilia doesn’t know Rosencrantz, but she knows Lasphilla all too well. She can deduce in countless ways what choices Lasphilla’s people will make under various circumstances.

For example, what Guinevere Rosencrantz, who was once of Lasphilla and now belongs to Rosencrantz, might be scheming right now.

You can only see things from the perspective of Rosencrantz. So you probably think you have to shoulder a fair bit of risk to take down Guinevere.

But not me. I know everything about her, all the way back to when she was still in Lasphilla.

“All you needed to do was continue maintaining an ambiguous relationship with me.”

Unless Nigel actually tried to force a marriage against the family’s wishes, there would be no reason or justification to strip him of his title or inheritance.

The Marquis, indifferent as he is to Nigel, might criticize his love life but won’t interfere directly.

If Nigel were to say, “I have no intention of marrying Cecilia. I’ll follow the family’s wishes when it comes to marriage,” the issue would be put to rest for the time being.

But after his father’s death, Nigel would become the master of Rosencrantz. The rights of the head of house are far greater than those of an heir.

As head of the house, he could marry his lover whenever he wished. Even if, by some chance, she was already married…

‘Guinevere, someone like you would still feel uneasy.’

Humans have an instinct to gauge the bottom of others based on their own lives and to become anxious in advance.

The logic that if you could fall to the bottom, so could anyone else. Cecilia was no exception, so it was impossible for her heart to remain peaceful.

Guinevere went from being the Marquis’s mistress to his second wife. What guarantee is there that Nigel’s mistress wouldn’t become a second wife in the same way?

Not that Cecilia actually intended to do so. She was merely saying that even in Guinevere’s worst-case scenario, there was a possibility of Cecilia becoming the Marchioness of Rosencrantz, too.