After ten-odd years working as a mercenary, Aiden returns home only to face a crisis: he must repay the mountain of debt his so-called uncle saddled his mother with.
If he fails, they’ll lose the house filled with memories of his late parents, leaving him with no real choice.
Accepting the proposal of his uncle, Baron Dorte, Aiden agrees to repay the debt with his body instead of money.
In place of his cousin younger sister—who abandoned her count fiancé and ran away in the dead of night—he will disguise himself as a woman and spend three weeks at the count’s estate taking “bride lessons.”
But as if it weren’t miserable enough already—squeezing his over-190cm, muscular frame into dresses, wobbling around in pointed heels, and scraping his throat raw trying to force out a feminine voice—
To make matters worse, he runs into an old enemy from the past.
“Hey… you think maybe he stole that bastard’s girl or something?”
“That?”
“A woman. Maybe he got caught cheating with one?”
Back in his mercenary days, that man would relentlessly charge at Aiden on sight, blades drawn, making everyone think he held some deep grudge against him.
And the count who was supposedly his cousin’s fiancé…
was that very man.
“My name is Rahat. Rahat Sardelmid.”
* * *
“In the North, there’s supposedly a tradition at wedding receptions where the groom crawls beneath the bride’s dress and removes the wedding garter with his teeth.”
“Would you like me to do it for you?”
