Capítulo 3: World Stunned: I Choose the Despised Baron

The silence in the Grand Orchid Hall was a living thing, a held breath pressed against the walls. Elinor Lanster's words still hung in the air, shattering the gilded splendor of her own engagement banquet like a stone through stained glass.

"Baron Samuel Vorman," she said again, her voice clear and unshaken, though her heart hammered against her ribs. "I am asking you.

Will you marry me?" A single gasp rippled through the crowd, then a wave of murmurs. Faces, moments before frozen in polite horror, now twisted with incredulity.

Lyon Kaiser, standing near the altar in his immaculate suit, looked as though the marble floor had split beneath him. His jaw tightened, the blue of his eyes turning to winter ice.

Samuel Vorman, his back stiff against the nearest pillar, seemed carved from stone. For a long, agonizing moment, he simply stared at her.

His dark hair, slightly too long, fell over a brow that usually hid every emotion. But now, Elinor saw what no one else had ever bothered to see: the slight tremor in his fingers, the rapid pulse at his throat, the way his lips parted as if to speak but could not.

"You… you are serious?" His voice was hoarse, as though the words cost him more than any blow. "I have never been more serious in my life," Elinor answered, and this time her voice softened, meant for him alone.

"I was blind once. I will not be blind again.

Samuel, I know what everyone says about you. But I also know what you have done—what you have sacrificed—for me.

I do not deserve it. But if you will have me, I will spend every day making sure you never regret it." Isolde, clinging to Lyon's arm with theatrical dismay, let out a laugh that was half a sob.

"Elinor, this is madness. You're throwing everything away for a penniless, title-less nobody.

Think of your family!" Elinor didn't spare her a glance. She kept her gaze locked on Samuel's face, waiting.

And then, the change came. The rigid mask that Samuel wore cracked—not with violence, but with something far more terrifying to a man like him: hope.

He took a step forward, then another, his worn leather shoes thudding softly on the marble. Guests parted before him as if he carried contagion.

"I have loved you from the first moment I saw you," he said, his voice low but steady now, carrying through the hush. "When you were fourteen and I was seventeen, at the Lanster autumn hunt.

You dropped your handkerchief in a puddle, and I retrieved it. You smiled at me.

I have never forgotten that smile, though you never remembered me." He paused, a muscle in his cheek flexing. "I built my entire practice in the capital just to be near you, even if only to read about your engagements in the papers.

I am a fool. A despised, useless fool.

But if you are asking... then yes.

A thousand times, yes." A collective gasp rose, then a storm of whispers louder than before. "He's mad." "She's ruined." "The Kaiser family will destroy them both." Lyon moved.

His steps were slow, deliberate, the heels of his polished boots clicking like a clocktower ticking toward doom. "Elinor," he said, and the cold fury in his tone sliced through the noise.

"You do this to humiliate me. But you only humiliate yourself.

Think carefully. Walk out that door with him, and you walk into disgrace.

Your family's contracts, your father's health, your very future—I hold them in my hand." Elinor finally looked at him. For a heartbeat, she saw not the handsome fiancé she had once adored, but the predator who had orchestrated her family's ruin in another life.

Her spine straightened. "No, Lyon.

You held them once. Not anymore." She did not explain; she only extended her hand toward Samuel.

Samuel took it. His fingers were calloused from years of grinding herbs and setting bones, but his touch was gentle, reverent.

He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips, a gesture so old-fashioned and earnest that even the whispering crowd fell quiet for an instant. Without another word, they walked together down the long aisle, past the abandoned flower arrangements and the stunned officials.

Lady Marche, a notorious gossip, swayed on her feet. Count Albrecht, who had toasted to the engagement minutes before, let his champagne glass slip through his fingers.

At the great double doors, Elinor paused. She did not turn.

She felt the weight of a hundred stares, but also the solid warmth of Samuel's hand in hers. "I am not afraid," she murmured, more to herself than to him.

"Neither am I," Samuel replied, and for the first time, a ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Not anymore." Behind them, Lyon's voice rose, cold and terrible: "You will regret this.

I swear it on my name—you will crawl back to me in ruins." The doors swung shut on his oath, but the words chased them into the night. Outside, the air was crisp and clean, the stars sharp as shards of glass above the cobbled street.

Samuel handed Elinor into a humble black carriage, nothing like the golden landau that had brought her here. As the horses stirred, she leaned her head against the worn leather seat and let out a breath she felt she'd been holding for two lifetimes.

Relief. Pure, trembling relief.

She was poor now, perhaps, and despised. But she was free.

And somewhere in the shadows of the manor gate, a figure in a dark cloak watched the carriage disappear, then turned and melted into the alleyway. A message was already winging its way to certain hidden ears—a message that would shake the balance of power in ways Lyon Kaiser could not yet imagine.