My Lord Duke, Your Wife Just Wants to Run Away

The story begins with a case of mistaken identity and an unexpected substitute bride. The heroine, whose soul comes from the modern world, knows full well that she is merely a stand-in pushed into the marriage after her legitimate elder sister ran away. She is also said to resemble the Duke's one true love. To survive in the perilous confines of a grand household, she decides to play the part of a meek, dutiful puppet of a wife. By day, she is a flawless young lady from a respectable family; by night, she secretly counts her private savings and plans her escape route, waiting for the right moment to slip away and live a carefree life of her own. The hero, a powerful, cold, and calculating duke, sees through all her disguises from the start. He watches his little wife put on her “dedicated” performance each day with amused interest, taking in every cautious little gesture and every attempt to look composed, as if enjoying a delightful game of cat and mouse staged just for him. He quietly clears obstacles from her path, then mischievously sets new ones, relishing the lively way she racks her brain to “run away” and tries so hard to keep him at bay. And so, a quiet tug-of-war begins: she runs, he pursues. Whenever she thinks her plan is flawless and manages to slip away, he effortlessly “finds” her at the last moment and brings her back. At last, when she can take no more and drops a divorce petition to end things for good, the man who has always had everything under control panics for the first time. Only then does he realize how deeply he has fallen. He doesn't want a substitute. He wants the one-of-a-kind soul before him, the one who only wants to get away from him.