Wait I’m even more confused now sorry this time Ian quite explicitly stated he is/was th...

I think at the start when he found out Ian and Ain was the same person, Michelle was just confused and taken aback and does not know how to response to this kind of situation since he has never been deceived before?

So right now, I think he has come to terms with it and decided to not think further about it, since he did say he would love whatever the kind of person Ian was even before meeting him.

But anyway, I am going on a rant but my interpterion of Michele's response is that this is his way of moving on and decided to assume that Ian was simply testing him, so now he will prove himself worthy as a good spouse to Ian to win him over? And the reason why I think this is the case it's because Michelle is a very sheltered young master growing up in the North, compared to his brothers that seemed to have more experiences, Michele is very trusting and naive. Thus, I imagine Michelle is trying to reason with himself that Ian does not have bad intentions in deceiving him because if you think about it aside from Ian's obvious manipulation that we can see, Michele prolly see Ian as a good person that doesn't trust Michele - someone his brothers sold off into the South to marry a stranger for money, someone that Ian has never even exchange pleasantries with (even though according to the flashbacks they must have met but Michele didn't remember). So I guess it makes sense from Michele's perspective as young, naive, trusting, clueless and very empathetic young master.

Ah ok thx that was very helpful. Idkw I thought maybe he wasn’t convinced Ian and Ain were the same ppl but this makes a lot more sense lol. Like deluded in the way that he doesn’t think much of his time as a servant bc he understands why he did it or understands it as a test

Michele's hesitation and rejection comes from the fact that he doesn't believe Ian when he says there's no deeper reason for posing as a servant, whether it was a test or something else. It's not that he believes that Ian and Ain are different people, but he figured out that there's something deeper to it and wants to know why Ian lied. The truth is that Ian WAS a servant, Ain is past self and how his mother called him before his father gave him the name Ian and a noble title and not just a role he played to deceive Michele, but Michele doesn't know it yet and assumes Ian has always been a noble from birth.