“I believe I kept that promise very well.”
Carson smiled subtly at the words that sounded like a child seeking praise.
“Don’t you think so?”
“I do.”
“A promise is something we should both keep, right?”
“Of course.”
Ines took the hand of the man who was touching her hair and waited until their eyes met.
“Lord, have you had… any issues?”
‘Perhaps, have you heard words that hurt or upset you? Or have you faced a moment where you had to make a difficult decision alone?’
Holding all the questions she wanted to ask in her eyes, Ines asked plainly. He looked at her for a moment and smiled as usual.
“Yeah, nothing happened.”
Carson said nothing more. Ines couldn’t dare cross the line he had drawn.
As if prepared to reject any words of comfort, Carson looked as resilient as ever. ‘If it makes him comfortable, it should stay that way,’ she thought.
However, a part of her felt heavy, and she suddenly remembered something he had said.
‘If you face any danger anywhere, days will repeat where I don’t even know it happened to you.’
She felt like she now slightly understood why Carson had looked so distressed when saying those words.
“There was something else I said?”
Then, Carson’s gentle question flew into Ines’s thoughts.
“What… was it?”
Ines looked up at him with a truly unknowable expression.
Meeting Ines again after a few months, even in the dark room, she shined like a pearl in the light, her cheeks flushed.
All thoughts that had been heavily weighing on him vanished into the slightly parted lips of this woman.
Could he forget all the emotions troubling him at once if he kissed her lips now?
He swallowed dryly and locked his eyes onto his reflection in hers. Dropping the towel he was holding, he cupped Ines’s cheek.
Naturally, as if it belonged there, her soft cheek nestled into his hand.
Now, just one year left. He had only one year left to keep his hands here.
“If you can’t remember, it can’t be helped.”
When the time came, he would make her eyes that calmly observed him quiver. Confused eyes losing focus, eventually unable to withstand, she would dig her nails into his shoulders and burst into tears.
“Did you perhaps tell me not to be close with Sir Marcus?”
The name of another man coming out of her mouth made his hand tense momentarily, but he still smiled.
“Could it be that?”
Ines’s head tilted slightly. Her damp hair gently landed on the back of his hand.
“So, what is it?”
Her delicate forehead frowned. Flattening it with his other hand, Carson finally realized.
In the end, the one-year term was the issue.
If he pushed Ines now, she would go along without any resistance. If he then climbed on top of her collapsed on the bed, what expression would this woman make?
If he greedily parted her lips and mercilessly invaded, she would momentarily freeze, but eventually accept him. When he filled her completely, she would wrench her neck back, driving him crazy.
That was the issue.
What he coveted in her now was ultimately nothing more than gossip about a high-status man embracing a lowly servant woman.
“Just asking since it came up, were you close with Chihao?”
So that one year was the problem. The silence during the brief time it took to ask and receive an answer was unbearable.
“Hm? Was I?”
She thought she had altered someone else’s life, and this twisted her conscience. For the past few months, in every moment she missed and worried about her, she had entertained absurd assumptions enough to plunge herself into disdain.
“Do I not look scared right now?”
Reflecting on the past, every time he realized her feelings were different from his, he was scared like a wet puppy in the rain.
That’s how the time was spent.
Could she ever understand his dissatisfaction, insufficiency, and anxiety from not being able to guarantee that much time with her again?
So answer quickly. While I was away from you, did you have another man in your sights?
“No, I haven’t. We weren’t close. But we… exchanged greetings.”
Ines spoke confidently, but half of it was a lie.
She didn’t have the time to meet with him privately, but deep down, she relied on Marcus. Whenever she couldn’t breathe and felt miserable, he was always there.
He would come running during the day, no matter where she was. It was a mystery how he always knew where to find Ines. Yet, since he never crossed certain boundaries, Ines never pushed him away.
Her feelings for Marcus had always been consistent. She thought that if she had lived a life without any troubles, she would have looked at him with the same eyes.
It was both sorrowful and touching to see the version of herself she could never have.
Of course, it wasn’t a complete lie, so Ines could smile brightly in front of her own safety.
Carson gently patted her head as if praising a child who had done their homework well, and moved to the table prepared in the room, averting his eyes from her flushed face.
As he took his seat, Ines sat across from him.
“Aren’t you going to ask why I came today?”
“Ah… why did you come?”
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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