After finally laying Ariante, who had burst into tears, to sleep in her bed, Mayana found herself completely exhausted, like a drenched sponge.
Putting Ariante to sleep was never an easy task—since she rarely wanted to sleep—but calming a hysterical child and getting her to fall asleep was no exaggeration to call heavy labor.
Moreover, today it was even more exhausting because she could not fully focus on putting Ariante to sleep. The words Ariante had spoken, the one that she had screamed like a bolt of lightning, were etched in her mind and wouldn’t leave her thoughts.
[You said you loved another child more than me.]Another child? What did that even mean? Was the Duke saying that he had another child besides Ariante?
‘You seemed handsome, but you were actually a fool?’
Mayana thought bitterly.
Who knows? Nobles often have mistresses. Though children born to those mistresses usually don’t join the family, in some cases they replace the legitimate child and inherit the family line.
In the royal family, there was a law specifically stating ‘illegitimate children cannot inherit the throne,’ but that did not mean the royalty did not have mistresses.
‘If there really is another child besides Ariante… where could that child be now?’
The Duke came to the capital now and then for business, but otherwise, he stayed in the duchy.
Surely the mistress and that child couldn’t be in the duchy, so there was a high probability they were in the capital… If this was true, Mayana felt like she could slap Sediloi’s cheek right away.
Did he even know what he was doing to his own children?
But he didn’t seem like such a despicable person…
“Mayana.”
Startled out of her thoughts, Mayana turned her head.
“Grete.”
“Is the princess asleep?”
Mayana glanced at Ariante’s room with a complex expression and nodded.
“She’s finally asleep. It would be nice if she could sleep until dinner.”
“You’re really working hard…”
Grete’s voice trailed off. Mayana gave a reassuring smile, and Grete spoke again.
“The princess is a difficult one to handle, isn’t she?”
Mayana chuckled.
“Indeed. I’ve never seen a sevenyearold like her.”
“Tell me about it… I was so surprised when I first met her. She was five back then. Anyway… I understand why the maids who looked after her all ran away. Take it easy, Mayana. Otherwise, you’ll burn yourself out.”
“I came here with that intention at first, but…”
Grete stared intently at Mayana.
Gazing solemnly at the ornate closed door, like Ariante’s stubbornly closed mind, Mayana chuckled again.
“But seeing her face every day, it doesn’t feel right to leave her. And no matter how wicked and naughty she behaves, she’s just a child. Exactly seven years old, no more, no less. Considering that, it’s hard to stand back. Isn’t it?”
“I guess so…”
“I need to check on the princess’s dinner. I clearly asked for her meal to be prepared separately this morning. You met Bainty, didn’t you?”
Grete blinked, her face showing confusion, as if she had completely forgotten about that matter. She then touched her lips and jumped in surprise.
“Right, I did. Bainty told me to do something else. I told him I had to serve the princess’s meal, but he said he’d do it… Did something go wrong?”
Mayana scrunched her nose as if she knew it all along.
“I asked them to remove everything the princess dislikes so she could eat comfortably, but they sent it up just as it was. I thought the chef was playing a prank, but it’s not. It must be Vainty’s doing.”
“My goodness. What did you do then?”
Mayana’s shoulders playfully shrugged.
“I squeezed my head hard and thought. Thanks to that, our princess had her breakfast cleanly today.”
Gretel looked at Mayana with a face of disbelief. Mayana patted Gretel’s shoulder, turned, and headed to the kitchen.
Whether there was a problem with Ariante, the Duchess, the Duke… Even if there was another child besides Ariante, it was no longer permissible to bring up anything related to him in front of Ariante.
Gretel was right. It wasn’t about taking Ariante to the lake. What needs to be found out could be found out alone……. It was right to do so.
‘It’s fortunate that the surroundings are all woods and fields.’
She clenched her hidden hand inside her pocket.
(This is a time separator.)
“Where on earth are we going?”
Ariante, who had been following, whined. He seemed to have gotten tired of swinging the branch he held in his hand, brushing the bushes’ leaves.
Today, Ariante was wearing another dress made by Mayana. It was made quickly overnight using breathable fabric, but attaching a large blue collar in a crescent shape to cover the shoulders made it incredibly cute.
It was loose for easy movement, and the trousers were made a little longer so as not to get caught on branches or thorns.
Thanks to that, Ariante looked like a little sailor. Dividing his soft blonde hair into two parts and rolling it into a round shape made him even cuter.
Mayana, leading the way, turned around and looked at Ariante with a grin.
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.”
[Touch the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to move to the next chapter if you want.]
