“Your Highness, Your Highness! I, I confirmed a moment ago that the Duke’s carriage has entered the gates of the capital!”
Viscount Hargis, who had been hesitating in the background due to the oppressive atmosphere, hurriedly reported. The momentum that had filled the office with a sense of dread faded as soon as Viscount Hargis finished speaking.
“Olivia is.”
Inquiring without pausing to breathe, Leopold’s words made Viscount Hargis recap the reported information.
“The lady has also entered the capital.”
Although he had only heard that Olivia was in the same capital, Leopold’s tense forehead gradually relaxed.
The thick tension that seemed to have solidified began to gradually dissipate.
“Where is she now, or rather…”
At this moment, Conrad, who had been eagerly waiting more than anyone to track Olivia’s movements, clenched his fist tightly.
“Duke, please leave.”
Conrad hesitated at the anticipated order of dismissal. However, that was it.
After Conrad, who maintained proper etiquette until the end, left, Leopold turned his displeased gaze toward Viscount Hargis.
“How does Olivia look?”
Olivia. Just four syllables, but calling that name felt strangely awkward.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t called the lady Olivia many times. Perhaps that’s why it felt unfamiliar. Or maybe there were words he wanted to add after that name.
Suppressing complex emotions, Leopold vaguely asked all the questions he wanted to.
However, Viscount Hargis bowed his head.
“Oh, I apologize, Your Highness. It was difficult to confirm the current health and condition of the lady as they were in the same carriage as the Duke.”
“They were in the same carriage, you say?”
“Yes.”
Bang!
At the sudden sound of a fist hitting the desk, Viscount Hargis skillfully avoided Leopold.
Unexplained anger surged within Leopold’s chest. Despite forcefully slamming the desk, his fist didn’t hurt.
In the same carriage. Calling it a carriage was laughable. Within that small space!
Leopold was well aware that anything could happen inside that carriage.
This was a different issue from when Olivia danced with the Duke. He had already conceded a considerable portion to Olivia. Although he had tied her freedom with a one-year grace period, he didn’t know what might happen.
“Berthain.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Go to where the lady is right now.”
As Leopold left the palace entrance, a carriage was already prepared. A courtier standing in front of it looked surprised and quickly bowed when he saw Leopold.
“Where is the lady now?”
Leopold asked as he boarded the carriage. Viscount Hargis hesitated for a moment before answering. He was saying that it was difficult to confirm the lady’s current location and health as they were in the same carriage as the Duke. However, his feelings suggested that if he mentioned the lady’s location as the Duke’s residence, the prince would be angry.
In the silence, Leopold’s forehead furrowed. He couldn’t wait even a moment. At that moment, the courtier next to him hesitated.
“By the way, why is the palace so noisy today?”
Leopold grumbled in annoyance. The normally quiet and leisurely palace seemed to be filled with a loud crying from somewhere.
Looking at the direction of the crying, the courtier next to him seemed to notice something and quickly approached.
“Your Highness, are you going to Tiaze Palace by any chance?”
“Tiaze Palace? Why?”
For a moment, a hint of a slip appeared on the courtier’s face.
Suddenly, a thought crossed Leopold’s mind, causing him to lower his head. No matter how self-centered Olivia was, she wouldn’t casually come to Tiaze Palace.
However, Leopold’s stern expression quickly softened.
Come to think of it, if it was Tiaze Palace, it was the woman he had terribly devoted affection to. He couldn’t definitively deny it.
Now, in Leopold’s mind, instead of Olivia’s appearance that had ruined his mood earlier, the familiar face of Olivia that Leopold knew well came to mind. The image of Olivia Madelaine, who circled around him endlessly, smiling.
However, when the awkward courtier began to speak, Leopold was momentarily dumbfounded, as if he had been hit with cold water.
“…What? Maria is injured?”
Olivia didn’t return?
At the sudden surge of thoughts, Leopold was stunned. To think of Olivia when his lover, Maria, was injured.
Seeming to sense the anger in Leopold’s expression due to his lover’s injury, the courtier awkwardly began to explain.
“Well, it seems that hot tea spilled on her arm.”
“Spilled? What does that mean? Explain it so I can understand properly.”
“That…”
Just then, the crying grew louder, and from a distance, a gentle-looking lady came running, crying. While the courtiers missed her, the lady knelt and prostrated herself as soon as she saw Leopold.
“Oh, I greet His Highness, the small sun of the Empire.”
“…Isn’t she Maria’s governess?”
It was a face he had encountered every time he went to Viscount Etel’s mansion. The sight of the prince calling him by name with a proud expression made the governess’s sobbing even louder.
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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