A whipping of forty wasn’t a punishment severe enough to kill a sturdy adult male, but it was also not mild enough to allow him to walk home on his own.
After removing his upper garments and enduring the whip until his upper body was all torn apart, he had to endure additional whipping on his bare buttocks, rendering him unable to sit or lie down. The servant caused a ruckus and was carried to the Cardinal de Mare’s residence, laid on a carriage, at dawn.
There was also Lucrezia, who had been carried in early in the evening after fainting. It was a crazy and tumultuous evening scene that the Cardinal de Mare, who returned home late after his duties, had to face.
Cardinal de Mare called all the family members to the living room on the first floor. This included the groaning servant.
He gritted his teeth and questioned the servant.
“For the past 22 years, I have provided you with shelter, clothes, and food. What on earth were you thinking today when you attacked my daughter?”
The servant, who had sobered up after being whipped forty times, had a different explanation from earlier in front of King Leo III.
“Isabella asked me to do it!”
He thought that since the Cardinal seemed to favor his eldest daughter the most, he could use Isabella as a shield to weather the storm.
Meanwhile, Isabella’s beautiful eyes widened in shock. He’s insane!
“When did I ever ask you to do that!”
Isabella had no intention of helping a servant like him in front of her father.
“Lies! A complete lie, Dad! This servant, who lied in front of His Majesty the King that he never shot at Ariadne, dares to use my name as an excuse at home?”
Isabella completely forgot about her past flirting with the servant, calling him ‘brother’ in a honeycoated voice, and now berated him harshly as if he were a lowly servant.
The servant, taken aback by this unexpected development, questioned Isabella.
“You said ‘teach that wench a lesson’!”
This was the servant’s own interpretation. Strictly speaking, it was the servant who first suggested “I will teach that wench a hard lesson”.
Isabella might have agreed with him happily, but it was a passive affirmation. The clever Isabella pointed this out immediately.
“You were the one who said ‘I’ll teach her a lesson’ first. When did I ever command you to do so!”
Isabella was so wronged that she was about to go crazy. This time, there was definitely a point where Isabella could feel wronged.
“And even if I did say to teach her a lesson, I thought it would just be a scolding at home or making her life a little uncomfortable. Who would think that you would shoot a crossbow at her in the hunting grounds!”
“I shot at the horse, not at a person.”
Even though he had shot the crossbow thinking it wouldn’t matter if it hit a person, the servant had his own rationalization for this part as well.
Isabella, judging that she couldn’t reason with this insane person, turned to Cardinal de Mare and appealed to her father.
“Dad, Dad, I swear I didn’t command him first. I might be guilty for not stopping him, but I’m not crazy enough to tell him to shoot a crossbow.”
Cardinal de Mare had a slightly different kind of question.
“Isabella, why do you hate Ariadne so much? Is the sight of your halfsister that disgusting to you?”
“Not at all!”
Isabella quickly denied the possibility of being labeled as an ‘unloving’ child. In the Etruscan Kingdom, favoring one sibling over another because of different mothers was considered a very crude behavior.
And in fact, the reason Isabella hated Ariadne was not because they had different mothers, but because Ariadne was a threat to her glory. Even if she were her biological sister, she would have acted the same.
“Ariadne behaves rudely all the time!”
“Rude? The second daughter?”
“Yes, she’s very rude! She’s gone crazy! She doesn’t even fear her cousin!”
The servant, who couldn’t distinguish between what should and shouldn’t be said, joined in. He hated the taunting Isabella, but he hated Ariadne, who ignored him, even more.
Isabella was classically beautiful and had a high reputation for that beauty. Being the daughter of a wealthy aunt and having received a good education, she was considered ‘superior’ to him in the servant’s eyes.
Being treated disrespectfully by a superior was something Janobi could tolerate.
But Ariadne, who came from a maid’s belly and grew up no differently than him on a rural farm, and only recently blossomed, was clearly someone who should be beneath him in Janobi’s mind.
Janobi resented it greatly that someone inferior to him would dare to confront him. This was intolerable.
Cardinal de Mare looked at Ariadne with a bewildered expression,
alternately glancing between Janobi and Isabella.
“What on earth has the second one done to be so arrogant, what kind of serious mistake did she make to be rescued by a strange man in the Orte forest! She must have spent the night in the forest, a fatal blow to her reputation! How seriously wrong must your attitude be to do such a thing to your own sister, no, my child!”
Male lead is a Destined Young Husband (Female-dominant)
One-sentence summary: Wife-master, listen to my explanation!
Li Ruantang, a young lady from a prestigious family, stumbled and fell. When she woke up, she saw a noble and beautiful young man sitting by her bedside, wiping away tears.
The young master had slightly reddened eyes, and his every move exuded charm.
The sight made Li Ruantang’s eyes hot and her heart flutter. After all, she had made a bet with the young master Meng from the neighboring family. If she couldn’t marry a husband before the end of the year, she would have to admit defeat and give up the jade she had worked so hard to obtain.
Outside the window, the flowers were in full bloom.
Rather than losing the bet, the jade, and her face, Li Ruantang calculated that it would be better to seek marriage with the young master in front of her, killing three birds with one stone.
…
Meng Jun never thought that an accident during a spring outing would lead to them rolling down a cliff and into a river, yet still survive.
Now they were trapped in an unknown village, and Meng Jun had overheard that the family who had rescued them had their own intentions.
After all, it was Li Ruantang who had lost her mind and sought marriage first. He was only trying to protect himself!
Glancing at Li Ruantang, who was listing her own merits, the young husband’s voice softened, and he blushed as he lied, “W-wife-master, Wife-master, don’t you remember me?”
The young husband’s voice was clear and handsome, coaxing Li Ruantang’s heart to be soft and sweet, and she spared no effort to protect him.
It wasn’t until they returned to the capital that Li Ruantang suddenly remembered.
When they had fallen off the cliff, in order not to implicate Wei Yunruo, whom he secretly admired, the young husband had instead pulled her, who was slightly farther away, down the cliff with him…
Short summary by Yuushi L: Initially, the male lead (ML) liked another girl, while the female lead (FL) liked the ML. Both fell off a cliff. The FL temporarily lost her memory, and the ML, fearing others might take advantage of him, claimed FL was his wife while they were staying in a village. Later, when they returned home, the FL regained her memories and remembered that the ML liked someone else, so she kept her distance from him. However, during their time living together in the countryside, the ML’s view of the FL had completely changed. From this point, his pursuit of the FL begins.
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