The outfit Alfonso wore was also pure white, the attire of a debutant’s partner. Unable to tell him ‘I need to go to the restroom, let’s dance later,’ Ariadne ended up taking his hand.
Just then, the band began to play the second waltz, and they smoothly entered the center of the main hall and began to dance.
“Count Cesare didn’t bother you, did he?”
It seemed he remembered a previous incident when Cesare had harassed Ariadne in the garden of Count Chibo. As Ariadne followed Alfonso’s lead and moved smoothly with the steps, she shook her head.
“No, today he was surprisingly gentlemanly.”
Prince Alfonso, sensing something suspicious, furrowed his brows. Then Ariadne’s counterquestion came.
“By the way, who did you have the first dance with?”
“Me? I danced with your sister.”
A cloud passed over Ariadne’s face. The beautiful Isabella. The enchantress no man can resist.
“How about it? Isn’t our sister pretty?”
Though she found bragging distasteful, the words slipped out of her mouth. The poise she had cultivated during her nine years in high society as the fiancee of the crown prince vanished without a trace when it came to Isabella. To Ariadne’s selfadmonishing remarks about her own lack of charm, Alfonso replied.
“Pretty? She didn’t look much like you.”
It was a far drier answer than Ariadne had expected. She couldn’t help but add another remark.
“Everyone says my sister is very pretty.”
“Is that so? Ah, she does look a bit different from ordinary people.”
Isabella was notably slender, with large puppylike eyes and fine features. Even in a chapel filled with a thousand people, she would stand out. But it seemed to make no impression on Alfonso.
“I don’t know.”
Alfonso, living in the palace, had seen countless pretty things.
Pretty faces, pretty wardrobes, pretty fans, and pretty jewels. One could certainly delight in such things, but to Alfonso, aesthetic beauty was ultimately replaceable.
Beautiful people age, and there will always be younger beauties appearing. Just as it is foolish to risk one’s life for a wardrobe or a fan, so it is with beauties.
Alfonso preferred something higher. Noble spirit, high pride, knighthood that does not compromise principles, and selfsacrificing noblesse oblige.
Only values that do not deteriorate over time fascinated him. The endless resourcefulness of the darkhaired girl in front of him was one such thing. But was that all?
As the music played, Ariadne took a large turn. Alfonso lifted his hand to give her space to spin, and Ariadne also raised the hand she was holding high.
Squeak!
Ariadne sensed that something was amiss. The moment the hook on her back received tension, she was unable to resist it, splaying out like a stick, followed by a sensation of her corset completely loosening.
At the same time, she felt the stitches in the center of her Vcut dress, unable to withstand the pressure from within, tearing apart.
Thud!
With a loud noise, the front of her dress burst open, revealing her enticing sternum.
Ariadne froze in the midst of the waltz music, standing out even more among the dozens of swirling pairs.
People also quickly noticed.
“Gasp!”
“Did her dress just rip?!”
“My goodness, you can see all the way down her chest.”
“Whew, spectacular!”
Among them, there was a person audaciously whistling. It was Janobi de Rossi.
Janobi’s behavior was considered uncouth not only in the San Carlo society, but also throughout the Etruscan Kingdom. Not just the ladies, but also the gentlemen shot glaring eyes at Janobi, the village fool who whistled.
“Who is that rude man?”
“He behaves like a complete country bumpkin.”
Only then did Janobi seem to realize his major mistake, shrinking his neck like a turtle and hurriedly leaving the ballroom.
The ballroom was in total chaos. It was then that Alfonso draped his ceremonial cape, which he had been wearing, over the frozen Ariadne.
The snowwhite cape, which had decorated the ballroom like petals, in a moment curled up like a bud, enveloping Ariadne entirely.
“Excuse me. We will pass.”
Alfonso, with Ariadne in one arm, tried to head towards the powder room arranged behind the ballroom. Seeing the powder room crowded with young women, he asked Ariadne’s opinion.
“There are a lot of people in the powder room, should we still go there?”
Upon hearing ‘there are a lot of people’, Ariadne shuddered, wrapped in the white cape. The first floor powder room was already bustling with Isabella’s friends.
“Let’s go to the second floor, to my room.”
Alfonso immediately took Ariadne to the second floor and went to Ariadne’s room located at the end of the western wing.
As soon as they entered Ariadne’s reception room, Ariadne’s attendant maids, including Sancha, hurriedly ran to take Ariadne from Alfonso.
“Miss, I’ll fetch your gown right away!”
As soon as Sancha seated Ariadne on the reception room sofa, she dashed into the dressing room, and Anna rushed to fetch makeup, while Maria ran to get tea to soothe the lady.
Left alone in the reception room, Alfonso finally realized that Ariadne was crying so much that she couldn’t breathe.
“Ariadne, are you okay?”
Alfonso, unable to find a handkerchief, hastily used his sleeve to wipe the tears flowing on Ariadne’s face. Ariadne, sobbing uncontrollably, managed to utter a word.
“So embarrassing…!”
In Ariadne’s head, Isabella’s words were echoing.
“I thought your breasts were a cow’s because they are so big and saggy.”
She had accidentally revealed a part that a modest lady should hide. And that part, in Ariadne’s view, was really ugly and poor.
Ariadne was automatically replaying criticisms from others, which she hadn’t actually heard, in her head.
‘She’s really ugly.’
‘She must be a woman with nothing to see, so she’s hanging on a man like that.’
‘The shameless daughter of a cheap maid!’
‘Did she expose her breasts and vulgarly attract Cesare?’
Alfonso, seeing Ariadne crying uncontrollably, embraced her, cape and all.
When Prince Alfonso cried as a child, Queen Marguerite always hugged him like that. Conveying warm body temperature was the best way Alfonso knew to comfort people.
“Don’t cry, Ariadne. It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”
Alfonso’s rhythmic patting on Ariadne’s back gradually calmed her sobbing. Once she seemed somewhat stabilized, Alfonso silently stared at her tearstreaked face.
“Are you feeling a bit better now?”
Ariadne nodded, her body still shuddering with sobs. However, she couldn’t stop the incoming tide of worry.
“They all saw it, didn’t they? How unsightly I was⋯⋯!”
Alfonso’s answer to both her questions was ‘No’.
“It was only a moment. Most people probably didn’t see. And what do you mean by unsightly? What’s unsightly?”
Ariadne was unable to utter the word ‘sagging breasts’. Alfonso continued to comfort her in succession.
“Many aged ladies expose their chest to that extent these days! They might have thought it was fashion.”
Ariadne checked how torn her clothing was by peering inside her cloak. Alfonso turned his blushing face away, pretending not to see.
Her neckline was torn all the way down to her navel. Through the torn seams, her plump chest bone perched atop her frail ribs was in view. Ariadne’s face fell once again. Alfonso inadvertently blurted out his true feelings.
“Yes, you were beautiful.”
That’s why I covered you with the cloak. So that no one else could see.
I want to be the only one to see you. I don’t want to show your beautiful appearance to anyone else.
Ariadne lifted her head and looked at Alfonso. Alfonso’s face turned bright red, all the way to his ears, and Ariadne, forgetting what to say, closed her mouth.
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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