The Plan of the Terminally-Ill Wife's Divorce (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 142

Simmons suppressed his urge to scold Anette as he watched her return from the monster hunt.

He hadn’t slept a wink all night, tormented by fear that something might break into the mansion—but now wasn’t the time to press her, since Anette clearly held the upper hand.

“Sister, you brought five hundred soldiers with you, right? You can see as well as I do that it’s not enough. So bring ten thousand! Protect our estate and exterminate the monsters!”

“Is that really what you want?”

“What?”

“It’s not. You don’t care whether the villagers suffer from monsters or not.”

Still seated on her horse, Anette looked down coldly at Simmons. Before returning to the Marquis’s estate, Lord Danau had informed her of the shocking state of affairs in the south.

“I heard outside that your domain’s tax rate is unbearably heavy—nine parts to the landlord, one to the serf.”

No matter how fertile the south was, survival under such terms was impossible.

“Yet despite failing to protect them, you’re more uneasy about villagers arming themselves with sickles against monsters? Even though those are just blunt farming tools, not real weapons! Didn’t you forbid gatherings of more than ten able-bodied men, fearing unrest? Even in a crisis like this? Are you telling them to scatter and die?”

Anette shot back sharply.

“Even a cornered rat will bite a cat—you know that well. What you truly fear is a peasant uprising.”

Struck at his core, fear flickered in Simmons’s eyes. Last night, when a villager had knelt at his feet begging him to save her husband, Simmons hadn’t seen her plea.

Even then, his gaze had fixed on the farming tools the fleeing villagers had barely managed to grab as their only means of defense.

He’d worried that perhaps this wretched woman was merely bait to open the Marquis’s gates, with a horde of ruthless rioters waiting behind her.

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