After finally calming down from her tears, Angela suddenly grasped Hestia’s hands firmly, raising her voice with a determined expression.
“Don’t worry! I will find you one! A husband who will love only you, Princess!”
“Find one? What do you mean?”
“Of course, a strong husband who will love you!”
“Haha…”
With a tone indicating little expectation, Hestia laughed.
Then, an idea suddenly struck her.
‘What if I use this as an opportunity to make things more natural?’
Hestia, trying to appear as casual as possible, gently asked Angela.
“Then Angela, can you look into someone for me?”
“Look into someone? Who do you have in mind?”
After wiping the lingering tears from her eyelashes, Angela nodded.
“Come closer.”
Though they were alone in the room, Hestia beckoned Angela closer, feeling her heart tighten.
As Angela’s ear came close to her lips, Hestia shielded their conversation with her palm and whispered.
Angela’s eyes widened at the name of a man that Hestia mentioned.
Aslan, sitting at his desk in the office, was looking at documents. Despite his main base being in Calati, he had responsibilities in the capital due to his title.
Most of the work was handled by a powerful executor appointed by Aslan, but some matters required the direct attention of the Duke of Calati.
Buried in a significant amount of work, Aslan hadn’t left his office all day.
Though his gaze seemed fixed on the paper, not a single word was actually registering.
“Phew.”
Unable to concentrate, he eventually put down the unread document and leaned back in his chair.
Tilting his head back, his thick neck moved roughly.
Lifting his arm, Aslan pressed his eyes with the back of his hand and let out a low curse through his lips.
“Damn it.”
His thoughts kept returning to that rainy night.
After she left his room, he stood there blankly for a while before coming to his senses.
Moving to the window and harshly pulling the curtains open, he saw her small figure leaving his mansion in the pouring rain.
Hestia.
That name, too heavy to utter aloud, he kept silently in his heart, fixing his gaze outside.
But no carriage awaited her.
〈Where’s the carriage?〉
Eventually, he saw her pass through the iron gates of his mansion.
On that dark night, Hestia was alone.
〈What do I care? What does it have to do with me?〉
Thinking she had nothing to do with him anymore, Aslan was about to turn away.
He gripped the curtain, ready to close it.
But he couldn’t let go. His arm was so tense it bulged, yet his hand wouldn’t move.
The fabric crumpled pathetically in his grasp.
〈Damn it.〉
Unable to shake off the image of her, Aslan cursed under his breath and followed her.
But he kept his presence hidden from Hestia. Talking to her only tightened his chest, a feeling he didn’t want to experience again.
And he didn’t want to be angry with her anymore.
So, Aslan quietly followed her from behind. Silencing his footsteps was all too easy for him.
Following her like a guardian, he suddenly felt angry again.
‘She’s too defenseless. What is she thinking, walking without even looking around?’
Even in a city with good public safety, it was dawn, and the streets were dark.
She could have been a target for anyone and wouldn’t have had the strength to defend herself if ambushed.
But why? Why was she walking without even glancing around, moving her legs so absentmindedly?
He didn’t like it at all.
Then, he cynically regained his senses.
He kept feeling like a madman.
Going back and forth.
‘Quite a mood swing.’
He had never been like this in the North.
He was a person who seldom got excited and never lost his rationality.
So now, he had to admit it.
The only person who could ignite Aslan like this was one and only.
Hestia.
Aslan tried not to think deeper about it. Just acknowledging this fact was a huge decision for him.
He did not want to change anything in his relationship or feelings towards Hestia. Too much was lost during the Dahanpa incident six years ago in Calati.
So, that night, he just quietly followed her, thinking of it as a mere walk.
Hestia, without a carriage or attendants, silently walked that road alone, and he kept watching her from behind.
‘Foolish.’
The thought of her trying to fend off the rain and cold with just that thin robe was absurd.
After seeing her safely enter the castle and returning to his mansion, it was already dawn.
Aslan lived his days as if nothing had happened that night.
But that was just an outward appearance.
He was still wandering those rainy night streets in his mind.
The encounter that night might have been the only, possibly the last, private meeting between him and Hestia.
However, he had no intention of finding out more about her.
Like always, he planned to stay quietly in the capital before returning to the North.
But his plans changed the moment he saw the invitation.
“Excuse me, sir.”
The butler, Robert, entered the office with a knock, bowing respectfully as always.
“I’ve brought the mail.”
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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