About Becoming My Ex-Husband's Mistress - Chapter 138

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 138. The Sensation of Lips Pressing In
I immediately rebuked Luderne for the question that sprang to mind.
“You could have come to see me at least once and explained. Or sent a letter.”
“….”
“I understand why you had Baron Sellen’s death processed. It kept the Crown Prince’s marriage history clean, didn’t it? There would have been no complications with betrothals to the daughters of high-ranking nobles.”
Luderne simply listened to my words with a bitter expression, so I asked him.
“Answer me. Am I imagining things?”
Luderne nodded.
“You’re not. You saw it right away.”
“How infuriating. I didn’t even know you had such intentions, and I….”
As I spoke, I suddenly remembered that time. When news of my husband’s death arrived, when I wept bitterly while burying an empty coffin in the ground.
As those emotions from that period came rushing back, tears welled up uncontrollably.
I covered my mouth with my hand as I struggled to swallow, unable to continue speaking, and Luderne drew closer and sat beside me. He extended his large hand and gently wiped away the tears from my cheek.
At his tender touch, I glared at him and clenched my teeth.
“How shameless of you. I thought you were truly dead….”
Even as I spoke, I found him utterly detestable.
“You should have come to me instead and told me plainly that you were alive, that the difference in our stations was too great for you to see a woman like me.”
I clenched my fist and struck his arm repeatedly.
“Then even if I cried, at least I would have wept out of hatred.”
My fists grew stronger with each blow.
“Because I didn’t know, I thought you were dead, and I…. How much did I weep, clutching at that empty coffin.”
Luderne simply accepted my blows without resistance.
“It felt as though the world itself had crumbled….”
My throat tightened with sorrow.
Unable to speak further, tears streaming down my face, Luderne pulled out a handkerchief.
“…I’m sorry.”
As he wiped my wet cheeks and eyes, his voice grew even lower with a long sigh, and his own eyes glistened with moisture.
“Is that all you have to say—that you’re sorry?”
I struck him, then finally covered my face with both hands.
Luderne pulled me into his embrace.
“You’re the worst. I can’t stand the sight of you, truly.”
I wept against his chest before managing to speak.
“If you had revealed your station and told me you wouldn’t leave a record of our marriage….”
The more I thought about it, there could be no other reason why he had filed a death report and gone into hiding.
I shed more tears before speaking again, barely managing the words.
“If you had told me to keep silent, I wouldn’t have….”
It would have been easier for him to hear if I had said it all at once, but unable to suppress my breaking sobs, I continued haltingly.
“…Were you afraid I would persistently cling to you or try to use it as leverage against you?”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it? Did someone threaten you with a blade? Warn you that if you saw me, I wouldn’t let you off?”
I had barely asked when Luderne whispered in a voice tinged with remorse.
That he was sorry, truly sorry. That it wasn’t his true intention.
I lifted my head and fixed him with a sharp glare.
“If that’s not it, then tell me the truth.”
“If you’d simply said you wouldn’t leave me alone as you claimed, it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Luderne’s sigh grew longer.
“I had no choice back then. I was too weak to defy the Emperor, and once I had you in my grasp as a hostage, I couldn’t even muster the will to resist.”
I doubted my own ears.
I quickly wiped away my tears and looked at him again.
“You took me hostage?”
“That is….”
Then an astonishing story poured from Luderne’s lips.
That if he had conveyed information or lingered near me, I would have died.
That it was Fleit Doorban’s imperial decree.
He had tried to defy it once, but realizing he couldn’t escape the tight surveillance net, he gave up meeting me.
“Then the Former King fell ill from a curse. It was misfortune, but it didn’t feel entirely unfortunate to me.”
Luderne gazed at me intently.
“If the Former King couldn’t move, then you wouldn’t be in danger either.”
In the meantime, Fleit Doorban’s will was inherited by Eclite Doorban.
It wasn’t merely inherited. The magnitude of the coercion had only grown larger.
I could also learn why I had encountered Luderne aboard the Quindel when I escaped from Count Genoma’s Estate and boarded it.
“He was shocked by news of your remarriage and anchored the Quindel in the small city of Roban under the pretense of trade.”
He said he wanted to bring me back, insisting over and over that my remarriage was void because my husband was alive.
“Even though he knew he couldn’t step forward in the end.”
Because the Emperor and Eclite had surveillance attached to his every move.
Only later, upon reviewing the boarding manifest, did he discover that several regulars of the Quindel were Eclite’s agents.
Luderne’s brow furrowed.
“And this is something I learned through separate investigation later….”
On the day I fell from the ship by Melissa’s hand, there was someone who witnessed the scene, though it escaped our notice.
It was one of Eclite’s agents.
He reported to his superiors. That the surveillance target had fallen into the sea and died.
And from the next voyage onward, they disappeared from the boarding manifest, Luderne told me.
Since there was no trace of me to be found anywhere, it was only natural in a sense.
Meanwhile, Luderne, who had rescued me from the beach at that time, even wondered if the situation was divine providence.
Especially when I clung to him desperately while under the curse’s influence.
The miracle of reuniting with me in a place without surveillance, and the hellish time of endurance arriving simultaneously.
“I wanted to press my lips together and hold you in my arms to feel your existence.”
But I was severely ill then.
Unable to do such things arbitrarily to someone who was sick, I endured and endured, but when I clung to him desperately, he held me as if he’d gone mad too.
By then, he already knew the condition of my belongings.
The lack of an identification badge was another advantage.
He had decided to exploit this point actively.
While he couldn’t openly claim me as his own, he wanted me kept somewhere safe and visible.
So he blocked every path off the island except the Quindel.
In other words, he had confined me to the island for four years.
Wary of Eclite’s possible infiltration, he had carefully concealed his emotions.
As a result, I had lived peacefully on the island, but on the other hand, it was absurd. Everything had been within his plan.
“Then Walter and Jester showed me kindness on your orders?”
“They knew nothing. Only Brissel Mohr and I understood the situation. I didn’t expect your connection with them to last so long either.”
Luderne immediately denied it and continued speaking.
“Only Brissel Mohr kept warning me. He said if things went wrong, you would be in danger.”
With that, he revealed Brissel Mohr’s true identity.
He was Luderne’s father, the previous Baron Sellen, who had changed his appearance through magic at that time.
Only then could I understand why Brissel Mohr had been so uncomfortable with me.
“Since Walter and Jester didn’t know about it, they couldn’t report related matters to me. So there were parts I didn’t know either.”
That’s where the gap appeared. Jester did his best to help me, and with his assistance, I escaped the island.
Luderne said he was truly flustered. He had been anxious lest I catch the attention of the Doerban Empire.
“But then you appeared again at Countess Dora’s house party in the form of Priscilla, together with Madame Laber.”
The corners of Luderne’s mouth lifted as he spoke.
“The makeup artistry you displayed was truly a natural talent. That felt like a second divine arrangement to me.”
“You recognized me right away, though.”
Luderne gently brushed my cheek.
“I couldn’t possibly fail to recognize you. I even let on that I had noticed.”
“Then that investment decision that day….”
My face grew hot as I spoke. It was too embarrassing to ask directly whether he had invested that enormous sum because of me.
It seemed like an excessive thought.
He surely would have invested based on the business prospects.
“I had intended to end it with about two thousand gold, but the moment I saw you, my mind changed. I decided to become the main investor in the business.”
My head was spinning from so much information.
But one thing I could understand clearly was why I couldn’t go out in Priscilla’s form.
Then Luderne, who had gently caressed my cheek, lowered himself and lightly pressed his lips to mine.
I reflexively closed my eyes. I felt his breath slipping between my lips as I tilted my head.
“Did you never intend to tell me from the beginning?”
Luderne hesitated, and I opened my eyes.
His closed eyelids also slowly lifted.
Our lips touching, the distance between us was extremely close.
Only his crimson eyes filled my entire vision.
Luderne’s lips moved as they were.
“Now your resolve seems solid. I think we can weather this together.”
With those words, I understood Luderne’s intention.
Back then, I was terribly fragile—fearful and timid. Perhaps it would have been better had I remained ignorant.
“I simply could not forget. I wished for you to live without trembling in fear, to find happiness. But fate had other designs….”
Luderne’s eyes closed once more.
“Now I have made my resolve.”
His lips descended upon mine, following his words.
I accepted his kiss without resistance, my hands still gripping the blanket I had drawn up.
We shared a slow, deliberate kiss.
When our lips parted, Luderne sat upright and made his declaration to me.
“I have never cared for the throne or the imperial crown.”
In the brilliant crimson of his eyes burned a resolve I had never before witnessed.
“But if it is necessary to reclaim you, then I shall seize it.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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