I Accidentally Resurrected My Dead Husband - Chapter 58

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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 58
“What?”
Udith pushed open the door and entered the moment Ern lifted himself from the bed. A bundle of keys jangled in her hand.
“I found them in the butler’s quarters when I first came to this estate.”
Without being asked, Udith explained kindly—which meant locking the door again would be pointless.
“You’d let me waste away without a shred of loyalty?”
Udith expressed her wounded feelings through her protruding lower lip.
“There are other methods. You could drill a hole through my skull.”
“What if you bleed too much and die? Besides, you let me stab a dagger into that shopkeeper’s forearm to keep him from his business, but you won’t do this? Why not?”
“That’s hardly the same thing.”
“It’s better this way. That hurt, but this won’t.”
It wouldn’t hurt, true enough, but…
Ern swallowed the words that had risen to the tip of his tongue.
“Get out.”
Ern seized Udith by both shoulders, spun her around, and pushed her toward the door.
“Ugh, you’re awful. But you know what, Ern? Tan was saying—”
A sharp thud cut off Udith’s words as the door slammed shut.
“In the middle of speaking, too.”
Udith, staring at the door that had slammed shut right in front of her, bit down hard on her lips.
“Ern Raindt, is this how you treat people?”
A spark of stubborn determination flickered in Udith’s eyes.
* * *
Ern returned from the bath. The moment he opened his door, Udith was waiting for him inside his room—sprawled across his bed without ceremony.
Predictable to the very last detail. It was good that he’d dressed carefully; ordinarily, Ern would emerge from bathing in nothing but a robe, but today he came out fully clothed, buttons secured all the way up. The humidity of the bath clung to Udith; she might well have tried to slip into his room otherwise, so precautions were necessary.
It was a matter of prevention.
“You’ve bathed too, I see? I just finished myself.”
Udith smiled brightly and winked. Her hair was completely unbound, and she’d even applied something red to her lips.
“Come in already. What are you waiting for, my dear?”
There it was—that “my dear” only when she needed something. Ern’s eyebrow twitched at her opportunistic endearment.
“I’ll give you options, Miss Herington. One: you leave of your own accord. Two: I drag you out.”
Standing in the doorway, Ern raised his index and middle fingers in turn. Udith then held up three fingers—index, middle, and ring—and spoke.
“Three: we just hold hands and sleep.”
“No. Out.”
“I really will only hold your hand.”
An ancient and time-honored stratagem, this one. Hold hands and sleep? Ha—and here she was, sprawled across his bed unprompted. The logic didn’t hold water.
“Ern, don’t you trust me? I’m Udith Herington.”
“…What does that have to do with it?”
If anything, it only made his doubts worse.
“Stop talking nonsense and get down from there.”
Ern approached the bed where Udith lay and knocked on the headboard as if knocking on a door.
“You thought this would catch me off guard, or that I’d fall for your scheme? Well, how do you propose to handle this?”
Though inexperienced, Ern had found himself in such situations far more often than one might expect.
“Women have snuck into my bedchamber more than once. There was even one who ambushed my carriage.”
“And they knew your temperament?”
“Of course they knew… What of my temperament?”
His striking looks more than compensated for what might be called a terrible disposition. Women dazzled by Ern’s appearance gave no thought to his character. They threw themselves at him.
Some tried to seduce him with beauty, others with wealth, and still others with power. Yet not a single one had succeeded. And compared to them, Udith was painfully clumsy. When it became clear she couldn’t seduce him, she changed tactics.
“But I really could sleep if we just held hands.”
A sympathy-inducing strategy, pure and simple.
Udith made a face like a drowned puppy. The Great Mother’s party had arrived days ago, and she’d eaten well, but her small frame made her look all the more pitiful. Ern moved to lift her onto his shoulder, but Udith clung to the headboard and resisted.
“Ouch!”
When she jerked away, he loosened his grip slightly.
“My hand has value too. Do you know how many women have tried to hold it? Line them up and they’d circle this estate twice over.”
“But right now, there’s only me, isn’t there?”
Ern hesitated. Well, that was true. It was true, but… As he struggled for a counterargument, his hands weakened for an instant, and in that moment, Udith broke free from his grip and pressed herself completely against the headboard.
“Listen to what I’m saying. I’m telling you, just holding hands is enough for me.”
“Don’t lie. You’ll try something while I’m asleep.”
“What do you take me for? Tan mentioned it—he said with you, all we need to do is hold hands and sleep.”
About an hour earlier, after Tan had stepped out of the conversation with the Great Mother regarding strange dreams, Tan had scratched his head and said something as he left.
“Oh, but Lord Ern possesses Extreme Yang Qi, so holding hands and sleeping should be perfectly fine…”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, the fundamental purpose of resolving a curse is to absorb Yang Qi into one’s body. Since ordinary people don’t possess particularly strong Yang Qi, I recommend close contact.”
But Ern possessed Extreme Yang Qi, she had said. Like the sun itself.
“Sir Ern is clearly overflowing with Yang Qi.”
Golden hair that evoked sunlight, green eyes as verdant as summer’s lush foliage, muscles that couldn’t be hidden even beneath a shirt, tireless vitality, and a fiery temperament—Ern was nothing short of the embodiment of Yang Qi itself.
“Then simply being close to him should gradually drive away the Humid Qi. It will take time, but it’s possible.”
For that reason, Udith had been about to ask Ern to merely hold her hand while she slept.
But the moment Ern laid eyes on Udith, he recoiled as though she were the most depraved creature on earth. Udith, spurred by his reaction, felt a sudden spark of defiance. So instead of explaining why holding hands alone would suffice, she resolved to seduce him instead. She even found and applied lipstick to her lips.
Yet there was one thing Udith had overlooked: she had never attempted seduction before in her life. Despite her efforts—washing, applying lipstick—she merely looked like someone lying on someone else’s bed. Her awkwardness was rather endearing, though.
“Hurry and lie down, Ern. Do you really want to watch me bore a hole through my own skull?”
Udith pressed herself against the headboard as though fused to it, making her resolve unmistakably clear.
“And what if I said I actually do want to see that?”
Learning that merely holding hands would suffice, Ern felt a twinge of embarrassment. Hadn’t he been the one fretting needlessly, imagining improper things and insisting it wouldn’t work?
“Shall I seek out some other source of Yang Qi instead?”
The words tumbled out unbidden, words he didn’t quite mean.
“Where else would I find Yang Qi like that?”
Udith replied with a tone of exasperation. It seemed her mind held no thought of the unattached men around her—not Henry, not Marquis Mosley, none of them. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Ern’s mood lifted perceptibly.
“You’re right. Miss Herington has no man but me.”
“Then help, if you understand.”
Her tone was rather insolent for someone asking for aid, but Ern, generous as only one possessed of Extreme Yang Qi could be, decided to overlook it. Yes, better to sacrifice my hand than watch her die with a hole bored through her skull.
Ern sat on the bed as though resigned to his martyrdom, as though offering himself as a saint to save a life. When he extended his hand, Udith reached toward it like someone grasping a lifeline. But just before their hands met, he pulled his away to the side.
“You washed your hands properly?”
“I told you I did!”
Sacrifice was sacrifice, and hygiene was hygiene.
* * *
Ern’s bedchamber had once been a maid’s room in the Raindt Estate. This was because Udith had first taken up residence in the first-floor butler’s quarters when she arrived at the estate. Though the rooms once occupied by the count’s family were larger and finer, they were all on the second floor.
With the estate largely empty and even stairs troublesome to clean, Udith saw no reason to use the second floor, so she chose the largest butler’s quarters on the first. Later, Ern naturally selected the second-largest room on the first floor, which happened to be the old maid’s chamber.
This meant the bed was a single. It was wider than other servants’ beds, but still cramped for two. Sharing it with someone as large as Ern left Udith squeezed against his side.
“Stop fidgeting.”
“It’s narrow. What do you expect?”
“This is exactly why dreaming dreams only creates trouble.”
Ern clicked his tongue in disapproval, yet his large hand remained entirely extended to her. Udith’s small hand was hidden from view, swallowed by his grasp.
“I never imagined a dream like this.”
Udith pouted her lips.
“But Ern, what about Marquis Ferni? Do you know anything about him?”
“I have no personal acquaintance with him, but I know one rumor that circulates—he apparently made an excellent match. A truly splendid marriage.”
“I’ve heard that rumor too. I heard his wife’s family is very wealthy, apparently better off than most marquis houses.”
The Marchioness Ferni was from Penko Kingdom, an island nation across the sea. She came from a family that owned an enormous trading house called the Ropuri Trading Company—or so the Young Lady of Baron Brix had mentioned once.
It was a trading company renowned in merchant circles, a family of hereditary wealth so great that even the king of Penko Kingdom couldn’t act arbitrarily toward them. That such a daughter married Marquis Ferni had caused such a stir in imperial society that it nearly upended it entirely.

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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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