Marriage With A Suspiciously Demure Husband - Chapter 75

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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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Episode 75

A Divorce Ban Edict?
A Divorce Ban Edict?
An edict forbidding divorce among the nobility within the empire, no less.
And apparently it was a direct, stern decree issued by the Emperor himself.
The reasoning, it seems, is that the Emperor grew furious over the mounting divorce lawsuits and marital disputes among the nobility that were causing social upheaval.
So this edict is meant to quell that chaos and establish the nobility as a model for society to follow.
This is absolute nonsense.
As if a simple ban would solve anything?
“What kind of absurd… news is this supposed to be?”
Divorces were hardly unheard of before.
They say it’s temporary, but just how temporary is temporary?
It’s only until the Emperor himself lifts the ban, for crying out loud!
“This is insane…….”
Now even His Majesty the Emperor is blocking my way forward.
I was tearing at my hair when Kailas walked in.
I quickly crumpled up the spread newspaper and hid it behind my back.
“…….”
He stretched out his long legs and stepped close to examine me, and even as he tidied my disheveled hair, I stood motionless, clutching the hidden newspaper and turning over thoughts of the Divorce Ban Edict.
When I looked up, our eyes met at once.
“…….”
“…….”
Close enough that his breath brushed my face whenever he bent his tall frame forward.
We seemed to stand like that for quite some time.
Even after he finished arranging my hair, his hand didn’t withdraw—I felt it clearly touching the curve of my ear.
His large hand encircled my waist, and the hand that had been tracing my ear slipped to the nape of my neck, kneading it with a slow, deliberate pressure.
At that warm, seductive touch, my chin tilted upward of its own accord and my lips parted.
He lowered his head and tilted it slightly to one side.
“Did you go to the Capital?”
His lips stopped with barely a paper’s thickness between them.
“The Capital?”
Only his breath reached me before he drew back slightly.
“Yes.”
“No.”

“The Lord selected items that he thought would suit the Lady’s taste. These are dresses that the most renowned designers of Elcard prepared as limited season pieces—only one of each kind made!”

A lie.
“And what about all the dresses and jewelry already filling my wardrobe?”
“That was a week ago.”
The newspaper was dated yesterday.
Was I being paranoid?
It hardly seemed likely that such a thing would move the Emperor.
By rights, the Imperial Household and the Hadid Duchy should have been headed toward a relationship of mutual hatred.
I had inadvertently prevented that, leaving them in a delicate state—neither friendly nor openly hostile—but it was certainly not good.
No matter how much the original story has diverged, that relationship was never meant to improve!
Besides, even if he desperately wanted to avoid divorce, would he go to such lengths?
Unless we were madly in love—but that’s not it. It’s clear he’s simply withholding the divorce because I’m inconvenient to him right now. There’s no reason he’d take such trouble.
Yet the timing is far too strange!
Moreover, this man had a track record.
He’d come all the way to Ferarium to capture me and sat here pressing down for a whole year, hadn’t he?
An edict banning divorce suddenly appears, and yesterday’s newspaper is placed inside my bedroom?
Plainly, it was left for me to see.
Suspicion without proof.
A man who could visit the Capital multiple times a day, when others struggled through the external fixed gate.
A man who had installed an expensive private portal in the basement of this manor—I couldn’t easily shake my doubts about him.
He had money to burn, so he’d naturally have several portals.
With an uneasy feeling, I brushed away his arm from my waist and stepped back.
Kailas’s eyebrow quirked up at the failed kiss.
“So you’re saying you never went to the Capital yesterday?”
“I was too busy to have the time.”
His casual tone made my brow furrow without thinking.
Fine, let’s say that’s true.
“Now that you know, move aside. I’m still in my nightclothes, for heaven’s sake.”
I need to burn this newspaper.
Instead of the hand holding the hidden newspaper, I raised one hand and pushed against his solid chest—and that’s when his interest shifted to the newspaper behind me.
“What’s it matter? You look beautiful either way. What are you hiding in the back there?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Give it to me.”
“You don’t need to know, I said.”
I gripped the newspaper tight and shuffled backward, step by step.
He was absurdly tall.
For every step he took toward me, I had to retreat two.
“You hiding it just makes it more suspicious.”
“No, it’s just—it’s just paper—!”
He finally wrested the newspaper from my hands and unfolded it with deliberate fanfare.
“The Divorce Ban Edict.”
I glared at him with eyes like a flatfish.
This is infuriating, truly. Is this just my mood playing tricks?
His face was expressionless, yet subtly pleased—which only made it more suspicious.
“You really didn’t know about this?”
“Know about what?”
“You just read it aloud yourself.”
“The Divorce Ban Edict?”
He said the same thing twice, and my insides began to boil.
“Yes.”
“I’m seeing it for the first time.”
Then he pressed the newspaper back into my hands. Very gently.
…….
“I really didn’t know about it.”
He drove the point home once more, and that made me even angrier.
“But we still—we’re still getting divorced—!”
“Divorced.”
…….
“The edict forbids it. We must follow the sovereign’s command.”
“And you’re going to follow the sovereign’s command?”
Since when? I should trust what I can actually believe.
“As long as I stand on imperial soil, it’s only natural. What choice do I have? I’m just a powerless nobleman, nothing more.”
A powerless nobleman?
Just a—?
You?
The man who holds titles so numerous that each comes with a different name, and whose aliases are too many to count?
The way he spoke so earnestly, so pitifully—begging to be believed—was not amusing. Only more suspicious.
Unable to find proof, I could only glare at him.
I’m certain, though. I really am.
“Then if we don’t divorce, I’ll just live separately. I won’t run away. I’m fine even in a falling-apart one-room hovel.”
“If word gets out about us living apart, what do you think that will do to my reputation?”
“If you want, I’ll cover my face and go about my business. We’ll live like strangers until the edict is lifted.”
“You don’t care about the hostage anymore?”
“Y—!”
Bastard.
No, don’t. Don’t fall for it. If I say anything now, I’ll look like the fool.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting my anger settle.
He brushed my cheek gently.
“I’ll come back early this evening. Let’s have dinner together. There’s something I need to tell you.”
“I’m not in the mood to sit across from you and eat. If you have something to say, say it now.”
“No, I need to tell you over dinner. You can spare me two hours, can’t you?”
He posed the question with that casual tone, his gaze pursuing mine persistently.
He looked ready to plant himself there and refuse to budge if she didn’t give permission.
What on earth was he doing this for so early in the morning?
If she kept refusing, they’d bicker for hours. And if that didn’t work, he’d bring up the hostages again. She was exhausted.
Without his help, she wouldn’t even know where the three of them were, which made it all the more unbearable.
“Fine, fine. But only two hours.”
Only after he kissed the back of her hand did he finally step back.
“Come back early.”
That playful eye-smile of his wasn’t even amusing anymore.
She turned her head away sharply, burning with indignation.

* * *

Syde, looking like an absolute zombie, shuffled over and collapsed face-first onto the table.
He’d barely managed to steal a moment to escape.
“Hey! I just cleaned that. Why are you draped all over it?”
At Emilta’s alarm, Syde’s face fell.
“Just thirty minutes like this…”
“You’ve lost it, seriously.”
“Want to switch jobs with me?”
“What are you babbling about?”
“Please, I’m dying. Absolutely dying…”
Like he might actually perish on the spot.
Syde whimpered with his face covered by his arm, looking ready to burst into tears any second.
“Hey.”
Regardless, Emilta found herself annoyed at the reality that she had to clean the table again.
This wasn’t the first or second time dealing with difficult work, so why was he whining so much?
“You don’t like jewelry?”
“What?”
“Don’t you like the dress? If it’s a limited edition? If it’s the only one in the entire empire? You wouldn’t dislike that?”
“You’ve gone mad.”
“Is there any good solution?”
“Are you talking about the lady? She’s back — what’s the problem?”
Emilta was aware of the lady’s escape incident too.
But she didn’t know the details quite as thoroughly as the servants directly under the baron.
Whether it was an escape or a runaway, she wasn’t sure, but even this place, which was a considerable distance away, had to hold its breath through the whole thing — it was hardly something to brush off lightly.
She’d thought it was fortunate that she’d come back, but it seemed there was still plenty left unresolved.
“Is there any good solution? If it were only possible, I’d turn back time to a month ago, or even three months ago… is there any wizard who does that sort of thing?”
“If something like that existed, I probably wouldn’t have become friends with you five years ago.”
……
Syde really looked like he was about to cry.
Even she could see how the flesh had drained from his face. Under other circumstances it might have been passable, but these days he looked absolutely wretched.
“Lovers’ quarrels are supposed to be worked out by the two of them themselves. There’s nothing others can do about it.”
“From what I’m seeing, this isn’t a quarrel anymore — it’s almost complete relationship collapse.”
“Is it really that serious?”
“It’s just… how do I put it? The lady has changed. She’s like a different person. Not a cold wind, but actual frost — sharp and cutting. How am I supposed to deal with it? She doesn’t trust anything. It’s pure distrust, that’s what it is.”
The way he kept calling her “the lady” with such precision suggested it really was serious.
“At that point, wouldn’t it be better if he just begged her? Try to hold out a little longer. It’s not like you’re going to give up anyway. Or, get him to make some excuse to keep clinging to her somehow, or… just keep apologizing until the mood shifts, then maybe take a trip together to smooth things over.”
Emilta sighed and gave Syde’s back a cursory pat.
“Do you think that’ll work…?”

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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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