My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 47

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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 47
Chapter 5. Secrets (4)
Luscius did not return the night before.
Celia opened her eyes to the commotion seeping through the door, shuffling forward in her slippers.
Familiar voices mixed with unfamiliar ones. As she distinguished between the two and threw open the door, she saw two groups dressed in contrasting attire.
“Who are you?”
At her irritated tone, those who had been standing face-to-face turned toward her in unison.
“Well, these are children sent by the Duchess.”
“So what? Why?”
Mulron, the under-steward who handled Celia’s miscellaneous affairs, wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and studied her expression nervously.
“They say the young lady is to be attended to by these children starting today.”
He spoke without hiding his anxious face.
Three years had passed since he began serving the young lady from Brickwell. Though his tenure was short, Mulron knew at least one thing for certain.
She was not the sort to graciously accept servants sent by the Duchess without consultation.
“……Sigh.”
Just as expected. She exhaled softly.
Irritation seeped into her half-awake face. Her blue eyes still carried the weight of sleep, but above them, her raised brows stood stiff as dried thorns.
“I don’t need them. Take them with you.”
“That would be difficult.”
“What would I do with these children?”
“…….”
The way her hand swept through her tangled hair looked as if she were brushing off a troublesome insect.
“Young lady… please, won’t you accept these children?”
The Duchess… what on earth was she thinking? She’d said something strange yesterday, and now she’s sending servants?
‘Is she trying to have me watched?’
Between Eleanor and Celia lay an unspoken line. A boundary neither had agreed to cross first.
This present situation grated on her nerves far more than she’d anticipated.
Celia clenched her teeth for a moment, then set her jaw firmly.
“Fine. Do as you like.”
It was less a matter of grace than the lingering echo of Eleanor’s pleading voice from the night before, which clung stubbornly to the inside of her ear.
“My lady…!”
Leaving Mulron to his surprised gratitude, Celia spun sharply on her heel.
***
Her mood was foul.
She’d never liked having people around her in the first place, but servants of the Duchess no less. Watching these women, who failed to blend with her own staff and stood apart, only piled on the stress.
And on top of that……
“Luscius isn’t feeling well?”
“Yes, it seems contagious, so I’m afraid a visit would not be advisable.”
The man who’d been fine yesterday had taken to his bed overnight.
Celia made her way to his door and looked up at Kabel, who blocked her path, with evident displeasure.
The rigidly built man spoke only in clipped tones, unyielding.
‘He was certainly busy these past few days.’
Celia forced herself to accept this and turned away.
But the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, when Luscius’s door remained shut, her patience reached its limit.
Her frayed patience, now worn threadbare, drove her forward.
“Move.”
“The young master’s orders prevent me from doing so!”
“I said move.”
Celia stepped closer toward the door. As the hem of her skirt brushed against him, Kabel’s face drained of color and he spread his arms wide. He braced himself between the door and her, blocking her path.
“The young master was worried about infecting the young lady! How can you not understand his concern!”
“Good point. You said it yourself yesterday—it’s not a serious illness. So there’s no reason I should go to such lengths to avoid it. Don’t pester people with talk of contagion or whatever. Step aside now.”
Even if she’d spent a winter night half-naked in the stables, she had never caught so much as a cold.
Unless it was a dire plague, she had no intention of turning back. Kabel’s shoulders tensed as he grasped her resolve with sudden clarity.
Kabel, who had been alarmed watching Celia appear steadily outside Luscius’s door for days, now found himself shocked for an entirely different reason.
“No matter who you are, my lady, I cannot disobey the young master’s orders!”
Celia stopped before him and looked him up and down. At this cumbersome obstacle, she gritted her teeth and tilted her head back to gaze at the ceiling.
The Duchess acted this way, and Luscius acted that way. Why did everyone insist on getting under her skin?
“I apologize…….”
As days of pent-up grievance accumulated, Celia’s cheek twitched.
He was rejecting her.
***
Fresh from bathing, Luscius steadied himself against the edge of the mirror with damp hands.
Steam still obscured his face in a hazy blur, but the gash running diagonally across his cheek stood out with particular clarity. The bleeding had stopped, but the torn flesh gaped open rawly.
He swallowed his pain, pressing his tongue against the inside of his lip, then turned to regard the stack of documents on the table.
“The materials you wanted.”
Word had come from Rowald that morning.
Luscius, confined to his room by the wound, had nothing but time, and he studied the densely written pages as though etching them into his vision.
“Ha. What is this mess?”
He approached the documents and gripped the edge of the table, gnawing at his lip.
The Larrendel Marquess’s daughter.
Though some details remained murky, one thing had become clear.
Chloe Larrendel had some sort of relationship with Luscius Windmere.
Particularly, the circumstances of their meeting alone together shortly before Luscius’s marriage to Celia were documented in meticulous detail within these pages.
But that was not all.
‘Why is there a record of Contraceptive Medicine?’
If it had been for use with Celia, he could have obtained it through a city physician. But before that—how likely was it that a newlywed couple, bound by the duty to produce an heir, would use Contraceptive Medicine?
Typically, such medicine was used with a mistress or lover.
All of this pointed to one fact.
He was committing Infidelity.
“……Repulsive.”
The word slipped from his lips and fell upon the documents like a dark stain.
Of course, there was one passage in the investigation report that stood out particularly, and he had already issued instructions for that section alone to be re-verified.
But for Luscius now, that was not the pressing matter.
His already tangled insides could no longer hold, and they warped. The thoughts he’d so carefully assembled crumbled all at once, leaving his core hollow and cold as an empty shell.
“I don’t feel…… good.”
The day he’d returned bearing a wound from Alzener.
Kabel had gasped the moment he saw him, dropping the folder of documents.
“My… my goodness, not like this since childhood. I’ve never seen his hands marked to this degree…….”
When pressed, Kabel offered his answer without resistance. At this point, there seemed little purpose in hiding anything further.
The truth that emerged was simple. The Duke’s violence was no recent matter.
The household reputed to be harmonious had been warped by brutality and indifference for far longer than anyone knew, and Celia—the childhood companion and wife he thought had grown love in his heart and shared his feelings—had never trusted him, only watched him warily and despised him.
And on top of all that, Infidelity itself.
One by one, the truths Luscius had believed crumbled away.
What remained was merely an illusion, carefully polished and arranged by someone’s hand.
“I want to see Celia.”
From the center of his devastated inner world, he reached down and pulled out that name once more.
Luscius saw his own reflection in the darkened window pane.
A face beaten while never once resisting the man called his father. A figure clutching documents detailing Infidelity yet unable to open his mouth. The fractures in his spirit, ready to shatter at the slightest pressure.
A dry laugh, like self-mockery, crossed his lips and faded.
“Not that I’d show her such an ugly sight.”
Then it came.
Tap. Tap. Tap. At the sound from near the window, he lifted his head.
In the next moment, Luscius leaped from his seat. His elbow brushed the corner of the desk, knocking over the inkwell. Dark liquid spilled across the floor in a rush, but he didn’t spare it a glance.
“Celia……!”
There, perched precariously on the windowsill, was Celia.

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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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