My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 56

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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 56
Chapter 6. Lull (3)
The moment they arrived in the Capital, invitations began to pour in.
As if to mark their arrival, letters accumulated by the day—sealed envelopes, neat handwriting, courteous phrasing. The contents were all much the same.
Well-wishes and welcomes, along with invitations for Couple Attendance.
“My lady, why do you look so troubled?”
“Just contemplating life’s mysteries.”
Celia lounged on the sofa, and after glancing at the envelopes arranged on the silver tray, she turned her head sharply.
“I despise the Capital for exactly this reason.”
“But suddenly? You’ve seemed cheerful these past few days!”
Anne protested even as she moved to clear the letters away. Celia swung her feet and wrinkled her nose. The warm sunlight had nothing to do with it.
“They’re endlessly bothersome. Unless it’s urgent, don’t send me anything—just throw it all away.”
“Are you quite certain?”
“Read them when I can’t sleep. They’ll put me right out.”
“My lady!”
Anne bounced in protest, though she couldn’t help giggling at the suggestion.
It had already been several days since they’d come to the Capital. For Anne, visiting the Townhouse owned by House of Windmere in the Capital for the first time, the place had taken on much the same appeal as it held for Celia.
The views were lovely, there weren’t many servants within the residence, and it was situated just far enough from the quarter where the other nobility crowded together.
“But it’s rather bustling today, isn’t it?”
“Ah! I heard His Majesty is having gifts delivered today.”
“Surely not… those bizarre hunt trophies?”
The Emperor, whose hobby was hunting, had taken to culling the woodland creatures as autumn arrived.
Unable to dispose of animals he’d caught in such abundance, he labeled them “gifts” and foisted them upon convenient members of the nobility.
“In fact, the Duke seems to have come back early today to sort through them.”
Anne spoke as she paused in her work, looking out the window.
Celia turned to follow her gaze.
Beyond the glass, all was bustle. Carriages came and went without pause, people moved ceaselessly back and forth, each carrying something. Through the hurried dance of activity, Celia’s eye caught a familiar silhouette.
……
Lucius vaulted down from his fine horse.
His coat tails lifted and fell with the breeze.
A well-fitted jacket of deep color cinched at his waist, a crisply buttoned shirt. Even the way he drew off his gloves held a certain effortless grace—each movement clean and economical, yet possessed of a curious magnetism that drew the eye.
Then he glanced up.
The moment their eyes met across the windowpane, Lucius broke into a brilliant smile. Before Celia could properly respond to that warmth, he disappeared from her view in a few long strides.
There was no need to puzzle over where he’d gone.
“Then I’ll fetch another cup of tea!”
His destination was transparent.
“I’m back.”
Sure enough. The door opened mere minutes after Anne had slipped away.
“What did you do today?”
He removed his coat with unhurried ease as he stepped inside, his greeting casual and familiar.
“You smell like animals.”
“Ah. It must have soaked into my clothes. As you know… there were rather a lot of hunting trophies.”
“… Bald-headed tyrant.”
“Celia……”
He laughed awkwardly as he spoke her name.
“At any rate, I’ve handled the pressing matters. I should have free time this afternoon.”
“To rest?”
“Perhaps. Or we could take a light outing.”
A garden walk, a newly opened restaurant, a dessert shop that had recently become fashionable among the ladies—all of these tumbled from his lips.
“I suspect you know the latest trends among the ladies better than I do.”
“It seems I’ve picked it up somehow. So, might there be a place that suits my wife’s tastes?”
The impudence of him.
Celia pulled a book she’d carelessly tossed beside the sofa closer and raised it to cover her face.
“I don’t want to go out today. I’d rather rest here a while longer.”
With the open pages hiding half her face, she spoke—her lips concealed behind them. Something in her expression softened Lucius’s features.
“Then I’d prefer to stay here too.
He settled himself naturally in her room.
For the record, when he’d suggested they share one room once they reached the Capital, Celia had given a firm refusal. She’d bounced right up to deliver it, too.
It was the consequence of being unable to bear the gap between a sudden, sweet proposal that had intruded during her divorce contemplations and the reality of her feelings.
‘He has no idea what I’ve been thinking.’
It was a lazy afternoon.
Celia observed quietly as he settled so naturally into her daily life.
With his coat removed, Lucius rolled up his sleeves against the warmth. The motion that began at his wrists stopped short of his elbows. The forearms that emerged from beneath the folded fabric appeared somewhat more defined than before. After days of busy comings and goings, his shoulders and arms had taken on a new firmness.
She lowered her book and asked.
“Do you exercise?”
“A little each morning.”
“You… do?”
Not that he’d ever been the sort to crawl along the ground, precisely, but she’d known him since they were roughly the same height and he had been shorter than the knights’ swords in those days.
‘Has he been eating something strange when I wasn’t looking?’
Lucius had begun to shoot up around age fourteen.
She still hadn’t forgotten the humiliation of an ever-shifting eyeline, the way he changed by the day. There had been nights when she’d resented him bitterly, convinced he’d been secretly devouring some bizarre herb. The indignity of it all had galled her.
‘Back then, I hated everything about him.’
His frame, his grip strength, his voice—each had transformed one after another, leaving her thoroughly fed up.
His once-gentle voice became disturbingly deep, and gangly limbs acquired muscle.
It would have been more bearable if she’d merely found him grating to look at, but what truly infuriated her was that he no longer treated her as an equal.
The boy with whom she’d grappled on the grass, collar in her fists, had vanished.
She’d felt cheated, exasperated, ashamed.
“Are you good at fighting?”
“……Hmm?”
In all her days, she’d finally heard Lucius actually bite his tongue.
Celia rested her arm on the chair’s arm and lowered her chin upon it, continuing to gaze up at him as he turned to regard her.
“I’m asking if you fight well. Could you take on multiple opponents alone?”
He blinked, genuinely bewildered.
Moments like this made those bygone days—when they were crude and unkempt, seizing each other by the collar, trading insults and raising their voices—feel like ancient history.
“Don’t concern yourself with such things. Besides, what occasion would I have to fight?”
He was the sole heir of House of Windmere, with none above him but the royal family itself. Tall and well-formed, he could walk the night streets and even drunken ruffians would instinctively step aside.
But during his childhood, dressed in ornate ruffled shirts, he’d never suspect that he’d once traded blows with her.
“I wonder why you’d suddenly ask such a thing.”
Lucius had drawn near without her noticing, and he touched a finger gently to the corner of her eye.
“Celia.”
Now, just the way he said her name was enough to tell the difference.
The fact that he held her dear.
And strangely, the moment she recognized this, something shifted—like a small stone dropped onto the surface of long-still water. A curiosity emerged, pricking the surface.
“Then I want to ask you something else.”
Celia opened her mouth.
“Why… do you like me.”
Lucius went very still. His eyes wavered like those of a lost child, then found their way back to her.
“That’s… not a question I ever expected.”
“Why? Can’t you answer?”
She suddenly wanted to know.
He’d lost only his memory. His fundamental nature couldn’t have changed entirely. Yet the old Lucius had disliked everything about her from the start. He’d been uncomfortable, always counting the days until they could be rid of each other, bickering and bristling with mistrust.
So why was this version of him different?
She wanted to understand where that difference had come from.
“Lucius?”
It was something closer to a demand.
His gaze slipped to one side for a moment, then returned to rest upon her. That brief instant felt oddly protracted. It was the kind of silence into which one wished to pour something—anything.
“Because you……”
At the end of his halting words, Celia’s eyes narrowed with attention.
“Because you were always at my side.”
Yet the answer that emerged was far more prosaic than she’d imagined.
A bare statement, without flourish or pretense.
Celia blinked once, then tilted her head slightly.
“That’s all?”
“From the moment I opened my eyes, you’ve been the one filling the emptiness inside me.”
She exhaled. Her shoulders dropped unconsciously, force draining out of her like water.
Celia looked down at the floor, then let her gaze drift into empty air.
“How utterly trite.”
……
How to describe it.
The energy had simply drained away.

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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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