My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 78

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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 78
Chapter 8. Resolution (8)
Wine dripped onto the floor.
Red liquid spread across his shoulder, and Fahrenheit froze like a suffocating fish before belatedly lifting his head, his neck flushing crimson with rage.
“However much you may despise me, what is this conduct in such a public setting!”
The low murmur that filled the hall swelled in every direction.
Celia opened her fan slowly before the shouting Fahrenheit, bringing it to her lips. The fan’s edge traced across her delicate skin, and beneath it, her eyes narrowed into a crescent. Those eyes, which gleamed with such evident delight, could only be seen by Fahrenheit, who knelt at her feet.
Just as his spine was about to prickle with dread, she smiled thinly.
“If you can’t even bear this much, why all the fuss?”
With that soft whisper, he grasped the meaning of her smile in the very next instant.
A woman was cutting through the crowd, striding forward with purpose.
“Lord Fahrenheit!”
At the ringing cry, those who had been watching only them turned their heads.
There stood a woman with a pallid face and thin lips. The crowd parted as she approached, and she planted herself directly before Fahrenheit.
It took him only seconds to recognize her and widen his eyes.
“Wait, surely not—”
The woman raised her hand swiftly. Then came a sharp, cruel crack.
“You terrible man!!”
Fahrenheit’s refined face snapped to the side.
He clutched at his stricken cheek, his pupils trembling in disbelief.
“No, my lady. What is the meaning of this!”
“The meaning?”
The woman hurled everything she had been cradling in her arms onto the ground before him.
It evoked the moment when Celia had cast flowers moments before. Yet where those had scattered brilliantly, what now littered the floor was the sordid wreckage of someone’s shame.
Thin letters, pharmacy receipts, medical diagnoses, opened envelopes.
“Oh, my.”
“How could such a thing be.”
Those standing nearby bent to gather the scattered documents, their faces paling as they did.
“Please, just a moment. Please, my lady. Let us speak first—”
“Don’t touch me!”
She wrenched her arm free from Fahrenheit’s grasp with force.
Then she spun toward the assembled crowd.
“Oh, my dear friends. I beg you, take pity on me. Hear the tearful story of my suffering and the suffering of innocent women!”
Her youthful appearance, delicate gestures, and the foreign accent in her accented Imperial speech were more than enough to command attention.
“This man came to our country to study, and he has preyed only upon defenseless women!”
The hall fell silent.
“He stalked only the Young Ladies of lesser houses, girls younger and weaker than himself. The moment they were alone, he would force himself upon them, and no matter how they refused, he never once stopped.”
The woman performed like an opera in the sight of all—and she was precisely the uninvited guest Celia had brought.
A nobleman’s stalking, no less, conducted while evading even the watchful, well-trained eyes of knights. This was clearly no amateur work, she had surmised.
And her assumption had proven correct.
Fahrenheit had caused quite a number of problems since going abroad after his dissolution of engagement.
“Moreover, how cruel he was to women carrying his children. Here are the physicians’ records! Look also at these notes, where he harassed poor Young Ladies by questioning whether his own children were truly his!”
Fahrenheit’s face drained of all color.
“It’s a lie!”
“A lie?”
The woman, whose downturned eyes were particularly lovely, hung tears at the corners of her gaze.
“Then is it also a lie that you always despised the nobility of this Empire, claiming your authority exceeded even the Emperor’s, and left us powerless to resist?”
Well, all of that was true, but that last part was fabricated.
If one wanted to stir the anger of noble men as well, a bit of embellishment like that was necessary.
To sweep away that wretched thing from her sight—such a lie was nothing. She could have done far worse.
“What is everyone doing? She’s mad, remove her!”
One fact became clear from this affair.
Fahrenheit was simply garbage.
‘Who said he was a gentle and kind man?’
Was it my own mouth in the past?
Fahrenheit was raising a commotion demanding they throw the woman out, and the Marquis Couple—appearing from who knows when—rushed to restore order among the crowd.
“Now, see here, we must—”
“Why stop?”
Celia, the very architect of this chaos and the one who had been watching the spectacle with interest, opened her mouth.
“If Lord Fahrenheit is innocent, there is no reason to fear what this lady says.”
Celia gestured to the woman held by the knights.
The knights hesitated. As the Marquis Couple faltered and rolled their eyes, the woman Celia had brought seized the moment.
A wailing cry erupted.
“You thought I would simply disappear and that would be the end of it, didn’t you? But there is not just me! There are more women who have suffered from what he has done. I am merely one of them!”
Celia had merely promised her a price.
To a Young Lady of humble origin from a powerless nation—one who wished to take vengeance on Fahrenheit but lacked the strength, and feared retaliation—she had promised money and a future.
The effect was magnificent, and now everyone in the hall looked down upon Fahrenheit with expressions of distaste.
“When did I ever—!!”
Unable to bear their gaze, Fahrenheit moved.
“Eek!”
“Lord Fahrenheit! Step away from that lady at once!!”
Someone blocked his outstretched hand, and the atmosphere crossed into irreversible territory.
Those who had maintained neutrality until moments before now bore expressions of suspicion and revulsion alike.
‘Ah, my temper is finally settling.’
Celia smoothed her dress with satisfaction, savoring the sight of Fahrenheit transforming like rotting fish.
When their eyes met, she brought her hand to her cheek and smiled thinly, approaching him—a face that looked ready to be coffined.
“Lord Fahrenheit.”
The man, cast down onto the floor amid the chaos, flinched.
She lowered her voice and tapped her shoe against his knee.
“Never set foot in this Empire again. If you so much as linger in my sight even once more, this will not end so lightly.”
Thus Fahrenheit fled, bearing her whispered words like a tail between his legs, rushing away into the night.
***
Fahrenheit, having fled to the Back Garden, clenched his jaw.
A metallic taste bloomed from where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.
“How dare she—”
His broken fingernail raked across the back of his hand. The nail hung like a withered twig at its tip. His cheek throbbed from the blow, and the words Celia had uttered remained lodged in his skull like nails.
“She dared humiliate me like that?”
Unaware of his own wrongs, he recalled the woman who had exposed his buried past, and Celia standing beside her, looking down at him like a contemptible worm, and clutched at his head.
“I misjudged her. I thought she was a pitiful woman, gentle and longing for freedom but unable to achieve it.”
So Lucius Windmere had been unable to bear her as well and denigrated her!
Gone was the wonder he had felt the day he first set eyes on her.
After being harshly dealt with by Lucius, the phantom of the lonely woman standing alone near the pond in the Back Garden had been cleanly erased.
“I will repay this. I swear it—”
He gnashed his teeth, vowing vengeance.
‘I just need to be careful of the Duke. Even if caught, he’s the sort of man who wouldn’t dare raise anything more than legal penalties.’
The Duke of Brickwell would be concerned but unlikely to maintain interest in an already-married daughter; the Duke of Windmere required no caution. The only one to worry about was Lucius, but Fahrenheit knew his character well enough—rigidly righteous to the point of frustration.
“I’ll make him pay so dearly he’ll never be able to move that beautiful mouth again.”
His pace quickened. Walking like a hunted man, driven forward by shame, he muttered—when someone suddenly seized him by the nape of his neck.
His body was dragged backward like a puppet on strings. Fahrenheit crashed into the corner of a wall, his shoulder taking the blow as he was shoved into a narrow corridor like an alley.
His breath caught in his throat like a fish bone.
“Who—”
The words never finished.
Someone pressed a folded cloth over his mouth. Fahrenheit’s eyes rolled back and he struggled, but the hand holding him was rigid as an iron vise. His arms flailed at empty air before falling limply.
His vision blurred like wet ink spreading across silk.
Just before his eyes closed, the last thing he saw was a pair of green eyes, cold and sharp even in the darkness.
And after that day, no one ever saw Fahrenheit again.

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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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