"So, what do you plan to do?"
Maxwell Peary struggled to suppress his anger, a forced smile plastered on his face as he looked at her.
"I..." Nia Mitchell swallowed hard. Why did she feel as if Uncle Peary was about to lose his temper? "I think... I’ll just eat whatever porridge you serve, Uncle Peary."
She smiled sweetly, resting her small chin on the table, looking adorable.
Maxwell Peary raised an eyebrow. That was more like it.
"Wait here."
Maxwell took the bowl to the kitchen and returned with Pumpkin Porridge for her. Nia recalled that Rabina Mitchell particularly liked this.
...
After finishing his work, Yancy Hastings didn’t return to the military base but headed straight for Madgar Pavilion.
"Hey, what bombshell dragged you here?"
Evelyn Peary could hardly believe it. This man, who spent three hundred and sixty out of three hundred and sixty-five days a year at the base, had actually shown up at her ’little temple.’
Yancy Hastings maintained a stoic expression, taking a large gulp from the teacup before him. "Your brother got married?"
His good friend’s relationship with his family was strained; his sister was the only one Maxwell was reasonably close to. If Maxwell had truly married, Evelyn would surely know.
Evelyn arched an eyebrow. Her brother actually told Yancy Hastings about this?
"Yes. Do you think my brother is the type to joke about sothing like this?" Regardless of why he questioned it, Evelyn felt she had to tell him the truth.
The three of them had been incredibly close back in the day. But after Yancy joined the army, keeping in touch beca difficult. They had seen each other only a handful of tis in recent years.
"So, he really got married." Yancy still found it hard to believe. Maxwell Peary, of all people, was the first of their trio to marry.
Everyone used to say that with his terrible temper, it would be a miracle if he didn’t stay a bachelor for life.
"Have you t your sister-in-law?" An image flashed through Yancy’s mind: the woman who had stared him down at their first eting and then brazenly kicked soone hard enough to land them in the hospital. What on earth... did she have that made Young Master Peary marry her?
"You haven’t t her? Oh, you absolutely must. You’ll see, she’s... a one-of-a-kind girl." To Evelyn, her new sister-in-law was just a girl, barely twenty. Every ti she thought about it, it felt like her brother was robbing the cradle.
"Different?" Yancy repeated. She certainly was different.
"Exactly! My brother must have searched with a lantern to find her; it’s a blessing from eight hundred years of cultivation!" A giggle escaped Evelyn as she pictured her little sister-in-law with her brother.
In this world, probably only Nia Mitchell could subdue Maxwell Peary and, on top of that, get away with walking all over him.
"I don’t see anything special about her. Surely he wasn’t deceived by so scheming woman?" Yancy Hastings countered. He had disliked that woman from the mont he first saw her.
Evelyn stared at Yancy Hastings in disbelief. Why would he think such a thing?
"Are you suggesting my brother can’t even judge character? I don’t know if my sister-in-law is scheming or not, but I know this: when he’s with her, he’s happy." Only then did Maxwell Peary seem like a normal person—he would laugh, show concern for others, throw a fit when angry, and even look to the heavens in exasperation.
"If you have so free ti, go spend it with my sister-in-law. You’ll discover what it is about her that captivates my brother."
Yancy Hastings nodded. That sounded like a good idea. He really should check things out for his good friend.
Evelyn Peary had no idea that her casual suggestion would change the course of Yancy Hastings’s entire life.
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