A Midsummer Night’s Crime of Passion

On the day before the funeral of the husband who had abused her.
Claude, a knight of the Earldom, confessed his crime to Marianne.

“Your husband, I killed him.”

Marianne wanted to dismiss it as a terrible joke, but Claude’s words to her did not end there.

“I got rid of the one who stood between us, so why are you not pleased?”
“Why would you do such a thing….”
“There was no other way. Because I could no longer bear to watch you live so unhappily.”

Claude, who saved Marianne from the *buse of her husband, and who had spent a long time weaving schemes in order to keep her by his side.

“I have waited long enough. Far longer than you think.”

In the end, to protect herself and her two children, Marianne had no choice but to take the hand Claude held out to her once more.
The hand of her former lover, the one who had personally declared their parting.