Protected by a Man

Alexander Hayes stared with wide, innocent eyes, looking rather adorable. "Wife, I caught her! I won't let her hit you!"

"Good catch!" Lily Evans laughed. This silly man was actually useful—at least he knew how to protect her.

Alexander Hayes had a surprisingly strong grip. Helen Parker couldn't break free at all. She glared at Lily Evans with a fierce expression and cursed, "You little wretch, tell your lover to let go! How dare you lay hands on your elders!"

Smack!

But Lily Evans didn't listen to Helen Parker at all—instead, she landed a hard slap right across Helen's face. "So what if I hit you? You think you can bully us just because there's no man in my house? Open your eyes and look! Do I, Lily Evans, look like someone you can push around? That slap was for what you did to my mother!"

Lily put all her strength into the blow, and Helen Parker's face immediately swelled up.

Helen Parker was stunned by the blow. She never expected the usually timid Lily Evans to dare hit her. When she finally came to her senses, Helen shrieked like a slaughtered pig and raised her free left hand to strike Lily.

But just as she lifted her left hand, Alexander Hayes grabbed it too.

With both hands restrained, Helen Parker was so furious her belly puffed up like a toad. She glanced nervously at the tall and imposing Alexander Hayes, then shifted her anger to Margaret Evans, yelling, "Second daughter-in-law, are you blind? Tell them to let me go! You shameless hussy, seducing Samuel Evans, and your daughter has been flirting with wild men since she was a child—ah...!"

Helen hadn't finished cursing before Lily Evans slapped her again. "Who gave you the right to talk to my mother like that? Such a filthy mouth—clearly no one taught you manners, so I'll do it for your parents!"

"Ah!" Both sides of Helen Parker's face were now swollen. She wanted nothing more than to pin Lily Evans to the ground and beat her senseless, but with Alexander Hayes there, she couldn't even touch a single hair on Lily's head.

Alexander Hayes's tall figure shielded the petite Lily Evans in his embrace. Seeing his 'if anyone bullies my wife, I'll fight them' attitude, Lily suddenly felt that having a man to protect her wasn't so bad after all.

"Get out of my house and don't come back!" Lily Evans kicked Helen Parker to the ground. Helen scrambled up and, with her two hired thugs, ran out of the yard. As she fled, she turned back and cursed, "You two shameless things, don't get cocky! Just you wait!"

Helen Parker scurried away from Lily's house. The two thugs hired by Master Zhang, having been beaten, glared at Helen and snapped, "You sly country bumpkin! Didn't you say your niece wasn't married? Then why did that man call her 'wife'? Trying to trick our Master Zhang out of fifty taels of betrothal money with a used woman—are you crazy for money? We're going home to report to the master. Don't expect a single copper from us!"

Helen Parker was nearly driven mad with rage. It was all that wretched Lily Evans's fault! Now her fifty taels of silver were gone, she'd gotten beaten for nothing, and her face was swollen like a pig's head. She just couldn't swallow this humiliation!

So Helen spent the whole way back adding fuel to the fire, spreading wild stories about Lily Evans hiding a man in her house. From the east end of Clearwater Village to the west, she dramatically recounted how Lily was shameless enough to hide a man and even got caught being intimate in the yard.

The villagers were simple folk. When they heard that Lily Evans had done something so shameless, they were filled with righteous indignation.

"Our Clearwater Village has always had good morals. We can't let Lily Evans ruin our reputation!"

"That's right! Her mother was a shameless flirt who seduced Samuel Evans. Like mother, like daughter—they're both bad news!"

"Let's go to the village chief! We have to throw those two adulterers into the pig cage, or Clearwater Village will lose all its dignity!"