After Getting a Stand-In, the Marquis Went Mad

[Male substitute + aloof beauty brought down from her pedestal + bittersweet angst + romantic rivalry + melodrama]

Before falling in love with Jiang Li, Pei Yanli, the Marquis of Ningyuan:

Because his mother had abandoned her husband and child when he was young, he hated nothing more than women who failed to observe the proper virtues. If he ever married a marchioness, she would have to put feminine virtue above all else.

So when Pei Yanli learned that the marriage his late father had arranged for him was to his younger brother’s former lover, he had only one thought:

Unless I die, I will never marry Jiang Li.

After falling in love with Jiang Li, Pei Yanli came to believe that no one in the world could love him more than she did.

“What? You say she used to be with my younger brother?”

“So what? Everyone has a past. She loves me now, and that’s what matters.”

“What? You say the person she really loves is my father, and I’m just a substitute?”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay...”

The day the truth came out, Pei Yanli shouted at Jiang Li to get out of his life, saying he never wanted to see her again.

Jiang Li didn’t hesitate. She quickly packed her things, moved out of the marquis’s residence, and disappeared without a trace.

Where she couldn’t see him, Pei Yanli, the emperor’s favored son, wept like a mad dog for the first time in his life.

Until one day, Jiang Li saw Pei Yanli wearing his late father’s old clothes and standing before his father’s grave. The usually proud and aloof Marquis of Ningyuan had reddened eyes and bowed his head, pleading with her to let him stay by her side.

“Would you let me be a good substitute, and let your love for my father have its way?”

Note:

1. The heroine is somewhat awful early on, but she changes later.

2. She has no genuine feelings for the younger brother. Later, she falls in love with the substitute and ends up with him.

3. The hero has no past romantic or sexual experience.