Marriage of Convenience

I took my younger sister’s place and married the fiancé who had suddenly gone blind.

After the wedding, we got along surprisingly well.

He believed the woman beside him was my sister, and that was why he treated me with such tenderness and devotion.

If nothing changed, our life should have passed quietly and smoothly.

Then one day, the man everyone believed would be blind forever…

Could see again.

When the war ended, the army prostitutes did everything they could to persuade soldiers to take them home, because the alternative was being sold to a brothel.

By the time the dark-skinned, taciturn centurion came looking for me, only an old dying woman and I remained in the camp.

She laughed and asked why I was still waiting for Young General Pei when he was about to marry a princess in a blaze of glory.

That night, Pei Qingfeng pinned me to the bed and ordered me to wait for him at the house he had bought outside the city.

Not once did he ask about the man who had visited me that day.

He seemed certain I would never leave with anyone else.

What he did not know was that I had already accepted the centurion named Zheng Yuan.

On the day Pei Qingfeng married his princess, Zheng Yuan and I would be married too.

The Minister of the Court of Judicial Review withstood enormous pressure, uncovered the true culprit, and cleared my father’s name, sparing our entire family from exile to Lingnan.

My father was immeasurably grateful and swore he would give his life to repay the minister’s kindness.

After a little polite hesitation, Lord Fu said, “My son has reached marriageable age, and I hear the vice minister’s household has several fine young ladies.”

My father understood.

My family had three daughters, each lovelier than the last.

When we came of marriageable age, suitors nearly wore our threshold smooth.

Even the Emperor decided to interfere.

He insisted that one of us marry the great general, Xie Yuan.

Father and Mother could do nothing but sigh.

My two elder sisters exchanged uneasy looks, so I rose with righteous resolve.

“What’s there to worry about? Marrying a general would be glorious, and I might even get to ride a great stallion!”

“If neither of you will marry him, I will.”

Later, Xie Yuan pinned me in his arms and coaxed me again and again:

“Are you shirking again, Mianmian? Why won’t you ride your great stallion tonight?”

At a palace banquet, my elder sister accidentally inhaled an aphrodisiac and ended up alone in a room with the heir of the Xie family.

But she was already the Crown Princess, and if the secret got out, the consequences would be catastrophic.

To protect her reputation, the young lord publicly took responsibility and claimed that I had been the woman who spent that night with him.

After I married into the marquis’s household, he remained unfailingly polite but distant, as cold as frost behind a screen.

So determined was he to sleep in separate rooms that he even ruined his own reputation, pretending to be drunk and lamenting before others that he suffered from an unspeakable condition and could not perform as a man.

To preserve the family’s dignity, my mother-in-law simply announced that I was the infertile one.

My sister tormented herself day and night, convinced that she had ruined my life.

I alone breathed a secret sigh of relief, stroked my steadily rounding belly, and made an announcement at the family banquet.

“A miracle from heaven! My husband is going to have an heir!”

The year I came of age, Father gave me three marriage choices.

I could become the lawful wife of a penniless scholar, the honored concubine of the Marquis of Pingnan’s heir, or the second wife of a wealthy merchant.

I wanted none of them.

Marriage negotiations always came down to the woman’s family, and my father held a modest post while I was merely a concubine-born daughter, so no truly eminent house would consider me.

Still, low birth had never cured me of high ambition.

If I could not marry up, I would sooner hang myself.

I have never been able to stand idle people.

The moment I married into the Li family, I found my new husband surrounded by a flock of talented beauties—and not a single one of them doing a day’s work.

So I lined everyone up and put them all to work: the pipa player to the music house, the dancer to the embroidery shop, and my useless heir of a husband off to perform for Prince Qi.

What started as a scheme to pay off the manor’s debts snowballed into a commercial empire—until the court, the temples, and a rebellion turned my money-making machine into something far more dangerous.

A mistaken phone call makes Si Yun order her distant contract husband, Huo Jingheng, to come home before she locks the door.

He obeys—and after an illness brings them closer, the cold businessman discovers how much he wants her care, her rules, and a real marriage.

But meddling parents, a proposed heiress, and the fragile terms of their agreement force them to decide whether their marriage is still a transaction or the home they have both been missing.

The crown prince married me because I seemed content to ask for nothing.

He made me promise that when my elder sister changed her mind and returned, I would surrender my place as crown princess.

What did he know?

Asking for nothing could be the surest way to gain everything.

After the wedding, I wore myself out in his service, at court and within his household alike.

I even nearly “died” for him several times.

The day my sister returned, I kept our agreement: I took off the crown princess’s robes and handed over the phoenix seal.

He was the one who began to hesitate.

I was born fickle and faithless.

Every man I met was my next great love.

Whenever I tired of one, I gave him a potion that erased his memories of loving me.

Until one day.

They all remembered.