Chapter 2

“Xia San, I’m halfway through that blue-and-green landscape, and I’ve run out of pigment. The servants can’t reproduce the color you mixed, no matter what they do. Come and help before they ruin my painting.”

I opened my eyes to see Ninth Young Master Cui. He was still the elegant young gentleman who seemed above the sordid world, charm and confidence in every glance. His gauze robe shimmered like purple lightning and blue frost.

“Cui Jiu,” I replied lazily, “I am not a maid in your household. Whether you have enough pigment, or whether it’s the right color, what has that to do with me?”

He stared. “This is a refined pursuit. Why speak of servants? Besides, you always enjoyed grinding and mixing the colors yourself, didn’t you?”

“Enjoyed it? Hammering rocks apart—is that what I enjoyed? Washing muddy sediment—did I enjoy that? Boiling glue in a pot—did I enjoy that? Stained skirts, an aching back, cuts all over my hands—did I enjoy that? If you were the one performing these refined pursuits, Ninth Young Master, would you enjoy them?”

He stood speechless for a long time before managing, “But you used to…”

I smoothed my hair and sighed. “I used not to understand that doing the unseen work is no easier than being the face everyone sees.

“You think a perfectly good painting will be ruined if I don’t mix your colors. But if I do, the finished work will still be your masterpiece, with nothing whatever to do with me, Xia Xiaozhu. When people praise it, they will speak only of your talent. No one will ever know my colors had any part in it.

“Now that I understand that, I don’t wish to waste more time on it. Please forgive me.”

His face slowly drained of color. His lips opened and closed. Then he caught my sleeve. “I was thoughtless before. From now on, whenever you mix the pigments for a painting, I will sign your name alongside mine. Would that do?”

I had no patience left for this. I pulled my sleeve free. “Thank you for the kind offer, but there’s no need. Respect is something one must earn for oneself. What use is another person’s charity?”

Cui Jiu frowned deeply and was about to answer, but I called for my personal maid. “Qiuying? Where are you?”

I stood up from the swing and looked around. Hearing me, Qiuying hurried over. I let my expression turn cold. “The decree granting my marriage has already arrived, yet you still admit a man to the inner courtyard without so much as announcing him. Have you no sense of propriety? Have you no brain?”

Her face went white. She dropped to her knees and struck her forehead against the ground. “I deserve death!”

Cui Jiu understood what I was really saying. His jaw tightened. At last remembering the manners he had cast to the far side of the world, he stepped back and bowed low. “I have been presumptuous. Please forgive me, Sanniang.”

I gave him a proper curtsy, my face solemn. “It is my failure to discipline the servants, not your fault. Was there any other important business you wished to discuss? Shall I inform my brothers?”

His face went red, then white. He shook his head. “I shall trouble you no further.”

I gestured toward the exit, and Qiuying led him away.

Cui Ziyan, the ninth young master of the Cui clan of Qinghe, was always impeccably courteous in public. Yet with me, he behaved however he pleased. I had thought it meant he did not consider me an outsider and had secretly congratulated myself.

Looking back, I had supplied the “outsider” part myself. He hadn’t treated me as a person at all.

Still, I did not blame him. Others begin to despise you when you have already learned to despise yourself.

Without my willing abasement, he would never have gone so far.

It was less that I hated him now than that I disliked the girl I had been—the girl who threw away every scrap of dignity to please him.

I bowed respectfully to see him out. Before I straightened, he stopped and looked back. He stood tall and graceful, his brows like distant mountains.

“Yesterday, I could not believe you had asked for this marriage yourself. Now… I believe it.”

I straightened, but he had already turned away again and strode off.

What did he mean? Had he come to make me his painting slave again, or… to sound me out?

If he cared nothing for me, why say such a thing all of a sudden?