Chapter 1

Of all my sisters, I was the last to marry.

My eldest sister married a scholar from East Lane. He had passed the first level of the civil service examinations at sixteen, and stood a good chance of earning the highest degree one day.

Unfortunately, his family was desperately poor. They never knew where the next meal was coming from; even the two chests of betrothal gifts had been bought with money borrowed from a loan shark.

Before the wedding, Mother reassured her. “Don’t worry. Maoqing may be poor, but he’ll make something of himself. Besides, you’re marrying beneath you. He won’t dare mistreat you.”

Eldest Sister was unwilling, but faced with becoming some ugly wretch’s concubine or a fool’s wife, she got into the bridal sedan.

Our household provided a standard dowry for every daughter born to a concubine. Eldest Sister’s had barely been carried through the door before her husband seized it, claiming she couldn’t manage accounts.

Soon afterward, he passed the highest examination. Father congratulated himself on his judgment, then pulled a great many strings to secure him a vacancy in the Ministry of Works.

Not long after that, my brother-in-law took a concubine.

When I saw him parading through the streets with his little songbird, I ground my teeth in fury.

What a calculating man!

Fourth Sister fared a little better. She didn’t have to marry a poor scholar or become an old man’s concubine. She became the lawful wife of the youngest son of one of Father’s colleagues.

Her husband came from a good family and was handsome, too.

Unfortunately, a fall from his horse while playing polo as a child had left him with a cognitive disability. Already in his twenties, he still needed someone to feed him and couldn’t put on his own clothes, shoes, or socks.

Seniority mattered above all else in our family. When it came to choosing husbands, the three of us born to concubines had taken our turns by age, selecting from the three candidates Mother presented.

Eldest Sister had chosen what she considered the best of a bad lot.

When Fourth Sister’s turn came, she hadn’t wanted the Xu family’s youngest son. But her birth mother kept signaling frantically at her from the side.

Fourth Sister’s full brother worked under Master Xu.

Only then had she chosen his son.

By my turn, only Master Chen remained. They called it choosing a husband, but there was no choice at all.

He was already thirty-six. His first wife was still alive, and he had two concubines besides.

Neither his wife nor his concubines had produced a son, though the household was full of little girls. That was why he wanted another concubine.

Master Chen was Father’s immediate superior.

I picked up the silk square bearing his name. “Mother, I’ll take him.”

No one believed I would willingly become an old man’s concubine. Yet there I was, happily holding my dowry list.

I had never been this rich in my life!

Mother had raised me herself, and secretly slipped me plenty of good things as well.

“Ah Tao,” she said, “as a concubine in that household, you’ll always have to bow to someone.”

“Don’t resent me.”

Looking at the new clothes and jewelry she had prepared for me—things neither Eldest Sister nor Fourth Sister had received—I felt nothing but gratitude. How could I resent her?

She might have been the one to present our prospective husbands, but Father had chosen all three. She was only delivering his decision.

Besides, I was marrying Father’s superior. He would never dare scowl at me when I came home again.