chapter 2

At the Spring Day Banquet, the Crown Prince saw me for the first time.

He stared at me for a long time before slowly asking, “Do you know Zhen Yuting, the Count’s Mansion’s legitimate daughter?”

I shook my head, looking at him in confusion.

“You two look remarkably alike,” he said. “Only she has a birthmark between her brows-by sheer coincidence it’s shaped like a lotus. It gives her an extra bit of charm.”

With a hint of shyness, I said, “I only returned to the capital not long ago. Didn’t that young lady come today?”

The Crown Prince shook his head, looking somewhat crestfallen. “She’s avoiding suspicion. She doesn’t want to see me.”

I laughed. “You’re so handsome that even women might pale in comparison. How could anyone bear not to look at a face like yours? She really doesn’t know how to appreciate her luck.”

After that day, the Crown Prince remembered me.

Gu Hanyu-the Legitimate Daughter of Marquis Dingguo who looked so much like Zhen Yuting.

From the very first day I entered the Marquis of Dingguo’s Mansion, I knew why I had been chosen: because I resembled Zhen Yuting, the Count’s Mansion’s young lady who had the Crown Prince trailing after her since childhood, forever checking whether she was warm enough or hungry, fussing over her every need.

The Marquis of Dingguo never bothered to hide the reason he saved me, and I never bothered to hide that I knew it.

We kept up the pretense of father and daughter-nothing more than a performance for outsiders.

He ensured I would never lack food or clothing; I helped him bring his grand undertaking to fruition.

The Marquis of Dingguo bribed someone to tamper with the medicine Zhen Yuting took every day. She ended up with diarrhea for two or three days and had no choice but to miss the Spring Day Banquet.

The besotted Crown Prince only assumed the beauty was avoiding him.

And what young lady wouldn’t? Get a little too close, and by tomorrow the rumors would be everywhere. One careless step, and you could even drag your whole family into it.

But not me. I didn’t even know he was the Crown Prince-I only took him for the son of some wealthy household.