Chapter 2
It was strange.
Perhaps because I had seen Xue Shao once after moving south with the Xie family.
The visions told me nothing about the Jiang family, yet I knew Xue Shao’s future in detail.
The day the Xie family fell was the day Xue Shao soared.
No one knew how he had won the Ninth Prince’s favor. No one knew how the Ninth Prince—or rather, the Ninth Princess—had dared to join the empress in deceiving everyone, fight for the throne as a woman, and ultimately win.
In any case, after the empress ascended the throne and the Xie family declined, I saw Xue Shao once in Xuanzhou.
He had come to take his great-aunt back to Shengdu to enjoy her remaining years. The Xie family dared not offend the rising dignitary. They respectfully issued a document releasing her from her status as a concubine and received him as an honored guest.
At the banquet, Xue Shao was cold to everyone except me. “You once spoke a word in my defense, young madam. If there is anything you still wish done, entrust it to me. I will do everything in my power.”
He meant something that had happened before I married into the Xie family.
He had still borne the name of half-servant then. Several sons of great families were mocking him in the street. I wasn’t anyone important myself; my beauty, talent, and virtue had merely earned me a little reputation. Naturally, I had no wish to interfere.
But the wind lifted my carriage curtain, and I saw that boy’s eyes, trampled into the mud as he was. They were black as ink, yet a fire still burned in them.
Something moved me to lift the curtain and speak with a smile, rescuing him from the situation.
Later, I married into the Xie family, but Xue Shao had already left the marquis’s household to establish his own home. We had no further contact.
I had never expected him to remember that one word of kindness.
My first thought was to ask him to take me back to Shengdu too. But then I reconsidered. How far could I stretch a debt incurred by a single remark? With power changing hands at court, Father and Mother must be frantic. There wasn’t one useful person in the whole family…
In the end, I bowed deeply to Xue Shao.
“Please look after my parents, my brother, and my sister, Marquis Xue. I would be deeply grateful.”
Xue Shao looked at me intently.
He returned my bow.
“I will. Please take care of yourself too, young madam.”
His good wishes did not come true.
Three months after he left, at the cold end of the year, I was still two days short of my twentieth birthday when a chill carried me off after Xuanzhou’s first snowfall. I never saw another spring.
…
My only memory of the young Xue Shao was of those eyes whose fire the mud could not extinguish.
So I was rather surprised when a servant said he had come to see me.
I received him with my elder brother present.
“Present” was generous. After exchanging greetings with Xue Shao, my brother sat far away and began embroidering. His hands were quick and deft; to ensure that I outshone the noble ladies in my dress, he made all my clothes.
Xue Shao bowed. “Miss Jiang.”
I returned the greeting without taking my eyes off his face.
Come to think of it, this was the first time I had really looked at the young Xue Shao.
Shengdu’s young men tended toward polished elegance. Xue Shao was different.
His skin was neither fair nor dark. His features were gently defined; his sharp brows and eyes were softened by the rounded tip of his nose. It was a handsome face poised somewhere between fierceness and sweetness.
The early spring was bitterly cold. His clothes were thin, but his back was perfectly straight.
I asked a maid to bring him another cup of hot tea.
“Have you come about the marriage, Master Xue?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Then please speak freely.”
I had prepared two speeches.
If he didn’t want to marry me, I would ask him to play along for a while. In six months, when the court was swept up in turmoil and the princess had no time for me, we could quietly end the engagement.
If he did want to marry me, I had a basketful of pretty words ready to make us sound like the most perfectly matched couple in the world.
Xue Shao lowered his eyes. “I know I am unworthy of you.”
Ah. He didn’t want to marry me, then.
My lashes trembled. I was about to assume an expression of heartfelt sincerity when he went on. “So I have come to ask whether this marriage is your way of escaping trouble, or whether someone is forcing you into it.”
I paused in surprise.
When I pointed to him yesterday, he seemed to glance my way. I thought he might know that I had a hand in this match, but I had never expected him to see through it so clearly.
“What if I am escaping trouble? What if I am being forced?”
Xue Shao raised his eyes to mine. “If you are escaping trouble, I am willing to occupy the position of your fiancé for a time. When the moment is right, I will end our engagement. You needn’t fear that I will cling to you. Here is a letter dissolving the engagement for you to keep.”
He took a letter from inside his robe and handed it to me.
I opened it and glanced through it. It really was a letter ending the engagement. More than that, he had assumed all the blame. The entire letter praised my noble birth and impeccable character, insisting that the gulf between us made him unworthy.
“And if someone is forcing me?”
“You are a woman of a great clan. Any little thing may bring reproach upon you. I am different: a wanderer with no place in the world. If someone is compelling you to marry beneath you, I will leave the capital immediately. The world is vast. Where could the princess look for me?”
Perhaps seeing my hesitation, Xue Shao curved his lips. A flash of youthful spirit lit his face.
“Don’t judge me by my present situation. At seven, I begged my way from Jiangzhou to Shengdu to find my great-aunt. A weed blown by the wind can take root anywhere.”
“Even if the princess digs up every inch of soil, she won’t catch me.”
Well. Now neither of my speeches was of any use.
For a moment I was at a loss. “Why would you go to such lengths, Master Xue?”
A gust of wind passed just then.
It lifted both his hair and mine, and I could not see his expression clearly. I only heard his extraordinarily gentle voice, carrying an emotion I would never have expected.
“The world is harsh toward women. You so rarely get to choose as you wish. Besides, you once spoke in my defense, and I ought to do everything I can to repay you. Whatever you want to do, I will help you do it.”
What I heard in his words
was pain on my behalf.
Xue Shao, you begged your way to Shengdu at seven. Why did your heart ache for me?
I found myself unable to speak.
After a long silence, I said softly,
“Then please become engaged to me.”