Chapter 4

My marriage to Xue Shao supplied Shengdu with gossip for a while.

But a steady stream of fresh stories soon displaced it.

The liveliest was the flower banquet the princess arranged. She invited marriageable daughters of great families and several ladies of royal blood, intending to find another match for Xie Qingwei.

She resented me because, faced with a choice between Xie Qingwei and Xue Shao, I had dared to choose Xue Shao. It wasn’t that she could have no other daughter-in-law. My choice was simply an intolerable humiliation for her son.

I received an invitation too. Her anger had not subsided, and she wanted the noble ladies’ ridicule to wear me down a little more.

The banquet took place at an imperial estate outside the city. Jiang Pingting had to travel with me, but the moment she left the carriage she abandoned me like a plague victim and went to find her friends.

I had once been close to several young ladies myself. It was no longer appropriate to trouble them.

Yet even keeping well out of the way could not prevent trouble from finding me.

My reputation in Shengdu rested on my virtues, speech, appearance, and accomplishments. Frankly, it was a carefully cultivated reputation. This dynasty’s demands on women were exceedingly harsh: eighteen hundred characters of instruction on female virtue, a hundred and thirty-two rules of conduct. If I really obeyed every one, inside and out, there would have to be something wrong with my head. A taste for tormenting myself, perhaps.

People despise those who cultivate a reputation.

The young ladies who had come to make trouble for me, for instance, were sneering with every word.

I listened humbly to their profound opinions. In truth, my mind had already wandered to whether I should ask my brother for cherries in sugarcane syrup or fried lychees tonight. Then a soft laugh sounded behind me.

“What elegant amusement. Every word a pearl. I am most impressed.”

Clearly, the speaker had heard the entire conversation.

The young ladies turned toward the voice, saw the deep-purple brocade, flushed scarlet, and hurried away.

I looked at the newcomer, paused, then bent my knees in greeting. “Your Highness, Ninth Prince.”

Here was the future empress.

Although she was a woman, she was very tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with a striking face whose vigor defied distinction between male and female. No wonder she had passed as a man all these years.

“Miss Jiang.” The Ninth Prince seemed to have helped me merely in passing. She nodded and walked on, then paused beside me to say with a smile,

“I think they’re wrong.”

I stared.

“Men gain recommendations for filial piety and integrity to enter office; women win reputations to find noble husbands. It amounts to the same thing. Why should the former be praised and the latter mocked?”

“I think ambition in a woman is a good thing. Besides, if you had a choice…”

She turned her head, smiled at me, and strode away.

I watched her retreating figure, unable to recover for a long time.

If I had a choice…

If I had a choice.

I would never rise early and sleep late, scheming and striving, merely to earn the privilege of entrusting my whole life to a man.

I closed my eyes.

And swallowed the bitterness in my throat.

Before long, the banquet was halfway over. I was looking for an excuse to leave when someone called to me in a secluded spot.

“Jiang Zhiyu.”

It was Xie Qingwei, who ought to have been surrounded by noble ladies just then.

I bowed from a distance and tried to go around him and leave by another path. He spoke coldly again. “Jiang Zhiyu, did you choose Xue Shao because he’ll become a marquis?”

I turned sharply.

Xie Qingwei smiled with contempt. “You really haven’t changed. Always chasing advantage. Whoever has power, you cling to him.”

I stared at him in bewildered alarm.

Had Xie Qingwei seen the future too? When…?

As though he had read my thoughts, he laughed softly. His smile was refined, his eyes icy.

“When Miss He said she would marry me and treat Ah Zhen as a sister, the words sounded…so familiar. So ironic.”

“Wasn’t that the promise my former virtuous wife made to me? The woman who is now Xue Shao’s fiancée?”

Ah Zhen was his beloved childhood sweetheart, Sun Zhen, the daughter of a disgraced official.

In the visions, I had indeed said those words.

So he really knew!

A chill crept up my spine.

Xie Qingwei advanced toward me, his eyes dark. The marquis’s gifted grandson of old would never have worn such a look. That brooding malice belonged to a defeated man, reduced to Xuanzhou and worn down by hardship.

“Jiang Zhiyu, what do you take me for? Something you can pick up when you want it and throw away when you don’t?”

He seized my chin, forcing me to look up at him.

“Unfortunately, your clever little plan has failed. You cannot escape me, and you certainly cannot attach yourself to Xue Shao. Do you think I’ll let him and the Ninth Princess rise to power this time?”

He looked at the frightened tears gathering in my eyes and curved his lips.

“Zhiyu, if you admit your mistake, I’m still willing to give you another chance. After all, we did have some happy days together, didn’t we?”

Pah.

Happy days? I was holding my nose and humoring you!

Seeing that I refused to yield, Xie Qingwei smiled and stroked my face lightly with a finger.

“Such spirit. You think I haven’t the power to bring them down?”

He did not seem to require an answer.

“In that case, I’ll kill that half-servant first. I won’t have someone so lowly bearing the title of your fiancé and offending my eyes and ears.”

He released me and strode away.

My heart pounded. Seeing him about to leave this secluded place, I picked up a food box someone had left there and hurried after him. “So you came to find me as soon as you saw the future? You still care about me, don’t you?”

He gave a short laugh and slowed slightly. “And if I do? Shall I put in a good word for you with Mother? Zhiyu, I am willing to forgive you, but you must learn a lesson first.”

That meant he hadn’t told anyone about the Ninth Princess yet.

Relieved, I raised the food box in both hands and brought it down on the back of his head.

Xie Qingwei turned. “You…”

Tsk. Too light. I struck the side of his head again.

He collapsed.