Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Mother was the mistress my father, the Marquis, kept at a country estate.

From the time I could walk, she drilled one lesson into me: I had to rise above my station. Ideally, I would become the heir. Then she could enjoy life as an imperially titled lady.

In her imagination, the Marchioness was some monstrous, venomous creature. Mother was convinced that Father had never brought us home because his wife kept standing in the way.

After hearing this year in and year out, I too grew to loathe the woman I had never met.

Then, when I was twelve, Father finally deigned to show us some mercy. He sent word that Mother and I would be brought back to the marquis’s estate.

That night, we laughed and cried until we were hoarse. After all these years, I was finally going to be acknowledged by my family and ancestors.

Life on the farm had not been terrible, but I had no wish to remain an illegitimate son who could never be shown in public. The servants there might call me Young Master to my face, but I had heard what they said behind my back.

They called Mother a whore and me a little bastard.

On the day we entered the estate, my stomach knotted with anxiety.

Mother and I had spent years studying stock phrases and household-intrigue tactics, but now I would be facing the Marchioness herself—the vicious, bloodthirsty Marchioness!

In my mind, she was fat, ugly, and mean. She spent her days beating disobedient servants with a feather duster and locking anyone she disliked in a dark room until they starved.

When we entered the reception hall, however, a beautiful woman in magnificent robes sat in the place of honor.

I had read plenty of poems describing beautiful women, yet none of them seemed adequate for the woman before me. She was so lovely that she hardly looked real. Merely sitting there, she made a painting of the room; the silk, jewels, and hair ornaments adorning her seemed dull by comparison.

Had she been holding a vase with a willow branch, I would have sworn she was Guanyin herself.

Mother’s reflexes were lightning-fast. She darted forward, seized the woman, and yanked her out of the chair.

“Have you got a death wish? How dare you sit in the Marchioness’s place!”

The woman dangled in Mother’s grip like a chick, her feet swinging above the floor.

Before becoming Father’s mistress, Mother had worked as a butcher. Years of chopping meat and doing farm labor had given her astonishing strength. To her, lifting an ordinary woman was no harder than picking up a chicken.

She deposited the woman in a guest chair farther down the hall.

“This is where people like us ought to sit.”

The entire maneuver flowed so smoothly that the woman had gone from the place of honor to a side seat in the blink of an eye.

An elderly maid standing nearby recovered first.

“Insolence! How dare you manhandle the Marchioness!”

That was the Marchioness?

That was the Marchioness!