Chapter 15

Chapter 15

A few days ago, I put on my newly made clothes and jewelry and went to see Ming Yue.

The moment I saw the jealousy and disbelief in her eyes, I knew I was already halfway to success.

Beaming, I said, “Ming Yue, after all these years, you and I are practically sisters. I have some happy news to share with you.”

She looked disdainful. “Who is your sister? Besides, what happy news could you possibly have?”

“Young Master is going to take me as his bedchamber maid. He also said that once the Young Madam marries into the household, he’ll raise me to a concubine. To spend my life with a man as gentle and handsome as Young Master… I suppose that is my good fortune.”

Ming Yue believed me. After all, she knew very well that Young Master had always treated me kindly.

“What’s there to be happy about? He’s just a sickly invalid. Who knows how much longer he’ll live?”

I covered my mouth and laughed softly. “Young Master’s health isn’t that bad. After so many years of careful recuperation, he’s already mostly recovered. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be taking up a post in court. The imperial appointment decree will be issued in a few days.”

She clearly did not believe me, but she was not completely stupid either. “How is that possible? If the Eldest Young Master becoming an official were such a huge matter, how could there be no news of it in the mansion?”

“Because no one told you. If you don’t believe me, go ask around carefully. Haven’t you noticed that people have been coming to the mansion again and again these past few days to deliver things?”

Seeing Ming Yue trying hard to recall, I guided her in a soft voice. “Those chests were all filled with silver. Everything I’m wearing was bestowed on me by Young Master. He said he’ll buy me even better things in the future.”

The jealousy in Ming Yue’s eyes grew more obvious. “So what? Stop showing off. It’s just a few pieces of jewelry. As if no one else has any.”

I chuckled. “Then has the man you’ve been pining after given you anything? You know, before the principal wife enters the household, the young masters cannot take concubines. That is the rule of the Marquis’s Mansion. Fortunately, the Eldest Young Master is the eldest son after all, so his marriage can’t be far off.”

For once, Ming Yue had no heart to argue with me. Her brows were tightly furrowed, and she kept picking at her clothes with her fingernails.

I had struck where it hurt. The more I spoke, the more anxious she became. She did not even realize that I was hinting at the Second Young Master.

So I added more fuel to the fire. “In the end, the Eldest Young Master is the legitimate eldest son… In the past, he stayed in the inner courtyard to recover from illness, but now that his health has improved and he has a post at court, if he inherits the title one day, perhaps he might even raise me to the position of secondary wife.”

Ming Yue was still unwilling to give up, but her voice was clearly much quieter. “You… How do you know for certain that the Eldest Young Master will inherit the title? Maybe it will be the Second Young Master.”

I took her hand kindly. “That’s true. If the Second Young Master inherits the title, then it has nothing to do with either of us. But Ming Yue… the day of Young Master’s coming-of-age ceremony can also be considered my wedding day. I have no other family, so I hope I can receive your blessing.”

Suppressing the ache in my heart, I removed the most expensive hairpin from my hair. Under Ming Yue’s envious and longing gaze, I gently placed it in her hair.

“Do as you like. If you still resent me, there’s nothing I can do about it. Consider this hairpin the last bit of affection between us.”

My heart still ached a little. This hairpin had been bestowed on me by Madam Lu. Everything else I owned put together was not worth as much as this one hairpin.

After serving the masters in the Marquis’s Mansion for so many years, I could truly say that as of today, I had nothing to my name. But right now, I had no other choice.

Things had already reached this point. I had said everything I needed to say. What remained depended on what Ming Yue would do next. I believed she absolutely would not be able to resist the temptation.

Compared to the Second Young Master’s empty, far-off promises, the tangible benefits the Eldest Young Master offered were far more tempting.

The floor was a little cold, and I slept fitfully.

In a daze, I seemed to dream of my childhood.

My father was not a good father, but my mother was the best mother in the world.

There was no earth-shattering love or hatred between my parents. They had married by their parents’ orders and a matchmaker’s word, an utterly ordinary husband and wife.

My father had a whole flock of concubines and rarely came to my mother’s room. My mother was perfectly happy to be left alone.

I had three brothers and five sisters in all.

Looking at it that way, my mother must have been the most magnanimous principal wife there was. She never mistreated the concubines, nor did she stop them from having children.

After all… no matter how many they gave birth to, she wasn’t the one raising them.

My mother was the only daughter in her family, and my maternal grandparents had practically poured more than half their fortune into her dowry. My mother’s greatest joy was making money.

After she married my father, she kept a firm grip on the fields and shops under her name. Every day, she would check the account books, study plans for opening new shops, and occasionally go collect debts. When she had free time, she would take me to wander around the market.

She never believed in the saying that “a woman without talent is virtuous.” She hired the best female tutor in the area to teach me to read and understand the world.

She hired the finest embroideress from an embroidery house to teach me needlework and embroidery.

Whenever she did the accounts, she liked to keep me by her side, hoping that, like her, I would be able to live without depending on anyone else.

My father alone had to bear the living expenses of all the concubines in the household, as well as his concubine-born sons and daughters. He was very unhappy about it.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it. It was just that… every time he looked at the quality of food and lodging in our courtyard, then looked at theirs, he inevitably felt a little unbalanced.

Mother said girls should be dressed cleanly and prettily. Every day, she changed me into a different dress, while my sisters were still wearing last year’s clothes.

My mother styled my hair in all sorts of ways, tying it with pretty ribbons and hair beads, while my sisters wore wildflowers plucked from the roadside in their hair. Only during festivals and holidays would they put on the silver lock pendants they treasured.

Seen like that, it was only normal that Father and the concubines felt resentful.

My mother didn’t care whether they felt resentful or not. If they didn’t like it, they could hold it in. If they had the ability, they could go earn money themselves.

There was nothing Father could do about it. Coveting a woman’s dowry was far too spineless and shameless. So long as he was thick-skinned enough to try, my mother was absolutely ready to raise her fists.

My mother had money, but she wasn’t foolish.

When I was little, I once went out to play. After I came back, my mother noticed that one of the little silver bells pinned to my clothes was missing.

She asked me where I had played that day and whom I had seen. Once she finished asking, she went straight to Concubine Chen’s courtyard and brought the thing back.

Every festival, my mother would also send a few new outfits to each of the concubines.

I asked her why.

She spat out a melon seed shell and said, “On such joyous days, seeing them all dressed so shabbily is bad luck.”

During the New Year, the concubines would come pay their respects. If they managed to coax my mother into a good mood, she would wave her hand generously and reward them with some silver. Because of that, all the concubines in the estate came before my mother to fawn and curry favor.

And I benefited from my mother’s position. Even though I was the child my father disliked most, I was still the object of every brother and sister’s flattery.

Though that cheap father of mine did not care for me, my mother gave me double the love-and even more.

Only… my father had never fulfilled even the slightest responsibility toward us mother and daughter. So why was it that when he made a mistake, we had to be dragged down with him?

Because of him, all my happiness came to an end the year I turned nine.