Chapter 11

Chapter 11

As everyone knows, words spoken while drunk are nothing more than a way to vent; once said, they should be forgotten.

Those disrespectful, nonsensical things I had said about my husband were completely gone from my memory by the time I woke up. When Xi’er mentioned them, my face first froze in shock, and then my heart began to tremble as I broke into a cold sweat.

Unsurprisingly, Cheng Wenting treated me with even more coldness after that. For two whole years, he never set foot in my courtyard again.

By now, Wei Shi’s daughter was three years old, and she was pregnant once more.

For me, the days simply passed one after another, though my mother-in-law’s accusations regarding my ‘inability to bear children’ continued unabated. My own mother’s disappointment in me also deepened by the day.

I didn’t like living this way. I was unhappy, lost, empty, and lonely.

Fortunately, my Wet Nurse Zou and my maid Xi’er remained by my side as they always had. My Wet Nurse was constantly advising me, saying that since ancient times, a woman obeys her father before marriage, her husband after marriage, and her son after her husband’s death… Now that Wei Shi was pregnant again, she urged me to start planning for my own future.

My drunken ramblings were already two years in the past. She insisted that the most urgent matter now was to find a way to please Cheng Wenting and conceive a child.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to please him, and I desperately wanted a child, but I simply had no opportunity. Cheng Wenting would never take the initiative to come to my courtyard.

Not long ago, I had summoned my courage and used the excuse of delivering snacks to his study to try and mend our relationship. But before I even reached the door, I learned that his other concubine, Chunlan, was already inside grinding ink for him, providing him with ‘fragrant companionship.’

I had been married to Cheng Wenting for seven years. Falling from a state of mutual respect to this current state of increasing estrangement was my failing as a wife. We maintained the final shreds of marital decorum, but in truth, he felt like a stranger to me. It was frustrating, and it left me feeling hopeless.

I was already a twenty-four-year-old woman. Even my own body seemed to remind me of the natural order: the husband is superior, the wife is subordinate, and a woman must take her husband as her guide. He was my entire world.

To win a man’s favor is to have everything; to lose it is to lose it all. My chances to hold onto Cheng Wenting were truly few and far between.

An opportunity like tonight was naturally something I couldn’t afford to miss.

So, as soon as Xi’er heard he had returned to the manor, she immediately went to the front courtyard to invite him. Meanwhile, as I sat before the mirror combing my hair, my Wet Nurse brought in a pot of wine. Fearing I wouldn’t be able to keep him here, she whispered in my ear that the wine would help ‘enhance the mood’ between a husband and wife.

She and Xi’er were putting so much heart and soul into this; if I didn’t succeed tonight, wouldn’t I be letting them down?