Chapter 3

The journey from Huai City to the capital took half a month. Matron Tian did all she could to nourish me, and by the time I stepped through the gates of the marquis’s residence, there was actually some color in my face.

It made me look even more like the marchioness. Almost as soon as she saw me, that gentle lady wept so hard she nearly fainted.

She took my hands and drew me into her arms. Warm, so very warm. I had never felt anything like it.

When you were a little beggar and people found you troublesome, the first thing they called you was a fatherless, motherless, ill-bred brat.

A ridiculous thought rose in my heart: now they could never call me that again.

I needed no proof. She was my mother. This was my mother.

The marquis looked rather helpless. With a grown daughter, propriety kept him from simply coming over to embrace me. He could only rub his hands together and say over and over, “You’re home. That’s all that matters. Your father is here now. You’ll never suffer again.”

He kept his word. It was as though I had entered paradise.

I had a name now. Yang Lingjia.

I lived in a great courtyard with a flock of maids to wait on me. Even when I wanted water, someone would think up a way to make it sweet, cool, or fragrant.

Meatball no longer cared for meatballs. She had discovered lychee pork and little crab soup dumplings, tiny mouthfuls of things she had never seen before, and they tasted even better.

Mother came to my room every day to keep me company. She stayed even at night, patting my back and singing the nursery songs she should have sung to me long ago.

As soon as Father and my brother returned home, they followed me about, asking what else I needed. Whatever I named would be piled in my room the next day.

One night, Mother began crying in the middle of a song. “My child. My poor child. You’re so grown up, and I’ve never held you for a single day.”

That day, I called her Mother. The next morning, I called Father and my brother by those names too.

They ate their breakfast porridge through their tears. Watching them, I felt a little more certain that these people were my family.

Everything was wonderful. Or it would have been, if not for Yang Lingyue.

I learned of Yang Lingyue by accident.

Lainiang the beggar could be illiterate. Yang Lingjia, the marquis’s daughter, could not.

Mother instructed me earnestly. “Be good, Jia. A woman’s future rests with her husband. There are only so many fine young men in the capital. Your father and I must secure one for you first. Then we can keep you at home for two years to prepare for marriage, with our minds at ease.”

For the sake of a fine young man, I attended lessons with lady tutors. I learned rules and etiquette, and something of music, chess, calligraphy, and painting.

One day, I went to hand in my work. At the door, I heard the music tutor sigh to the literature tutor. “What cruel turns fate takes. Miss Lingyue was so quick and clever. She only needed to hear a piece twice to grasp its essence. This Miss Lingjia works hard enough, but her hands are rather clumsy. A pity the gifted one turned out not to be their own.”

The literature tutor agreed. “Such a pity. My lady has even forbidden the whole household from mentioning her. Seventeen years raising a child, and now they won’t acknowledge her at all.”

That was the first time I heard Yang Lingyue’s name. Once I had heard it, I was curious. I turned to Baoxia. “Who is Miss Lingyue?”

Mother had given me this maid. She shook her head in a panic. “Miss, I—I can’t tell you.”

If she could not tell me, someone else could.

My parents and my brother all hurried over.

My parents faltered. Only my brother spoke, in a low voice. “Yang Lingyue is the girl who was raised here in your place.

“All these years, you were struggling to survive outside, while she had food and clothing and no worries here. I couldn’t bear it.

“I asked Father and Mother to move her out and forbid anyone to mention her to you. I didn’t want you to be hurt.”

He had told me that a wicked servant stole me away. It turned out he had given me a half-truth. The Yang family had not looked for me for seventeen years. They had looked for one.

Mother had gone into labor early while spending the summer on a country estate. A wicked servant there gave birth on the same day. That woman had been unable to conceive for years and had suffered at her husband’s family’s hands. She knew that if she bore a daughter, neither she nor the child would have a decent life.

Using her knowledge of the estate, she switched her daughter with me. After Mother left, she set fire to her whole family, leaving a message that life held no hope and she wanted revenge for all those years of torment.

I was not burned. But I passed from one pair of hands to another and became a little beggar far away, with no one to care what happened to me.

Only last year had Father chanced upon something amiss and begun searching everywhere for me.

Mother stroked my back. “Don’t worry. I will never see that girl again as long as I live. I won’t let her trouble you.”