Chapter 1

“My lady, the Marquis is drunk at Dreamreturn House again. He refuses to come home.”

My hand paused over my book. I ordered the carriage prepared and went to fetch him myself.

I had visited Dreamreturn House so often that I already knew its layout by heart.

Ignoring the strange looks around me, I walked straight to the private room Shen Huaiting always reserved.

Before I entered, a woman’s sweet, delicate voice drifted through the door. “My lord, you have drunk so much again. When your wife arrives, she will blame me for not stopping you.”

Shen Huaiting snorted, his voice thick with mockery. “What wife? She is nothing but my dog—a dog that comes when I call and leaves when I dismiss her!”

The guards’ expressions changed. They feared I would lose my temper.

I acted as though I had heard nothing and pushed open the door.

“My lord, it is time to return home.”

Shen Huaiting’s unfocused gaze settled on my face. He suddenly gave a cold laugh. “You heard that?”

He meant what he had just said.

I nodded calmly.

“I did.”

His brow furrowed, as though my lack of reaction displeased him.

He staggered over and leaned close, a dark gleam in his eyes.

“Was I right? Are you my dog?”

The reek of wine washed over me.

I frowned instinctively.

I knew Shen Huaiting was deliberately trying to provoke me.

Clenching my palm, I raised my eyes to meet his and enunciated every word.

“My lord, it is time to go home.”

We stared each other down, neither willing to yield. Shen Huaiting lost first.

He passed out drunk.

That evening, I wiped his face with a damp cloth.

He abruptly woke and seized my hand.

There was a catch in his voice.

“Yueru, do not marry him. Wait for me, will you?”

I said nothing.

He peered at me, murmured something, and fell asleep again.

“You are not Yueru.”

Of course I was not Gu Yueru.

Gu Yueru was the love Shen Huaiting could never forget.

They had grown up together and should have spent their lives side by side. But Gu Yueru’s father misspoke at court. As punishment, His Majesty betrothed her to the unfavored Third Prince.

Then he ordered Shen Huaiting to marry me.

That day, Shen Huaiting knelt outside the throne hall and begged the Emperor to withdraw the decree.

Instead, the Emperor had him beaten twenty times and sent home.

His love for Gu Yueru ran deep.

So deep that he loathed me, the wife who had taken her place.

Less than three days after our wedding, he began frequenting brothels and spending his days with courtesans.

I became the greatest joke in Shengjing.

People even wagered in private that our marriage would last no more than a year.

Yet three years had passed.

Every day, I treated Shen Huaiting better than the day before, tending to him with meticulous care.

When he drank himself senseless in a brothel, I set aside my dignity and went there to bring him home.

Again and again.

Those who had once mocked me for failing to hold my husband’s heart could no longer find fault with me. They merely sighed over how pitiful I was.

But I was not pitiful.

I fetched him because I liked the way Shen Huaiting looked when he was drunk.

At those times, he was unusually docile, sleeping against the carriage wall while dim light fell across his sharply defined face.

And he looked even more like my young general.