Chapter 2

When I woke the next day, the season’s first snow was falling.

The Empress was holding a plum-blossom banquet in the palace for the wives and families of Shengjing’s officials.

Over breakfast, I asked softly, “Will you attend with me, my lord?”

Shen Huaiting glanced at me and nodded.

I was surprised.

He never attended banquets with me.

I had the servants prepare the carriage and personally laid out his ceremonial robes.

After all that bustle, the hour of departure arrived, but Shen Huaiting was nowhere to be seen.

My maid Qingzhu complained indignantly, “The Marquis has gone too far. He promised you he would come!”

I lowered my lashes, thinking—

This was probably another new way for Shen Huaiting to make a fool of me.

Once, when my mother was gravely ill, he took me to Huaiyin Temple. He told me it was a sacred place for prayers and that only a full night kneeling there would prove my sincerity.

So I knelt all night.

Only later did I learn it was merely an abandoned temple rumored to be haunted.

He had cut apart the sachets I embroidered for my father and brothers and torn up the paintings I treasured…

Again and again, he tried to anger me.

To make me divorce him.

But I endured it all.

The moment I looked at that face, I was helpless.

I submitted to his deceptions time after time.

At the peach-blossom banquet, nearly every husband and wife sat together, hand in hand.

I alone sat by myself.

Everyone knew my circumstances.

Their gazes held a measure of pity.

Even the Empress had heard that I had gone to the brothel again the previous day. Drawing me to her side, she sighed. “Suichao, you must stop indulging Huaiting.”

I let the proper hint of maidenly shyness appear on my face. “I do not wish my lord to be unhappy because of me. If he is happy, I will bear anything.”

The Empress patted my hand and said no more.

After all, she had made Shen Huaiting marry me precisely because I was famed in Shengjing for my gentle nature and could never control him.

She pitied Shen Huaiting for losing his mother young, so naturally she was willing to indulge him.

She did not care how humiliating life was for me as his wife.

Yet no matter how humiliated I was, I could show no resentment.

Her words of concern were only a test.

I understood that better than anyone.

And I was willing to play the devoted woman hopelessly in love.

Only then could I keep my place as the Marchioness.

Only then could I see that face every day.

To gain something, one must be willing to sacrifice something else.

During the banquet, snow suddenly began to fall outside the windows.

The ladies of Shengjing rarely saw snow and could not resist going to admire it.

Only I remained quietly seated.

One lady asked curiously, “Lady Shen grew up in the northwest, where I hear it snows every day in winter. Do you not like snow?”

I took a small sip of peach-blossom wine.

“I do not.”

The man I loved died on a snowy night.

After that, I never loved again.