Chapter 3

Sitting before my sister, I accepted the hot tea she offered me.

“Sister, Xie Jingzhi wants to make Zhou Ruo an equal wife.”

Her brows shot up. “An equal wife? He was the one who asked to marry you, and after only a few months he wants another wife?”

Her anger rose with every word. Then she gave a cold laugh. “Very well. If he can marry another, why can you not marry one too?”

I stared at her.

“Qingluan, you are my sister. Marrying you to him was already an injustice. Father always meant for you to stay home and bring a husband into our family. We can certainly afford to keep you.”

Her eyes gleamed with mischief as she leaned closer. “If he plays dirty, so can we. Once you have given birth, I will bestow a pretty young man on you. You need not deprive yourself.”

My sister truly was a beautiful, merciful bodhisattva reborn. Having her was the blessing of eight lifetimes.

Only after I returned did I discover that she had also sent an elderly palace matron to teach Zhou Ruo proper conduct.

Since Zhou Ruo wished to become an equal wife, she would have to learn the rules. With the young madam heavily pregnant and unable to go out, Miss Zhou would represent the household socially and must not disgrace it.

The matron had a face like a coffin plank. On her first day, she ordered Zhou Ruo to practice embroidery, declaring needlework the foremost virtue of an equal wife.

The matron guided Zhou Ruo’s hand. One jab drew a hiss and a bead of blood. Another needle brought another muffled cry. Before half a day had passed, her soft white fingers were covered in punctures.

Madam Xie hurried over to protect her. She had barely suggested that the lessons might be too harsh when the matron glanced at her. “If Madam thinks this old servant too strict, perhaps Madam would prefer to teach her personally?”

Madam Xie’s face stiffened. Too proud to retreat before the servants, she took the needle and thread. Within an hour, her own hands were riddled with punctures. She had to bite back every cry to preserve her dignity.

After that, Zhou Ruo had no time to strut before me.

The matron drilled her in etiquette all day and made her copy manuals of women’s conduct at night. She was not allowed to sleep until she finished.

Within a month, she had grown so thin that her chin came to a point, and she swayed when she walked. Yet she still had to attend banquets on my behalf.

At her first outing, she confused a minister’s wife with an undersecretary’s, then addressed an elderly lady as someone a generation younger. The whole room stared.

Zhou Ruo locked herself away and cried all night. The next morning, she came to me with eyes swollen like walnuts, dropped to her knees, and rasped that she no longer wanted to be an equal wife.

She confessed that Madam Xie had lured her from the countryside, promising that the young madam was a spineless fool and easy to manipulate. If Zhou Ruo won Jingzhi while I was pregnant, her future would be secure.

Her family was desperately poor and planned to marry her to a magistrate over fifty as his second wife. That was why she had agreed.

Clutching my sleeve, she begged me to find her another marriage and help her leave.

Her tears softened my heart. I arranged a match with a successful examination candidate from a respectable family whose mother was kind.

Zhou Ruo kowtowed in gratitude and quietly married him while Madam Xie was away at a banquet.

When Xie Jingzhi learned she was gone, he assumed I had driven her away. He stormed into my room.

“Was it you? Did you force A-Ruo out? Jiang Qingluan, you have gone too far! I have tolerated the bastard in your belly. Why could you not tolerate her?”

My ears rang from his shouting, but I remembered Zhou Ruo’s parting words: “He has no will of his own. Whatever his mother says, he obeys. A life with him would be endless misery.”

She had been right. His head was empty.

Thank heaven the child in my belly was not his and our marriage was only a performance. If I had borne a child with his brains, I would have had two fools to raise.

I was about to call the servants to throw him out when I suddenly groaned and bent over, gripping the table.

He sprang back. “What are you doing? Do not blame this on me—I never touched you!”

“Quiet. The baby kicked.”

He stared at my belly. “It can move already? How can something so small kick? Are you changing the subject?”

His words were skeptical, but curiosity glued his eyes to me. After hesitating, he reached out and gingerly laid his palm on my belly.

I slapped his hand away.

He did not even notice. His eyes widened. “It really kicked! It kicked me!”

It had kicked me, not him. Why was he wearing that benevolent fatherly smile?

From that day onward, Xie Jingzhi became very strange. He either recited books at my belly or secretly bought tiny clothes and shoes, folded them into chests, and forbade anyone else to touch them.

I began to suspect that the baby’s kick had somehow struck him in the head.