Chapter 5
After that day, Chu Yan didn’t visit the other house for several days running.
It was as if he had become a different person.
Before, he had despised me.
He ate at a separate table and took a detour whenever he saw me.
These past few days, he had even broken precedent by sitting beside me at meals.
When I returned to my courtyard, he called, “Wait, my wife. We’ll go together.”
More terrifying still, when I shyly asked, “Will you be staying at home tonight, Husband?”
he didn’t sneer at me.
Instead, he thought for a moment and nodded awkwardly.
“Very well.”
His unusual behavior had even made my mother-in-law look at him more fondly.
“If he could settle down completely and make a good life with you, I’d have nothing to worry about,” she told me with feeling.
Nothing to worry about?
That wouldn’t do!
I’d been good at reading people since childhood.
Of course I knew my tearful complaints that night had stirred a little guilt in Chu Yan.
But he was already tainted.
How could I treat myself so poorly?
“Husband.”
As Chu Yan stepped into the bedchamber, I lowered my eyes and called to him.
Feigning shy distress, I said, “I ought to be glad you’ve had a change of heart.”
“But the timing is unfortunate. It’s my time of the month.”
After a pause, I added hopefully, “Mother’s birthday banquet is in a few days. Could you stay home that night?”
“It would make Mother happy, for one thing. And for another… I’ll be feeling better by then, and we could try for a child.”
Cool moonlight gave Chu Yan, standing in the doorway, a remote air.
My mother-in-law was beautiful.
He wasn’t bad-looking either.
But whenever he was displeased, his face turned cold and distant.
His eyes had been much softer when he looked at me these past few days.
Yet as soon as I finished speaking, suspicion moved across his gaze.
His face went cold again.
“I asked the maid. This isn’t your time of the month.”
Of course it wasn’t.
I was only stalling until Pei Jin came.
The madman had eyes inside this estate.
He threw a fit even when I spoke to Chu Yan.
What would he do if I slept with him?
With that thought, I lowered my head shyly again, stepped closer, and laid a hand on his chest.
“Husband, we’ve been married for over two years, and we’ve never…”
“I’m… I’m just nervous.”
As it turned out, Chu Yan hadn’t truly wanted to consummate our marriage.
When I coaxed him, he despised me.
When I complained of being wronged and pushed him away, he felt guilty toward me.
It was only the contrariness in his bones at work.
Sure enough, I had barely stepped out of character, contradicted myself a little,
when he revealed his true nature and roughly seized my hand.
“Wen Xiaoxiao,” he probed, “everyone in the capital says you love me. That you’d rather suffer than agree to a divorce.”
“Is that true? Are your feelings for me sincere?”
His gaze on my face grew colder and colder.
Pain shot through my hand. I lost my footing and fell into his arms.
On purpose.
From a little farther away, no one could hear what we were saying.
Who could tell whether I had thrown myself at him or he’d forced me?
“Of course my feelings are sincere, Husband. How can you doubt me?”
Our eyes met, and mine reddened.
A flicker of surprise passed through his cold eyes.
But a moment later, a newly arrived attendant interrupted his gaze.
“My lord.”
The attendant drew close and whispered in his ear.
His voice was so low that I caught only “Miss Shen.”
Chu Yan’s expression changed immediately. He released me.
Without so much as a word, he hurried away again.
Only when his figure vanished into the moonlight
did I put away my stricken look.
I irritably wiped the hand he’d held with my handkerchief.
Tsk.
Help had come far too slowly.
I’d have to think of a punishment for Pei Jin.