Chapter 1
My name is Lu Zhuohua, and I am an entirely unremarkable marchioness.
The Marquis of Changping, Yan Yunqing, is the husband chosen for me in a political marriage. We have now been wed for twelve years.
Today was the day he returned to the capital from Yangzhou.
He had been away on official business and earned merit in disaster relief. Now he had been transferred back to the capital to receive his reward.
When a maid reported that Yan Yunqing’s carriages were nearly at the gates, I gathered the concubines of the rear court, all dressed and ready, along with the children and the estate stewards, and headed for the front courtyard.
Most of the concubines’ children were still young, so I sent them to wait in the reception hall while I led everyone else outside the estate.
For reasons I could not fathom, a wait I had expected to last no longer than the time it took to drink a cup of tea stretched into a full hour.
It was only autumn, but the wind still chilled my hands and feet.
After another long while, the procession finally crept into view.
The carriage stopped, yet no one emerged. I was about to send someone over to ask what was happening when Yan Yunqing climbed down alone, carrying a woman in his arms.
I paused, but took it rather well.
The inner household of my maiden family, the Lus, was simple. My mother presided over the household as its principal wife, while my father’s three concubines both attended him and pursued work of their own choosing. For the most part, everyone lived in peace.
The capital’s great houses, by contrast, loved cramming their rear courts with women and children, only to have them fight one another tooth and nail.
The marquis’s household suffered from the same affliction. New women arrived every year; by now there had been more than ten in all.
Beaming, I went forward and addressed Yan Yunqing directly. “Did your journey to Yangzhou go smoothly, my lord? You look thinner to me.”
He still held the woman in his arms, yet his smile was tender, almost like a newlywed’s. We chatted pleasantly all the way inside.
When we first married, Yan Yunqing and I had shared a measure of genuine affection.
He was handsome and accomplished, able to paint my brows, sketch my portrait, or compose poems praising my beauty and wit.
I had been at an age when a young woman’s heart first stirred. Falling for a man like that was hardly difficult.
We had once drunk together beneath the moon and spoken heart to heart.
If he ever wanted to take a concubine, he needed only inform me. I had more than enough generosity to tolerate it.
But I was to remain the household’s one and only mistress.
Elevating a favored concubine over his wife? He could forget it.
Laying a hand on me? The thought should never even cross his mind.
Yan Yunqing had laughed at my worries then. “I am a gentleman. How could I ever strike a woman?”
As a naive new bride, I had thought his answer reasonable.
Back home, even when Father and Mother quarreled until the roof nearly shook, he had never laid a finger on her.
He always said, “What sort of man hits a woman?”
Surely the exalted Marquis of Changping, a relation of the imperial clan, would never stoop to something so dishonorable as striking his own wife.
I paid little attention to the woman in Yan Yunqing’s arms, but the concubines waiting in the reception hall erupted.
Their expressions were grim, yet they forced smiles and tried to catch his attention.
Yan Yunqing was markedly colder toward them—even toward the concubine he had favored most before leaving the capital.
I stood to one side and watched in silence. The woman in his arms was plainly awake, but she kept her eyes shut and pretended to sleep.
Yan Yunqing carried her all the way to his own courtyard.
As the concubines muttered over one another, I beckoned to a steward and told him to prepare a courtyard for our new “sister.”
Her name was Yun Yaoyao.