Chapter 2
As expected.
The day mother and son arrived, Lin Qingru led her five-year-old forward to pay her respects to me.
She had barely bent at the waist when the jade hanging from the boy’s neck slipped out of his collar in full view of the entire courtyard and flashed in the sunlight.
The lively courtyard fell deathly silent.
When the former crown prince had ground the Xie family into the mud, Xie Jingrang lost everything.
The only heirloom left to him was that twin-dragon jade pendant.
He treasured it so fiercely that he flew into a rage if anyone so much as touched it.
When our daughter was born, he could not bear to give it to her.
When our son arrived, he said the boy could have it at his coming-of-age ceremony.
Yet after all that waiting, it had somehow ended up around the neck of his former beloved’s child.
An aunt from a collateral branch of the Xie family went cold in the face.
“How did the Xie family’s ancestral jade come to be worn by an outsider?”
Lin Qingru’s hand trembled around her son’s.
With reddened eyes, she looked at me and spoke in alarm.
“Please do not be angry, Madam. The journey was hard on him. He was miserable and would not stop crying.”
“His Lordship felt sorry for him and lent him the jade from his belt to soothe him.”
“The child forgot to return it. I will take it off him now.”
She fumbled at the cord, pulling it tight against her son Song Chang’an’s tender neck.
The pain made him shove Lin Qingru’s hand away and cry out through his tears.
“Father gave it to me! He said if Chang’an liked it, I could keep it to play with. Why is Mother trying to steal Chang’an’s thing?”
He thrust a finger at me, his little face vicious.
“That bad woman made you do it, didn’t she? She stole my father and now she wants to bully my mother. She is a bad woman!”
Everyone in the courtyard gasped and turned to stare at me.
A child wearing the Xie family’s ancestral jade and calling Xie Jingrang Father.
The moment she entered the capital, Lin Qingru had laid my dignity on the ground to wipe her shoes.
Xie Jingrang merely held the boy and comforted him, deaf to every ugly insult hurled in my face.
My daughter glanced at me, cocked her head, and cried out with childish innocence.
“He is five years old and doesn’t even know who his own father is. How stupid!”
“Claiming someone else’s father like that—aren’t you afraid people will call you a shameless little bastard?”
Lin Qingru’s lashes quivered.
Xie Jingrang’s rebuke came at once.
“Insolent! Who taught you to be so cruel and ill-mannered? Go kneel in the ancestral hall and copy the family rules—”
Clack!
The lid of my teacup struck the bowl with a sharp report and shattered the rest of his sentence.
Meeting my icy gaze, he belatedly paled and lowered his voice.
“It is only a form of address. Is it worth getting angry over?”
“The boy has no father and is often bullied. He cried all the way here. I am a marquis. I could hardly stand by while my benefactor’s child suffered.”
My lips curved, though I did not raise my eyes.
“So in your noble self-sacrifice, my lord, you let him call you Father and gave your own children the suffering of being laughed at in his place?”
Xie Jingrang’s righteous certainty faltered.
“You were away from the capital too long. You seem to have forgotten where your home is—and who your family are.”
I lifted my gaze to him, cold and steady.
“When someone pointed at my face and called me a wicked woman, you might as well have been poisoned mute. How admirably tolerant you were of a child.”
“Yet when your daughter said a few words in my defense, you suddenly remembered rules and upbringing and tried to punish her. Are such double standards a custom in Ningzhou?”
“Tell me, precisely which rule of conduct personally taught to Ah Zheng by the Empress Dowager displeased you so deeply that you would impose family punishment on her before everyone?”
Xie Jingrang’s breath caught.
“You know that isn’t what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
Xie Jingrang had no answer.
He dared not say it aloud: the Empress Dowager had retired to a Buddhist sanctuary,
and with my patron gone, he believed he could mold and crush me as he pleased.
Seeing this, Lin Qingru slapped Song Chang’an hard across the back.
“That will teach you to call people whatever you please and cause His Lordship so much trouble! Kneel and apologize to Madam at once.”
Song Chang’an shrieked in pain.
“Father says a man should never kneel lightly! I won’t kneel to that bad woman. I don’t want to stay in the capital. I want to go back to Ningzhou! Back to Ningzhou!”
The boy howled and thrashed.
Lin Qingru twisted her handkerchief and smothered a sob.
“My lord, he is only a child. He has upset Madam. I should take him and leave.”
Xie Jingrang’s brows drew together by slow degrees.
“The Lin family once helped our house. Qingru has had a hard time raising a child alone. Jingqiu, do not make things difficult for her.”
I set my teacup gently on the table.
“Tell me, my lord. How exactly have I made things difficult for her?”