Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Jiaoniang looked down on me. In her eyes, I was nothing but a bitter wife, resentful because I had no man to warm my bed.

After Gu Jinyan spent two nights in a row in her chambers, she came swaying over to flaunt herself before me. “Sister, look at my figure. Haven’t I grown a little more voluptuous lately?”

“The Marquis is always saying that if he goes even two or three days without seeing me, his heart burns like fire. Ah, but poor Sister. You don’t even have a man by your side…”

Calmly, I turned a page of the scripture in my hands. “You are quite right, Sister.”

“The long nights are indeed hard to endure. All I can do is scatter banknotes all over the floor. By the time I’ve finished picking them up, dawn has arrived.”

“…”

At that, Jiaoniang, who had come from poverty, completely lost her composure.

Wenniang looked down on Jiaoniang and her coquettish, seductive ways. In Wenniang’s eyes, Jiaoniang was vulgar, unfit for polite society-nothing more than a plaything for men’s amusement.

Recently, Gu Jinyan had been suffering from headaches and went to Wenniang’s chambers a few more times for quiet. Naturally, she came to flaunt it before me too. “Sister, didn’t I say that once beauty fades, so does affection? That Jiaoniang may have been the most famous courtesan in the north and south, but she still can’t compare to a modest household’s daughter like me when it comes to winning favor!”

In response, I merely continued turning the prayer beads around my wrist. “The Marquis is getting on in years now. He isn’t what he used to be. If he visits your room a few times, it’s only because he wants some peace and quiet.”

“Third Sister, don’t read too much into it.”

“…”

Wenniang could not keep the embarrassment from her face and turned on her heel to leave.

After nightfall, the second and third households took turns cursing, smashing things, and making such a scene that the servants in the manor scarcely dared breathe too loudly.

Only I remained serene and detached, still in the ancestral hall, tapping on my wooden fish.

As for Gu Jinyan, he had once been the kind of handsome youth in Jinling City who could fill a carriage with the fruit women threw at him.

Back then, however, he was merely a concubine-born son of the Marquis’s Manor.

My father, meanwhile, had already risen to the position of chief minister and was the most favored official before the Emperor.

To persuade my father to allow the match between our two families, Gu Jinyan once knelt outside the back gate of the minister’s estate for three days and three nights, kowtowing until his forehead and face were covered in bloody marks.

“If I marry Yuqing, I will have only her, for this lifetime and the next!”

Moved by his devotion, I went to find my mother, who was chanting scriptures in the ancestral hall, and cried and shouted that I wanted to marry this least-favored concubine-born son of the Gu family.

“Mother! I like Jinyan! I want to marry Jinyan!”

With a sigh, Mother asked me what exactly I liked about him.

What did I like about him?

Was it the way he looked in flowing white robes, tall and slender as bamboo?

Or his refined bearing, his scholarly elegance, his mind full of poetry and books?

Or perhaps his deep affection, his unwavering devotion?

I thought for a long while, then stamped my foot. “Jinyan is… he’s my white-robed young gentleman!”

After hearing that, Mother took me to a shabby little school at the end of the alley. Inside was a whole roomful of young men in white robes-enough that one swing of a stick could knock down a hundred of them.

She stroked the top of my head and shook her head helplessly. “Oh, what white-robed young gentleman? Aren’t they all right here?”

But I would not listen. I kept crying and shouting that I wanted to marry him.

Mother could only shake her head and sigh. “Foolish child. Foolish child.”

“Within three years, you will surely regret this.”