Chapter 5

Chapter 5

From a young married couple to two people who could hardly stand the sight of each other.

Perhaps Gu Jinyan had regretted it, too.

After all, every time he got drunk, he would use the wine as an excuse to come knocking on my door, whether I answered or not.

Tonight was no different. Seeing that I still refused to yield, he sprawled against the door and kept mumbling drunkenly, “Yuqing, open the door…”

“As long as you open the door, I can abandon them. I don’t need all this wealth and glory…”

“Yuqing, I was wrong. I truly know I was wrong…”

I had just opened the window to let out the smell of alcohol when I saw a thinly clad figure standing beneath the corridor not far away.

It was Wenniang, his concubine.

I asked, puzzled, “What are you doing here?”

She carefully watched my expression. “I’m worried about the Lord Marquis…”

Listening to the loud howling outside my door, I closed the window halfway again. “Don’t worry. He won’t keep up this madness for long.”

“Once he sobers up, he will still be your Lord Marquis.”

The news that I wanted a divorce had spread through the entire capital.

If this had been before, my maiden family would have come rushing out to stop me long ago.

But now, more than ten years had passed. My father had retired from office, my mother had passed away, and there was no one in the world freer than I was.

That afternoon, as I was packing up my valuables, one of the more respectable old women in the household came to advise me again. She urged me, for the sake of the whole family and the reputation of the Marquis’s Manor, to at least give the Lord Marquis some face.

I counted the banknotes in my hand, my expression as calm as ever.

“You make a fair point, elder sister.”

“Who else in the manor wishes to come plead his case? Tell them all to come together.”

“I have nothing to do today. I may as well listen.”

In the Marquis’s Manor, I had always kept to myself, rarely going out and treating others kindly. Because of that, among the servants, I had even earned the elegant nickname of “serene as a chrysanthemum.”

Everyone had long since received Gu Jinyan’s order: whoever could persuade Madam to change her mind would receive a handsome reward. And so, before long, my little courtyard was packed with people.

To these loyal servants who had come to urge reconciliation, I nodded kindly, agreed gently, and even wrote down each of their names in a little notebook.

Once the old women and young manservants left in satisfaction, I snapped the notebook shut and tossed it straight to the maid behind me.

“Ha. A pack of ingrates biting the hand that feeds them! On ordinary days, they eat my food and drink my wine, and now they dare speak for Gu Jinyan?”

“Go. Hand this notebook to the servant broker!”

“Remember every single person who came just now. Sell them all off!”

I was storming out in a fury when I saw a figure in white standing at the courtyard gate. Who knew how long he had been there?

No doubt he had seen everything I had just done.

Rolling the prayer beads in my hand, I gave him a smile that did not reach my eyes.

“What? Have you come to persuade me, too?”