Chapter 3
Near the end of the year, Mother was found to be pregnant.
Luo Hongsheng, who had been lingering away from home for more than a month, finally returned to the estate.
When he entered the main courtyard with delight written across his face, Mother had confined Eldest Sister and me to her room to test our embroidery.
Eldest Sister’s stitches were crooked and uneven, and she was clinging to Mother, wheedling for indulgence.
The instant Luo Hongsheng came in, she sat straight and addressed him coolly: “Father.”
Mother also put away the tenderness on her face and said flatly, “You’re back, my lord.”
The room seemed to turn cold in an instant.
Luo Hongsheng appeared not to notice.
He walked over cheerfully and patted Eldest Sister’s head. “Our Yue is thirteen already, yet you’re still clinging to your mother. Tell Father what you want. How about I grant it in your mother’s stead?”
“Father, I’m only twelve this year.”
Eldest Sister sounded displeased.
I could tell that when Luo Hongsheng set his hand on her head, she recoiled from his touch.
She merely endured it.
Luo Hongsheng’s expression froze, and embarrassment flickered across his face.
Mother’s expression grew colder still.
“Yue, you two may go.”
“Yes, Mother.”
I bowed with Eldest Sister.
As I turned away, Luo Hongsheng suddenly called me back.
A large robe dropped over my head. The weight caught me by surprise and drove me several steps backward.
I would have fallen if Eldest Sister had not caught me.
“Go fetch me a basin of hot water for my feet.”
“…”
“My lord, Ninth is not a maid.” Mother’s voice did not rise or fall. “Have you forgotten? She is the Ninth Miss of this household, the daughter you brought back from Qi County.”
“What? She… she’s grown this big already?”
Luo Hongsheng narrowed his eyes and studied me for a long while. His murky, drink-sodden gaze held nothing but confusion.
It seemed he had forgotten entirely that he had a daughter like me.
After a long pause, he said awkwardly, “It was your husband’s oversight. Tomorrow I’ll go see her and her mother…”
“My lord, her mother died of illness some days ago.”
“…”
Hugging Luo Hongsheng’s outer robe, I dragged it step by laborious step out the door.
I did not need to look back to know the expression on his face.
There would be surprise and embarrassment.
But no grief, and no remorse.
My mother had been fourteen when he bought her. At the time, he was serving as an official in Qi County.
She was not yet sixteen when she became pregnant with me.
I was born in a carriage.
Luo Hongsheng had just received a promotion, and we were traveling to his next post.
My mother labored in the carriage for a day and a night, attended only by an old woman purchased along the road.
After I was born, Luo Hongsheng came to look at me once, then complained that I had delayed his journey.
My mother said she had been forced to make my swaddling clothes from an old garment at the last moment.
Yet even after one foot had passed through death’s gate, she had still been happy.
She believed that giving birth to Luo Hongsheng’s flesh and blood meant she would have someone to depend on for the rest of her life.
But Luo Hongsheng already had a wife and a crowd of concubines in the capital. A pretty country girl like my mother had been no more than a diversion along the road between provincial appointments.
Even the maids who attended him shared his bed.
Perhaps he did not abandon us only because he remembered my mother’s company during those years.
My mother and I followed him from posting to posting until he returned to the capital and brought us into this enormous estate.
When she first entered the Luo residence, my mother gazed delightedly at the grand compound, unlike anything she had ever seen.
She naively believed she must have burned the right incense in a past life to win the favor of so eminent a lord.
She did not know that from the moment she crossed the gate, Luo Hongsheng would never set foot in her courtyard again.
To the servants of the Luo estate, she was merely “the woman Master brought back from Qi County.”
Three years in the rear courtyard had been more than enough for Luo Hongsheng to forget us both.
He forgot the young woman who had traveled from posting to posting with him, tended to his every need, and never left his side.
He forgot that she had miscarried several times, damaging her health and leaving an illness behind, only to spend her last years in loneliness.
If she had lived a few more years and seen Luo Hongsheng for what he was, what would she have thought of her younger, trusting self?
A maid told me that Luo Hongsheng spent half that night in Mother’s room before leaving the estate again.
He took Concubine Huan with him.
She was the courtesan he had brought home for one hundred taels of silver.
When Eldest Sister heard, the sullenness that had plagued her for days suddenly vanished.
She told me our father was about to receive another promotion.
Then she narrowed her eyes and looked me up and down.
With an innocent smile, she said, “Good thing your mother died early—”
How could dying early be fortunate?
I did not understand.
But my other brothers and sisters did.
I saw them pressing their lips together, covering their mouths to hide their laughter.
Joy gleamed at the corners of their eyes and brows.
The entire Luo estate brimmed with a secret, shadowed sense of celebration.
In the middle of the night, I slipped into Concubine Huan’s courtyard.
It had once been the little courtyard where my mother and I lived.
In less than a day, it had been emptied.
Only the faint trace of perfume remained in the air.
It smelled much like Luo Hongsheng’s clothes the previous night.
The fragrance was almost painfully strong.
But the longer I breathed it in,
the more it smelled like rot.