Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After returning home, I immediately had the servants prepare a bath barrel for me and told them not to wait on me nearby.

I wanted to wash away the traces of betraying my husband.

But those marks were shockingly severe. It was clear just how fiercely he had taken me at the time.

Pity these old bones of mine. I was nearly fifty, yet I had still been tormented like that.

At that thought, my face flushed.

“Bah, bah, bah. At my age, how can I still be thinking about such things!”

That night, I dreamed my husband was gripping my throat and questioning me furiously.

“Lin Yuqing, how dare you betray me!”

“What happened to sharing one quilt in life and one grave in death?”

“I waited for you for twenty years. Fine, you refused to come down, but you even found me a twenty-five-year-old little brother?”

I apologized over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, husband. I didn’t mean to break my promise.”

“He was too strong. I was forced…”

Then the Prince Regent appeared out of nowhere. Not only did he wrap an arm around my waist and stop me from lowering my head to apologize, he even kicked my husband, sending him flying until he vanished without a trace.

“What right does a dead man have to make a fuss?”

Then he covered my ears.

“Good Yuqing, don’t listen to that old fool’s nonsense. You deserve the finest man in the world.”

I looked at him blankly. “The finest… man in the world?”

Wasn’t he talking about himself? Who praised themselves like that?

I couldn’t help punching him lightly.

“Shameless!”

The Prince Regent lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him.

“You like me shameless.”

Then he lowered his head and kissed me.

When I woke, I was burning hot and drenched in sweat.

It was only early spring, yet the night was somehow this stifling.

I called for a servant to prepare bathwater again.

“Hongshu, prepare water. I want to bathe…”

Because the Prince Regent had left marks in obvious places on my neck, I hid in my room for several days to avoid gossip, only going out once the marks had faded.

To outsiders, I merely said that I had gone up the mountain that day to worship Buddha and caught a chill.

My granddaughter Shen Yan was a filial child. Even though I refused to see her, she still came to my little Buddhist hall every day to pay her respects and ask after me.

That day, as I rose early and dressed, my senior maid Hongshu asked, “Old Madam, the Eldest Young Lady came very early to pay her respects. Will you still not see her today?”

I glanced at the sky outside, thinking that no one had come looking for me these past few days, so surely nothing had happened.

So I said, “Let her in. Tell her I’ve fully recovered.”

Hongshu said happily, “Yes! This servant will tell the Eldest Young Lady at once!”

Before long, Yan’er hurried in excitedly. The moment she entered, she rushed over and hugged my legs.

“Grandmother! You’re finally willing to see Yan’er!”

“Yan’er thought you were upset because I ran out on my own that day and made you personally go up the mountain to find me!”

“I’m sorry. It was Yan’er’s fault. I almost got abducted by bad people! Thank you for coming to find me, Grandmother!”

“Otherwise… if Brother Yuheng found out, he would be unhappy!”

Jiang Yuheng.

In my previous life, he had been Yan’er’s childhood sweetheart and fiancé, the young general of Zhenguo General’s Manor. Yet on their wedding night, he went off to the battlefield.

He left Yan’er to support the General’s Mansion alone, when it was already nothing but an empty shell.

As for him, he took a concubine at the border and even got his mistress pregnant.

Even more hateful was that everyone in the Jiang Family knew about it. Yet using Yan’er’s lack of children as an excuse, they had that illegitimate son adopted under Yan’er’s name as the heir of the clan.