My elder sister lost her reputation just before her marriage was to be arranged.
Somehow, the jade pendant she wore next to her skin had ended up in a wastrel’s hands.
He brought all seven of his concubines to our door, with gongs and drums, to ask for her hand.
Her good name was ruined.
The marriage intended for her, into a marquis’s household, fell to me instead.
But after we married, my husband suspected I had been behind it.
He would humiliate me in our bedchamber to avenge her.
Pei Zheng pitied my sister so much that he defied all propriety and insisted on marrying her as a second wife of equal standing.
Then I was given another life.
Once again, I got hold of my sister’s jade pendant.
And I had not changed a bit.
Under cover of darkness, I slipped it into the drunken wastrel’s hand.
