Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Ending my engagement to Cui Zhaoyu damaged my reputation.
People said I did not know how fortunate I had been.
“Young Master Cui is such a good man. Li Yunshu is simply being difficult.”
“He rescued someone out of kindness, yet his betrothed is so coldhearted.”
“No wonder it is hard to be a good person these days.”
Listening to everyone repeat the same nonsense was exhausting.
A good man was not necessarily a good husband.
My parents were proof enough.
Father was a good man, but as a husband, he had been abysmal.
Fortunately, another scandal soon swept through the capital and pushed mine out of the conversation.
Xie Jinyan had refused a marriage to the Fifth Princess.
Unlike me, he was praised as a man of unbending principle, a scholar of noble integrity who did not fear imperial power.
I had only one response.
What in Heaven’s name?
Where was justice?
So when I heard someone praising Xie Jinyan at the Grand Princess’s flower banquet, I scoffed and walked away.
“What a pretentious fraud.”
I crouched beside a pond, broke apart the pastries I had smuggled from the banquet, and fed them to the fish.
Plump koi in red and gold came swishing over, fighting for every crumb.
A cool voice sounded beside me.
“Miss Li does not care for… Xie Jinyan?”
I looked up at a straight-backed young man with refined features. For no reason I could name, he reminded me of green bamboo.
“You know me?”
“Yes. At the Lantern Festival this year, you handed out lanterns in the street. You gave me a palace lantern. I still have it. Thank you.”
My heart dimmed a little.
That had been the first time Cui Zhaoyu made me wait.
Zhenzhen had wanted to make him a lantern, but a bamboo strip cut her hand.
Because it was a holiday, the clinics were all closed. Cui Zhaoyu had no choice, he said, but to take her to his family physician himself.
He had promised to meet me so we could solve riddles and win lanterns together.
I had laughed bitterly.
Even then, I had known something was wrong.
I gave his servant a silver ingot and told him to wait there. If Cui Zhaoyu arrived, the servant was to tell him I had gone to solve riddles and win lanterns by myself.
If I had ten lanterns in my hands and he still had not come…
Well.
What I did not tell the servant was that Cui Zhaoyu would have used his first chance.
The joy of our first meeting would be gone.
I won fifteen lanterns that night, and he never appeared.
His servant awkwardly tried to return the silver, scratching his head as he searched for some excuse on his master’s behalf.
I refused the money and handed him a lantern instead. “Go have some fun.”
I gave the remaining fourteen away. If I saw a child, I gave one to the child. If there were no children nearby, I gave one to any adult without a lantern.
I had not known this man was among the recipients.
I did remember someone asking, “Are you not keeping one for yourself, miss?”
I had smiled without answering.
In that moment, I understood my mother.
She had not wanted a thing. She had wanted affection.
She had wanted a happy memory of solving riddles and winning lanterns together.
I returned to the present and gave the young man a level look.
“So it was you. What is your name?”
“Xie Shen.”
Xie Shen crouched beside me and, to my surprise, produced a pastry from inside his robe to feed the fish.
I stared at him.
A kindred spirit.
After a moment’s thought, I said, “I have never met Xie Jinyan, so I cannot say whether I like him. My impression of him is simply poor.”
“Why?” Xie Shen widened his eyes and, noticing I had run out of food, handed me another pastry.
I took it.
“I suppose I do not understand. What has he actually done to deserve such praise? Has he rendered some great service to the state? Has he done anything to benefit the people? If merely refusing a princess is enough to earn a reputation for integrity, then integrity comes very cheaply.”
No one had praised me for ending my engagement. They had only cursed me.
Hmph.
It was unfair.
So unfair that I had become jealous of the man everyone praised.
On reflection, even I knew that made no sense.
Xie Jinyan had done nothing wrong.
I was the one whose judgment had been clouded by the world’s prejudice.
Xie Shen had not expected that answer. He froze, then promptly agreed.
“I also think the praise is undeserved. He refused the princess only because he knew he could not be the good imperial son-in-law she deserved.”
“You know him?”
“Fairly well.”
I said nothing more.
He was much too sly.
Clearly he was Xie Jinyan’s friend, yet here he was coaxing me into speaking ill of Xie Jinyan.
His conscience was rotten through and through.
Hmph.
Scoundrel.