Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The first time I met Second Aunt, she actually tried to make excuses for Madam Wang.

She said something about her poor health…

I simply looked at her with an especially sweet, obedient smile.

“…”

After a moment of silence, Second Aunt sighed. “It will be better once you’re married.”

Yes. It would be better once I was married.

Third Young Master Gu had said he would teach me to read and write. Even if he died, he would still arrange a way out for me.

After I married, I would no longer be a daughter of the Wang Family. I would have nothing more to do with them.

My dowry was not especially large, but to someone as ignorant of the world as I was, it already seemed like a great deal.

Second Aunt looked over the dowry list and fell silent again.

“Second Aunt, is something wrong?”

“Your mother…”

I could not read, so I could not understand the list.

“You will find out sooner or later, so I won’t hide it from you. Aside from the betrothal gifts from the Gu Family, which they’re letting you take back with you, everything they prepared for you is careless and cheap.”

“It doesn’t matter. Madam Wang said that once I marry, she won’t have anything more to do with me. No one wants to throw a meat bun to a dog and never get it back.”

“…”

Back then, she had only sent me far away instead of strangling me to death. For that alone, I was already thanking the heavens.

From now on, we would be strangers. What was the point of harboring more resentment?

The maidservants prepared to accompany me as part of my dowry had been bought from outside. They had not been properly trained, let alone taught any rules.

Second Aunt’s face darkened. “Yuwan, Second Aunt will give you a set of dowry servants.”

“Second Aunt, I don’t have any estates or shops that need managing, and I don’t have much silver in hand either. I can’t afford to support too many people. As for those women, Madam Wang hasn’t given me their indenture contracts. After I marry into the Gu Family, I will send them back.

“Second Aunt, the only one I cannot bear to part with is Siyue. If you can help me get her indenture contract, I will remember your great kindness forever…”

Second Aunt helped me obtain Siyue’s indenture contract, as well as those of the four maidservants and two older serving women.

On the day I married, I received very few bridal gifts. My sisters all kept their distance from me, and Madam Wang did not give me any estates, shops, or silver to tuck into the bottom of my wedding trunks.

Master Wang and the two young masters of the Wang Family looked at me with cold indifference.

I did not call out to them either.

Only Second Aunt secretly gave me a banknote worth one thousand taels and told me to keep it safe for emergencies.

When I left for my wedding, there was no elder brother to carry me out the door.

Gu Chengyan did come to fetch the bride himself, but his legs were in poor condition, so he could not carry me either.

The parts where I was supposed to receive my father’s and mother’s instructions were omitted.

When I bowed farewell to my parents, they gave me a few stiff, perfunctory words, then told me to go be married.

It was the wedding matron who carried me. When we reached the main gate, someone shouted from outside.

It was my elder brother’s voice.

I wanted to lift my veil and see whether he had come alone, or whether Nanny had come too.

The wedding matron pressed down on my hand and stuffed me into the bridal sedan.

Outside, amid the crackle of firecrackers and the blare of suona horns, my elder brother shouted two more times.

It was the secret signal between us.

For a moment, I almost could not hold back my tears.

“…”

I had wanted to answer him twice as well, but then I remembered I was the bride. I could not make myself a laughingstock.

Though, in truth, I was already a laughingstock.

I did not care if Wang Yuwan had been a joke, because that joke was not of my own making. I had done nothing wrong. It was the Wang Family who were petty and narrow-minded. The fault was theirs.

But once I stepped out of the Wang Family’s gates, I would be a daughter-in-law of the Gu Family. I could not bring shame upon Gu Chengyan.

The bridal sedan swayed all the way to the Gu Mansion, where the firecrackers and suona horns never stopped.

The wedding matron helped me down from the sedan. I gripped the red silk tightly and followed along, stepping over the fire basin, then moving forward one step at a time behind the large feet ahead of me.

Then came the wedding ceremony.

“First bow, to Heaven and Earth-

“Second bow, to the honored elders-

“Husband and wife bow to each other-

“The rites are complete. Send them to the bridal chamber.”

Gu Chengyan led me a few steps by the hand, then sat down in his wheeled sedan chair.

I could hear his pained, labored breathing.

Between Third Young Master, husband, and Third Master, I chose Third Master.

“Third Master, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

What I had not expected even more was that he had prepared a carried chair for me as well, with four older serving women to bear me to the bridal chamber.

Later, I asked him why he had arranged that.

He said, “If I get to be lazy and sit in a wheeled chair, what right do I have to make you suffer and walk there?”

He was not being lazy. He was in pain.

But even so, he had still married me into the Gu Family with full honor and splendor.