Chapter 3

“My lord, I truly love you. It is a pity we were fated to meet but not to be together.”

Covering my face, I ran off and happened to encounter Lingrou hiding behind the rockery.

Her eyes were red. My devotion must have moved her deeply.

When Shen Mingwei learned that the duke’s household was pressing the marriage, she agreed to help me find a way to refuse.

But the Duke of Ding’s family had five generations of distinguished service behind it. Ours could hardly stand against them.

During that time, Father looked at me with particular affection.

He did not say so, but I understood. He hoped I would marry into their household and preserve the connection for our family.

I was a dutiful daughter. How could I bear to put him in a difficult position?

The wedding was set for a month later.

Every day, I shut myself in my room to prepare my bridal gown.

In truth, my stitches were crooked. The seamstresses did all the work.

Lingrou suddenly volunteered to help. I was so moved that I nearly cried.

If she was willing to arrange my wedding, surely she had finally decided to grow close to her elder sister.

Since she was so enthusiastic, I entrusted everything to her. All I had to do was await the day.

Who knew she would be so enthusiastic that she would even board the bridal sedan for me?

On my wedding day, she drugged my tea, put on my gown, covered her face, and left with the bridal procession.

I slept until the next day. By the time I woke, the wedding night was over.

Seven days before the ceremony, Lingrou had begun visiting my courtyard frequently.

She asked about the size of my gown and which gate the bridal party would use. She even offered to look after my veil.

I answered every question honestly. I even made a point of complaining that the phoenix crown Lu Chengze had sent was too heavy. I did not want to wear it.

Her eyes shone, though she still advised me, “A girl has only one grand wedding in her life. You can’t be so willful.”

On the eve of the wedding, she brought a pot of calming tea and said that from now on we sisters would live in harmony.

I drank half a cup before her.

Once she left, I immediately vomited it into the spittoon. Then I told my maid to put out the lamps as usual and pretended to sleep soundly.

The next day, Lingrou entered wearing my bridal gown.

She called to me several times beside the bed. Once she was certain I did not respond, she took the phoenix crown and veil.

Eyes closed, I heard her tell her personal maid, “Once the wedding night is over, the duke’s family will have to accept it even if they discover the bride has changed.”

Only when the courtyard gate closed again did I open my eyes.

Shen Mingwei emerged from behind the screen and asked whether I really meant to let her board the sedan.

“If she knew nothing of his vile conduct, we could say wealth had blinded her.

“But she heard me refuse him in the garden. She knows he had an affair with my own mother, yet still she wants to fight me for him.

“She chose this road herself.”

Shen Mingwei said no more to stop me. She only sent a trusted matron secretly to the duke’s residence to make sure Lingrou actually survived the wedding night.

We could let her taste the bitter fruit she had sown. We could not let someone quietly silence her before the truth reached the Jiang household.

Shen Mingwei wanted to go there and demand justice, but I stopped her.

“My sister is so devoted to the young lord. As her elder sister, naturally I should help her get what she wants.”

She held my hand and sighed over the wrongs I had suffered.

After Lingrou left, I missed her more than I ever had.

So on the third day, when she was due to make her bridal homecoming visit, I waited at our gate from early morning.

Lu Chengze did not come.

Only Lingrou stepped out of the carriage.

She seemed to have missed me terribly too. Her eyes reddened the moment she saw me. She lunged forward and clamped both hands around my throat.

7.

“Jiang Lingyi, you vicious woman! You knew all along, didn’t you?”

Shen Mingwei had the servants pull her away.

Lingrou sprawled on the ground, sobbing that Lu Chengze was a madman.

In three days of marriage, she had scarcely been allowed out of bed. Whip marks and bruises from his grip covered her body.

She pushed up her sleeves. Blue and purple mottled her skin, and even her wrists were swollen.

“This was all supposed to happen to you!”

She pointed at me and shrieked hoarsely.

Hiding behind Shen Mingwei, I reminded her softly, “You knocked me unconscious and got into the bridal sedan yourself. How can you blame me?”

She tried to lunge again, but several serving women held her fast.

Shen Mingwei looked at her coldly.

“You boarded the sedan of your own accord and entered the bridal chamber yourself. Since you stole this marriage, you must bear its consequences.”

I nodded repeatedly.

Our new mistress really did speak perfect sense.

Lingrou suddenly turned on us.

“You knew what Lu Chengze was like and deliberately kept it from me!”

Shen Mingwei did not deny it.

The Duchess of Ding valued appearances above all else. She had carefully concealed her son’s abductions of common women and his forcing respectable girls to become concubines.

But no secret could be sealed forever. Anyone willing to investigate could find his victims.

Lingrou saw only his title and wealth. She had never wondered why, even after the scandal, his family insisted on honoring the engagement.

I had known long ago that he was no good.

After my dance at that earlier banquet, he had dared block my way in someone else’s residence and tried to drag me into an empty room.

Only by drawing my hairpin and wounding his hand had I escaped.

As Father was a court official, Lu Chengze could not simply abduct me. Instead, he had the duke’s household propose formally.

Once the scandal with Madam Liu spread, no young lady of suitable standing would marry him.

Unable to swallow the humiliation of rejection, he had forced the Jiang family to send him a daughter as promised.

Lingrou cried and begged Father to let her stay.

He agreed to her face. But when Lu Chengze himself brought men to collect her, Father still put her in the carriage.

He would not quarrel with the duke’s household over a daughter.

As Lingrou left, she glared at me as though she wanted to tear out a piece of my flesh with her teeth.

I paid no mind.

After a little more time, she would be completely free of that den of horrors.

Not long afterward, Lu Chengze died.

He suddenly dropped dead while in bed with Lingrou. The physician diagnosed sudden death during intercourse.

Father sent men to fetch his daughter, but they were a step too late.

The Duchess of Ding believed Lingrou had brought death upon her son. She had her face slashed and both legs broken, then threw her out of the gate.

The duke’s family had meant to lay all the blame for Lu Chengze’s death on her.

Shen Mingwei had already gathered statements from his former victims. She also bribed the coroner to examine him, confirming that years of debauchery had indeed left him with an underlying illness.

The medicine had merely hastened the outcome. To all appearances, he had still died of his own excesses.

Father took several petitions written in the victims’ blood to the duke’s residence.

He had not suddenly developed compassion for his daughter. He feared that a conviction for murdering her husband would implicate the family’s other children.

Afraid of further scandal, the duchess could only let him take Lingrou home.

As for her ruined face and broken legs, she said her daughter-in-law had gone mad and injured herself.

After Lingrou returned, she had moments of lucidity.

Whenever she was lucid, she seized Madam Liu and demanded to know why her mother had encouraged her to steal the marriage when she already knew Lu Chengze’s character.

Madam Liu had no answer.

At first she had meant only to destroy me, then use the duke’s household to advance her own daughter.

Who could have foreseen that, step by step, everything would fall upon Lingrou instead?

Lingrou could not withstand the shock. Her mind became unstable.

Whenever anyone approached, she clutched her head and screamed, repeating over and over, “Don’t touch me… Don’t touch me…”

Shen Mingwei settled her in Listening Rain Pavilion, in the care of her own mother.

Washing clothes in the snow had already damaged Madam Liu’s health. Now, dragging her sick body about to look after her distraught daughter, she soon wasted to skin and bones.

Father took pity on her and raised her from servant to concubine.

Shen Mingwei did not object. She even sent two more maids to help.

I was delighted.

At last, Madam Liu’s ordeal had worked. Father had seen her sincerity again.

Lingrou had suffered a little, but at least she was alive.

One happy event after another began to arrive in our family.

8.

Shen Mingwei safely delivered a boy.

Father named him Jiang Huaijin. At the one-month celebration, he held a grand feast and smiled so broadly all day that he could scarcely shut his mouth.

The front hall was packed with guests when a group of fierce-looking men burst in.

Their leader flung down a stack of debt notes.

“Your Third Young Master owes a hundred thousand taels in gambling debts. Lord Jiang, kindly pay in full today.”

Only then did everyone learn that, after Father punished him, Huaiyu had slipped away from the academy.

Afraid to come home, he had followed a crowd of wastrel young gentlemen into gambling houses. In a few months, he had lost more than half our family’s wealth.

Father assumed his official air and asked what would happen if he did not pay.

The man looked around at the assembled guests and smiled with exquisite courtesy.

“A debt must be repaid. If Lord Jiang cannot bear to part with the silver, we shall have to send the Third Young Master home in installments.

“An arm first or a leg first—you may choose.”

The celebration fell utterly silent.

However much Father hated his son’s behavior, he could not bear to let him die. He immediately ordered the accounts office to gather the ransom.

For the first time, the habitually gentle Shen Mingwei opposed him in public.

A hundred thousand taels would all but empty the family coffers. If they handed it all over, how would the dozens of people in the household live?

Besides, gambling debts were a bottomless pit. Saving him once did not mean there would be no second time.

Father began to hesitate.

That night, Madam Liu secretly visited his study. They talked behind closed doors for a long time.

The next day, despite Shen Mingwei’s objections, Father sold an estate, gathered the money, and brought Huaiyu home.

Holding the swaddled Huaijin, Shen Mingwei watched Father, Madam Liu, Huaiyu, and Lingrou gathered together. A cold hint of a smile touched her lips.

She suddenly asked, “Lingyi, which little brother do you like better?”

Without hesitation, I pointed at the baby in her arms.

“Huaijin, of course. He’s quiet and sweet. He’s never smashed up my room.”

Shen Mingwei smiled.

“Then share a little of that medicine of yours with me.”

I looked at her in dismay.

I had thought I had hidden it so well. She had discovered it after all.

9.

My nurse’s granddaughter had once been forced into the duke’s household by Lu Chengze.

She suffered every kind of torment there and died in less than three months.

My nurse’s husband and son went to the authorities to seek justice. On their way home, they encountered so-called mountain bandits. Both lost their lives.

On her deathbed, my nurse gripped my hand and begged me to win justice for her family.

I agreed.

They were far from the only family he had destroyed over the years.

I used my banquet dance to draw near him while secretly approaching several of his victims’ families.

One, a medicine merchant, gave me a bottle of a secret preparation.

Once a man was exposed to it, its poison would take effect during intercourse, with symptoms almost identical to sudden death from the act.

I mixed it into a box of lip rouge, intending to use it on my own wedding night.

Since Lingrou boarded the bridal sedan in my place, naturally she took that brand-new box of rouge in the dowry too.

She had always loved stealing my things.

This time, she finally stole something truly useful.

When Shen Mingwei asked for the medicine, I did not ask what she meant to do. I simply gave her half.

She did not act immediately.

First, she traced where Father’s ransom money had gone. Then she had Madam Liu and the gambling-house manager watched.

The hundred-thousand-tael debt had been no accident.

Knowing that Shen Mingwei now had a son, Madam Liu feared Huaiyu would lose his chance to inherit. She had secretly encouraged him to befriend gamblers.

She had originally meant for him to run up a manageable debt, then have Father pay it. That would give her an opportunity to transfer family assets into her son’s name ahead of time.

But the gamblers suddenly inflated the debt, and everything spiraled out of control.

Shen Mingwei simply turned their scheme to her own advantage.

Half the supposed debt collectors were guards she had arranged.

The banknotes and land Father handed over passed through the gambling house and ultimately returned to an estate registered in her name.

On the surface, the Jiang family had been stripped bare. In reality, its wealth had moved from Father and Madam Liu into Huaijin’s keeping.

She wanted my medicine because, as long as Father could still speak, sooner or later he would discover where the ransom had gone.

Besides, he knew Huaiyu was addicted to gambling, yet still chose to sacrifice the entire household’s livelihood to protect him.

Shen Mingwei did not intend to give him another choice.

That night, Father stayed at Listening Rain Pavilion.

Near dawn, a maid ran out in terror. Father had collapsed on Madam Liu’s bed, his mouth twisted and his eyes askew. He could no longer speak a complete sentence.