Chapter 3

She saw me kneeling before Qinghe, weeping, and gave a loud snort through her nose.

“Second Miss, if you knew this day would come, why did you do it in the first place?”

“If you had been content to live as a maid, your mother would still be alive.”

Becoming the Lu family’s Second Miss

was the first time I had risked my life to fight for something of my own.

When I was seven, Grandmother died.

Out of regard for their former sisterly friendship, the Empress Dowager came to pay her respects in person, accompanied by a host of noble ladies.

As the coffin was being carried out of the residence, I rushed from the crowd in front of them all and struck my head against it.

“Grandmother was as kind to Yao’er as a mountain is great!”

“Yao’er is willing to follow Grandmother to the underworld and keep serving you!”

Amid the cries of alarm throughout the courtyard, the Empress Dowager herself helped me to my feet.

She pressed a handkerchief to my bleeding forehead,

and her own eyes reddened.

“You are a daughter of the Lu family?”

“What a dutiful child.”

I turned toward Father and deliberately put on a confused look.

“Father, this Grandmother looks just like the one who loved Yao’er.”

Father’s face looked worse than the face of the woman in the coffin.

I took an unfinished Buddhist scripture from inside my robe and wiped my eyes as I cried.

“Yao’er embroidered this for Grandmother. It’s a shame I didn’t finish it in time.”

Most of the Buddhist scriptures bearing Lu Yunchu’s name had been embroidered by my hands. A few had even been sent into the palace.

Every time, Grandmother would proudly show them off to her guests.

“This is a token of our Yao’er’s devotion.”

But back then, Yao’er was not my name. It was Lu Yunchu’s childhood name.

I was just a nameless little maid beside Qinghe.

The Empress Dowager took the scripture and examined it carefully, nodding again and again.

“This embroidery is indeed just like the ones from before.”

Father gave Madam Lu a discreet shove. She had no choice but to grit her teeth and pull me into her arms.

She gripped the back of my neck and pressed my face against her chest so I could not speak again.

“This is my youngest daughter. She was born prematurely and has always been frail, so we have raised her in the inner quarters. She has never met outsiders.”

“She doesn’t understand proper etiquette. I hope she hasn’t alarmed Your Majesty.”

After Grandmother was buried, Madam Lu immediately ordered someone to gag me and shouted that I should be beaten to death.

I met her gaze without retreating a single step.

“Mother wants to kill Yao’er?”

“But Her Majesty just said that Yao’er should enter the palace on the first and fifteenth of every month to keep her company.”

“Tomorrow happens to be the first.”

The Lu family had always kept close ties with the imperial house.

I knew the Empress Dowager valued filial piety above all else. I also knew that the Emperor was not her biological son.

From day after day of backbreaking work, I had pieced these secrets together from the servants’ gossip.

The Empress and the Empress Dowager were at odds, while the Empress’s maternal family had long been on friendly terms with Madam Lu’s family.

Before Grandmother died, she had once quietly cautioned Father.

“His Majesty’s birth mother, Noble Consort, may have been involved in the assassination of the former Crown Prince’s household. There is no solid proof, and the Noble Consort has passed away.”

“But the suspicion still festers in the Empress Dowager’s heart…”

“From now on, be a loyal subject to His Majesty. I’ll use these old bones of mine to maintain our ties with the Empress Dowager.”

The Emperor had only recently ascended the throne, and his position was not yet secure. A group of old ministers with military power still served under the Empress Dowager.

With Grandmother gone, Father urgently needed someone else who could keep the Lu family close to her.

I copied Lu Yunchu’s manner and, for the first time, bowed to them with proper decorum.

“If Father and Mother are willing to let the whole Lu family stand together as one,”

“Yao’er will bring honor to the Lu family, too.”

That day, I gained a name and a place in the family, as well as new clothes, a gold hairpin, and a jade bracelet.

I also got a bottle of wound medicine.

The day before, Qinghe had kept vigil at Grandmother’s tomb, kneeling there all night.

The next day, she walked a little more slowly.

Madam Lu used it as an excuse to call her lazy and had her beaten with twenty strokes of the rod.

Her wounds soon festered. Qinghe burned with fever and drifted in and out of consciousness, but no one would summon a physician.

I had risked everything to win this time because I wanted her to live.

But when she woke, she coldly shoved me out the door.

“I don’t have a daughter as reckless as you!”

“Now that you’ve climbed to a lofty branch, why come back to see a lowly maid like me?”

I moved into the inner quarters, with only a wall between us from then on.

When I heard her muffled sobs on the other side, all I could do was kneel and bow respectfully in her direction.

Back then, I truly believed that one day I would take her away and give her a better life.

But today, Lu Yunchu left through the main gate in a splendid wedding procession,

while Qinghe was wrapped in a straw mat and carried out through the side gate used for hauling away dirty water.

There was no dignified funeral. Her death was merely considered bad luck on her master’s wedding day.

Granny Qian would not let me see her off. She broke each of my fingers as they clung to the doorframe.

“How can Second Miss weep over a servant?”