Chapter 1

My husband pleaded on behalf of a condemned official and was banished to Lingnan by imperial decree for three years.
When he returned to the capital, he brought the man's daughter with him.
He also brought their two children—a boy and a girl.
I became the capital's newest laughingstock.
Everyone praised his unwavering devotion.

I said only one thing: I wanted a divorce.
Later, he nearly went mad with regret. But why should their great love require me to serve as its backdrop?

1.

On the day Gu Huaizhang returned to the capital, the Gu family held his welcome feast in the main hall.
The residence was hung with lanterns and festive decorations. Yet in the West Courtyard, where I lived, there was not even a pot of hot tea.
On the other side of the courtyard wall, several older servants gossiped as they swept. The eldest young master had brought home a concubine, they said, and children too. Before long, his lawful wife would have to make way.
I did not bother arguing with them. I changed my clothes and went to the main hall.

The room was full.
Old Madam Gu held a two-year-old boy, smiling until her eyes were little more than slits.
My mother-in-law cradled a girl of six months. Shen Xuerong sat beside Gu Huaizhang in costly silks, her face still lightly browned by the Lingnan sun.
Gu Huaizhang had grown thinner and darker. Lingnan had left weariness in his face.
But when he looked at Shen Xuerong, he was just as he had been three years ago, longing to shield her from every hardship in the world.

Shen Xuerong and I had once studied alongside the princess as her companions. I knew perfectly well what she did best.
She rose first and bowed to me.

“Sister Lu, you've worked so hard looking after Huaizhang's family all these years.”

With a single sentence, she cast herself as the wife who had shared his hardships, and me as an outsider left to mind the house.
I laid my chopsticks across my bowl.

“I wouldn't presume to accept that title. Are you a concubine of the Gu family now, or a wife Gu Huaizhang married privately in Lingnan?”

Her smile froze. She immediately turned to Gu Huaizhang.
As expected, he answered for her.

“Xuerong will not be a concubine. Her father's case has been reopened. The court will soon clear the Shen family's name.”

“And?”

“I will make her my coequal wife. She will have everything a lawful wife is entitled to.”

I laughed. “This dynasty recognizes wives and concubines. There is no official provision for two lawful wives. If you cast off your wife and marry again, that is bigamy; if you enter her in the Gu family register, she is a concubine. You've only just returned from Lingnan, Lord Gu. Surely you're not eager for another lawsuit.”

Minister Gu's expression darkened. Plainly, he disliked having the law brought to the dinner table.
Gu Huaizhang pressed his lips together.

“She has suffered for three years. I will not let her suffer the indignity of an inferior status as well.”

“Then divorce me. That will leave the place free for her.”

He clearly had not expected so ready an answer. His throat moved. A long silence passed before he spoke.

“This… Marriage is a serious matter. How can you end it just like that?”

I looked at him and almost laughed.
He was the one who would not treat me as his wife. Now he was also the one who would not let me leave.
He had never wanted me. He wanted a wife in name who would not stand in the way of his devotion to someone else, and who could look after his family for him.

Shen Xuerong hurried to soothe me.

“Sister Lu, please don't be angry on my account. The children are still little. In time, they'll respect you and call you Mother.”

“They have a mother. And I'm not dead. Why should they go collecting another one?”

My mother-in-law could bear no more. She set her teacup down hard.

“Mingqi, Huaizhang has only just come home. Must you make it impossible for the family to eat?”

“I only want a straight answer. What position do you intend Shen Xuerong to hold?”

“She shared Huaizhang's hardships and bore the Gu family a son and a daughter. Naturally, we cannot treat her poorly.”

“I asked about her status.”

My mother-in-law went livid.

“You… What nonsense! We're a family living together. Who else would badger people over every word the way you do?”

Old Madam Gu hugged the boy closer.

“You've been married into this family for three years without a child. Huaizhang is willing to have the boy registered as your son. That's already more than you deserve. And you dare ask for a divorce?”

“He left for Lingnan two months after our wedding. He hasn't entered my room in three years.”

I glanced around the room and made myself very clear.

“If I had produced a child, would the Gu family have dared acknowledge that bastard?”

Silence fell.
My mother-in-law wanted to scold me but could find nothing to say.
A flicker of delight crossed Shen Xuerong's eyes. Her words, however, rushed to Gu Huaizhang's defense.

“Sister Lu, you know how much Huaizhang needs a good reputation just now. If you force him to divorce you, people will call him heartless. It will harm his career…”

Then she suddenly sank to her knees.

“It's all my fault. If you're angry, take it out on me. The children are innocent, and Huaizhang cannot afford to lose his post again. Please, give my children and me a chance to live.”

Tears streamed down her face. At once, the Gu family looked at me differently.
In their eyes, she had borne a married man's children because she had no other way to survive. By refusing to make room for her, I was the one driving people to desperation.

I bent to look at her.

“When you two were carrying on behind my back, did you ever consider that I had a reputation too? Now you've brought your children home, you expect me to protect yours?”

“Enough!” my mother-in-law snapped. “If you won't eat, get back to your courtyard. Don't stand here offending everyone's eyes.”

I rose, but I did not return to the West Courtyard.
The Gu family's reunion dinner would be just as they wanted it without me.
And it was time I went to the Lu residence to ask Mother whether she would leave with me.

2.

I went straight from the Gu residence to my parents' home.
Divorce was not an idea that had occurred to me today.
As soon as I heard that Gu Huaizhang and Shen Xuerong had children in Lingnan, I bought a three-room house in the south of the city and began taking stock of all my shops and dowry assets.

Mother had spent over twenty years trapped in the Lu family's inner courtyards. Her suffering had long since shown me the answer.
I did not want to fight another woman for a husband. Nor did I want a future child of mine to grow up as I had, yearning for a scrap of paternal affection that would never be theirs.

I had barely passed through the inner gate when my father's favorite concubine, Cheng Wanniang, came to meet me, fluttering a round fan.
She and Father had been childhood sweethearts.
To remain in the capital as an official, Father had married my maternal grandfather's only daughter. Once his position was secure, he brought Cheng Wanniang into the household as a concubine of respectable birth.
Having borne him a son and two daughters, she had spent years lording it over Mother.

“What brings our eldest young lady home today?”

She covered her mouth with her fan and laughed.

“I hear your husband brought his beloved back from Lingnan. Two children as well! Tsk, tsk. Poor thing. What use is putting on airs as a lawful wife's daughter when your husband won't even set foot in your room?”

I pushed her fan down.

“You certainly have a gift for coaxing men, Concubine Cheng. Nearly twenty years, and you can still persuade my father to support you and your children on his wife's dowry. No one else could hope to be quite so shameless.”

Her smile vanished.

“You… How dare you!”

“Aren't you arranging a marriage for Lu Zhao? You'd better pray he manages to fool some girl into supporting your whole family with her dowry.”

I walked past her toward Mother's courtyard.
Behind me, Cheng Wanniang cursed. Sooner or later, she said, my husband would cast me out. I would be a discarded wife, back at the Lu residence begging for food.
I did not turn.
What pleased her most was that Mother could not leave, and that I would have to follow in Mother's footsteps.

Mother sat beneath the veranda, sorting a basket of embroidery thread. When she saw me, she smiled and told a maid to bring more tea.
I sat close beside her. The resolve I had braced myself with finally relaxed.

“Mother, Shen Xuerong came back with him. And their two children.”

The thread in her hand fell into her lap.

“Two children?”

“One about two years old. The other only six months.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“What do you mean to do?”

“Divorce him.”

Saying it to her made me more nervous than I had been at the Gu family's table.

Mother did not try to dissuade me. She only asked, “Have you thought it through?”

“I have. I don't want to waste my life shut away in the back of a house for a man who doesn't love me. And I certainly don't want to have a child who has to beg for a little favoritism from its father.”

Mother turned toward the peonies in the courtyard. For a long time, she said nothing.
I knew she was thinking of my little brother, who had died so young.

Lu Zhao had been five when he pushed my three-year-old brother into the pond.
Cheng Wanniang insisted it was an accident. Father protected her, and in the end, there was not even a punishment.
After my brother died, Mother never truly smiled again.

Gu Huaizhang and I had been betrothed since childhood.
Later, he fell for Shen Xuerong and became determined to break off our engagement.
But the man Shen Xuerong wanted to marry was Prince Ning.
Although Prince Ning was already betrothed to the Duke of Anguo's legitimate daughter, Shen Xuerong continued to meet him in secret. She provoked the duke's household into taking action, and the Shen family became embroiled in an examination fraud case.
In the end, the duke's daughter became Princess Consort Ning, while the Shens were sentenced to exile in Lingnan. At least until then, Shen Xuerong had still believed she had a chance to snatch that position for herself.

Gu Huaizhang, quite out of his depth, went everywhere protesting the Shen family's innocence.
Minister Gu feared his son would drag the whole family down with him. He hurried the Gu and Lu families into holding our wedding, hoping our connection by marriage and my grandfather's influence would shield his son from disaster.

I needed that marriage too, as a way out of the Lu household.
Cheng Wanniang had begun coveting Mother's dowry. She had even tampered with a bowl of soup meant for her.
Marrying into the Gu family was the only way open to me then.

Yet Gu Huaizhang decided I was the one who had torn him and Shen Xuerong apart.
For the two months after our wedding, he never once entered my courtyard. Then his pleas on behalf of the Shens earned him a demotion to Lingnan.

Looking back, going to Lingnan may not have been entirely a punishment.
The person he wanted to be with happened to be there.

When Mother heard the whole story, there was no surprise in her eyes, only a profound weariness.
She took my hand. Her palm was cool.

“Give me a night to think.”

I nodded.
I was not afraid she would tell me to endure it. I was afraid she would feel she had no right to tell me to leave.

3.

Mother did not need a whole night.
Before dusk had quite fallen, she said, “If you've made up your mind, then I'll stand by you.”

My nose stung. I leaned against her shoulder.

“After the divorce, I'm not moving back to the Lu residence. I've bought a house in the south of the city. Will you come and live there with me?”

Mother stared at me.

“You want to take me with you?”

“If you don't come, I'll have escaped the Gu household only to spend every day worrying about you in the Lu household.”

At last, a little light returned to her eyes. Her answer was soft, but it came at once.

“Yes.”