A Second Spring Behind Silken Doors - Chapter 2

Outside the marquis’s residence, I met Xu Yao at the mouth of the lane. He was holding a wooden sword, his young face full of anger.

He rolled his eyes at me. “Move!”

He brandished the sword, making it clear that if I didn’t, he would use it.

He had always been hotheaded and overbearing.

In my previous life, I had spent endless effort softening his temper. As the heir to an established house, I thought, he would go further and fare better in these peaceful, prosperous times with tact than with an aggressive edge.

Over ten years, he learned everything I taught him. Learned it very well, in fact.

He had certainly put those lessons to good use on me.

I bent down to look at him and raised my brows.

“Yao, your father and mother are fighting.”

Xu Yao frowned at me.

“You’re getting a new mother. Do you know who? Lady Huyang!” I put on an envious expression. “She’s so noble. I wish I could have a mother as noble as that. What a lucky boy you are.”

Xu Yao stared at me in shock. “I have a mother! You’re talking rubbish. Go away!”

He ran back inside.

I wiped my hands, planted them on my hips, and looked up at the gilded sign above the gates of the Xuanping residence. What a familiar entrance. Everything from my previous life felt like a dream.

How good it was to have another chance.

As I turned, I noticed a man and a woman standing at the gates across the way. The woman was striking, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five. The man was slender and refined, with an air of distinction, and looked to be in his early twenties.

They were looking at me too, their expressions unreadable.

I had no idea how long they’d been there, or whether they’d heard what I said to Xu Yao.

I hurriedly curtsied and climbed into my carriage.

My heart was thumping. The woman was Lady Huyang, whom I’d just been talking about. A widow of many years, she did much as she pleased. The young man beside her, though, I had never seen before.

Surely she hadn’t heard me using her name to stir things up?

Still, I hadn’t invented anything. Her affair with Xu Hanzhi was real.

Jiang Zhi caused such a commotion that Father and his wife went to the marquis’s residence that very night. Apparently, she’d scratched Xu Hanzhi’s face as well.

Xu Hanzhi smashed a teacup and spent the night at his government office.

Then Jiang Zhi fell quiet again. I was getting impatient. I had Mother send an elderly servant out to visit Concubine Zhou at the neighboring Baoding residence. While she was there, the servant deliberately let slip all sorts of things.

Two days later, one of Lady Huyang‘s male favorites suddenly died in her residence.

His elder brother lodged a complaint with the prefectural authorities, saying the dead man was no ordinary commoner, but a scholar who held an examination qualification. The matter reached the emperor. Lady Huyang lost part of her revenue fief, and the empress confined her to her residence for a hundred days in the name of prayer, ordering her to copy Buddhist scriptures a hundred times.

To my surprise, Lady Huyang sent me a blank scripture-copying book.

I didn’t dare think too hard about what she meant. I pretended I hadn’t received it.

“Jiang Zhi’s gone mad trying to bring Lady Huyang down. She actually dared to kill someone!” Mother’s voice shook. “If I’d known she would kill that favorite, I would never have agreed to let you send the servant to pass on the news.”

“Mother, mind my ear.” I was lying with my head in her lap while she cleaned my ears.

“I know how careful to be.” She returned her attention to it, her movements delicate again.

I smiled with my eyes half closed. “It’s no loss, that man’s death. He had two lives on his hands. Otherwise, why would he hide in her residence as a favorite instead of pursuing an official career through the examinations?”

Mother paused. “How do you know everything?”

I knew because, in my previous life, that licentiate turned favorite had died too. But Lady Huyang had kept the affair quiet then.

“My Shu really seems to have grown up,” Mother sighed.

I held back my tears. I hadn’t grown up in two or three days. It had taken thirty-three years of foolishness and failure.

“Then I won’t grow up. I’ll stay with you forever and just be your daughter.”

“That won’t do. You’ll marry when it’s time. I still want the pleasure of having grandchildren.”

I hugged her around the waist and laughed. “Then I’ll choose my husband carefully and have lots of children, so you can enjoy them.”

In my previous life, I’d had no children. I had taken more medicine than I could remember, yet never conceived a son or daughter before I died.

Thinking back now, Jiang Zhi might well have drugged me. Otherwise, why had I been unable to conceive?

Through a roundabout route, I let Xu Hanzhi hear about the favorite’s death.

He had to know. Otherwise, how would a rift open between husband and wife?

Just as I hoped, Xu Hanzhi stormed home. He even drew his sword and pointed it at Jiang Zhi.

“You have a nerve! Over some petty jealousy between women, you dared not only to kill a man but to bring the whole affair before His Majesty!

“You used the emperor. You deceived him! Do you have any idea what crime that is, you stupid woman?”

The emperor was suspicious by nature. Xu Hanzhi understood very well what it meant for him to learn of this.

That day, the man who had always indulged Jiang Zhi not only pointed a sword at her, but slapped her as well.

They had been married for ten years, their relationship always good. This was the first time he’d struck her.

Jiang Zhi spat blood on the spot.

The bond between them had broken.

But this was only the beginning.

At court the next morning, the emperor remarked to Xu Hanzhi, neither harshly nor lightly, “I hear you’ve been busy with domestic affairs of late, Minister Xu. Shall I send a few people home with you to help you think things through?”

Xu Hanzhi went home and fell ill.

Our whole family went to visit him, only to be stopped outside his study. Even Jiang Zhi, supported by a maid, was left standing at the door.

“His Lordship says he is your junior and cannot accept the honor of a special visit from Master and Madam Jiang. Please go home, all of you,” his servant said, barring the way.

Humiliated, Father pointed at Jiang Zhi. “You stupid woman. Sooner or later you’ll cost us all our heads.”

He swept away.

His wife, her face white, sent us after him and stayed behind at the residence.

I supposed she meant to advise Jiang Zhi.