Let Lost Love Lie - Chapter 3

My older cousin, Xie Yan.

When I was little, Mother had brought me to the capital to seek shelter with the Xie family.

They had looked down on us. We were, after all, impoverished relatives come begging for help.

Then Mother died too. Dependent on the Xies’ charity, I was sometimes bullied by the servants in secret.

That was when Xie Yan appeared.

He was not the family’s only son, but he was the only legitimate son with authority in the household.

He protected me. After that, I never lacked charcoal in winter or crushed ice in summer. No one dared withhold my food. Even the muddleheaded Marquis Xie, who had always scorned me, treated me kindly out of regard for Xie Yan.

At first, I had been deeply grateful.

He was like a piece of driftwood appearing just as I was about to drown. Suddenly there was daylight, and the way ahead was dark no longer.

At least, that was what I had once believed.

Then I discovered that he had repeatedly ruined my marriage prospects.

He was intimate with me, yet never treated me as a younger sister. His need to control me bordered on sickness. I could not come home late or speak to other men… A young man who proposed to me was stuffed into a black sack the next day, dumped in the streets, and beaten.

After that, no one dared ask for my hand.

Yet he seemed never to have considered marrying me himself.

Or rather, marrying me as his proper wife.

The night I learned that his engagement to the chancellor’s daughter was about to be settled, I cried until morning.

What did he mean by refusing to let me marry while keeping me dangling without a name or place of my own?

Did he want me as a concubine? A mistress kept in another house?

Later, a secret imperial order took him out of the capital to investigate a case.

A fortnight after he left, I gritted my teeth at a flower-viewing banquet and dragged Shen Cizhou into the lake with me, all to escape Xie Yan.

I got the marriage I wanted.

And that was where the mistake began.

I came back to myself.

Xie Yan seemed to be waiting for an answer. His fingertips brushed the corner of my mouth, picking up a little lip rouge.

He watched me with a half-smile. The tiny red stain soon vanished as he rubbed his fingers together.

His voice was soft.

“You haven’t answered me, A-Ning.”

“Were you that desperate to marry?”

I dug my nails hard into my palm.

Xie Yan was never one to obey convention or worry what others thought. I had only managed to marry by keeping it a secret from him.

If he learned that I had schemed my way into this marriage, that I had tried everything I could to escape him—

He might very well tie me up, lock me away, and insist I had vanished on my way to offer incense.

It would be entirely in character.

My lashes trembled. Making up my mind, I met his eyes and asked hesitantly, “Who are you?”

The smile vanished from his lips.

His gaze chilled. Seeming to remember something, he leaned closer.

The lingering scent of wind and snow nearly swallowed me. Cold fingertips touched my forehead as he examined the wound from my fall.

“…You really don’t recognize me?”

I kept my head lowered and could not see his expression.

The injury was almost completely healed. Only a barely visible red mark remained.

I did not know whether I could fool Xie Yan with my pretended amnesia. Shen Cizhou and I had remained strangers through six months of marriage; deceiving him had been easy enough.

But Xie Yan was different.

We had met too early, spent too many years together. He knew what I looked like when I was angry, everything I liked and disliked. He knew all of me. He had even taught me to write with his own hands.

So he knew when I lied, too.

Ignoring my resistance, he traced the red mark on my temple inch by inch. I gripped the edge of the carriage window and squeezed my eyes shut, as though I were so frightened I might cry.

“My husband is Shen Cizhou, the Grand Tutor. My cousin is Xie Yan of the Criminal Justice Office.”

“If I return home safely, I’ll persuade them not to pursue what happened today.”

His fingers paused, then abruptly drew away.

I did not know how long passed. My heart pounded and my palms grew damp. Then I heard his scoff above me.

“…Ha.”

He lifted my chin, his gaze moving over my flustered face. His voice was soft enough to sound affectionate.

“Don’t look at me as though I’m a stranger, A-Ning.”

He brushed the reddened corner of my eye, seeming genuinely puzzled.

“Why be afraid? You remember my name, don’t you?”

“When you first learned to write, you pestered me to teach you the characters for ‘Xie Yan.’”

“And now you can simply forget?”

Under his icy gaze, I stood frozen, unable to make a sound.

His eyes were very black, with the suggestion of a smile. Being watched by him felt like being caught by a predator.

He lowered his lashes slightly and spoke with pointed meaning.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten.”

“What we have is hardly something any stray who comes along can intrude upon.”

He wiped the tears gathering at the corner of my eye, dampening his fingertips. Leaning close, he spoke as softly as a sigh.

“I raised you myself. Your clothes, the pigment for your brows… Is there anything about you I haven’t had a hand in?”

The wind and snow were growing stronger. He adjusted my cloak, looking down at my astonishment with pleasure in his eyes.

“You say you’ve forgotten. All right. I believe you.”

Xie Yan smiled faintly.

“But, A-Ning—”

“You had better hope I never discover you’re lying to me.”