Marrying a Warrior - Chapter 2

Once the guests dispersed, the room fell quiet.

I sat on the bed and watched Zhao Mo arrange bedding on the floor. Then he went to blow out the two dragon-and-phoenix wedding candles.

By custom, they should burn all night, a wish for the couple to remain devoted until old age.

“Why put them out?”

“My face will frighten you.”

I suddenly remembered that, at our first meeting, the scar on Zhao Mo’s face had made me cry.

He did not live up to his name. Mo meant ink, but he knew little of literature.

He could make a sword dance in a hundred and eighty different ways, yet could not complete a simple couplet that any schoolboy could answer.

He was fierce-looking and powerfully built, a scar crossing the bridge of his nose. Nothing like the powdered young men the capital’s ladies favored.

Unlearned and rough in appearance, he only made himself a laughingstock at banquets. That was why I had always disliked him.

I had even joined Li Muzhi and the others in writing verses mocking his looks, comparing him to Zhong Kui.

“I’m not afraid,” I said, then ventured, “Aren’t you going to lift my veil? It is rather stuffy.”

The slight trembling of his hands betrayed his nerves.

When he lifted it, I looked closely at Zhao Mo’s face for the first time.

His features were sharp, his eyes like a hawk’s, enough to chill a person with one glance.

His groom’s robes outlined broad shoulders and a narrow waist, like a leopard poised to spring. Beside him, the men at the capital’s poetry gatherings seemed affected little clowns.

Some were not even as tall as the long saber standing beside his bed.

Strange. How had I ever thought him ugly?

“Don’t look… It isn’t pleasant.”

He instinctively covered his scar.

“Does it… still hurt?” I tilted my face up carefully. “How did you get it?”

“I don’t remember.”

Knowing I disliked him, Zhao Mo made his bed on the floor.

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t touch you.”

In the middle of the night, I felt my way beneath his quilt.

He went rigid, his back tense, not daring to move.

“Jiang Yu, don’t tempt me. I am a man too.”

I put an arm around his waist and whispered:

“We still have to hand over the bridal cloth…”

I did not want to be branded unchaste before marriage, nor did I want Zhao Mo mocked as a cuckold.

His whole body tightened, but he did not dare lower his guard.

“Jiang Yu, why are you being so kind to me today?”

Of course.

Three days earlier, I had invited him to a plum-blossom banquet. Thinking I had changed my mind, he had come eagerly.

Instead, I had joined the others in composing poems to ridicule his appearance.

Unversed in poetry, he thought I was praising him.

Everyone burst into laughter. He was left helplessly embarrassed.

To him, every kindness I offered concealed a knife.

Guilt rose in me.

As I pressed close, the dagger hidden against my chest slipped out.

Zhao Mo froze. Bitterness filled his eyes.

“So… you were kind today because you wanted to kill me?”

No. That wasn’t—

He pushed me away coldly.

“I will deal with the bridal cloth. Your Highness need not trouble herself.”

I had nightmares all night.

Dreams of Li Muzhi.

When I was five, my father disappeared while hunting. The abbot of Shanyin Temple took me in and raised me until I was ten.

That year, Li Muzhi and his father came to the temple to establish a memorial tablet for the late Consort Xian.

In the rear courtyard, I overheard his father speaking.

Consort Xian had been Li Muzhi’s elder sister.

Apparently she had offended Noble Consort Jia upon the latter’s return to the palace. The emperor cast her aside and ordered her death with poisoned wine.

Lady Li had died giving birth to Li Muzhi. His father remained a widower for many years and never remarried.

Consort Xian had raised her brother as both sister and mother.

Lord Li was overcome with grief, repeatedly shedding tears as he spoke.

Yet Li Muzhi seemed to feel little attachment to that wrongfully dead sister.

Or perhaps he was cold by nature.

He merely knelt on a prayer cushion, staring for a long time at a sprig of plum blossom on the altar.

Hidden behind the bamboo, I thought his figure more graceful than the stalks.

After watching him for half the day, my legs grew sore. When I rose, I stepped on a dead branch beneath the snow.

Li Muzhi turned.

I stared.

Like slender bamboo. Like a bright moon. Like a branch of jade.

Such a gentleman.

When Lord Li saw my face, he too froze.

“So alike… So very alike…”

I wondered whom he meant.

His voice caught, but Li Muzhi smiled faintly.

“So like my late sister.”

The Li family, the household of the Duke of Zhong, brought me to the capital and adopted me as their daughter.

My food, clothing, and daily arrangements all matched what Consort Xian had enjoyed before entering the palace.

She had loved plum blossoms. They appeared on my jewelry and even my bed curtains.

She had been a gifted poet, so Li Muzhi personally taught me to read and compose verse.

She had strictly observed womanly virtue, so he taught me propriety and the moral order, never to cross a boundary.

I understood that the family had placed their longing for Consort Xian upon me.

I willingly tried to imitate her to bring them comfort.

Six years passed. Even Nanny Feng, an old servant of the household, sighed:

“That snowy day, when Second Miss stood in the corridor holding plum blossoms, she was the very image of our First Miss.”

There was only one way in which I differed from Consort Xian.

I had developed other feelings for Li Muzhi.

I hid scraps bearing his handwriting between the pages of the thick Four Books for Women on my shelf.

Those feelings could never see the light.