Only After Clear Skies Do I Know Summer Has Deepened - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I sat alone in the study for hours, stiff and dazed.

Only when a servant came to announce that Sheng Rongchuan had returned did I snap awake as if from a dream, hurriedly putting the divorce agreement back where it had been.

After dinner, Sheng Rongchuan went to the study as usual to handle official business.

I sat at the small desk a step or so away from him, reviewing the lessons he had assigned me.

The candlelight was warm and gentle. Sheng Rongchuan’s brows and eyes were soft, just as they had been when we first met.

But there had been nothing beautiful about the way he and I met.

My birth father, Yang Ping, was the adopted son of Liu Zhong, the Nine-Thousand-Year-Old.

His Majesty was muddleheaded, and all affairs of court were controlled by the Eunuch Faction.

As for my father, he was responsible for searching out pretty young girls, training them, then sending them into the back courtyards of the powerful.

On the fifteenth day of the third month, the results of the spring imperial examinations were posted.

Father held a banquet at home.

I had only taken a sip of wine before I lost consciousness.

When I woke, my clothes were in disarray, and a strange man was pinning me beneath him.

With all my strength, I smashed a vase over his head and knocked him out. Then I ran out and ran into Sheng Rongchuan.

When my legal mother arrived with a great crowd to catch the adulterers, what she saw was me, disheveled, clutching Sheng Rongchuan’s sleeve.

An old matron at my legal mother’s side slapped me across the face and cursed me for having no shame.

“A woman like you, so unchaste and wanton, ought to be strangled with a length of white silk, lest you disgrace the Yang family’s good name.”

Sheng Rongchuan, who had been trying to argue on reason and principle, was defeated the moment he saw that.

He accepted responsibility for that muddled scandal.

Sheng Rongchuan was unwilling to sink into the mire with the Eunuch Faction.

But the upright civil officials could not tolerate a Sheng Rongchuan who had married me, either.

Caught between the two sides’ struggle, he was posted out of the capital.

His brilliant future was ruined in an instant.

“Sigh.”

Sheng Rongchuan gave a helpless sigh and rose, walking over to me.

“I haven’t heard you turn a page in half an hour. Is the work I assigned today too difficult?”

He took the wolf-hair brush from my hand, leaned a little closer, and carefully made notes for me.

The scent of ink mingled with the faint, elegant fragrance of wild ginger on him, lingering at the tip of my nose.

My eyes stung.

If not for me, Sheng Rongchuan would not have wasted three years before barely managing to return to the capital.

Sheng Rongchuan’s brows drew together. At last, he noticed something was wrong with me.

“Has someone been wagging their tongue in front of you again?”

Half a month ago, Liu Zhong, the Nine-Thousand-Year-Old, was sentenced to death for treason, and the entire Liu faction was purged.

My father was sentenced to confiscation of property and exile, and all the women of his household were sent to the Music and Drama Bureau as slaves.

According to our dynasty’s laws, disaster did not extend to daughters who had already married out.

But when the nest was overturned, how could any egg remain whole?

My married sisters still died of illness in their husbands’ homes, each for one reason or another.

Yet Sheng Rongchuan treated me as he always had.

He protected me very well. The storms outside had never been allowed to reach me.

Compared with those sisters who had “died of illness,” a few rumors and whispers from outsiders truly amounted to nothing.

I shook my head and forced a smile under his worried gaze.

“My lord, I want a divorce.”

Sheng Rongchuan froze. The tip of his brush left a blot of ink on the page.

“Why?”

“Have I treated you poorly?”

“No.”

“Then why do you want a divorce?”

I stood and gave him a slight bow.

“I am jealous and possessive. I never accepted the concubine your superior gifted you.”

“And?”

“And… and in three years of marriage, I have not borne you even a son or daughter. I have violated one of the seven grounds for divorce.”

Sheng Rongchuan’s anger turned into laughter. “That’s all?”

I stared at the tips of my shoes, not daring to meet Sheng Rongchuan’s eyes.

He said with a faint scoff, “Your husband draws a meager salary. This household cannot afford to keep idle people. It is only Juexia who has been wronged, forced to carry the name of a jealous wife.”

“As for children…” He set down the brush and pondered for a moment.

“If I work harder a few more times, we will have them sooner or later.”

With that, he took my hand and led me toward the couch.

I pressed my hand against his chest, my cheeks burning, my words stumbling. “My lord, about the divorce…”

“Juexia.”

I lifted my eyes and met his gaze.

Sheng Rongchuan’s black hair had come loose, a few strands falling against my face.

They tickled.

He held down my restless hand. “Even at a time like this, you still won’t say what I want to hear?”

The man before me swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Turbulent waves surged in his eyes before finally settling back into calm.

“Forget it!”

“I am the useless one. I still left you with the strength to think about such irrelevant things.”

The courtyard was silent. At some point, wind and rain had begun to rise.

The wind came in scattered gusts, the rain in sudden torrents, knocking blossoms all over the ground.

This storm was fiercer than any before.