The Night Before the Wedding, My Fiance Asked Me to Comfort His White Moonlight - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Shen Jiaojiao lived in Lizhao Courtyard, on the western side of Lu Mansion.

The courtyard was lined with pear trees.

But on a late autumn night, where could the scent of pear blossoms possibly be coming from?

When I entered, she was sitting on the daybed, a thin pale-blue outer robe draped over her shoulders.

The bowl of medicine sat on the small table, long since gone cold.

When she saw me, she froze at first, then lowered her eyes.

“Miss Song.”

Her voice was very soft.

“You came after all.”

It did not sound like surprise. It sounded as if she had been waiting for me for a very long time.

I had all the maids withdraw.

Once the door closed, I placed the letter on the table.

“You wrote this?”

Shen Jiaojiao glanced at it and did not deny it.

“Yes.”

I sat down across from her.

“Lu Jingci asked me to come persuade you to drink your medicine.”

Her fingers curled tight, her nails nearly digging into her palm.

“I’m not sick.”

I looked at her.

Shen Jiaojiao raised her head. Her eyes were threaded with red.

“That medicine can’t be drunk.”

She pushed the bowl toward me.

“There is Sleep Herb in it.”

Sleep Herb was not fatal. It only made a person fall unconscious.

In a light dose, it calmed the nerves.

In a heavy dose, it could make someone sleep an entire day, and after waking, they would have no clear memory of what had happened.

My heart sank.

“Who gave it to you?”

“Madam Lu.”

After saying that, Shen Jiaojiao added, “Not Jingci.”

The way she defended Lu Jingci was rather grating.

I did not respond to that. I only asked, “In your letter, you said he would die. How?”

Shen Jiaojiao pressed her lips together.

The room was very quiet.

Outside, footsteps passed by, very light. They paused outside the door for a moment, then moved on.

Only after the sound had faded did Shen Jiaojiao reach beneath her pillow and take out a length of red cord.

Tied to the cord was half of a jade clasp.

I recognized it.

It was the jade clasp Lu Jingci had worn at his waist for years. The other half was still on him.

“At the spring hunt three years ago, the arrow that struck him was never meant for you.”

I said nothing.

She looked at me, her voice trembling.

“It was meant for him.”

My heart gave a hard thud.

At the spring hunt three years ago, Lu Jingci had taken an arrow for me.

Everyone knew that.

Because of it, he gained a marriage agreement with the Song Family, as well as my father’s support in court.

But if that arrow had been meant for Lu Jingci from the very beginning, then when he took it for me, he had not been saving me.

He had merely stood in the wrong place.

I asked, “Who wants him dead?”

Shen Jiaojiao clenched the half jade clasp tight.

“Madam Lu.”

I stared at her.

“His own mother?”

Shen Jiaojiao shook her head.

“His stepmother.”

I knew that much.

Lu Jingci’s birth mother had died early, and the current Madam Lu was his father’s second wife.

She had a son of her own as well, only he was still young and had yet to enter officialdom.

I asked slowly, “So tomorrow, on the wedding night, she intends to kill Lu Jingci again?”

Shen Jiaojiao nodded.

“There will be poison in the wedding wine.”

At that, she suddenly began coughing.

She coughed violently, and the faint trace of color in her face vanished.

I rose to pour her some water.

But she grabbed my sleeve.

“You can’t let him drink the bridal wine.”

I looked at her bloodless knuckles.

“Why don’t you tell him directly?”

Shen Jiaojiao gave a laugh.

It was an ugly sound.

“I did.”

“He said I was delirious from illness.”

I fell silent.

Lu Jingci had been raised by Madam Lu since childhood.

In his heart, perhaps his stepmother was more trustworthy than this cousin who had appeared out of nowhere.

Yet he did not trust Shen Jiaojiao, while still visiting her again and again.

The accounts between them were a hopeless tangle.

I was just about to ask more when a faint clatter of roof tiles sounded outside the window.

Shen Jiaojiao’s expression changed.

Before I could turn around, the window paper was slit open by the tip of a blade.

A thin needle flew past my ear and embedded itself in the wooden pillar behind me.

Shen Jiaojiao lunged over and yanked me down.

“Get down!”

In the next instant, the door was rammed open from outside.

The person who came in was not Lu Jingci.

It was a man in a black narrow-sleeved robe.

With one kick, he knocked over the folding screen, then raised his hand and flung a short blade.

Someone outside the window gave a muffled grunt and fell into the flowering shrubs.

I recognized him.

Pei Shu, Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review.

He was also Lu Jingci’s maternal uncle.

By seniority, I should be calling him Uncle tomorrow.

Pei Shu did not even look at Shen Jiaojiao. He first helped me up from the floor.

When his fingers brushed the bone of my wrist, he quickly let go.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head.

Only then did Pei Shu turn to Shen Jiaojiao.

“You sent the letter out?”

Shen Jiaojiao’s face went even paler.

I looked between them.

“You know each other?”

Pei Shu lowered his eyes to the medicine bowl on the table, then to the thin needle.

“Miss Song, you cannot return to the Song Mansion tonight.”

The anger smoldering in me finally flared up.

“Why?”

Pei Shu looked at me.

“Something has been sewn into the wedding robes in your courtyard.”

He paused.

“It is not a poison that kills immediately.”

“It is something that will make you unable to explain yourself.”