Zhu Yu's Story - Chapter 3

I hadn’t found Father, but I’d acquired a mother.

The Grand Princess held a banquet to mark the adoption and announced it to the world.

The whole capital was in an uproar.

Who was this Zhu Yu who’d appeared out of nowhere and stolen the prize?

Rumor had it that I was actually the Grand Princess’s illegitimate daughter.

There’d been a similar rumor many years ago. Now my sudden appearance seemed to confirm it.

“If that child were still alive, she’d be about your age,” the Grand Princess said sadly.

I happened to run into the duke’s heir at a restaurant. He saw me in a whole new light.

“I never knew you had such skills.” He looked at me with approval. “You’ve certainly gone to a great deal of trouble to marry Jiang Zhaolin. Very well. I’ll let the two of you lovers have your wish.”

He sent Luo Yizhi back to her hometown. To him, anyone who’d outlived their usefulness was worthless.

Luo Yizhi refused to go. She came to beg me in private. “I can be a concubine.”

I’d had enough. “Whether you’re a concubine has nothing to do with me. I’m not marrying Jiang Zhaolin.”

She didn’t believe me.

The Jiang family was already preparing the betrothal gifts. The empress summoned me to the palace for an audience.

She was the emperor’s second empress. Though she had a son, the Third Prince, the Crown Prince was the first empress’s son.

Of course, with Grand Princess Zhenguo’s support, things might be different.

The empress chatted with me about everyday matters and was delighted to learn that Jiang Zhaolin and I had once been engaged.

I told her as tactfully as I could that we’d already broken it off.

She brushed that aside. “Things are different now. There’s no need to feel inferior.”

She bestowed a great many fine things on me and seemed thoroughly satisfied with me.

Wei Ci hadn’t been allowed into the palace. He was waiting at the gates.

When I came out, I found him and Jiang Zhaolin staring each other down.

“Wei Ci.”

He immediately came to my side. “Mistress.”

Jiang Zhaolin gave him a scornful glance, then came to stand on my other side. “Mistress.”

I was speechless.

“I didn’t make you wait two years because I’d had a change of heart,” he said, gazing at me with deep affection. “My brother wouldn’t agree. He even threatened your life. I was afraid he’d hurt you, so I didn’t dare contact you.

“For the past two years, I’ve been working for the empress. I wanted to ask her to decree our marriage. I never forgot my promise to you, and I never wanted to marry another woman.”

“So you spent two years begging the empress and still couldn’t get her to agree? You’re pretty useless, then.”

“…Yes. I am. I still have to rely on you.”

“Have you forgotten I told you I’m marrying someone else?”

Jiang Zhaolin glanced at Wei Ci again and closed his eyes in anguish. “I can agree to let him be your secondary husband.”

What?

Someone turned the story of Jiang Zhaolin and me into a romance. Storytellers repeated it endlessly in all the capital’s teahouses.

I saved your life; you offered yourself in marriage.

A beautiful young miracle doctor and a noble young lord from the capital.

What a romantic love story.

Even the Grand Princess heard about it and asked if it was true.

“It is,” I said. “But then I saved Wei Ci, so I chose a different husband.”

She stared at me. “So you change husbands every time you save a man?”

Before I could answer, a servant announced that the Jiang family had come to propose marriage.

The Grand Princess looked at me. I looked at her. Then she turned to Wei Ci. “Would you mind having a younger brother in the household?”

I didn’t let the Jiang family through the gates.

Wei Ci and I went out to meet them, with the Grand Princess sneaking along behind us to watch.

The duke’s heir really did run his household. Even for something as important as a marriage proposal, neither Duke Cheng’en nor his wife appeared. He’d handled everything himself.

Jiang Zhaolin wore a complicated expression: four parts hope, three parts anguish, two parts guilt, and one part hesitation.

“Miss Zhu saved my younger brother’s life,” the duke’s heir declared. “Our family owes her an immense debt. For such a kindness, it is only fitting that my brother repay her with himself in marriage.”

The crowd laughed good-naturedly.

“I’m sorry, Lord Jiang,” I said frankly. “I know I’m wonderful, but you’re too late. I’m already married.”

I drew Wei Ci forward and laced my fingers through his. “This is my husband. We bowed to Heaven and Earth back in our hometown.”

The laughter stopped.

Not a sound.

Jiang Zhaolin looked at me reproachfully.

His brother’s expression was one of utter disbelief.

All this time, he’d assumed everything I did was so I could marry Jiang Zhaolin and become his properly wedded wife.

Now he couldn’t make sense of me at all.

His eyes slowly turned vicious. He looked like a wolf that wanted to leap at me and tear my throat out.

“Come on!” He tugged at Jiang Zhaolin. “Do you want everyone laughing at you?”

Jiang Zhaolin wouldn’t leave. He reached for me. “Zhu Yu, I don’t mind being your secondary husband!”

His brother was thunderstruck.

I smiled. “Sorry. My husband would mind.”

“I wouldn’t,” Wei Ci said.

Now I was thunderstruck.