Remarriage (1v1, H) - 12
They never left the bedchamber all afternoon.
Lu Xiniang still couldn’t decide how she had survived it.
The ointment had cooled the ache between her legs, but Chong-ge’er had turned into a stranger possessed by every lewd scroll he’d ever hidden under his mattress.
First her hand, then her br3asts squeezed tight around his c0ck, and when she’d clamped her lips shut he’d tried to nudge the slick head past them.
Only her frantic head-shaking had saved her throat.
They say lust shortens life.
The next morning, watching him flow through the Eight Pieces of Brocade in the courtyard, shirt clinging to sweat, she finally exhaled.
Good.
At least the boy still had breath in him.
At dawn the Lu clan had sent over lacquered boxes: honeyed pastries, bolts of brocade, a phoenix hairpin thick with pearls.
She and Wang Chong paid respects at Shi’an Park.
Lady Qin looked stronger, cheeks pink, and even managed a smile while pressing extra sweets on the bride.
Today the groom must escort his bride home for the third-day visit.
Lu Xiniang left Chunmei and Chuntao behind, terrified their sharp eyes would spot the wrong soul in their mistress’s skin.
“His Grace hates waste,” she told them. “Stay here. I need no attendants.”
The girls bobbed grateful curtsies.
Outside, the ducal mansion glittered like a phoenix; inside, even fetching bathwater fell to the lady’s own maids.
Back in the Lu house they had been pampered like darlings.
Here they were little better than scullery girls.
Lu Xiniang stepped into the outer room and found Wang Chong waiting, arms folded.
Her stomach flipped.
Had he overheard her lie?
He merely flicked the curtain aside.
“Let’s go.”
Only one groom handled the reins.
When she was settled inside the carriage, Wang Chong leaned in.
“If two maids aren’t enough, tell Shi-mammy. We can add more.”
Heat flooded her cheeks.
So he had heard everything.
She shook her head, eyes on her knees.
“No need.”
Lu Xiniang’s tongue itched to ask about Lanping, but the name felt too heavy to toss into the quiet carriage.
She lifted the curtain instead.
Bianjing spilled past in bright, noisy ribbons: hawkers with sugared crab-apples, children chasing hoops, a blind musician sawing a two-stringed erhu.
Twenty years walled inside the ducal mansion had starved her of streets.
Her face lit like a girl’s.
She caught, she remembered who she was pretending to be, and let the silk fall.
Back straight, hands folded, smile tucked away.
The carriage rolled to a stop.
“Madam, Your Grace, we’ve arrived,” the groom murmured.
The Lu clan had rolled out scarlet carpets.
Ten banquet tables steamed with pork knuckle and lotus-seed soup; pipers tuned their flutes.
A stout mammy from the heir’s household stood at the gate, eyes sharp as a falcon’s.
The moment the duke’s crests gleamed, she dispatched a page at a run.
Wang Chong stepped down first, turned, and offered his hand.
Lu Xiniang took it, pulse fluttering against his palm.
The mammy swept a deep curtsey.
“Heavens, you’re here! The old lady and the heir’s wife have worn out the floor pacing.”
Lu Xiniang smiled politely, mind racing.
Sister-in-law’s woman, surely.
She had never been close to her father, the Renping Bo; her birth mother died before she could walk.
Lady Cui (stepmother) had raised her with silk gloves and gentle scolding.
How were they faring now?
She tightened her grip on Wang Chong’s sleeve and stepped across the threshold into the only home she had ever truly known.