Remarriage (1v1, H) - 13
Wang Chong was whisked off to the men’s banquet.
The mammy beamed at Lu Xiniang.
“The heir’s wife has spoken of nothing else for days. My old heart’s half at ease just seeing you. And His Grace—such care! He handed you down from the carriage himself.”
Lu Xiniang managed a flat “Mm,” terrified one wrong blink would betray her.
The mammy (wet-nurse to the heir’s wife) had dandled the real Yuexiang on her knee.
She noted the bride’s stiff face, the missing sparkle, and filed it away.
*Girl’s in a duke’s cage now,* she thought. *No more tantrums. I’ll warn Madam.*
They threaded the rear corridors.
Ten years away, yet every turn felt stitched to her bones—until the bamboo grove.
Nothing remained: no wall, no moon-gate, no trace of the courtyard where she had once brewed tea and embroidered crab-apples.
Leveled flat.
“Miss, why’ve you stopped?” the mammy asked.
Lu Xiniang swallowed the ache and shook her head.
They reached Lady Cui’s hall.
A dozen women perched on stools or leaned against pillars, fans fluttering like bright moths.
Lu Xiniang picked out only two faces: her stepmother Cui-shi, silver-streaked yet youthful at fifty, and her sister-in-law Luo-shi.
Rank demanded obeisance; she sank to her knees and touched forehead to floor.
Cui-shi lifted her at once, drew her onto the kang, and clasped both hands.
“Plump as a peach! My fragrant girl is blessed.”
She turned the bride left and right, eyes shining.
A younger aunt tittered, “Who doesn’t praise a Lu daughter?”
Catching Cui-shi’s glare, she slapped her own cheek. “Foul mouth! Speaking of fate on a happy day.”
Cui-shi’s smile thinned.
“My first daughter was good, too. Fate simply refused to keep her.”
Lu Xiniang stared at the manicured hand wrapped around her own.
The year she married, this same hand had tucked a newborn Yuexiang into her arms.
She had never known her stepmother could be soft.
The other women drifted to the flower-hall feast.
Only mother, daughter, and sister-in-law remained.
Cui-shi would not let go; Luo-shi dabbed tears, studying the bride as though memorizing every eyelash.
The two women’s stares pinned Lu Xiniang like a moth.
She had no script for Yuexiang’s daily voice, only memories of a biddable niece who used to curtsy and call her “Aunt.”
Gathering courage, she forced the words out.
“Grandmother… Mother.”
Cui-shi’s smile sharpened.
“There, my girl’s grown polished since marrying into the ducal house.
Bear a son or two and His Grace will keep you in silk for life, all for *her* sake.
Worth every tael I spent raising you these eighteen years.”
The sentence landed oddly, like a tune played in the wrong key.
Lu Xiniang kept her lashes lowered, afraid to ask what “her” meant.
A maid slipped in.
“Lady, the banquet is served.”
They ate amid forced laughter and clinking cups.
By sundown the third-day visit must end; the bride had to return to her husband’s roof.
Yet every corridor in the Renping Bo mansion felt borrowed, every face a stranger wearing a familiar mask.
At the gate the women dabbed their eyes with sleeves.
Lu Xiniang’s own eyes stayed dry until she spotted Wang Chong beside the carriage, tall and silent, the man who had filled her womb with forbidden seed.
Grief crashed over her then, real, scalding.
She pressed her handkerchief to her face and let the tears come.