Remarriage (1v1, H) - 4
The red candles guttered out only at dawn.
Wang Chong had nine days’ wedding leave; seven still remained. After last night’s debauch, the duke rose later than the sun. When his eyes opened, one broad hand still cupped the bride’s pvssy, half a finger buried in swollen silk.
He eased free, frowned at the slick on his skin, then turned to the woman beside him.
She slept on her back, br3asts bared, lips parted. He had collapsed after coming and dragged the quilt over them both.
Now the quilt was his alone. She lay half uncovered, milk-white skin painted with finger-bruises, bite-marks, and the faint purple bloom of spent passion.
Wang Chong sighed, swung his legs over the side, and left the bed.
In Linhui Courtyard the maids and old nurses knew their master’s ways: His Grace hated bodies hovering while he dressed. Yet a new bride changed rules. No one dared guess the new ones. They waited beyond the door.
When Wang Chong stepped out, fully robed, Steward Shi hurried forward.
“Your Grace, shall we attend the lady’s toilette? The dowager has already sent twice.”
Shi was his wet-nurse, banished when he was four, recalled only last year.
Wang Chong flicked a glance across the bowing heads.
“Send her own maids. Let them serve her.”
He said nothing about his grandmother.
Shi murmured assent and dispatched a runner for the bride’s two personal girls.
Inside the gauze-curtained bed, the “sleeping” bride had woken the instant his finger slid free.
She couldn’t help it; the man had tugged hard and—cruelly—pinched her tender cl!t on the way out.
She kept her eyes clenched shut, rigid as a corpse, until the last footstep died beyond the door. Only then did she lurch from the bed. Her foot struck the footboard; a blade of pain sliced through her groin. She crumpled with a choked cry, knees cracking against wood. After long, trembling breaths she snatched the crumpled cyan wedding gown from the floor and yanked it over her bruised skin.
In life, Lu Xiniang had copied sutras and devoured moral tales (tales of souls hijacking fresh corpses). None had prepared her for the bronze mirror.
One glimpse and the bl00d drained from her face. The mirror flew, clanging across the boards. The girl staring back (peach cheeks, crimson lips, brows like willow leaves) was her niece Lu Yuexiang, frozen at seventeen. Three years ago Yuexiang had spent a month in this very mansion; Lu Xiniang still recalled the scarlet plum-blossom birthmark tucked above the girl’s left hip.
On hands and knees she crawled after the mirror, angled it, and there it was: a single red petal blazing in the hollow of the reflected waist.
“Ghost!”
The word ripped free before shame silenced her (she was the ghost).
The shriek summoned the maids. Chunmei and Chuntao burst in, basins sloshing.
“Madam! A nightmare?”
Lu Xiniang swallowed terror, squared her shoulders, and endured their sponges, combs, and scarlet brocade. She sat at the table wordless, devoured two steaming rice dumplings, and drained three bowls of sweet bean porridge.
The maids traded wide-eyed glances. Their delicate mistress, who normally nibbled like a sparrow, had eaten like a garrison soldier. Neither dared speak.