Remarriage (1v1, H) - 6

From a distance the courtyard looked empty, yet every flagstone gleamed. Someone had kept it polished for years.  

Two old nurses hurried out the moment their shadows crossed the gate, dropping deep curtseys.  

“Your Grace. Madam.”

“Prepare everything,” Wang Chong said.

Lu Xiniang studied the women: unfamiliar faces, clean cuffs, no dust on their hems.  

Lanping—her shadow since age six, unmarried at thirty-five—must have been sent away after the funeral.  

How long ago had that been?

The crab-apple trees she had planted still stood, heavy with hard green fruit. Late summer, then—eighth or ninth month.

Wang Chong lingered beneath the branches, gaze fixed on the unripe apples as though they held answers.  

She watched the boy she had raised, heart twisting. At last she stepped closer and breathed, “Chong—”

He stiffened, head snapping down, eyes cold steel.

The name died in her throat. Yuexiang would call him “Cousin”; a wife should say “Husband” or “My Lord.” Neither word fit her tongue.  

She swallowed and tried again, voice small.  

“Your Grace… Aunt would hate to see you grieve like this.”

Her first real sentence to him since the wedding night.

His face softened a fraction at the mention of the dead woman.  

“Your aunt doted on you,” he said, eyes still on the fruit. “Three years since she left us, yet you cannot have forgotten. Go inside. Offer her tea.”

Only then did the truth strike home: she had been ash for three full years.  

Yet the dowager still lived, and so did Wang Chong’s legitimate mother, Lady Qin.  

Bringing the new bride here to burn incense for the old one was scandal waiting to happen—grounds for impeachment.

“But the dowager—”  

He cut her off with a glance.

One of the nurses returned, bowing.  

“Your Grace, all is ready.”

The old nurse lifted the door curtain. Lu Xiniang followed Wang Chong inside. Nothing had changed: her embroidery frames still leaned against the wall; the paired screens she had stitched—crab-apples in spring, bamboo in frost—hung exactly where she had left them.

In the main hall a black-lacquer daybed faced them. Between its arms lay the pair of mutton-fat jade bangles she had worn every day of her marriage.

She was still staring when the nurses set down two cups of fragrant tea.  

A heavy thud—Wang Chong dropped to his knees before the daybed.  

She sank beside him, knees protesting.

Kneeling to her own bracelets, offering tea to her own ghost—absurdity twisted her stomach. She managed three light taps of her forehead to the floor and let the nurse haul her up.

Wang Chong rose unsteadily, swaying like a man drunk on grief. A crimson bruise bloomed across his brow, as though the kowtow had cracked the skin.

Her poor boy.  

Orphaned young, sent to her courtyard only after the main house tired of him. He still mourned; she saw it in the tremor of his shoulders.

Tenderness flooded her. She ached to blurt the truth—*It’s me, Chong-ge’er, I’m here*—but the words lodged behind her teeth. If he believed her, scandal would devour them both. If he didn’t, he would think his bride mad. Better to swallow the secret.

They left her courtyard in silence and wound toward Shi’an Park, the apartments of Lady Qin.  

At the gate, Song-mammy barred the way with a deep curtsey.  

“Your Grace, the dowager is indisposed and still abed.”