Chapter 002

Chapter 2: You Came Back Too?

One must pass through certain things to grasp the truth of living. When all she could see was a blaze of festive red and the sound of celebration filled her ears, Xin An clapped a hand over her mouth, forcing the trembling cry back down her throat. She had clearly been driven to death by Tang Rong’s fury. She had regretted, dying, that she had not even found a chance to drag him with her into the grave. So how was she now inside a bridal sedan?

Voices outside rose in merriment: “The Xin family’s bridal sedan has arrived,” someone announced, to which another called: “The Tao family’s bridal sedan has arrived as well.”

The babble of chatter, the teasing laughter, pierced the canopy and battered her mind until she could not think. Then came the thud of the sedan being set down and the felicitator’s bright cry: “Please, eldest young master, kick the sedan door.”

In an instant, old memories flooded her. This was the sound from the day she married into the Tang family. That day she came full of love and left with a lifetime’s bad name. The past flickered through her mind like lantern slides. She could not hear the teasing outside, could not feel the jolt of a kicked sedan door, and so did not see the hand extended to help her step down. [She had come back, to the very day she married Tang Rong.] [But how could she marry Tang Rong again?]

Tang Rong was the young lord painstakingly cultivated by the Marquis of Wei Yuan’s house after abandoning the martial for the civil track in the Nanyue dynasty. The world said he observed rules and rites, restrained himself and restored propriety, lofty and pure, contending for nothing under the moon. She too had fallen for him at first glance, and when the Tang family sent to propose, she was overjoyed.

After marriage she pitied his early loss of his mother and burned with anger at the bullying of his stepmother. Whatever he said he wanted, she would fight to win for him. [So much for not contending. So much for the moon.] It had all been a reputation he gained standing on her shoulders.

It stung that she had given her whole life for Tang Rong only to earn a name for being especially grasping, petty, and sharp-tongued.

The new bride still did not step down, so the felicitator sang out more auspicious lines. In the chorus of laughter, Xin An recovered herself, lifted her hand, and let Tang Rong lead her out of the sedan. The bridal palanquin had reached the Tang family’s gate. This marriage she could not escape, and what was more, she did not dare.

Opposite stood another sedan. Tang Rong, the legitimate elder son, and Tang Mo, the son of the stepwife, were marrying on the same day. Neither brother wore much joy. After a polite nod, they entered together.

Time overlapped the former life. Xin An performed each rite of the ceremony with sobriety, then was surrounded by the felicitator and a flock of maids and old women and carried toward the back court.

The mistress of the Marquis of Wei Yuan’s house, Madam Wang, was a second wife, a woman of deep calculation. She disliked that her son should marry Tao Yi Ran, famed for singing lovely but empty airs, so she used the excuse that Tang Mo’s courtyard lacked sunlight and switched it with Tang Rong’s, intending to switch brides along with it. In her past life, Xin An had kept careful watch on every move of the Tang family and heard of this in advance. When she came to the fork, she spoke up and took the correct turn, thereby marrying Tang Rong. Today she hesitated not at all and walked straight in.

The truth was that Tang Mo did not like her either. He and his mother were of a kind, people who sharpened their skulls to squeeze upward. Their interests were directly at odds with hers, and they had fought many covert skirmishes. Though they despised each other, she had envied Tang Mo’s wife Tao Yi Ran, for his wants he wrested with his own hands; he never made Tao Yi Ran worry.

It was as if Heaven had played a joke. Tao Yi Ran, a national beauty renowned throughout the capital for qin and chess, calligraphy and painting, shared Tang Rong’s nature: aloof and crystalline. She could not stand Tang Mo’s vulgarity. Anything Tang Mo wrested back, she would personally return. Each time, Tang Mo nearly died of rage.

In the bridal chamber, Xin An sat at the bed’s edge and shut out every voice beyond the veil. Only while she waited for Tang Mo did she have a moment to straighten her thoughts. The affair felt so uncanny it was like a dream, and yet the dream was too real.

She did not regret what she had given for Tang Rong; after all, she had given willingly. It was only that Tang Rong should not have been so cold in the end.

When her fingertips felt the softness of youthful skin, she lowered her eyes to her pale palms and a wild joy rose within her. [What woman who has known age and ruin could refuse to be seventeen again? She had truly returned.]

She did not know how much time passed before black-soled boots appeared in her narrow field of view. When the veil lifted and she saw that it was Tang Mo, she did not even feign surprise. The panic she had been wearing turned suddenly farcical.

Tang Mo’s eyes were unfriendly and he sneered in his heart. From the day this woman married into the Tang family, she had been at odds with him, guarding against him like a thief. If not for her thwarting him at every turn, he might have lived smooth and straight, to a career crowned with merit.

Since he said nothing, did not appear surprised, and even looked at her as one looks at an enemy, Xin An understood at once. She tested him with a quiet question: “You came back too?”

He answered with a single sound: “Mm.”

Xin An rose, tore off the veil, tossed it aside, and let out a short laugh. In their previous life the two of them had been uncle and nephew-in-law, and at that openly at each other’s throats. In this life they were husband and wife, each knowing the other’s past. [Heaven had a grand sense of humor.]

She asked, probing further: “What about Tang Rong?”

Tang Mo said flatly: “No.”

“By rights he should have noticed the bride was wrong. Why hasn’t he come looking?”

Tang Mo’s laugh matched hers in scorn as he said: “The old man thinks the Xin family is useful to the Tang family. Not everyone agrees. How can a salt merchant’s daughter compare with the daughter of a fourth-rank official? With opportunity set before him, he’ll hurry to cook the rice until it is done. Tomorrow, if anyone asks, he will say he drank too much and was muddled and didn’t see clearly.”

Xin An smiled at herself and said, voice light: “You have even prepared an excuse for him. You are not so bad. Say, if you run over now, you might yet make it in time. You may only be missing the last step.”

He turned to tidy the peanuts and red dates on the bed and shot back with a snort: “The husband you defended with your life is at this very moment overturning the clouds and summoning the rain with another woman. Does your heart not ache? Are you not going to make a scene?” He added with poisonous sweetness: “After all, you were the Marchioness of Wei Yuan for many years. How heartless.”

Xin An stuffed a handful of red dates and peanuts into his arms and walked straight to the dressing table. Seeing in the bronze mirror a face young and lovely, with none of the mean lines carved by years of toil and exhaustion, she let her lips curve. Stroking the hairpins in her hair, she returned fire without missing a beat: “Your darling, at this moment, is under another man, moaning with pleasure. You are like a green-shelled turtle. How can you criticize me?”

She went on in the same airy tone: “She did everything for your sake, lest you be tainted by the faintest stain. How many of the things you fought to win did she return on your behalf? And you call that gratitude?”

No man could bear that, even if he himself wanted nothing to do with that woman in this life. He would not allow himself to be insulted. Veins stood out on Tang Mo’s forehead as he grabbed Xin An’s wrist with a snarl: “Believe it or not, I could kill you now and say you could not bear the shame and dashed your brains against the pillar.”

“Could not bear the shame?” Xin An smiled, a smile far from proper manners, and asked lightly: “What then? Did you also drink too much and grow muddled? So the reason you just spun was for yourself?”

The small mountain of her hair piled and glinting, the shadowed waves of her temples setting off snow-pale cheeks, the shifting light in her eyes as they brimmed with feeling, the soft white swell of her chest above a willow-slender waist—Tang Mo blanked for a heartbeat. For the first time he realized she looked like a temptress who could topple a kingdom. [How had he ever seen only a shrew?]