Chapter 003

Chapter 3: You Were Lucky To Die Early

Perhaps dying once had untied a knot in her heart. Xin An felt suddenly lighter, even restless, eager to vent the earlier suffocation and helplessness. She had died far too aggrieved.

She looked him over and needled him lazily: “The desire to kill me is hardly born today. Well then, wish granted. And I must say, looked at up close, you are three points better-looking than Tang Rong. With such a face, how did Tao Yi Ran not cling to you, keeping you home day after day? Instead you went about with that particular look of permanent frustration, confronting everyone with a scowl. Truly, a paragon of lofty virtue.”

Tang Mo released her wrist. A strange spark lit his eyes and amusement spread over his face as he said: “You are not wrong. Up close you do have some beauty. You were born with a demon’s face, yet you dressed every day like a widow in a convent. My virtuous elder brother is ever so self-restrained; I imagine in bed as well.”

Xin An rubbed the wrist he had seized and said coolly: “You and I are six of one and half a dozen of the other. Who is nobler than whom?”

She loosed her hair, rinsed her face in cold water until the heat under her skin subsided, then walked with unhurried steps to the bed. The instant she sat, Tang Mo bristled: “Do not tell me you intend to sleep on the bed.”

“You should think of your situation,” she replied, already tugging at her clothes. “Oh, by the way, I died early because of you in the last life. I imagine that paragon of restraint, my husband who wants everything while pretending to want nothing, must have come to hate you. Without me, how could he flaunt his goodness? Did he call you a vicious shrew? Why do this to yourself?”

Ignoring him, she stripped down to her inner clothes, kicked off her shoes and stockings, and lay down. She even scooted in toward the wall and patted the space beside her: “I do not care to quarrel today. I have not slept soundly for a very long time. You were fortunate to die early and missed the confiscation of the marquisal household. Those days were too hard.”

She closed her eyes, exhaled a long, easing breath, then explained, voice level: “Remember this much: I did not kill you with anger. You finally pried that country estate in the suburbs out of my hands, and before half a stick of incense had burned, your bodhisattva-hearted good wife gifted it to your elder brother. You rolled your eyes on the spot, drank in a sulk, missed your step and fell into the lotus pond. You swallowed too much muddy water and breathed your last within two days.”

“If you cannot remember because you died so early, it is fine. I will remind you in the future. No thanks necessary.”

Hearing that even the household was later raided, Tang Mo’s brows drew together, then smoothed with a show of indifference. He went to the bedside and, arching a brow, asked: “If I died so early, did the family not put any valuables in my coffin? When you later fell into poverty, did you never think to dig me up?”

This woman was hard and ruthless enough to do anything.

Xin An opened her eyes with frank regret: “Why did I not think of that? Your mother buried you with quite a few fine things. Ah, too late to repent.”

Seeing she truly considered it a good plan, Tang Mo was again driven half mad. In petty spite he kicked off his shoes and flung himself down beside her, saying nothing more. He soon heard the long, even rhythm of her breathing.

At last asleep, she woke him in the middle of the night with the thrashings of one pressed by nightmares. Annoyed, he rolled over, but saw her face twisted in pain. She cursed through clenched teeth, then wept and laughed by turns. Had he not seen a bit of the world, she would have frightened him to death.

In her dream, Xin An returned to that blizzard. Amid the roaring white, she set a blaze that burned Tang Rong and Tao Xinran, mother and son, to ash. She laughed and then she cried, not knowing why the sorrow would not stop, only feeling that nothing but a flood of tears could vent it.

Tang Mo did not wake her, his eyes narrowed in calculation. He wanted to know what had happened after he died. Without military power, the marquisal house had failed to stand firm at court; how had they then committed a crime grave enough to be raided? Had that coward of a father rebelled?

When Xin An would not stop crying and the pillow was wet through, he finally shoved her and said curtly: “Wake up.”

“Hurry and wake up. You wail like a ghost in your sleep. Anyone would think I had done something to you.”

Xin An woke slowly, head aching. Only when she checked that she was still young did she let out a long breath. Tang Mo had many questions, but she gave him no opening, turned her back, closed her eyes, and, after such a dream, felt her heart a worse tangle than before.

Early the next morning, before dawn, came the rap of knuckles on the door. The two of them lay back-to-back without moving. Their thoughts had run wild at night, and now sleep was thick upon them. One of them, in death, had grown used to being unconquerably arrogant; the other had once been master of the entire household. In their subconscious, no one dared cross them. They slept as if stunned.

The knocking continued, joined by Chun Yang’s voice. Xin An, eyes shut, kicked Tang Mo and muttered: “Think of a reason to put them off.”

Jolted awake and heavy with temper, Tang Mo bellowed at the door: “Get out!”

Silence fell outside at once. Xin An lay breathing evenly, and before long slipped under again. In the half year after the raid, she had hardly slept well; in the last days she had lain awake until dawn. Even now that she had come back, the exhaustion clung like lead. She could not seem to get enough sleep.

Maids and old women milled outside, anxious. They did not yet grasp how serious matters were. Hearing movement in the next courtyard, they assumed the heir apparent and the second young madam had already gone to the front hall to serve tea, and worried only that their own heir apparent and his wife had not yet risen.

“Young people are vigorous,” someone muttered, “they do not know to take it easy.”

She raised her hand to knock again, but hurried steps sounded at the gate. The nanny beside Madam Wang arrived, face tight. Without preamble she bent close to murmur to the people in the yard. At once hands flew to cover mouths. Granny Wang swayed as if she would faint and gasped: “This…”

“How could such a thing have happened?”

Next door were the heir apparent and what had been the original second young madam. Then the ones in this room were…

The second young master and what had been the heir apparent’s wife?

At the same time, in the main hall at the front, Tang Rong knelt before the elders and said with a bowed head: “Yesterday this son drank too much, was muddled and did not recognize the person, and in confusion consummated the marriage. In this I have wronged my second brother, but since what is done is done, I must take responsibility and answer for Yiran.”

The Marquis of Wei Yuan, Tang Gang, wore a face like iron. “Drank too much,” indeed; utter nonsense. Tang Rong had mistaken the person, and Tao Yi Ran had also drunk too much?

He looked at his pride of a son with disappointment bitter in his eyes. If he had realized at once and spoken immediately, the two brides could have been quietly exchanged in private and the affair would have passed without incident. Thinking of the storm of gossip to come, Tang Gang’s expression grew uglier.

Before the betrothals were set, he had asked in person whom his son preferred. If he had said he wished to marry the Tao family’s girl, as his father Tang Gang would have made the match. But he had said, piously, that he obeyed parents’ command and matchmaker’s word.

Good, he thought savagely, very good—parents’ command and matchmaker’s word.

With the air of a benevolent mother, Madam Wang’s eyes went red as she spoke a few sentences of self-blame, then she rose and knelt, saying: “Grand Matron, Master, with something like this we cannot blame the eldest young master only. I was the one who arranged matters poorly. But what is done is done. We must consider the faces of all three families. Now we can only make a mistake into what is right. I will take rich gifts at once and pay calls, asking both the Tao and Xin families to acknowledge this as fact. If all three mouths tell the same story, any idle chatter outside will pass quickly.”

The Tang family’s old madam was already panting with anger, disappointed in her grandson and more displeased than ever with this daughter-in-law. She snapped an order with a face like frost: “Go see what is happening in the second boy’s rooms.”