Pei Zhao paused for a moment, then smiled and shook his head.

“Then why have you always avoided the main gatherings of the Flower Festival Season, unwilling to show yourself or make a name for yourself?” Lingbo pressed on. “Is it illegitimate birth, a family feud, or a changed identity? There must be a reason. Otherwise, why would you be content to stay in the shadows? There’s always something that prevents you from stepping into the light.”

Pei Zhao neither confirmed nor denied it, only watched her with that smile in his eyes.

His Ye Lingbo, indeed — like the cold rain of the frontier: seemingly soft and soundless as it soaked into the earth, but when a wind swept through, it turned to ice needles falling from every direction.

“You won’t say?” Lingbo furrowed her brow — even furrowing her brow, she managed to look endearing.

Pei Zhao only smiled and shook his head.

Truly maddening — impossible to beat, impossible to scold. Lingbo could only threaten him: “Then don’t blame me for going right back to managing Cui Jingyu’s affairs…”

Utterly dispiriting — wanting to threaten him, yet with no one she could use as a kite to dangle before him. No wonder this wretch was so completely without fear. He had decided she was never going to run.

He even turned the threat around on her, smiling and saying: “Then I’ll go to the riding banquet.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Lingbo could already picture it — he would take everything from today and do it all over again at the riding banquet, and she didn’t know how many people would set their sights on him this time. The thought made her expression go cold.

Pei Zhao only watched her eyes with that smile, watching the emotions shift rapidly across those deep dark eyes — rapid calculation of all the stakes involved. He didn’t find her calculating at all. He only found it amusing.

“Come with me, Lingbo.” He asked her in earnest. “We’ll go to the frontier together — go see Zhenshan Pass, go see Mingsha River. Everything you want will be there.”

“The fighting at the frontier ended long ago. What would be the point of going?” Lingbo reflexively retorted — and by the time she caught herself, her face had gone instantly red.

Pei Zhao, you wretch — no marriage contract, no matchmaker, and he was already talking about taking her away to the frontier with him. How was that any different from eloping? No — it was eloping, plain and simple. No wonder people compared him to Wang Shaoshan from the plays. He was exactly the same kind.

But a thought still flashed unbidden through Lingbo’s mind.

Had Cui Jingyu asked Qinglan the same thing back then? Asked her to follow him — out to the frontier, to the wide open skies beyond the pass, to grow old together?

“Hmph — I’m not going!” She immediately told him off. “I’m staying in the capital. I’m never leaving my family, not for the rest of my life.”

Pei Zhao duly put on his wounded expression. He had this particular power — the foolish yearning was his, yet he had only to lower those peach-blossom eyes and let that fine face of his droop slightly, and it made you want to give him everything, to soften like cotton. You couldn’t bear it.

Lingbo couldn’t help but sigh, and felt a little downhearted herself.

“Stop this, Pei Zhao.” She told him seriously. “I’m never going to follow you. Don’t keep doing this in front of me. It only makes my thoughts go to pieces.”

Pei Zhao still had his eyes lowered and only gave a soft “Hm.”

Here we go, here we go again — always the same. He was a full head taller than Lingbo, with a build as solid as a horse. The moves he’d shown on the polo field today could probably take down two tigers. Yet he insisted on wearing this pitiful expression, in his worn old blue robe, arms folded, leaning against the apricot tree, looking every bit as if the world had wronged him.

No wonder Lingbo’s thoughts were in chaos.

And so she stood quietly watching him, and for a moment neither had anything to say. The moon rose, and a light breeze stirred through the apricot grove. She immediately coughed once — she was a young miss raised in sheltered comfort, the kind to fall ill if she lacked so much as a handwarmer.

Pei Zhao raised his eyes, turned to the side, and used his body to block the wind for her.

“Go back,” he even urged her. “The night is getting cold. I won’t go to the polo banquet. I won’t do anything like today again. Today was just to tease you. I won’t ever do it again.”

Lingbo’s heart went soft completely. She wanted to say something, looked at his face — and could not get a word out. It was Xiao Liu’er who saved her, having stood watch outside long enough and grown anxious. She came to urge them: “Young miss, we should go back. If they come looking for us at the banquet it won’t look good, and Elder Miss will be worried…”

“I know.” Lingbo could only agree, and involuntarily looked back at Pei Zhao. She saw that he was no longer joking, and he gave her a smile — an obedient smile, exactly the same as little Yanyan’s smile when she, as a child, had needed to go out to manage business and was on her way out the door.

“Go on back. I’ll head back in a bit too.” He even said to Lingbo: “I’ll keep an eye on Cui Jingyu’s side of things. When there’s news, I’ll let you know.”

Even Xiao Liu’er sighed at that — to say nothing of Lingbo herself.

She followed Xiao Liu’er out, walked some distance, and could not help looking back. She saw Pei Zhao still standing quietly under the tree — arms folded, expression indistinguishable. The apricot grove was full of shifting shadows, and only he was there, alone beneath it.

He was always alone.

Lingbo returned to the banquet in a daze, ate a few bites that tasted of nothing, barely registering what even Sister Han or Qinglan said to her. The banquet hall was naturally blazing with light — the whole room richly appointed, the curtains of brocade, the vases overflowing with apricot blossom branches, crimson jade pendants hanging everywhere, all very festive.

Where was Pei Zhao now? Stubborn as he was, he certainly wouldn’t go in to sit at the banquet — he’d be back in his rundown courtyard, wearing his rundown clothes, eating his rundown meal…

If only she’d managed to get the reason out of him just now.

If only she’d taken his flower ball in the grove — even if she still couldn’t have agreed to be with him in the end, at least he’d have been a little happier for it.

Lingbo made up her mind, right there at the banquet: the moment the gathering ended, she would have Liu Ji send a full banquet over to Pei Zhao’s home, and stand watch until he had eaten every bite, or she’d scold him half to death.

And then there was Xiao Liu’er, softer-hearted even than she was. That night, Lingbo was already tossing and turning, unable to sleep, and Xiao Liu’er came to reason with her: “Young miss, I think General Pei is quite good, you know — a truly devoted heart. Why won’t you accept him?”

“What do you know?” Lingbo was too proud to concede: “If his heart is truly devoted, why won’t he tell me his origins? Why won’t he tell me why he refuses to advance himself? Without knowing the reason, how is this tangle ever supposed to be undone? I think he simply has no intention of building a future with me…”

“No, that’s not it. I was just in the grove listening to General Pei talk with you — his heart is entirely devoted to you.” Xiao Liu’er was urgent. “Young miss, you won’t be with him, and you won’t let him go find someone else, and he agreed to that — he’s even going to watch over General Cui for you. Can’t the young miss see why? I understand it.”

“I don’t.” Lingbo said huffily, then couldn’t help asking: “Why?”

“Because it’s what he wrote on the young miss’s birthday greeting.” Xiao Liu’er said with conviction. “He wanted everything to go the young miss’s way — all things to be fulfilled. General Pei may always be joking with the young miss, but he has never once deceived her.”

Lingbo’s soft feelings toward Pei Zhao lasted only a few days more.

The Apricot Blossom Banquet had been a great, lively success. The Plum Blossom Banquet that followed passed without incident — with one banquet every five days, the pace was truly relentless. After all the excitement, the ladies and misses needed time to recover. So Lingbo only went to the Plum Blossom Banquet to make an appearance, as there was nothing of particular importance — Cui Jingyu didn’t even attend. She came home early to see to a real matter.

The Ye family’s Matriarch was now going to great lengths to win Lingbo back, granting every convenience she could. She had truly acted as host, arranged a banquet, and invited Dai Yuquan as a guest — putting it politely: she had been bedridden for years and had grown distant from old friends and their children, and since she had heard he had been in the capital for over a year without their families having been in contact, she was holding a special gathering to make amends.

Framed this way, Dai Yuquan had no reason to refuse, and duly arrived early. Lingbo had made her preparations in advance — first she kept him waiting in the main hall, with only an elderly matron to receive him and two maids to serve tea, to observe his character. She herself positioned herself behind the curtain and stole a glance.

He looked well enough — regular features, a tall and solid build, with an air of straightforwardness. Not exactly handsome, but there was something capable about him. His temperament seemed steady; Lingbo had deliberately instructed Xiao Liu’er to go pour him a cup of tea and splash a little out, nearly landing on his shoes, to test him. He neither fussed nor grew irritated. Xiao Liu’er apologized profusely and dabbed at the spot for him. The siblings — Xiao Liu’er and Liu Ji — were both handsome, with the fine looks common to Yangzhou people: delicate features, oval faces, slender figures. Liu Ji, when out on errands, drew larger tips than ordinary manservants.

But this man kept his eyes straight ahead and didn’t engage with Xiao Liu’er in conversation. His character, it seemed, was sound.

Lingbo was quietly satisfied, and decided to grant him the qualifications to serve as a kite. She gave instructions for dinner to be served inside, and invited the guest to be seated. She herself changed into a formal ensemble and came out with Nanny Wu.

“The Matriarch is unwell and unable to receive the honored guest properly — the maidservant must presume beyond her station,” Nanny Wu said with flawless diplomacy. “We feared the guest might take offense, so we asked the second young miss to come out and pay her respects — after all, he is practically family, and she is the host. She would not wish to appear remiss.”

Lingbo wasn’t usually one for elaborate dressing, but knowing that he had come partly on account of Qinglan’s beauty at the Lantern Festival, she was afraid being too plain might not serve her. She made the effort and dressed formally — a full ensemble of jade-green embroidered brocade, her hair piled high in an elaborate cloud coiffure, jeweled ornaments and pearls, quite splendid. She came forward to present her respects.

“You are too kind — I could not presume,” Dai Yuquan naturally rose from his seat to return the courtesy. “The Matriarch’s generosity humbles this junior.”

Closer range allowed for a better assessment. Lingbo knew that what had drawn him was Qinglan’s composed and dignified bearing, so she was punctilious in her conduct — only flicking a brief glance at him when she raised her eyes. He happened to look in exactly that moment as well; their gazes crossed, Lingbo immediately looked away, and he, in turn, smiled.

“As it happens, the second young miss and I are in the same line of work.” He began the conversation with a pleasantry. Seeing Lingbo’s puzzled expression, he added: “Has the young miss forgotten the matter of the dispute over the property in the Western District — the Ruyi Workshop?”

Lingbo understood then, and looked back at him with considerably more depth in her eyes.

What he called the Ruyi Workshop property dispute was merely a phrase suitable for saying in front of the elderly matron — he couldn’t very well say it plainly. If one were to count it up properly, this man was actually something of a rival.

To trace it back: it was the affair of the cotton trade from last year. During the great campaign, the capital had tightened its grip on everything. Grain ships, tea ships, silk ships — inspected every three days, searched every five. Officially it was said to be for fear of smuggled correspondence and the detection of spies, but in practice several government offices were using the cover of the war to line their pockets, taking advantage of authority they had gained during the campaign and knowing it would evaporate once the fighting ended. So they were scrambling to extract every last coin before that happened, because once peace came, they’d go back to being offices without jurisdiction over the waterways.

In such circumstances, many merchants had withdrawn, sitting on their stockpiles and waiting it out, surviving the winter. But Lingbo saw an opportunity. She reasoned that no matter how much merchants economized, there were things the capital simply could not do without — food, clothing, shelter, transit, these were unavoidable necessities, and there would always be buyers. So she gambled boldly, put up the funds to grease the relevant offices, and secured a hundred cargo vessels operating under a military pass from the Ministry of War — free passage through nine provinces, unrestricted throughout the realm.

To call it a gamble was perhaps not quite accurate — for Lingbo’s cleverness lay precisely here. Of the hundred vessels, she used only twenty for herself. The remaining eighty she held in reserve. Come winter, some merchants started to perceive an opportunity and wanted to ship goods to the capital, but found themselves without boats — and more importantly, without transit passes. Lingbo put her eighty vessels on the market, renting them to other merchants at an astronomical daily rate. She bore none of the risk herself, yet pocketed clean profit. Merchants competed frantically to secure her vessels and sent gift upon gift just for the privilege.

Lingbo was busy enjoying her windfall when she unexpectedly offended a government office — the imperial merchants. The imperial textile trade was overseen by the Pingjun Prince, and ordinarily they were in separate worlds. But as it happened, the imperial merchants had also wanted to corner the silk market: once the capital’s shipping routes were cut off, silk could not come in, and the imperial storehouses would be the sole remaining source. With the Flower Festival Season approaching, who would not pay any price? And it wasn’t only silk — tea, stored grain, dried fruits — the imperial merchants had designs on all of it. But silk was the most valuable and the lightest in weight, which is why the silk-handling imperial merchants had run directly into Ye Lingbo.

Merchants always have officials behind them. The imperial merchants were not polite about it — they went straight to the government offices to make trouble for Lingbo’s ships. What they did not reckon on was how freely Lingbo spent: she had already distributed a generous sum upward and downward through the bureaucracy, and as Yang Niangzi put it, she was like a turtle in armor — nothing to bite onto. Not only did they fail to catch any fault with her, but Lingbo discovered their scheme, and Lingbo’s way of handling things was simple: she spoke to Sister Han, who let Madam Shen quietly inform the Princess of Pingjun that a certain someone’s devotion to the people’s welfare was admirable — she had spent her own private funds to ease the flow of goods along the waterways, and it was puzzling to hear there were people looking to reopen the case and investigate.

The Princess of Pingjun naturally smiled and said there was no such thing, and she would look into it with her household people.

Lingbo also made sure Madam Shen’s words didn’t ring hollow. Of the twenty ships she sailed herself, ten followed with silk merchants. The other ten carried cotton from the northern frontier to the capital. The cotton was good — light, warm, plentiful — and she sold it all at low prices to the common people through her many shops, ensuring no one could buy it cheap to stockpile. Just when the capital most needed cotton, in the dead of winter, those ten ships of cotton alone couldn’t supply everyone’s urgent need — but a single person had brought the price of cotton in the capital crashing down, and the common people sang her praises, calling her Bodhisattva Ye.

That wasn’t all — her purchase of cotton had already relieved the cotton growers of the northern frontier at the moment of their greatest need, and the sale proceeds were donated entirely to the military fund. What spirit, what grace — the ladies all admired her. No one thought to calculate how much those ten ships of silk and those eighty leased vessels had actually earned her — enough, one suspected, to have covered the entire cost of the cotton ventures in a single run.

That was the real work Lingbo had done the year before. She knew it was not entirely glorious. But as a merchant, as long as goods were kept moving, as long as no one could hoard and suppress the market, as long as ordinary people could buy abundant goods at fair prices — that was the greatest glory. She was always generous: Sister Han had a stake in the venture, and Lingbo returned her investment with handsome interest, plus substantial gifts to Madam Shen’s side as well. Now Young Princess Wang and the others were all eager to join in, having already made an agreement with Lingbo that whenever such opportunities arose in future, they must be included as partners. After all, their households too had men of influence and connections.

But where there is joy, there is also grievance: the whole affair had indeed made an enemy of the imperial merchants handling silk. So when the Ruyi Workshop in the Western District had identified a good property and was about to open for business, it found someone had beaten them to it. Lingbo was not surprised. Yang Niangzi was furious, insisting there was no such principle of justice, and wanted to take the landlord and the guarantors straight to the magistrate’s court. Lingbo instead advised her to let it go.

She had taken the broad road herself — of course she had to leave the smaller paths for others to walk. Even if it was spite that gained nothing, letting them vent their frustration was all right.

She hadn’t expected them to go quite this far in their venting, and even bring it to her door. Lingbo was both amused and annoyed, unable to quite read Dai Yuquan’s approach. She only said blandly: “The gentleman is too polite. We are practically family — what dispute over property? If the gentleman enjoys sweets, I’ll have the kitchen arrange something.”

The words were cleverly put, and Dai Yuquan immediately smiled — his looks were ordinary, but his smile was open and warm — saying: “All the rumors about the second young miss’s generous spirit are well-founded. Truly, we were the ones who were small-minded. I am quite ashamed.”

Lingbo hadn’t expected this man, who seemed blunt and straightforward on the surface, to speak so well. Her confidence in his fitness to serve as a kite grew by three more parts. She ventured with a smile: “Whatever is the gentleman talking about — it is right past the Lantern Festival, and we had pastries prepared at home already. It is just the season of the moonlit nights, too. What is there to be magnanimous or not about?”

Dai Yuquan also smiled: “Since I have now come to pay my belated New Year respects to the Matriarch, I shall have to eat a late Lantern Festival sweet dumpling as well.”

Lingbo saw that he had caught the signal, and understood that he had indeed come on account of Qinglan at the Lantern Festival. So she said: “I understand the gentleman arrived in the capital last autumn, and came just in time for the grand occasion of the Flower Festival Season. The polo banquet a few days ago was quite a lively affair — how did the gentleman not attend?”

Dai Yuquan smiled: “The office was truly busy — but things are settled now. The prince is also understanding of our situation, and knowing I missed the polo banquet, has specially permitted me to assist with the arrangement of the Peach Blossom Banquet.”

Perfectly timed — not attending was one thing, but to assist with the arrangement of the Peach Blossom Banquet was quite another sort of honor. It spoke well of his prospects: not equal to Cui Jingyu’s rank of marquis, but in a head-to-head comparison he was far from lacking. Lingbo had what she needed, and said no more — immediately assumed a composed and proper air, to better set off Qinglan’s virtue by contrast, and took her leave: “A girl of the inner quarters, to have spoken so much with the gentleman already borders on presumption. I shall retire. Please let Nanny Wu look after the gentleman well, and I ask the gentleman to forgive my rudeness — we shall meet again at the Peach Blossom Banquet, at which time I shall make my apologies.”

Dai Yuquan was good-natured and still smiled his broad, easy smile, saying: “Not at all — the young miss is gracious and perceptive. It is I who have been improper. I shall apologize to the young miss at the Peach Blossom Banquet.”

A tall, imposing build, a fine bearing, and the ability to speak well without overstepping. Good family, good prospects, solid wealth behind him — as a suitor, all of this did Qinglan proper credit.

Lingbo had accomplished a major piece of business, and her spirits were excellent. Back in the warmth of the inner room, laying out the clothes for the Peach Blossom Banquet for Qinglan, A’Cuo, and Yanyan, she hummed a little tune to herself without thinking, thoroughly content. The sky outside the glass pavilion was brilliantly clear, matching her good mood.

Lingbo was in the middle of her good spirits, sorting through garments, when her hand landed on a piece of embroidered brocade — and a certain wretch came unbidden to mind. All at once, understanding broke over her.

She had still been thinking of using Dai Yuquan as a kite — to provoke Cui Jingyu into pressing his courtship of Qinglan more seriously. She had thought it an extraordinary scheme.

But looking back at the Apricot Blossom Banquet a few days ago — Pei Zhao, that creature, picking the flower and claiming the honors, making such a show of his charms, setting the hearts of all the gallery’s young misses aflutter — hadn’t he been using those girls as kites, to make her jealous?

What a pity Lingbo had not yet had a chance to settle the score with Pei Zhao when something of considerable importance happened in the capital.