The sudden appearance of Huo Yingzhen, the Duke of England — absent from public life for more than ten years — at the Ye family’s banquet was enough to shake the capital to its foundations, and that was no exaggeration.

Lingbo had always been a little wary of Secretary Qin, who was the kind of palace attendant capable of remaining perfectly composed before even the greatest of nobles — outwardly kneeling and paying reverence with the utmost deference, yet immediately moving to correct Pei Zhao’s behavior. She said: “Young Master is of imperial blood — how can it be proper to ride in the same carriage as a young lady on a public street? Please go at once to pay your respects to Her Highness.”

Lingbo had, in truth, been struck senseless by what Pei Zhao had said. Huo Yingzhen — who was this? The Duke of England, of incomparable distinction, and the only son of Her Highness the Grand Princess. The moment he appeared, he would be the undisputed champion of the flower-viewing season without a shadow of doubt. And yet the way he smiled at her with those curving eyes was still unmistakably her Pei Zhao.

“Don’t worry — I’ll be right back.” He smiled to reassure her, and made to step down from the carriage.

Lingbo immediately seized his sleeve.

No wonder he was so remarkably handsome. No wonder he had merely smiled lightly when she sent him woven-pattern satin, saying only that he preferred cut-silk. No wonder he had found the solid gold belly band too rich. No wonder he was the finest polo player in the capital. No wonder he refused so stubbornly to make something of himself, even refusing to appear at the main banquet of the flower-viewing season…

His military record showed he had enlisted four years ago and distinguished himself repeatedly in battle, eventually rising to the rank of young general of the Fire Division. The history of the Duke of England’s household was so complicated — and he was Huo Yingzhen, who had grown up bearing all of that history and all those old grudges. So he had hidden his name and gone north to enlist, and the Grand Princess had lost all word of him, which was why she had been saying all this time that he was studying at Yongning Mountain, and why Secretary Qin’s words just now carried a note of reproach.

Everyone said Lingbo was clever, and she was. In the space of a single flash of thought, she had pieced together the rough shape of the whole story. She understood what decision Pei Zhao had made for her sake, what he had given up, and what he had chosen.

And Pei Zhao only smiled, those peach-blossom eyes curving softly, coaxing her with patient gentleness.

“Don’t worry,” he said, knowing that Lingbo’s heart was in turmoil. “I’ll see Her Highness for a moment, and come straight back for you.”

As he spoke, he lowered his head slightly and turned his face to the side. The sunlight drew a golden line across his face. His skin was so fine-grained, his cheekbones narrow, his beauty of a kind that made the heart yield.

Lingbo often had a fleeting disbelief that he was truly hers.

She was not afraid. She was Ye Lingbo. She had already waded through the most treacherous of rivers. Flowing water and peach blossoms — what begins must end. The hardest choice she had already made; she had followed her heart, taken off this bridal garment, and rushed toward him — and toward her own fate.

And even if she had not chosen him, he had chosen her. That very morning, he had sent in his calling card. He was willing to become Huo Yingzhen again for her sake, because she refused to marry a man of no title or station.

She gave up all her stubborn insistence; he gave up his.

And so they had been able to meet here — like two foolish children, each trying to give the other the very best of themselves.

Once she understood this, there was truly nothing left to fear on the road ahead.

Lingbo released his sleeve. The golden woven青鸾 pattern slipped through her fingers. She was, at heart, someone with very little sense of security — she had clung to Madam Ye from childhood, unable to let go for even a moment. After her mother died, she had often fallen asleep clutching her mother’s clothes, because they still held her scent.

She was intensely practical — she loved brocade and jade, she loved the solid weight of gold and silver ingots, because things you could hold in your hands were real. She often had the urge to bite Pei Zhao, feeling it was the only way to confirm he truly existed.

But she was Ye Lingbo, and she had always been brave.

“All right,” she smiled back at him, sincere and clear. “I’ll wait for you to come back.”

When Pei Zhao walked into the main hall, every one of the assembled ladies held her breath.

Because they were in the presence of the Grand Princess and could not exchange whispers, but if they had been able to — every lady would have had the same words on her lips.

So that’s why.

The skill he had shown at the polo banquet. That bearing. So many people had sighed for him — what a pity he had no title; otherwise the champion of this year’s flower-viewing season would have been a foregone conclusion. In truth, rank and standing were secondary — what the ladies lamented was that such a young man, so breathtaking in appearance, so attuned to the moods of others, ought by rights to live with an untroubled freedom and high spirits, so that tender feelings between a man and a woman could truly flourish between equals. Otherwise, how was one to bear the long grinding-down of ordinary life?

A marquisate had already been the height of these ladies’ wishful thinking — and who could have imagined he would turn out to be the capital’s one young Duke?

With Lu Wanyang gone — and fortunately with Lu Wanyang gone — it was almost as if you could hear the sound of knives being sharpened inside the ladies’ hearts. At the banquet the Grand Princess had hosted that day, a single name had been enough to set every ambitious heart racing; how much more so now. The tall, broad-shouldered young man strode forward — willowy as a beautiful tree, his long, lean figure bathed in the courtyard’s midday light. He wore white woven-pattern satin, the magnificent青鸾 pattern not half as resplendent as his own looks. From the stage came the sound of strings and flutes. He took the steps two at a time, swept aside the hem of his robe, and knelt on the red carpet.

“I pay my respects to Mother.”

Every lady in the hall felt a sigh echo through her heart; even the young misses flushed. Such bearing and such looks — truly, in his case, not a single day of this fine youth had been wasted.

Princess Minghua herself had been unsettled for some time now. The noble ladies of the palace had this one advantage — they could endure with teeth clenched. The assembled ladies were startled to catch a glimpse of something entirely human about her, something like an ordinary mother in the world, measuring his back with her eyes inch by inch, even the rims of her eyes turning red.

“Rise,” she said.

She could endure it, but the members of the Grand Princess’s household could not. Secretary Qin looked on with reproach in her eyes; Secretary Su’s expression was one of sheer astonishment; and Nanny Song’s eyes were already full of tears. “You’re back, you’re back.” A palace nanny, old and seasoned in the ways of the world, was at a loss for words for once. She went forward and seized Pei Zhao by the arm, examining him carefully to make sure he was whole and intact. Then she immediately performed the ritual bow of greeting: “This servant pays her respects to the Duke.”

The assembled ladies finally came back to themselves and rushed forward to pay their respects. After the purges of the late Emperor, only two Dukedoms remained in the capital. The Yongguo Dukedom was openly on the verge of dying out — which made this one surviving young Duke all the more precious, like a phoenix among men.

Pei Zhao simply smiled: “Ladies, you are too kind — the polo banquet the other day was unforgivably rude of me.”

And this was exactly why the ladies adored him. In addition to his exceptional appearance and bearing, he was nothing like those two from the Northern Border Army — always looking as though they bore the weight of some bitter feud, cold as ice. This one loved to smile and talk, with a naturally graceful and charming air. Only ladies who had lived their years knew that this was the kind of man the operas truly described when they sang of the most beautiful partners and the slow passing of time like flowing water.

He had made a joke, so the ladies naturally relaxed. Even the Grand Princess said: “Ladies, you need not stand on ceremony — he’s young; we mustn’t spoil him.”

Nanny Song also stepped forward with a smile: “Quite right, ladies — please don’t be so formal. The Duke is young; heavy ceremony would be too much for him.”

The ladies might be exempt from such ceremony, but the male guests outside were not. The Grand Princess therefore gave instructions: “Very well — Jingrong, take him to make the rounds outside. Hongyü should be at the front gate?”

Zhao Hongyü was the Pingjun Prince’s given name. Before the Grand Princess, he was of the nephew generation. The Pingjun Princess Consort, hearing this, immediately stepped forward with a smile: “To answer Your Highness — he has been waiting at the main entrance since early on.”

“Go then.” The Grand Princess’s expression as she looked at her son was that of a long-suffering mother, yet her gaze kept returning to him, and it seemed to carry infinite wistfulness. “Don’t stay outside too long — make one round and come back.”

Han Yueqi stepped forward at once: “Your Highness, a small banquet has been set up in the Lanyue Chamber for the Duke. After the Duke has greeted the male guests, I invite you to move there.”

The assembled ladies probably couldn’t understand why a private banquet would be arranged — they would assume it was because the Grand Princess was unwilling to be parted from her son so soon. After all, if Huo Yingzhen had been serving as a general in the Northern Border Army, then these four years he had spent away were not studying at some Yongning Mountain, but quietly gone off to fight a war.

What they couldn’t know was that there was still one more matter for Her Highness the Grand Princess to decide — only Han Yueqi had a rough idea of what it was, having just been told in a whispered message from the maid Lingbo had sent over.

What a fateful entanglement.

From the time of the founding of the dynasty, the Huo family had been like this — never settling for stillness. Among the twenty-four meritorious subjects of the Pavilion of Meritorious Subjects, Huo An’guo had stood first among the military. An imperial secret, they said, reached back to the founding itself, when a diviner had openly declared that Huo An’guo shared the fate of Han Xin. In the end, the prophecy had fulfilled itself; the Huo family had always had their own Weiyang Palace.

To crash someone else’s engagement banquet and steal their bride — truly something only the Huo family could manage.

The Grand Princess was cursing them inwardly even as she sighed in resignation.

“Go,” she said, instructing Secretary Qin: “I am tired. Go and ask the Ye family’s eldest daughter to come and keep me company for a while.”

Qinglan had not anticipated things developing in quite this way, yet the sudden reversal of fortune was not entirely surprising to her. What was more, the turn had been toward a good outcome — so when she went to see Her Highness the Grand Princess, she was not overly apprehensive.

No matter how ruthless the rules of the imperial family, she was, at the end of it, Huo Yingzhen’s mother.

And indeed, Her Highness the Grand Princess was far more approachable today than at any of their previous encounters — though it was possible, Qinglan reflected, that this was her own misperception. After all, the Grand Princess was now seated in the Ye family’s glazed chamber, reclining against the edge of the couch in a way that somehow reminded her of how Madam Ye had looked in her time. She was clearly also greatly vexed by the current state of affairs, and was gently massaging her temples with her fingertips.

Only now did Qinglan see clearly how much of Her Highness’s face resembled Pei Zhao’s — the same tilt toward a striking, almost ethereal beauty in the lines of her face, and the lips almost exactly alike. But Pei Zhao’s eyes were more rakish, while she had the narrow phoenix eyes of the Zhao family — more imperious, and harder to approach.

“Qinglan pays her respects to Your Highness.” She stepped forward and performed the ritual bow.

“Take a seat,” the Grand Princess said.

The treatment improved each time — a pity that Secretary Su was absent, or she would certainly have been pleased on Qinglan’s behalf.

Qinglan bowed her head properly and sat down with composure. And indeed, she immediately heard Secretary Qin go on the attack: “The Ye family’s eldest daughter does her duties as hostess remarkably well — how is it that both the bride and one of the guests have ended up in a back lane?”

The imperial family’s way of things — blaming the outsider first. Rather like how Lingbo, in private moments, would sometimes mutter complaints about Zhao Yanze, saying that their family had such fine airs, as though their own men were all phoenixes and everyone else must be coveting them. When it was plainly Zhao Yanze who kept pursuing Shen Biwei, the palace’s implications somehow always managed to suggest it was Shen Biwei who had done the enticing.

But Qinglan only smiled and said: “Our household was hosting an engagement banquet for my younger sister; we truly had no knowledge that the Duke would honor us with his presence. I ask Chief Secretary Qin to forgive the discourtesy.”

No wonder Secretary Qin was displeased — the whole affair was really quite improper. Gone for four years without a word, and when he finally returned, it was for the sake of a girl. Any young lady would have been a matter to be dealt with; a slightly lesser family background could have been overlooked. But she had to be someone else’s fiancée. It sounded appalling when said plainly — involving the Grand Princess as it did, it was nearly a case of the ruler taking a minister’s bride. Not that the Huo family had any pride left to lose; they had no one left to be embarrassed for them. But the imperial family still had a face to keep.

And it was Her Highness’s only child, so the only option was to find a way to smooth it over. Every one of Ye Qinglan’s words was a thrust: my sister was properly engaged to be married; how did your Duke manage to turn up of his own accord?

It was enough to give one a headache.

Secretary Qin had never endured this kind of treatment. With the status of Her Highness the Grand Princess, she walked sideways even in the palace itself — she could go toe to toe with the Central Palace on level ground. When had she ever been made to feel like this?

But the Grand Princess was, after all, the Grand Princess.

“Everyone says Qinglan is devoted to her younger sister; indeed, she is remarkably protective,” she said, keeping her voice light.

The address had grown closer each time — and with good reason, given the unusual circumstances. What they effectively were, at this moment, was the chief relatives in charge on both sides of a prospective union. In other words: mothers-in-law.

“One does not have many close family members in this life. If I don’t protect mine, who am I to protect?” Qinglan replied with a gentle smile — a reply that was both encouragement and remonstrance: “My mother taught me from childhood to read the writings of sages and to live one’s whole life with caution and propriety — and that this was to protect one’s family. Otherwise, what is the point? Simply to spend a lifetime as a stone idol, standing there to be worshipped?”

She had that particular quality of sharpness — her soft exterior concealing a core of pure, unyielding bone — and one sentence was enough to bring the glazed chamber to silence.