It is precisely those who are usually the most careless about the world who catch you completely off guard when they suddenly speak in earnest. And he was so striking to look at — those peach-blossom eyes, refined to the point of perfection, with their upward-sweeping outer corners and their tear-mole beneath, held no watery softness in them at all. Instead, his pupils were bright as starlight, a deep smoky black, and when they fixed on you with full attention, you felt as though they might draw your very soul away.

Even Ye Lingbo, who had spent many days in his company, held her breath for just a moment.

But she was, after all, Ye Lingbo — who had seen through the nature of love long ago. She pulled herself back immediately, like a southern bird escaping a miasma, or a desert fox wrenching itself free from quicksand.

“There is something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time,” Ye Lingbo said with a smile. “What does it feel like to be so beautiful? Pei Zhao.”

Pei Zhao smiled too.

There was an ease about him that belonged only to someone who had been beautiful their whole life — someone who never worried about their clothes, never thought about their posture or expression. Like now: still slouched in his chair, he simply tilted his face toward Ye Lingbo so she could see it better. “Then what does it feel like for the one looking at someone so beautiful?”

It was the worst possible light — the dim grey of a winter afternoon, with lamps lit inside — and yet the light falling on his face was still smooth and luminous as silk. His head was shaped well, like a divine statue wrought by a master craftsman, the skin drawn taut against it without a single flaw.

At this closeness, there was a scent of grass about him — Ye Lingbo knew he had probably come straight from the stables again, which was almost enough to make one despair. A beautiful person was a beautiful person: even the smell of hay on him was like priceless incense.

He remained perfectly at ease as Ye Lingbo examined him — from those peach-blossom eyes, to the straight bridge of his nose, to his lips with their ever-present trace of a smile, lips shaped like a drawn bow, both delicate and spirited. There was simply nothing to criticize.

“Your mother must have been a great beauty,” Ye Lingbo concluded. “Was your father handsome?”

“Probably,” Pei Zhao said lazily. “I didn’t see much of him.”

“No wonder they say Xi Shi was a washerwoman,” Ye Lingbo mused. “Men of noble families really are sometimes less handsome than commoners.”

“That’s because there are simply more commoners,” Pei Zhao corrected her. “Most ordinary people spend their days struggling to survive. Who has the leisure to think about who is or isn’t handsome? They’re all grey and worn…”

Ye Lingbo was someone who did not take contradiction well, and her eyes sharpened at once.

“You dare lecture me? I’ve had no less contact with common people than you have — I manage shops and estates myself. I am hardly some sheltered young lady who doesn’t know how the world works.”

Pei Zhao immediately burst out laughing.

“Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right — I misspoke. The young miss is correct. I acknowledge my error!”

Ye Lingbo was laughed into smiling despite herself.

“You’ve never even accepted an imperial decree — how do you manage to sound so practiced at it?”

“The palace held a victory banquet and summoned us to attend. The eunuch who delivered the summons spoke exactly like that.”

“Of course you’d pick up these useless things,” said Ye Lingbo, perched on the heater — positioned higher than him — glancing between the account book and giving him a light kick with her foot. “Speaking of which — what is it like at a palace banquet? I’ve heard that the dried fish maw served in the palace is the real thing — supplied as tribute through the Maritime Department, and replaced by the Imperial Kitchen every year, with not a trace of rancid smell. No matter how fine the quality available to ordinary people, it can’t compare. Is that true?”

Pei Zhao said languidly, “I didn’t eat it.”

“Why not?” Ye Lingbo asked.

“Didn’t want to,” he said. “Wasn’t that when Wei Yushan had you all blocked on the road? I followed Cui Jingyu along to watch the excitement. After it was over, they went back to attend the banquet, but I thought it was too cold, so I just went back to the barracks.”

Ye Lingbo looked at him in the way one looks at someone who is beyond helping.

“I knew it — you can’t handle anything of high social standing. How many people never get to attend a palace banquet even once in their lifetimes? And here you are, turning around and walking away from it.”

Pei Zhao was not offended in the least, only smiling pleasantly. He did not really seem like someone of common origins — though he always had that air of habitual languor about him, like a cat. When Ye Lingbo spoke to him, he responded; when she did not, he simply reclined in his chair like a beautiful ornament, lending a touch of color to the winter afternoon and making even the account books seem less tedious.

He was lazy, while Ye Lingbo was diligent — she handled an untold number of matters in a single afternoon. Yang Niangzi came in to report one thing after another: first, the New Year’s Eve dinner menu needed her review; then, two of the household’s servant boys had gotten into a fight over who would handle a particular task and needed her to arbitrate; then, a gift arrived from one of Master Ye’s students, and the question arose of whether to inform the other courtyard.

Ye Lingbo dealt with everything adeptly, handling each matter with ease. Pei Zhao listened from the side and even teased her: “Ye Young Miss has so many affairs of state to attend to.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Ye Lingbo said dismissively.

But she also understood, in truth, why Pei Zhao was here.

The way he had mentioned his parents just now — it seemed as though they were both gone. The Northern Frontier Army had been gradually absorbed into the capital’s garrison forces, and even soldiers could go home for the New Year. But he, it seemed, had no home to return to — and the long princess had relocated everyone from Peace Lane Courtyard to another place.

No matter how careless a person pretended to be, during the depths of the New Year’s festival, in the heavy snow of the capital, they still longed to warm themselves by the fire in the home of someone they knew.

And so Ye Lingbo simply let him stay until dark, had the evening meal brought in from outside, and asked him, “Any foods you can’t eat?”

“Ye Young Miss is even treating me to dinner — I’m too grateful to the young miss,” Pei Zhao started teasing her again.

“Stop clowning around,” Ye Lingbo said dismissively. “Eat and then head back. Don’t drink, and don’t wander about in the heavy snow.”

“As you command.”

“Oh — and one more thing,” Ye Lingbo said, catching sight of him heading out and calling after him. “Come by at noon on New Year’s Day. I have something to ask you.”

With Pei Zhao there, she hadn’t noticed; once he was gone, the warm inner chamber truly felt emptied out. Ye Lingbo wrote at the account book for a while longer, but found she couldn’t keep at it. She stood up on her own. Xiao Liu’er was attending nearby and asked, “Does the young miss need something?”

Ye Lingbo said nothing, only paced about the inner chamber for a moment. She didn’t know why, but her mood had gone a little flat. Her gaze fell idly on her own reflection in the diamond-patterned mirror, and she laughed at herself.

Pei Zhao would never know why she had asked him what it felt like to be beautiful.

Beautiful people were all like that — they never thought much of their own beauty.

Just as A’Cuo would never know that Ye Lingbo ought not to have brought her along to the front courtyard today.

Among that group of her father’s students, only two had returned to the capital for official postings. The one in the crimson robe was named Qi Xiangyong, and the one in the green robe was Zou Maolin. Qi Xiangyong had lost both parents when he was young and had lived with his uncle’s family; he later passed the imperial examinations, though his uncle and aunt were mean and stingy. So when his mother had been alive, he had spent half the year living in the Ye household. Zou Maolin, meanwhile, was simply a man of fine character — mature and steady beyond his years.

Among the twenty-four flower festival winds, even the peach and apricot blossoms understand how to give themselves to the east wind. Ye Lingbo was not without her calculations.

Only her calculations had carried little weight.

The truth was, it had been the same way last year — just as it was now. She had spent these past few days going to considerable trouble to arrange things, even reading through two of Zou Maolin’s essays to learn his tastes, understand his family background, and know that he preferred the color green on women. Yet at one single glance, he had looked straight past her to A’Cuo. The year before that, it had been Qinglan.

“Admiring youth” — characters Ye Lingbo had written on paper as a child, not understanding them then. Now she finally grasped their meaning. The nature of food and beauty was common to all people; who in this world did not admire a beautiful face? Even after all the careful weighing of character and suitability — even knowing who would make the better match — there was no controlling who you fell for at first sight.

She had never been beautiful, and could barely qualify as pleasant-looking. The person she would one day marry was likely to feel nothing for her at all — it would simply be a matter of matching families, of mutual respect without warmth, of two people arriving at roughly the right age at roughly the right circumstances, and thus joining their lives together. Though this was a common enough fate for young ladies of noble families, it still felt dispiriting to contemplate.

She would never have Qinglan’s girlish romantic feelings. She would never share that knowing of two hearts in harmony. No one would look at her the way Cui Jingyu looked at Qinglan — as though she held absolute power over him, as though his heart lay in her hands, as though every future he imagined had her shadow woven through it.

If she had already seen through to this outcome, why did she feel such hollow loss?

Why had she not refused when A’Cuo asked to come along?

Perhaps she still harbored hope — still wished that someone might truly, genuinely, come to like her.

Ye Lingbo looked at her own face in the mirror, and smiled at herself with quiet self-mockery.

She really ought to have drawn a few lines across Pei Zhao’s face — it made no difference to him regardless. That fellow was more of a waste than even Shen Biwei. He had everything anyone could envy, and he simply didn’t care.

But no matter how high one’s gifts, in this capital city, on a long and bitter winter night, to return alone to an empty home — that must still be difficult to bear.

“Xiao Liu’er, go and have Liu Ji send a box of those lotus pastries the kitchen fried today to Pei Zhao, and take a jug of wine along with them,” Ye Lingbo told Xiao Liu’er. “If the snow gets heavier, you don’t need to come back tonight.”

Xiao Liu’er was sharp-witted, and her eyes lit up at once.

“Understood. I’ll go tell my brother right away.”

On the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth month, Ye Qinglan went up the mountain to burn incense.

The Ci’en Temple was a very small temple, tucked away in a secluded little grove on the outskirts of the capital. The mountain was not tall, and the scenery was nothing remarkable. If there was anything particular to say about it, it was that years ago, when Lady Ye was still alive, she had once brought Qinglan out for a day’s outing and happened to stop at this temple, where they had shared a vegetarian meal.

Qinglan was the eldest and the most sensible — she was not burdened and heavy-hearted like Ye Lingbo, nor did she cling like Yanyan. And so Lady Ye had directed most of her attention toward the two younger ones. That day had been a rare instance of time spent alone together, and so, many years later, Ye Qinglan still remembered the feeling of holding her mother’s hand for the first time as they stepped through the gate of that temple’s meditation hall — the damp chill of the ancient trees all around, and the faint sweet fragrance of the gardenia tree in the courtyard.

It was just that afterward, with the family always so busy, she could only ever make the journey at year’s end — and so she never saw the gardenias in bloom.

She burned several long sticks of incense at the temple and bought a year’s worth of lamp oil. The nuns there all knew this regular patron well. This year, she burned one stick fewer than usual. One of the nuns seemed reluctant to say something, then finally ventured, “Young miss — you’ve been burning incense here for four years. If you stop before it’s complete, that is truly a pity. A thing should be seen through to its end.”

Ye Qinglan said nothing. The nun seemed to realize she had overstepped, and asked quietly, “Has something happened to the person you were praying for? Perhaps you could ask the Bodhisattva for protection — it may still turn misfortune into fortune.”

“Nothing has happened to him,” Ye Qinglan said mildly. “He has come back.”

When the Twenty-Four Flower Festival Banquets concluded, he would naturally have a Marchioness of Dingyuan who was a worthy match for him. There was no need to go on praying daily for his safety and well-being.

This incense was no longer hers to burn.

Just as what had existed between herself and him had always been a beginning without an ending.