Fortunately, Madam Shen was still attentive. Master Shen was in fact rather cold-natured: Madam Shen was herself of distinguished birth, the only daughter of the Duke of Yongguo’s household, and had been proud in her own day. The two had gone through a period of mutual resentment early in their marriage — and then the affair of the second branch of the household had occurred. She was probably afraid of Han Yueqi walking the same path she herself had walked, so she used the ninth day of the month — the birthday of the late elder patriarch of the Shen Family — as occasion to host a small family dinner. Only family members attended, and she invited both Han Yueqi and Shen Yunze. She also had the wet nurse bring their daughter A’Xing to be fussed over, while Shen Biwei in particular was utterly delighted with A’Xing and spent the whole time holding her and teasing her with a rattle drum.
A’Xing’s name had come about because when Han Yueqi had attended a palace banquet, she had felt a certain sourness in her stomach, and the Empress had happened to pass her a tribute apricot to eat. On returning home, an imperial physician had been consulted about a change in her pulses, and she was found to be with child. In families of such noble rank, children were most beloved, and yet they were often so difficult to raise to adulthood — so no one dared to give a formal name too soon, and could only give a rough little childhood name to see the child through. Calling her A’Xing also carried the meaning of seeking the blessing and protection of the Empress’s good fortune.
Shen Biwei was also willful about it — anyone with clear eyes could see that Madam Shen intended to bring these two young spouses back together; Shen Biwei instead clung to A’Xing and refused to let go, which drew furious glares from Shen Yunze, and she provocatively countered: “Where is your Yanlu now?”
Shen Yunze knew very well that Yanlu’s origins were compromised, yet the more that was the case, the more he felt the need to defend her — for a person as proud as him, how could he ever admit that he had made a mistake? He still said: “Yanlu has said that she has turned over a new leaf entirely. Now that she has entered this household, she is part of this household.”
Shen Biwei was lost for words at the sheer absurdity: “You are truly extraordinarily foolish.”
After she finished scolding Shen Yunze, she bent down to coo at A’Xing: “Our little A’Xing must take after your mother, all right? Being too stupid won’t do — you’ll be led around in circles by people.”
Shen Yunze was so infuriated by her that steam practically rose from the top of his head. “Tomorrow is the Flower Season Banquet, isn’t it? Instead of going to bed early, why are you still here?”
“And what business is it of yours,” Shen Biwei shot back at him. “You just go and keep your beloved Yanlu company. Stay in your Qing Xiao Pavilion and rot there for all I care.”
Shen Yunze refused to budge: “She was the one who told me to go live in Qing Xiao Pavilion — why shouldn’t I live there? She drove me out herself; she can come and ask me back herself.”
Shen Biwei was actually tickled into laughing by him.
“Ask you back? You’re dreaming. Even if you went crawling back yourself, she might not even want you. Do you think Sister Yueqi is like that Yanlu or whoever she is — devoting herself to flattering you?” Shen Biwei laughed so hard she clapped her hands. “I was just saying there wasn’t enough to laugh at at this year’s Flower Season Banquet — turns out you’re the biggest joke of all!”
Shen Yunze was so furious he was nearly beside himself with anger. He had been groomed as a future top scholar from childhood, studying for close to twenty years — and yet he had no skill in arguments. He wanted to turn and leave, but could not bring himself to do it, and so stayed where he was. He waited until Madam Shen, unable to watch any longer, chased Shen Biwei away and returned A’Xing to Han Yueqi’s arms — only then did he find an opening to speak with Han Yueqi.
In truth, thinking back on it, those three-odd years of marriage had also passed something like a dream. He could not even recall how the engagement had come about; A’Xing was already more than two years old. He only remembered walking into a bridal chamber awash in crimson red, and her sitting upright on the marriage bed with a fan held before her face, while the ladies gathered to tease the bride made her blush so red, so quietly and shyly waiting for him to compose the verse that would allow her to lower the fan.
And yet in the blink of an eye, it had all come to today. He moved hesitantly to her side; she was coaxing A’Xing, and did not look up.
Fortunately, A’Xing still recognized him, and waved the rattle drum in her hand, calling out in an imprecise little voice: “Papa.”
“Yes.” Shen Yunze answered her cheerfully, and reached out wanting to take A’Xing from her arms — but she paid him no notice. He could only make conversation: “Still like this at two years old? I was already reciting poetry at two.”
That remark had clearly been the wrong thing to say, for her expression immediately clouded over.
“My lord husband is naturally extraordinary,” she said only, her tone flat, and passed A’Xing to Han Niangzi: “Take the Little Miss to sleep, please. Have the wet nurse burp her — the weather is cold today; I worry she may catch a chill.”
A’Xing was carried off, naturally bursting into tears, which made the scene before them appear all the more bleak.
Shen Yunze recalled what Shen Biwei had just said in her mad way — and foolish as it was, there was a grain of truth in it: when she had arranged for him to go to Qing Xiao Pavilion, she had been angry and there had also been the intention of testing him. And yet he had settled in and stayed there for three whole days. No wonder she had misread the situation.
So he said at once, “I have thought through what you meant. I have spoken to Yanlu — what she did last time was an offense to you, and she was in the wrong. Since you do not wish to see her in the household, I will send her away. In the future, should anything like this arise, I will tell you, and will not go secretly taking a concubine outside the household. This time I was in the wrong; please stop being angry with me. You have won, and I know I have erred. Let me move back to Shen Xiang Pavilion today.”
He was quite certain that these were the most conciliatory words he had ever spoken, an unprecedented concession on his part — and that upon hearing them, even if she were not moved to emotion, she would at least soften. Once he moved back to Shen Xiang Pavilion, after a few more days, things would settle back down, just as they had been before…
But Han Yueqi behaved as though she had not heard a word. She stood and turned to Han Niangzi: “Wait — there is still something I have not attended to…”
Shen Yunze was immediately alarmed, and grabbed her sleeve: “Did you hear what I said?”
Han Yueqi merely looked at him with a calm smile. “I naturally heard everything my lord husband said.”
Shen Yunze was just about to feel relieved when he heard her add evenly, “But what does any of it have to do with me?”
His heart sank. Only then did he realize precisely where the difference lay between the Han Yueqi before him now and the image of her he had held in his mind.
She looked at him the way one looks at a stranger who has no bearing on one’s life. All those late-night vigils, those moments of warmth by lamplight, those tender and lingering smiles, that bird’s nest congee simmered low on a slow flame, the flush that had come to her face when he had suddenly taken her brush and guided her hand through a line of verse — all of it, and all the days and nights of those three years, seemed now as though they had been nothing but his imagination…
Shen Yunze felt a tightening in his chest, and out of that tightening was born a boundless fury.
“You — what do you mean by this?”
“Does my lord husband not understand perfectly well what I mean?” She continued to look at Shen Yunze with the same composure. “Is this not precisely what my lord husband wanted? Shen Xiang Pavilion and Qing Xiao Pavilion, each undisturbed by the other — no matter how many concubines my lord husband takes, or how many women he keeps outside the household, I remain only the Young Mistress of the Shen household.”
Shen Yunze clearly took this as nothing more than jealousy.
“I have already told you — Yanlu and I are not what you imagine. At the time I believed her situation was pitiable, my colleagues at the banquet were goading me, and the brothel mistress was threatening to force her to sell her body — I was moved in a moment of righteous indignation to—”
“My lord husband does not need to account to me for what he and Yanlu are to each other. I am the principal wife — managing matters of concubinage is not my affair; I only need whoever is taken in to answer to my authority. Is the arrangement not perfectly satisfactory as it stands? What could my lord husband possibly find lacking?” She interrupted him again, and asked him with the same composure.
Yes — what was lacking? An emptiness opened up in Shen Yunze’s chest, and her question left him without a word to say. But meeting the calm steadiness of her gaze, a sudden fury surged up in him.
“I find it lacking — and what of it? I am moving back to Shen Xiang Pavilion. You are the Young Mistress and I am your husband — I have every right to return to Shen Xiang Pavilion!” He announced this, seizing her wrist.
Han Yueqi smiled at him with contempt.
“And if I do not consent — what then?” she asked Shen Yunze coldly. “What can my lord husband do? Divorce me?”
Had she not said it, Shen Yunze would never have thought of it.
Ah — the thing all women feared most in this world: to be repudiated and cast aside. He seized upon it at once as the only sharp blade left to him, his last lifeline, and threatened: “You are so jealous — all over one concubine, you drive your own husband out. If you do not let me return to Shen Xiang Pavilion, I will write you a letter of divorce this very day.”
Madam Shen had deliberately given them space alone together, and had withdrawn long ago with Master Shen. Now in the warm chamber there were only the two of them, with the servants in attendance. Han Niangzi and Nanny Shen and the others, serving nearby, changed color at hearing this.
“Young Master, please do not speak such things recklessly…” Nanny Shen rushed forward to mediate. “How can words that harm the feelings be uttered like this? Over all these years, how much has the Young Mistress labored for this household — to say such things to her, how it must wound her heart!”
Han Niangzi’s eyes also reddened: “How can the Young Master be so heartless — in all these years the Young Mistress has never once said no to anything in this household, how can you say such a thing…”
Tong Yun even knelt down directly and said, “It is all our fault. I beg the Young Master and Young Mistress to calm your anger.”
But Han Yueqi only glanced at her coldly and said, “Rise.”
At one word from her, Tong Yun did not dare to continue her pleas. There was no trace left of deference to him as the young master, and he ought to feel furious at that — and yet Shen Yunze could only stare fixedly at her eyes.
Her eyes seemed to have reddened, and yet also seemed not to have.
But none of that mattered anymore, because the very next moment she broke into laughter — as though Shen Yunze had just said something absolutely absurd.
“Divorce me? Does my lord husband want to hear himself say that again?”
She stood in the lamplight of the warm chamber, layers of embroidered silk wrapped around a face that was the very image of a noble lady’s beauty, adorned with pearls and kingfisher-feather ornaments, her cloud of hair threaded through with flowers — and yet the light in her eyes was something no one could bear to look at directly.
“Shen Yunze, hear me well. I, Han Yueqi, did not come into this marriage — I was brought in by three formal matchmakers, six sets of wedding gifts, and an eight-bearer palanquin. Grand Secretary Qin oversaw the vows. The Empress herself added her gifts. His Majesty wrote the plaque reading ‘May Your Lutes Harmonize’ — and it still hangs above the entrance to Shen Xiang Pavilion to this day. The full council of elder kinsmen of the Shen clan received my obeisance. My name was presented to your ancestors and entered into your family register. Not only have I committed none of the seven grounds for dismissal — even if I had, do you think a single word from your household could remove me?”
“Madam Shen entrusted the household management to me, and Master Shen has placed the inner household in my hands entirely. My father is Assistant Director of the Court of Imperial Entertainments; to this day he holds three memorials of impeachment against you submitted by his students. My mother holds an imperially bestowed title; she could file a complaint with the Empress at any moment — do you think your career as a graduate who placed third in the imperial examination is so utterly secure? By the time the Censorate finishes its business with you, you will have nothing left!”
Shen Yunze was struck silent — not by her boldness, but by the precise and lucid logic with which she spoke, as though she had turned these words over in her mind through countless nights.
And Han Yueqi clearly took his reaction for something else entirely.
For otherwise, she would not have let out a cold laugh.
“You want to divorce me? Then look at what is around you. Half the dishes on this table come from the estates in my dowry. Every one of the servants here — which of them was not brought from my family? This entire Shen household — without me, how would it function? Will you manage it yourself, or will you have it managed by the women of the pleasure houses you pick up at banquets?”
“And you still want to return to Shen Xiang Pavilion? Every single thing in Shen Xiang Pavilion came from my dowry. You have already defiled yourself — do you wish to defile my place as well?” She told Shen Yunze with contempt, “I won’t be afraid to tell you plainly — you will never set foot in Shen Xiang Pavilion again as long as you live. Yet even so, I will remain the Young Mistress of the Shen household, and one day will be its principal mistress. Every concubine you take will kneel and bow to me and address me as Madam. Every title of honor His Majesty bestows upon you will be conferred upon me. Every child born of your concubines will be raised under my name and call me Mother. The outer household is yours; the inner household is mine. As long as I, Han Yueqi, remain here for even one day, the position of Young Mistress of the Shen household belongs to me and no one else. As for who you favor, where you sleep, who you choose to be with — that stopped being any of my concern long ago. If we are to be on good terms, let us live in mutual peace. But if you ever again open your mouth to speak of divorce, I will not hesitate to let Madam and Master hear of it — and we shall see whether the bricks in the study are harder, or your knees, my lord husband!”
These words left not only Shen Yunze stunned, but Han Niangzi and Nanny Shen standing there in a daze as well. As one might well imagine — Han Yueqi was the kind of person who let nothing through without reason, and her choosing to say all of this in front of Nanny Shen meant she fully intended for it to be carried back as a message. The Shen Family had dealt with Shen Yunze far too lightly over the Spring Welcome Banquet affair, and the Han Family had long been dissatisfied. Shen Yunze had now compounded his error by speaking of divorce, and Han Yueqi had caught him precisely on this point. Once the matter reached Master Shen and Madam Shen, the one who would be reprimanded was without question Shen Yunze.
Still calling yourself a noble young gentleman — threatening to divorce your wife over a woman from the pleasure houses. Have you the face to speak of such a thing? Go kneel in the study and reflect on yourself this instant!
Such words, from the in-laws, were inevitable.
So Han Yueqi was entirely unafraid. She pulled her wrist free from Shen Yunze’s grasp and walked away, composed and unhurried.
“Yueqi.” Shen Yunze could not stop himself from calling after her. His expression was almost bewildered.
It was not because of what Han Yueqi had said that he was in turmoil — he knew that. But Han Yueqi did not know it.
But as she herself had said — none of that mattered anymore. What difference did it make? The outcome was the same either way.
She led her train of maids and serving women out of the warm chamber — just as she had done at the Spring Welcome Banquet, when she had led her servants to clear away the wreckage left by Shen Yunze’s “Yanlu.”
She did not look back once.