Yet Shiyiniang did not hold out much hope in this matter.

After all, before marriage, such things were for the most part kept carefully secret — the chances of there being a child were very small. And even if there were, the greatest precautions would certainly have been taken. If Xu Lingyi could be called a mighty dragon crossing the river, then Zhu Anping was the local snake in his own territory. There was the old saying that even a mighty dragon is no match for the local snake — Xu Lingyi might not necessarily be able to find anything.

Xu Lingyi himself felt Shiyiniang’s approach was not quite sound.

Zhu Anping was shrewd and capable, a man of considerable strategy — how would he have allowed himself to father a child before marriage and damage his own reputation, thereby jeopardizing his marriage prospects?

But seeing Shiyiniang’s eager and spirited expression, he did not want to dash her enthusiasm. He only said, tactfully: “And if there are no children?”

“If there are no children,” Shiyiniang replied, “Seventh Elder Sister still stands on firmer ground.”

Xu Lingyi understood at once.

If Zhu Anping had fathered a child before marriage, that would be an act of moral failing — the Luo family would already hold the moral high ground. Even if Seventh Young Lady could not produce children, having that hold over Zhu Anping would allow them to secure the greatest possible advantages and family sympathy for Seventh Young Lady, thereby gaining the upper hand in the matter of heirs. And if Zhu Anping had no prior children, so much the better — Seventh Young Lady could place the entire responsibility for the lack of children squarely on Zhu Anping’s shoulders.

He thought it over, and decided to tell Shiyiniang outright: “I had introduced Zhu Anping to Prince Shun, and he in turn introduced a merchant surnamed Wang from Songjiang to Prince Shun. This spring, Prince Shun secured this Wang merchant the business of the Jiangnan Textile Bureau…”

Shiyiniang was startled. “What about the Wen family?”

“Sometimes, doing nothing but enabling someone further only causes them to sink deeper,” Xu Lingyi said coldly. “The Wen family’s power has grown too overbearing — it is time for them to step back.” He gave a quiet sigh. “It is only that the Wen family may not be willing to step back.”

“The Wen family are merchants, after all — the affairs of the imperial court may be beyond their understanding.” Thinking of how these years Xu Lingyi had been caught between the Emperor and the Wen family, forever pulled in both directions, Shiyiniang reached under the quilt and took his hand. “I think the Marquis may as well speak plainly with them. Whether they blame you or are grateful to you — the Marquis need only have a clear conscience.”

Xu Lingyi closed his hand around Shiyiniang’s, gave a quiet sound of assent, and a thread of melancholy passed through his voice.

Shiyiniang did not press further into the subject, and returned to speaking of Seventh Young Lady: “From the way the Marquis speaks, Zhu Anping now conducts his business with the Marquis’s help?”

“It is not quite that he conducts business with my help,” Xu Lingyi said evenly. “Only that if the two families were to fall out completely, Zhu Anping’s losses would certainly be considerable.”

Shiyiniang exhaled with relief, and then paused, feeling a faint urge to laugh.

She and Xu Lingyi were so alike.

Both believed that interest and advantage were more durable and steadfast than sentiment and feeling — yet in all their actions they went in quite the opposite direction…

Shiyiniang could not help turning onto her side and resting her head on Xu Lingyi’s arm, curling herself into his embrace.

Seeing her nestle close, Xu Lingyi slipped his hand inside her collar and stroked her back slowly, feeling through his fingertips the silk-smooth fineness of her skin, and said with unhurried ease: “You need only drop a hint to Seventh Young Lady. There are certain things that should not be said too plainly. If Zhu Anping were to think we were leveraging favors for personal gain, that would not do.”

“This concubine understands!” Shiyiniang wound her fingers around Xu Lingyi’s sash cord and murmured softly: “This concubine also does not want Seventh Elder Sister to misunderstand, thinking that her husband has been tolerant of her all this time only because of such considerations.” As she said it, a strange feeling stirred within her. It was as though Seventh Young Lady and Zhu Anping’s love was as insubstantial as a flower reflected in water or the moon caught in a mirror — illusory and fleeting — while she and Xu Lingyi were quietly, carefully papering over the cracks for them.

Once she had been the one to shatter other people’s beautiful illusions. How had she become so endlessly sentimental now?

“Have I ever told the Marquis,” she said softly, “that when I was small I once fell gravely ill? The first time I ever saw Seventh Elder Sister was in the courtyard where I was recuperating. It was just the beginning of summer, the weather a little warm, the room stuffy with no air flowing, and I could not allow anyone to fan me. Binju had spread out a mat under the great locust tree in the courtyard, and I lay on the mat covered with a plain indigo-blue cotton sheet. The sunlight was like golden arrows shooting down through the gaps in the leaves, and when the wind stirred, those dappled shifting patterns of light would sway and scatter across my body and my hands… I felt like a piece of ancient bronze that had been shut away from sunlight for many years, its mustiness and green patina finally beginning, little by little, to lift away.

“A girl’s voice drifted in from beyond the courtyard wall: ‘There is a wall covered in morning glories over here.’ Another clear, bright voice replied: ‘Pick two to hang inside the bed curtains.’ The first girl urged her on: ‘We are in mourning, and the Grand Madam is such a strict woman — if she finds out, Mother will be shamed.’ The bright voice said back: ‘Everyone else is strict with others and lenient with themselves. But the First Aunt is lenient with herself and strict with everyone else. I laugh out loud twice and she stares at me for half the day — yet behind everyone’s backs she makes meat porridge for Ma Ge’er to eat, don’t think I don’t know it…’ The first girl’s voice grew a little trembling, and she hurried to counsel her: ‘Young Miss, please don’t say any more — if Madam hears, she will make you kneel on the washboard again. Since you returned to Yuhang, you have already been made to kneel five times.'”

As Xu Lingyi listened, he could feel the body pressed against him grow more relaxed, and the voice grow more content.

Xu Lingyi bowed his head and kissed her brow. “The clear, bright voice — that was Seventh Young Lady?”

Shiyiniang gave a sound of assent, and smiled. “Our grandfather had just passed away. Father was in Fujian and returned the soonest; Second Uncle was in Yanjing and returned the latest. She had come back to Yuhang when I was already in the side courtyard recuperating, and I did not meet her then. She had grown up in Yanjing from a very young age and been doted on by her parents, brothers, and sisters. Returning home, she found life difficult to adjust to, and being shut up in the rooms all day, she was very unhappy. She often used the midday rest hour, when everyone else was napping, to take a little maid and wander the courtyards. When she saw me lying beneath the great tree, she was quite startled, and then looked at me with great sympathy, and sent her little maid back to the room to fetch me a bottle of Snow Relief Pellets…” At this, she let out a small laugh. “I have always intensely disliked things like Snow Relief Pellets — pitch black and lumpy, looking like bits of grime rolled off someone’s skin, and who knows whether the hands that rolled them were clean…”

Xu Lingyi listened, and laughed along with her.

That must have been the most difficult period of Shiyiniang’s life — beaten by her elder sister until she was bedridden, banished to a distant and secluded courtyard, tended by only two maids, her days spent among medicines, her fate uncertain, her future unclear. Such things as these, that even to imagine made one’s heart ache, were spoken from Shiyiniang’s lips with the light-hearted wit of a comic storyteller — broad-minded, and magnanimous.

His arm around her tightened a little. “And did you eat it?”

“I did!” Shiyiniang laughed, with something of a helpless air. “She pressed it on me and would not be satisfied until she had watched me put it in my mouth. She said these Snow Relief Pellets were different from the common sort — Second Aunt, knowing they were going back to Yuhang, had especially asked the people at the Imperial Pharmacy to prepare them. You would not find Snow Relief Pellets as good as these anywhere in Yuhang…” Perhaps remembering the amusing scene from that day, the laughter in her voice grew richer. “And yet that day, after I held the Snow Relief Pellets in my mouth, I truly felt a good deal cooler and more comfortable. Which just goes to show that what a person likes or dislikes always has a story behind it…” As she said the last words, there was a brief moment of hesitation.

She realized she had never actually known what Xu Lingyi liked.

When it came to food — the kitchen cooked what it cooked and he ate what was set before him, never making any particular requests. When it came to dress — the tailor’s shop made what it made and he wore what was sent to him, and at home he always moved about in the same few pieces. When it came to where he lived — before their marriage she had not known, but since they wed, he had always simply gone along with her arrangements. Whether she put a fish tank on the windowsill, or hung strands of jade-fragrance flowers from the four corners of the bed curtains, he never said a word. As for how he traveled — she had not the faintest idea whether he took a carriage, or a palanquin, or rode on horseback…

Her face grew a little warm, and she pressed herself further into his embrace.

Was she thinking of something unpleasant? Was she pressing closer like a child seeking comfort?

Xu Lingyi simply let her slender frame half rest atop him.

“And do you like Snow Relief Pellets now?”

Shiyiniang pillowed her head on his shoulder and found it very comfortable.

“I don’t like them!” she replied with a smile. “But when the weather is hot, I will occasionally take a couple of them and find they truly do have a cooling and refreshing effect.”

Was that when this sister had earned a lasting place in her heart?

Xu Lingyi turned his face toward her. Her soft, flushed lips were scarcely a hand’s breadth away.

“You sisters are so close — no wonder you want to involve yourself in her household affairs,” he said slowly, his head lowering gradually, his lips drawing closer and closer to hers… she could even feel his breath warm against her cheek.

An unmistakable fluster showed in Shiyiniang’s expression.

To receive him — yet there was a faint, lingering unease within her. Not to receive him — yet that, too, seemed to fill her with unease.

Whatever was she to do?

“It is not only that…” she said in a hurry, as though by speaking she could momentarily hold off Xu Lingyi’s advance. “I feel that husband and wife being together is what matters most… Parents will leave before us, children will come after us… only a husband and wife can remain side by side, knowing each other through it all, walking together to the very end…”

Xu Lingyi’s lips came to rest no more than a finger’s width from hers.

What manner of reasoning was that?

A flicker of bewilderment passed through his eyes. The ambiance of just a moment ago dissolved entirely.

“By that logic of yours,” he said, with a note of questioning, “so long as a husband and wife are on good terms, nothing else need concern them?”

Shiyiniang quietly exhaled with relief.

“My lord, there you are mistaken!” She smiled, and with her finger traced the character for “home” in Xu Lingyi’s palm. “Does the Marquis see it? The character for ‘home’ has a roof above and an offering of sacrifice below. Among the three great failures of filial piety, one is: ‘When the family is poor and one’s parents old, yet one does not seek employment.’ This is precisely the meaning — without sacrifice and reverence, there is no foundation to support a home. And to maintain that reverence, children and descendants must be able to earn a living and provide for their parents. There is also the saying that ‘of all the ways to honor one’s family, filial piety and bringing glory to the ancestral name stand first’…”

Xu Lingyi said nothing.

He understood all these principles — but what did they have to do with her having said, just moments before, that “only husband and wife can remain side by side, knowing each other, walking to the very end”?

And already Shiyiniang was continuing: “Just as it is with the Marquis and me. The Marquis toils abroad for the sake of this household, while this concubine at home must honor our elders, raise our children, and maintain harmony with our sisters-in-law and neighbors. Only when the Marquis and this concubine are of one mind and one purpose, working together to build our days from better to best, can Mother enjoy her later years without worry, without having to fret over the affairs of the household; only then do Yu Ge’er, Zhun Ge’er, Jie Ge’er, Zhen Jie’er, and Jin Ge’er have something to depend upon; only then, when Third Master or Fifth Master are in difficulty, can we lend our aid. My lord — does this reasoning hold?”