Fang Jinshu looked away. She raised her cup and drank it down in one long swallow, then turned to watch the ninth prince approaching her mother with a smile.

She had said she would make Han Linfeng regret it to his very bones — and those had been no empty words spoken in anger. She would spend her entire life making Han Linfeng and that blind woman understand just how ill-suited their union was.

With that thought settled in her heart, Fang Jinshu picked up a fresh cup, refilled it with wine, rose with a smile, and raised it toward the ninth prince in a toast.

The palace banquet came to an end, and each guest departed with their own private thoughts.

For Su Luoyun, the end of the banquet meant the end of her ordeal. That enormous headdress had sat upon her head the entire time, and maintaining the required composure and bearing throughout had left her neck aching terribly.

When Han Linfeng helped her back into the carriage, the very first thing Su Luoyun did was remove the headdress.

Seeing that she was fumbling with it somewhat, Han Linfeng reached over to take it off for her.

The weight lifted from her head, and Luoyun exhaled with relief. “Whoever designed this thing — it certainly was not a woman. It is so heavy. I cannot imagine how all those noble ladies manage to sit through banquets wearing it.”

Han Linfeng smiled. “That one is not especially heavy. The Empress’s phoenix crown weighs roughly twice as much.”

Luoyun drew a sharp breath. Well, at least she would never in this lifetime need to wear something like that. Otherwise she would surely be crushed flat upon the phoenix throne before the evening was out.

She was still pondering this when her stomach growled.

The food at the banquet had not been worth eating, and yet Luoyun had in fact been quite hungry throughout. To avoid embarrassing herself in public, she had eaten nothing beyond one or two bites of vegetables, leaving everything else untouched.

And then Han Linfeng had insisted on being fed — claiming it would demonstrate to onlookers that the Shizi was content with the Emperor’s match, and that they were a couple deeply in love.

She had had no choice but to pick up a spoon and feed him a few mouthfuls. She had then accidentally scooped a chili pepper into the Shizi’s mouth, and he had promptly reached over and pinched her face, asking whether it had been deliberate.

In the middle of the imperial hall, she could hardly reprimand him for conducting himself like a man at a brothel, and so she had simply endured it.

In short, she had played her part on the outside while starving quietly within, and now her stomach was making its grievances known.

Han Linfeng heard the undignified protest from her midsection and laughed in apology. “It seems you have been perpetually underfed since marrying me. Qingyang — have the driver take us to the outskirts villa. Tell Chef Cui to prepare some Liangzhou dishes for the consort to try.”

And so Qingyang, riding alongside the carriage, received his orders, and the carriage took off at a swift pace for the Shizi’s villa on the outskirts of the capital.

Every young man of means in the capital kept a villa outside the city. However permissive the capital’s fashions might be, the rules of a great household still placed certain constraints on what could be done within its walls. A villa in the outskirts offered far more freedom — one could drink through the night, invite performers and courtesans, and generally do as one pleased without interference.

Han Linfeng, being one of the capital’s more notorious young idlers, was no exception. He had purchased a villa in Xiahe Village, set apart from the surrounding hamlet by a ridge of hills.

Of course, while the villa served on the surface as a place for pleasurable leisure, it was also intended for entertaining guests it would not be convenient to receive within the capital residence.

The cook there, old Cui, had in fact been a fellow northerner Han Linfeng had brought back from a military camp. His particular specialty was the mess-hall cooking of the Liangzhou army.

When word reached him that the Shizi had come wanting a taste of home, old Cui understood at once what was needed. He built a fire in the courtyard’s sunken earthen stove and set a large iron pot over it. He threw in strips of pork belly and chunks of chicken, stir-fried them, then added water. In went a generous measure of pungent chili, various greens, potato, and even pig liver, all left to braise together in the pot.

When the braising liquid had nearly cooked down and the meat was dark and fragrant, he took a pair of scissors, cut the strips of pork into smaller pieces, and served them with a small bowl of intensely flavored dipping sauce on the side.

Su Luoyun, who had grown up in the gentle south of Huainan, had never encountered food of such bold and unrefined character.

Han Linfeng dragged over a low stool and declared that eating right beside the pot was the only proper way to enjoy it. And so Luoyun found herself seated beside the steaming iron pot, accepting a large piece of pork on the end of Han Linfeng’s chopsticks.

The flavors — fiery, savory, deeply rich — went straight to her head. She had to keep scooping plain rice to temper the heat, swallowing several mouthfuls just to bring herself back to earth.

She had only just managed to get down one piece of pork when Han Linfeng placed a large slice of pig liver in front of her, paired with the braised green peppers and the pickled sauce that was a Liangzhou specialty. The heat was so appetite-sharpening that Luoyun found herself finishing an entire bowl of rice.

She ordinarily ate much less than this. Yet sitting beside that warm earthen stove, listening to old Cui and his wife press drinks on the Shizi in their thick regional accent, she found she had eaten two full bowls without quite noticing.

Old Cui, for his part, seemed to stand on no ceremony whatsoever — he sat beside the Shizi drinking fiery sorghum liquor from large bowls. When the conversation turned to the old days in the military camp, Qingyang and several of the guards crouching around the iron pot laughed along with evident delight.

Han Linfeng said little, but Luoyun could hear in his voice that he was visibly at ease — and there was a lightness in his manner of speaking that she had not noticed before.

Perhaps other men used their villas for keeping mistresses and chasing pleasures. Han Linfeng’s villa seemed to be where he went to release the long-suppressed weight of his true nature.

The man who could sit shoulder to shoulder with an old cook and his guards around a great iron pot, drinking freely and laughing without restraint, was a very different person from the powdered and pampered young idler the capital knew.

The warmth and ease of the atmosphere put Su Luoyun at her own ease in a way she had not expected, being here for the first time.

Perhaps it was the smoky warmth of the earthen stove, the robust and unreserved food, or the lack of guarded formality in the way people spoke to one another in that courtyard. It was all so simple and unadorned — it reminded her of the countryside, and felt unexpectedly like home.

Everything in this courtyard stood in complete contrast to the cold and ceremonious hall she had been in only hours before. It gave her the feeling of returning to the ordinary world of human warmth.

And so even after she was full, Luoyun did not immediately rise to leave, but sat sipping a small cup of wine and listening to the conversation continue around her.

After a time, by some meandering path, the topic found its way to Luoyun herself. Old Cui’s wife said with a grin: “The Shizi finally has someone to come home to. The consort looks gentle and healthy — a fine constitution for bearing children. When can we expect to hold a little one?”

Luoyun nearly choked on her wine, barely managing not to spray it into the iron pot. Han Linfeng laughed and patted her on the back, turning to the old woman with a smile. “No hurry — it will happen.”

Luoyun’s coughing only intensified at this. She very much wanted to give the utterly shameless Han Linfeng a thorough beating, propriety be damned.

After the meal, Luoyun assumed they would be returning to the capital.

But Han Linfeng said: “We will stay at the villa for a couple of days before going back. This place is much simpler than the Shizi’s residence — none of that complicated web of people and interests. You have been occupied with the wedding ceremonies for the past several days, and you must be tired. Rest here and recover.”

Su Luoyun asked carefully: “Then… are we to share a room again?”

Han Linfeng replied without particular inflection: “Of course we share a room. Otherwise, what would the villa servants think? If word got out and reached the wrong ears, it could become difficult.”

The furnishings at the villa were, if anything, more generously appointed than those at the Shizi residence. The inner room at least had a daybed, which meant the two of them need not be crowded together in one bed as they had been on their wedding night.

After the maids brought in two basins of hot water, the two of them sat across from each other in their chairs, soaking their feet.

Luoyun sat facing Han Linfeng, and felt a distinct awkwardness about the business of calmly removing her socks in front of the Shizi.

Yet the maids — Xiangcao included — seemed to find nothing at all improper about a newly married couple sharing a foot bath across from one another.

And the Shizi, who seemed to have genuinely drunk too much that evening, had mislaid his usual gentlemanly consideration somewhere along the way and did not think to hint to the maids that anything was amiss.

Instead, he was the first to put his feet in, and called over to her: “Ah Yun, you soak yours too. It’s getting late — we should turn in early tonight.”

The sun had not yet finished setting. Coming from a new husband, these words had a rather suggestive ring to them, and the maids exchanging glances over the water basin and the incense burner could not help a shared smile before setting everything down and slipping out, so as not to impose on the newlyweds’ private time.

Xiangcao helped her mistress remove her socks and lowered a pair of delicate jade-white feet into the copper basin. Then she looked up at the young lady with quiet sorrow, thinking to herself that her tender, pale little cabbage was about to be uprooted by a pig once again tonight.

Su Luoyun sat saying nothing, biting her lip. When she finally asked whether everyone in the room had gone, she felt it was necessary to have a frank conversation with the Shizi about when he intended to relegate her to obscurity, leaving her to keep a cold and solitary room on her own.

After all, a man like Han Linfeng — however newly married — was hardly the sort to devote himself exclusively to his wife. A few days of newlywed closeness was gesture enough. Everyone already knew she was a commoner woman he had taken by force of circumstance. Too much devoted affection would start to look excessive.

Han Linfeng listened to her objections and gave a quiet laugh. She had been unexpectedly blind for two years now, and had apparently forgotten how deeply her appearance could unsettle a person’s composure.

And so he said with idle ease: “Ah Yun is worrying over nothing. Given the way you look — after all, you are the one who caused me to lose my head and take you as my wife by force — a few years of devoted attention should not be much of a problem.”

As he spoke, he held out a handful of plump pomegranate seeds toward her lips.

Su Luoyun had been attempting to discuss this matter with him in all seriousness. She had not anticipated quite such an unserious reply. She was just about to retort — and found her mouth filled with the sweet-tart seeds instead.

When she had finished eating them, still simmering, and needed to spit out the pits, Han Linfeng was already waiting beside her lips with a folded handkerchief.

Such attentiveness. Such seamless consideration. The mark, unmistakably, of a man long at home in the company of women.

…Was it possible that years spent among the courtesans of pleasure houses had made him equally warm and practiced with any woman whose face he found agreeable?

Before she could say another word, the carriage came to a stop before the Shizi residence.

Young Commandery Princess Han Yao stood at the gates with Nanny Xi and a retinue of servants, formally welcoming her brother and sister-in-law home.

Han Linfeng, having to make his first appearance at the Ministry of Works, returned only long enough to change into his official robes before departing for the government offices.

Luoyun had barely changed her own clothes before a servant came to inform her that Commandery Princess Han Yao wished to invite her sister-in-law for tea.

By this point, Luoyun understood the inner workings of the Shizi residence quite well.

During those two days at the villa, the Shizi had told her something of the general situation within the Beizhen manor.

It emerged that the Beizhen Wang Fei — the woman who was now her nominal mother-in-law — had produced no legitimate son despite many years of marriage. It was only through repeated insistence from the Prince himself that she had eventually agreed to adopt Han Linfeng, born of a foreign beauty kept as a favored concubine, and register him in her name.

As for Han Linfeng’s birth mother — she was never allowed to be close to her son, and later fell pregnant again, dying in childbirth. Though the Wang Fei was not Han Linfeng’s true mother, she had raised him from early childhood, and Han Linfeng regarded this adoptive mother with genuine filial respect.

Han Linfeng’s arrival in her household seemed to have brought the Wang Fei a kind of good fortune — within a few years of the adoption, she gave birth to a daughter: Han Yao.

Good news continued to arrive: she then bore a son as well, the young lord Han Xiao, currently fourteen years old, said to be clever and well-mannered, raised at his mother’s side.

When Han Linfeng spoke of this, his voice had been level and calm, without any particular rise or fall.

Yet Su Luoyun’s heart had shifted uneasily as she listened, and she asked, with careful restraint: “With a son of her own, does the Wang Fei have any intention of having the young lord inherit the title instead?”

She had not expected Han Linfeng’s circumstances to mirror her own so closely — his birth mother gone, his adoptive mother with a son of her own. Was Han Linfeng’s position not deeply precarious?

Han Linfeng had simply smiled and said, without apparent concern: “As the legitimate heir, I must come to the capital, study, receive the Emperor’s regard. Han Xiao is too intelligent — my mother fears that too much brilliance will bring harm. She has no need to ask me to step aside.”

He spoke graciously. But Luoyun understood what lay beneath the words.

For a Prince of Beizhen, the foremost requirement was not to be accomplished in both civil and martial matters — it was to learn how to waste time convincingly. The more conspicuously unsuitable the Prince appeared, the more at ease the imperial court would feel. A useless prince posed no threat.

Such a prince lived a life without flavor or purpose, yet had to remain forever alert to the sword hanging above his head.

The Wang Fei loved her own son too dearly to see him raised into such a life. She would not contend with Han Linfeng for a position that cost so much and returned so little.

That Han Linfeng chose to explain all of this to Su Luoyun was his way of helping her read the situation clearly.

Nanny Xi belonged to the Wang Fei. To slight her would be to show disrespect to Han Linfeng’s adoptive mother.

A good-for-nothing heir who had now married a blind woman of low birth — taken together, it was an image that posed no threat to anyone.

Nanny Xi might look down on Luoyun, or assert authority over her for the sake of the manor’s reputation, but the woman’s actual influence and capabilities were what they were. Aside from trading on her seniority, she had no real power. With the Wang Fei not in the capital, the old woman had no formidable backing to rely upon — how much harm could she truly cause?

With this understanding, Luoyun knew how to calibrate her approach to the manor’s various well-connected figures: never appear so soft that she invited open contempt, but never push so far that she broke what should not be broken.

Having sorted this out, she was able to meet her young sister-in-law Han Yao without the trepidation she might otherwise have felt.

When the two of them sat together in the tea room, Luoyun found the Commandery Princess to be a pleasant and approachable person — considerably easier to deal with, on the surface at least, than Nanny Xi.

Han Yao, for her part, had been observing this new sister-in-law with quiet care.

She had assumed at first that her brother had simply brought this humiliation upon himself through his own recklessness, and that the Emperor had punished him accordingly. But it was apparent that her brother was genuinely fond of his new wife — he seemed far from resentful.

She could understand it, if she was honest. The woman’s origins might be modest and her eyes unsound, but that face of hers was simply too beautiful. How could any man fail to be moved?

Striking looks alone would have been one thing — but there was no trace of coarseness in her manner or speech. Most unexpectedly, watching her perform the tea ceremony, with those slender white wrists moving in a natural rhythm and grace, one forgot entirely that she was blind.

Luoyun was indeed accomplished in the art of tea. In preparing a cup for her young sister-in-law, she rinsed, warmed, and poured in one fluid sequence, turning her wrists with an ease that was entirely natural.

The art itself was beautiful. Done by a beautiful person, it became something altogether more so.

As the tea fragrance drifted through the room, something in the atmosphere grew still and calm.

When a cup was placed before Han Yao, she accepted it with a smile. Looking at her sister-in-law’s face — features fine enough to make the moon pale — she found herself thinking that although her brother was beyond help, when it came to fine clothing, exquisite food, and beautiful companions, he had never in his life settled for less than the finest.

This woman… was truly, inside and out, what they called a rare and breathtaking beauty.

The conversation between the two of them did not falter.

Luoyun dealt in fragrances and called on the households of high officials and nobility. She had a thorough understanding of what occupied the minds of young women of great families confined within their inner quarters.

Since Han Yao was already betrothed, she would naturally be curious about the third son of the Duke of Jun’s household.

And so, over tea and sweetmeats, Luoyun naturally steered the conversation toward the young lord of the Jun Duke’s family.

Sure enough, within a few exchanges, Han Yao stopped fishing for details about Luoyun’s life with her brother and turned her full attention to questions about the people and customs of the Jun Duke’s household.

She was to marry into that family, after all — of course she wished to understand what she was entering.

Luoyun held nothing back, sharing everything she knew. She also told the young Commandery Princess that her future mother-in-law was somewhat slow to warm to people but was an ardent lover of the game of polo. If the Princess was at all skilled at riding, it might be worth taking part in a polo match or two alongside the Duchess — that sort of shared activity had a way of drawing strangers together quickly.

By the time the tea was finished, both women had set down a measure of their wariness.

Han Yao’s original contempt for this sister-in-law had diminished by at least six parts. She even found herself thinking that a sister-in-law from a modest family was not without advantages — at least she would not need to tread carefully around her or flatter her constantly.

She still had a year before she was married. If her brother’s household had come with a sharp and spiteful sister-in-law, that year would have been very difficult to endure.

Su Luoyun, too, felt reassured. At the very least, this young sister-in-law was not cut from the same cloth as that old schemer. Han Yao was a well-mannered young woman.

After the tea gathering between the two of them, however, Nanny Xi took Han Yao aside and spoke to her with grave significance: “Commandery Princess, you must always remember your own station. A woman like that was never worthy of so much as carrying your shoes. She has simply had one stroke of extraordinary luck, a pheasant dressed up in phoenix feathers, passing herself off as something she is not. But no one is truly fooled. In the future, when you go out in public, you must take care never to appear too close to her — and especially in the presence of anyone from the Jun Duke’s household. If you are seen showing deference to her, people will laugh behind your back and say the young ladies of the Beizhen manor have no discernment — that you are as reckless as the Shizi, and have let yourself be taken in as well.”