The Duchess of Junguo — always so aloof and haughty, forever the center of admiration at every banquet and gathering — had now sunk to the level of gossip fodder for others.

So much so that whenever she attended a tea party or wine feast and caught someone’s eyes sweeping over her mid-conversation, she would immediately suspect they were whispering about the Junguo Ducal House, causing her expression to darken further into an iron-gray scowl.

To begin with, her features had never been particularly warm or approachable, and now they inspired even greater dread in those who looked her way.

As a result, the Third Young Master — now freed from his broken engagement — did not, as the Duchess of Junguo had fantasized, instantly become the most coveted bachelor in the capital.

Those families of comparable standing to the Junguo Ducal House all harbored private misgivings: the capital was full of illustrious households, and the Junguo Ducal House was hardly the most distinguished among them — why would anyone want to marry their daughter into such a vicious family?

The Duchess’s standards had always been sky-high, and anyone she deemed beneath her she would not deign to consider, so the Third Young Master’s marriage prospects simply remained in limbo.

However, the Duchess eventually managed to trace the rumors back to their source through roundabout inquiries.

It turned out to be Princess Yuyang — far away in Liangzhou, accompanying her husband through the war — who had let the matter slip in letters to several of her closest friends among the capital’s noble ladies.

Princess Yuyang was stationed in Liangzhou, and it was from the consort of the senior branch Wang that she had learned of the circumstances surrounding the forced dissolution of the engagement involving the junior generation of her Han family’s main line.

Though Princess Yuyang and the Beizhen Prince’s Household were only distant relatives of the same clan and not particularly close, she had always been fiercely protective of her own. Moreover, the way the Senior Consort Wang had described the matter — weeping and wailing as she recounted every injustice — had been enough to stoke anyone’s indignation.

When the Princess wrote to her close friends in the capital, she had not held back in her commentary on the matter, cautioning her friends to be guarded in their dealings with people from the Junguo Ducal House.

And so the hidden circumstances behind the broken engagement gradually spread.

When the Duchess of Junguo finally learned the full account, she was so furious she smashed several sets of precious tea ware right there in her own home.

But she could do nothing — the one responsible was the Emperor’s beloved daughter, and however great her rage, she had no choice but to swallow it.

Still, this grudge had been carved into her heart. In the moments between sleep and waking, she would clench her teeth in silent, bitter reckoning.

Back in Liangzhou, though the young commandery princess’s engagement had been dissolved, the Beizhen Prince’s Household had no leisure to attend to the romantic affairs of the younger generation.

Ever since the Senior Consort Wang had been frightened during the incident at Huicheng, she had been plagued by palpitations and listlessness. Compounded by her father’s forced resignation from office, and the total uncertainty surrounding her daughter’s marital prospects, one blow had followed another in quick succession. She now summoned a different physician almost every day.

The physicians were unanimous in their assessment: the Consort suffered from an excess of heart-fire, and beyond that, there was nothing seriously wrong.

Yet no matter how much money was poured into decoctions and tonics, the Senior Consort Wang remained languid and drained of energy. At other times she would be consumed by a restless, smoldering irritability, seizing upon her daughter at the slightest pretext to let loose a torrent of scolding.

Emotional ailments are slow to mend, and as a result, Han Yao now found herself once again hugging the walls as she moved through the household.

With the Consort in such a state, she had lost all inclination to manage the household affairs.

Lord Beizhen had no patience for such domestic entanglements, so he asked the Senior Consort Wang how the matter ought to be handled.

The Senior Consort Wang lay on her bed, listless and faint, and said: “It’s not as though I’m the only person in this household. Don’t you have an eldest daughter-in-law? She’s so capable — she manages her own shops so well. Just hand over the household accounts to her.”

Lord Beizhen was genuinely surprised. He had not expected his wife to relinquish her authority so readily.

But she had suggested the right solution, and so Lord Beizhen went to speak with his daughter-in-law.

The moment he left, the Senior Consort Wang — who had been lying there looking utterly spent — abruptly sat up and called out to her personal attendant, Nanny Sheng: “Quickly — bring those beauty-hammers wrapped in soft jade leather, and have the little maids pound my legs for me. Lying here all day, my waist is practically coming apart.”

This Nanny Sheng was a cousin of Nanny Xi, who had gone home to recuperate from her illness. She was one of the household’s long-serving old retainers, and had now stepped into the vacancy left by Nanny Xi. Skilled at reading the room, and guided by Nanny Xi’s instructions, she had become quite adept at waiting on the Consort.

But when she had just overheard the Senior Consort Wang agreeing to hand over authority to the new daughter-in-law, her heart gave a sudden lurch. Setting aside the little maids entirely, she took up the beauty-hammers herself and knelt beside the daybed, gently working on the Consort’s legs while speaking in a soft, measured tone: “You are the mistress of this household, my lady, and still in the prime of your years. What would be the reason to hand over your authority so soon?”

The Senior Consort Wang let out a disdainful snort. “Do you think I’m a fool? If there were good assets to manage, of course managing the household would go smoothly. But the communal accounts are nearly bare — what is there worth holding onto? Our Lord of the house has never had any sense with money. He already handed over half the penalty fine on behalf of my father. Every last coin that could be scraped together from this entire household has been scraped clean. The tenant rents won’t come in for some time yet, and the whole household still needs to eat and drink. If I don’t make someone else shoulder this burden, am I supposed to fill the gap out of my own dowry?”

So the household was in serious financial straits, and the Senior Consort Wang found herself unable to manage it either. She was seizing the opportunity to feign illness and push the burden onto that new daughter-in-law, Su Luoyun.

The woman was so wealthy — seeing the household short of funds, how could she possibly fail to contribute?

After all, the Senior Consort Wang was an official family’s daughter, and could not bring herself to demand her daughter-in-law’s dowry outright the way some country mother-in-law might. So she had contrived a suitably dignified pretext to hand the entire mess over to her eldest daughter-in-law, Luoyun.

Once Nanny Sheng heard the Consort’s reasoning, it all became clear to her in an instant, and she showered praise on the Consort’s cleverness.

That Su Luoyun was from a merchant family — hardly the right sort of background for a prince’s household to begin with. Now that she had finally married in, and the household was short of money, if she did not contribute her own funds to make up the deficit, how could she hold her head up under the eaves of this house?

As for the Lord himself — before all this, even without proper household management, he would never have been comfortable entrusting a new daughter-in-law with running the house.

After all, Luoyun had come from a modest background, and was afflicted with an eye ailment besides. The manner in which their son had married her was itself rather baffling. Watching the two of them together in daily life, it was always the son who doted and accommodated, treading so carefully it was as though he were a poor country boy who had brought home a village wife by some winding road and was terrified she might run off.

Lord Beizhen had never been able to fathom how long this strange union would hold, and had accordingly never genuinely regarded Luoyun as family.

Yet as time passed and the days accumulated, he found himself increasingly understanding why his son had been so insistent on marrying this common blind woman.

The girl might be blind, but her mind was far clearer and sharper than many a woman with full sight.

Lord Beizhen, in his time, had judged women first by their looks, and guided by his own considerations had selected a daughter of the Zong family — only to take in a resentful wife in the process. Later, through Han Linfeng’s mother, he had come to understand that a woman’s worth lay not only in her appearance, but in the precious quality of a gentle and warm temperament.

But now, watching his eldest daughter-in-law, he felt an involuntary admiration: if a woman, beyond beauty and disposition, also possessed true wisdom — that was a heaven-sent companion of the finest kind.

Having witnessed how she handled those two circuit inspectors, and observed the storm surrounding Han Yao’s broken engagement, Lord Beizhen had at last come to a thorough understanding of what manner of person his eldest daughter-in-law truly was.

She lacked the backing of a great family name, yet she had been forged through years of navigating the wealthy and powerful circles of the capital.

As for finances — she dealt in flows of thousands and tens of thousands of taels, managing so many shops with ease. The account books of a single princely household were, by comparison, small practice ledgers.

So Lord Beizhen summoned Luoyun privately, and first conveyed to her the Senior Consort Wang’s intention.

He had half-expected that a new daughter-in-law, being asked to take the household management from her mother-in-law, would make a show of anxious humility — declining a time or two, or else lighting up with poorly concealed delight and offering elaborate thanks for the elders’ trust.

What he had not expected was that his eldest daughter-in-law, upon hearing it, said nothing at all. She simply smiled — a smile laden with unspoken meaning.

Even Lord Beizhen, a man who had weathered his share of storms, could not read what that smile meant. Seeing her continue to smile, he asked her what she was thinking.

Luoyun tilted her face up in thought for a moment, then said unhurriedly: “If Father Lord has no more suitable candidate in mind, I am willing to take this burden from you.”

Lord Beizhen heard the weight beneath her words and said, “I thought you might still push back a little.”

Luoyun smiled slightly. “When the Zong family ran into trouble, Father Lord decided to pay half the penalty fine on behalf of the maternal grandfather. Though Father Lord’s devotion is beyond question, our household’s communal funds are already nearly exhausted. Mother’s illness has likely grown more serious in part because she finds these accounts beyond managing. If I can help the two elders bring in more income and reduce expenses, we can at least weather this difficult stretch of time. Once the communal accounts are properly sorted, Mother will likely have recovered, and at that point I will return the account books to her. Only — life in the household will need to be rather frugal going forward. Banquets and gift-giving and the like will have to be considered carefully. I am certain my thinking is imperfect in places, and I ask Father Lord to forgive any shortcomings.”

Without his daughter-in-law raising the matter, Lord Beizhen would never have known the household was on the verge of not being able to keep the pot boiling. Hearing it laid out like this, he was genuinely taken aback.

“The household is in deficit? How can that be?”

Luoyun smiled gently. “At the time, Mother kicked Father Lord twice under the table. But Father Lord paid it no mind. I surmised that it was because Mother manages the accounts — she knew it would be a strain to produce so much money, and was trying to signal Father Lord to hold back.”

Lord Beizhen was utterly dumbfounded. So that was what his wife had meant when she had kicked him! Why on earth had she not said so plainly at the time? Had she lost her tongue? What possible use was kicking?

His daughter-in-law, by contrast, had spelled it out with perfect clarity: don’t imagine you are handing over some coveted prize.

Even a clever wife cannot cook a meal without rice — now, thanks to his father-in-law’s reckless generosity, the household would have to count every coin. And in future, should anyone wish to play the magnanimous benefactor again, she asked that they restrain themselves, for the household had no money to spare.

Just then, Luoyun added in her unhurried way: “The household’s cash flow being temporarily disrupted, it would only be right for me as a daughter-in-law to help out. But I discussed this with Linfeng, and he immediately grew agitated. He said that if I used my dowry money to fill the deficit, it would saddle him with the reputation of living off his wife, and that he had only just shed his image as a good-for-nothing wastrel and did not want people to misunderstand him again as useless. He scolded me over it, and I could only agree to follow his wishes. So from here on, the household must simply open new income streams and cut expenses, and live more frugally.”

Luoyun was now using her husband as a shield without so much as a blink.

She was indeed a woman of means — but that money was her dowry, and the Beizhen Prince’s Household, however temporarily strapped for cash, had no right to expect its daughter-in-law to fill the gap.

It was not that Luoyun was stingy. She knew that the Young Lord was currently doing great things, spending money like flowing water; and even with the wealthy patron You Shanyue backing him, over time things could become stretched. Her own money could not be touched from this point forward — not a single coin. If You Shanyue one day changed his mind and withdrew his support, she would need to be her husband’s financial backer herself, and she could not let money become the obstacle that felled a man of such ambitions.

Beyond that, Lord Beizhen deserved to experience some hardship for having unilaterally helped his in-laws with money, without so much as consulting his family.

The Zong family’s regional inspector had held his post for many years, skimming from everything that passed through his hands, accumulating a considerable private fortune. Yet the moment the younger Zong Jinnian had shed a few tears and cried poverty, Lord Beizhen had opened his purse without a second thought.

From the perspective of a son-in-law and a brother-in-law, such a generous fool was certainly welcome.

But he was also the undisputed head of the Beizhen Prince’s Household — and it was only right that the head of such a household should understand that one must first ensure one’s own family can put food on the table before offering help to others.

This father-in-law of hers, however reduced in circumstance, was still a prince of the realm — not a commoner. Raised from infancy in silk and gold, he had never concerned himself with practical matters, and his understanding of money was vague at best.

This was, in fact, a fine opportunity. Luoyun intended to give not a single coin, to draw the belt tight around the entire household, and to let them learn what it truly meant to get through a lean year.

Lord Beizhen had not anticipated that he would receive such a quiet, understated dressing-down from his own daughter-in-law.

He suppressed an awkward cough or two, then said: “Since you will be managing the household from now on, naturally you must use your own judgment.”

Luoyun accepted the charge, but raised just one condition: whenever she reviewed the accounts, Lord Beizhen must be present. If that could not be agreed to, she would not take the matter on.

Lord Beizhen raised an eyebrow and asked her why.

Luoyun curved her lips into a smile. “I don’t have Mother’s authority to overawe people, and the Young Lord is not here in the household. The household is full of long-serving senior retainers. If Father Lord does not lend me his backing, I’ll be nothing but a paper tiger standing there — who would I frighten? If Father Lord is willing to let me borrow your authority for a few days, I promise not to trouble you further once things are in order.”

Lord Beizhen had nothing urgent pressing him at the moment, and was also curious to see how this young woman would conduct herself. He agreed readily.

This young woman even scripted a few lines for him to deliver, and then began making preparations to summon those responsible for the account books.

There were a great many account ledgers in the prince’s household. When she received each one, the way she reviewed them varied: sometimes she turned the pages rapidly; the other hand moved over the abacus in a swift clatter of beads. Before long, she had turned up several discrepant entries across the ledgers, called each manager separately, had them all standing in the courtyard, and summoned them in one by one for questioning.

Lord Beizhen could barely follow what she was asking — only that a few terse questions were enough to make those purchasing managers and account-keepers repeatedly mop their faces with their sleeves. It was clear she had drilled straight to the chokepoints in the procurement chain.

In this manner, she uncovered a considerable number of old ledger entries where funds had been skimmed and pocketed.

Had the Young Lord’s Consort been sitting there alone, those seasoned operators could easily have talked their way out with a tangle of lies.

But now, Lord Beizhen sat to one side with a stern expression, and whenever those managers launched into some glib and elaborate excuse, the Young Lord’s Consort would invariably lift her teacup without any hurry — and Lord Beizhen, following his cue, would rumble out the line he had rehearsed with his daughter-in-law: “You think this load of incomprehensible nonsense is something this Lord and the Young Lord’s Consort would believe?”

Even a Lord typically so measured and refined in his manner had now turned crude — and the old retainers dropped to their knees one after another, begging for mercy.

Then the Young Lord’s Consort would set down her teacup and, with unhurried calm, dismantle each of their excuses in turn.

This new daughter-in-law had evidently done her homework in advance. She could lay out the full procedure for every link in their procurement chain. The seasonal prices of fish, vegetables, meat, and produce were all in her head. And for the goods most susceptible to manipulation — bolts of cloth and medicinal materials — the Young Lord’s Consort produced the account books of the very shops from which they had been purchased.

This meant she had clearly investigated everything without the slightest show of it long before today.

What lie could possibly hold against a mistress this knowledgeable?

In the end, Su Luoyun spent two days auditing accounts in the main hall of the prince’s household, and recovered more than six or seven hundred taels of silver from the managers and servants who had been embezzling.

Compared to the Emperor’s lenient “Golden Pardon,” this woman was far more exacting.

Having their backs flogged and the money clawed back was not the end of it — Luoyun dismissed more than ten people in a single breath, expelling them from the household with no prospect of re-employment.

Lord Beizhen had been sitting there idly at first, but the more the audit uncovered, the more unsettled he became. After the last person was sent out, he slapped the table in fury: “Ignorant, foolish woman — how could she have let things come to such a state?”

Luoyun had no intention of embarrassing her mother-in-law. She continued working the abacus beads as she spoke, unhurried: “Mother was already managing very attentively. It’s only that certain account items require a background in commerce to properly understand the value of money. I happen to know these things simply because I was born into a merchant family and spent my days making a living in the marketplace. As for why I audited so meticulously — it wasn’t entirely for the sake of recovering these few hundred taels. We are in wartime, and our Beizhen Prince’s Household is also playing host to a dignitary such as Princess Yuyang. With so many people about, there will inevitably be loose talk and divided loyalties. I am also using this opportunity to drive out those with impure intentions. Consider it establishing rules for those who remain. With few masters in the household, reducing the number of servants will also help with income and expenditures. With the border in an unsettled state and no knowing what the future holds, having some reserves set aside will at least keep our minds at ease.”

The sum that had been handed over on behalf of the Zong family had been no small amount. If the household continued as before, keeping on those rats who gnawed at the foundations, the household would eventually be hollowed out.

In truth, Lord Beizhen’s scolding was not without merit. The Senior Consort Wang’s approach to account management had merely aimed to avoid any major errors.

But she kept far too many long-favored old servants around her — people such as Nanny Xi and Nanny Sheng — and as a result, the key positions of the household were all controlled by these influential retainers and their kin. With such people all interlinked and colluding with one another, crooked intentions were bound to take root.

Among those Luoyun had expelled were two sons of Nanny Sheng and two grandsons of Nanny Xi.

This was also the most fundamental reason Luoyun had insisted on having Lord Beizhen present during the accounting. After all, the grudge between her and the likes of Nanny Xi was known throughout the household. If, upon taking charge of domestic affairs, she had immediately moved to dismiss the old-guard retainers’ inner circle, it would inevitably have invited accusations of settling personal scores. But with Lord Beizhen present from start to finish, having heard every detail of the offenses for which each person was dismissed, there would be no opening for anyone to go behind her back and file a private complaint, sparing her the need to explain herself to Lord Beizhen all over again.

In no time at all, the managers and servants of the Beizhen Prince’s Household all understood: the old order had changed. The new mistress, the Young Lord’s Consort, was no gentle creature, and they had all better straighten out their intentions and tread carefully from now on.

As for those who had been expelled, naturally not all of them accepted their fate without a fight.

Nanny Xi, convalescing at home, took one look at her grandsons as they came slinking back looking thoroughly disgraced, and was not about to let it stand.

So the old woman, leaning on her walking cane and letting her daughter-in-law support her arm, made her way to the Senior Consort Wang’s quarters to pour out her grievances.

Nanny Xi wept with great heaving sobs, speaking of her late husband’s life-saving service to the old Lord long ago, and lamenting that her children and grandchildren were unworthy — just like her old self — neither able to win the Young Lord’s Consort’s favor.

Nanny Xi wept until her nose was running and her eyes were streaming: “Once old Nanny is gone, however will you look after yourself, my Lady? You fall ill, and the whole household changes hands — and we old retainers who have served this house for decades are left with no place to belong!”

At this point, Nanny Sheng, who was standing nearby, dropped to her knees as well, weeping that her own sons had been wrongly treated and expelled by the Young Lord’s Consort, too shamed to show their faces.

Just then, a little maidservant arrived carrying the Consort’s bird’s nest tonic for the day.

The Senior Consort Wang was exceedingly vain about her appearance — though her youth had passed, she still paid great attention to preserving her looks, and every two days without fail she would drink a bowl of thick bird’s nest broth with red dates and wolfberries.

Yet today the soup in the bowl seemed rather too thin. When the Consort scooped some up with her porcelain spoon for a closer look — this was no bird’s nest. It was plainly a bowl of white fungus soup.

The Consort assumed some lazy servant was trying to pass off a cheap substitute and immediately slapped the table in fury. “Do they take me for blind?” she demanded. “I know the difference between bird’s nest and white fungus. Who was on duty in the kitchen today? How dare they try to cheat me like this?”

The cook from the kitchen came running over, fell to her knees, and explained in a breathless rush: “It was not this servant’s intention to deceive the Consort. It is simply that there was no bird’s nest among the ingredients delivered to the kitchen today. I told the purchasing manager — you drink bird’s nest broth every two days, my Lady. But the manager said that for the past several months the household’s communal funds have been low, and all ingredients are to be purchased strictly according to the list approved by the Young Lord’s Consort. There is no extra money to buy bird’s nest, so he told me to make do and substitute white fungus. The manager said that once the tenant rents are collected in a few months, some quality bird’s nest would be bought for the Consort to replenish herself.”

The Senior Consort Wang was already simmering with anger from listening to the old retainers’ complaints, and now seeing that even her health-maintenance quota had been watered down, she erupted with barely contained fury. “Bring me the Young Lord’s Consort,” she said in an icy voice.

When Luoyun arrived, performed a curtsy, and offered her respectful greetings, the Consort let out a cold sniff and said: “I hardly dare to accept such deference. Now that you hold the household keys and manage the storerooms, how very impressive you must feel. I hear you haven’t merely driven out a whole batch of long-serving old retainers — you have also halved every expenditure in the household. Does this mean that under your management, our household has fallen into poverty, so destitute we can barely keep the pot boiling?”

From the side, Nanny Sheng added with a cold edge: “Substituting white fungus for bird’s nest to deceive the Consort — does that not amount to the pot being empty?”

Luoyun glanced briefly at Nanny Xi, sitting there in the corner. The old woman’s eyes were still red — she had clearly spent a good while filing complaints.

Luoyun considered for a moment, then said softly: “The household truly is short of money — isn’t that precisely why Mother has been too worried to do anything but fall ‘ill’? When the Zong family’s maternal grandfather ran into trouble, Father Lord paid half the penalty fine. The communal funds fell into serious deficit almost overnight. I am only a new daughter-in-law, with none of Mother’s authority to manage a household, so I could only lay out the situation plainly for Lord Father, explaining that we would need to live more frugally. As for which areas needed to be cut and which did not, I had no way of knowing — so I simply drew up a list and handed it to Father Lord, leaving it entirely to him to go through it item by item. I genuinely had not noticed that Father Lord had struck your bird’s nest from the list as well. That was my oversight. However — I happen to have a box of eight sets of bird’s nest in my own room, sent to me by my maternal uncle through a contact; the age and quality are excellent. I will have Ji Qiu bring it to the kitchen to be prepared for you. Even if the younger generation must tighten our belts, we would never dare neglect your wellbeing, Mother.”

The Senior Consort Wang, listening to this smooth and nimble response that somehow laid all responsibility at Lord Beizhen’s feet without missing a beat, felt her anger rise further. Anyone could go confront Lord Beizhen over it — anyone but her. The household money had been handed over to the Zong family; if she pressed him now, it would practically be walking over to invite a scolding upon herself.

But while the Consort held her tongue, the sharp-eyed old retainer beside her was only too happy to speak for her. Nanny Sheng smiled with thin sycophancy and said: “The Young Lord’s Consort truly has a way with words. But now that you have taken charge of the household and there is suddenly no money, ought you not think of a solution? I have never once heard of a princely household that had no money learning to tighten its belt like common folk. You handed two thousand taels of silver to the supply battalion without a second thought — can you really not produce a few hundred taels to help the household through a difficult stretch?”

It turned out that when it came to shamelessness, these servants had the advantage even over the Lord and the Consort — what neither the Consort nor the Lord could bring themselves to say openly, this crafty old retainer blurted out without hesitation.

Among decent acquaintances, even asking to borrow money was a matter that brought discomfort; and yet Luoyun was the Beizhen Prince’s Household’s daughter-in-law. If the household was in difficulty, surely she was expected to step forward and open her purse?

As Nanny Sheng delivered these words, Nanny Xi sat to the side with a cold smile pulling at the corner of her lips. Having already been thoroughly bested by the Young Lord’s Consort — and having received a kick from the Young Lord himself as further instruction — the old Nanny had wisely decided not to take the lead again, and now sat back to watch her cousin charge forward instead.