Chapter 17 Don't be afraid, I am Pei Qi, the husband you were supposed to marry tonight
Pei Huaian didn't want to marry someone else. Firstly, it was because he had always dreamed of the third lady of the Shen family. Secondly, he really couldn't imagine himself being married to the eldest lady of the Shen family, whom he had called "sister-in-law" for more than a month.
When they arrived at Yunzhi Courtyard, Pei Huaian quickened his pace and walked in front of his eldest brother and said to him, "Brother, let's go and ask separately. I'll go see Mrs. Shen San, and you see Mrs. Shen Da."
Although Pei Huaijin knew what his seventh brother was thinking, after all, Miss Shen San was his beloved. He was already doing him a disservice by stealing her away, so it would be awkward not to give them both a chance to say a word, so he said, "Okay..."
At this time, Shen Youran was neatly dressed and had already left the bedroom, sitting in the left side room with her sister. Tinglan and Danruo were called back and stood guard outside the room, sighing silently.
Shen Youran in the room had swollen eyes from crying and had no strength left to cry. She slumped over the table, listening to her elder sister analyzing the pros and cons with her.
The eldest sister said that the Pei and Shen families were both prominent families in the capital, and that something like this had to be kept secret, otherwise it would damage the reputation of both families. Should the two marriages be swapped, or should one be abandoned to save the other? As the lesser of two evils, the Pei family would probably choose the former...
Shen Youran sniffed, her voice still thick with tears: "I don't want to change, I want to cancel the engagement, the worst that can happen is that I will go up the mountain to become a nun..."
"Don't be angry. The eldest son of the Pei family is a man that many girls in the capital want to marry. You won't lose out if you marry him..."
"I know he's a good person, but I'm not a good match for him, just like you and Pei Qilang are not a good match," Shen Youran said in frustration. "I'm so stupid. Why didn't I see it then? Who could be so mature at the age of sixteen? I was so confused..."
The feeling of skin touching skin still seemed to be there, and the pressure of his fingers being squeezed open was still there. Shen Youran looked at his hands, and a wave of nausea came over him, and he couldn't help but retching...
Seeing her sister so resistant, Shen Yunshu couldn't persuade her for a moment and could only sit aside and sigh silently.
There was a knock on the door, and Tinglan, who was guarding outside, came in to report to them: "Master Pei and Master Pei Qi are back. Master Pei Qi wants to come in and talk to Miss Three..."
Shen Youran looked at Shen Yunshu at a loss and shook her head: "Sister, I don't want to see anyone."
"Well, if you don't want to see him, then don't." Shen Yunshu patted her sister's hand and asked Tinglan, "Where is Master Pei?"
"Mr. Pei is in the hall."
I guess they had already discussed the result with the old lady, so they came back to tell them.
Shen Yunshu stood up and said to Shen Youran, "I'm going to go out and meet them. You wait here for me. Don't cry anymore. Your eyesight isn't good to begin with..."
"Um."
As soon as he opened the door, Pei Huaian was about to go in, but was stopped by Shen Yunshu: "Seventh Young Master, Third Sister is frightened and doesn't want to see anyone right now. If you have anything to say, you can tell me first and I will help convey it to Third Sister."
"No, there are some things I need to say to her in person." Pei Huaian held onto the partition, leaned halfway over, and called out, "Third Lady, can you let me in?"
There was no response from the room for a long time. Shen Yunshu didn't want to embarrass her third sister, so she pushed him out and closed the door.
"Seventh Young Master, how did you discuss it in Chunxuan Hall?" she asked.
"Go ask your eldest brother." Pei Huaian said this and turned away.
He had to see Shen Youran tonight.
Shen Yunshu thought he was angry with her and left, so she went to the hall to find Pei Huaijin.
There were a few candles burning in the hall. Pei Huaijin stood in the hall with his hands behind his back. His posture was outstanding, but a little cold. When he saw her come in, he looked over with slightly absent-minded eyes. He nodded slightly at her to indicate that she should sit down, with a distant and polite expression on his face.
After tonight's farce, the two people who should have been husband and wife can only sit on either side and talk politely like strangers.
"Is she okay?"
"Just finished crying..."
"Well," Pei Huaijin said slowly after a few breaths of silence, "Although it was a misunderstanding, she and I have almost completed the ceremony. I must be responsible for her. Our marriage has to be called off."
"Young Master is willing to take responsibility for Youran, that's great." Shen Yunshu wasn't surprised at all. "What do the elders say?"
"The elders mean to make the best of a bad situation and let me marry my seventh brother. However, you and my seventh brother haven't completed the ceremony. If you want to get out of this unscathed, I can help you persuade them..."
Get away with it?
It’s not that Shen Yunshu hasn’t thought about it, but she can’t leave. She is worried about leaving her third sister alone in Pei Mansion. She also doesn’t dare to leave because there is Lu Yi outside who is eyeing her covetously.
"Thank you for your understanding, Young Master. However, if I leave, it will be tantamount to confirming the marriage swap. Our two families may become the subject of gossip and jokes among the people. If I don't leave, I can just shut up the servants and tell the public that the two marriages originally arranged were between you and Third Sister, and me and Seventh Young Master. Perhaps this will save some face for our two families..."
Pei Huaijin raised his eyebrows slightly, a little surprised by her answer.
"I heard from my mother that you also came to my grandmother's birthday party. There were many people in attendance at the banquet, and they already knew your identity. The servants in the mansion could still keep their mouths shut, but how can you stop the gossips from outside? Besides, face is ultimately illusory. It won't harm the foundation of either family, so it's not worth sacrificing your own marriage for it."
"I know Mr. Pei Qi's character. Marrying him wouldn't be considered a sacrifice..."
"But you and Seventh Brother are not a good match." Pei Huaijin didn't want to let her know about the Seventh Brother's reluctance to do something in Chunxuan Hall just now, so he just reminded her tactfully, "Seventh Brother seems to have said that he doesn't like people older than him..."
"In that case..." She pondered for a moment before saying, "If I really can't get along with the Seventh Young Master, we can divorce in the future. After all, I've already worn wedding clothes once, so even if I cancel the engagement now, it's no different from a divorce."
"You don't have to wrong yourself like this."
Shen Yunshu couldn't express her true intentions, so she could only politely decline the other party's offer: "Since exchanging marriages is the best option right now, please stop trying to persuade me, young master."
Pei Huaijin didn't understand why she was so stubborn, but since she had made up her mind, he couldn't say anything more.
He looked cold, and when the other party stood up to leave, he brought up another matter.
"After I returned home, I heard that someone had kidnapped my bride in broad daylight. However, the capital is peaceful and prosperous, with a clean and honest society. Such a terrible incident hasn't happened in a long time. Xiao Ci, the Chief Justice of the Dali Temple, was once my classmate. He specializes in investigating difficult cases in the capital. I would like to ask him for help in investigating this case. Do you have any clues you can provide us?"
He glanced at me indifferently, but there was suspicion hidden in his calm tone.
He really began to suspect that the bride kidnapping incident in broad daylight was related to the bride.
A chill ran through Shen Yunshu's body, but she had long expected someone to become suspicious, so she didn't show any panic. Instead, she raised her eyes to meet the other person's oppressive gaze, her face full of innocence: "This happened suddenly, I didn't notice any clues..."
"Excuse my blunt question, but before you got married, were there any men around you who had any ill intentions?"
Shen Yunshu took a deep breath and spoke calmly, "I came to Beijing two years ago. My third sister and I have been living in the backyard ever since, rarely going out. The only time I came into contact with a man outside of my family was three months before our wedding. On the day of the City God Temple Fair, I accompanied my third sister to see the sixth son of the Liang family from the General's Mansion. However, that meeting ended in vain because of the appearance of the Seventh Young Master..."
The more details she spoke, the clearer she and her third sister would be. Even if the Dali Temple later found out that it was her stepbrother Lu Yi who planned to kidnap the bride, she would grit her teeth and say that she didn't know his feelings for her.
Pei Huaijin saw that she was calm and composed, with no trace of lying, so he withdrew his tentative intention and returned to the matter of the marriage exchange: "Since you are not unwilling to exchange marriages, come with me to inform Mrs. Shen San about this matter, and then I can go to Chunxuan Hall to report to the elders."
"Third sister is emotionally unstable right now. Can you please allow her to calm down for a while?"
"She'll have to face it sooner or later. It's not good to keep the elders waiting..."
Shen Yunshu couldn't persuade him, so she had to walk with him to the left side room.
*
Little did they know that while they were talking in the hall, Pei Huaian had already walked around to the back of the house and pushed open the window of the left side room.
At that time, Shen Youran was still leaning over the table and feeling sorry for himself. When he heard a noise coming from the window, he thought it was the wind that blew the window open and was too lazy to turn his head to look.
Then she heard a light sound of footfall, as if someone was climbing in through the window. She slowly turned her head and saw a figure standing beside her.
Just as she was about to scream, her open mouth was covered by the other person.
"Don't be afraid, it's me," Pei Huaian met those frightened eyes, "I'm Pei Qi, the husband you were supposed to marry tonight."
"I know you don't want to see anyone right now, but there are some things I need to say to you face to face. If you don't scream or make a fuss, I'll let you go, okay?"
Shen Youran nodded.
The other person withdrew his hand, moved a stool and sat next to her, staring at her.
Shen Youran also looked at him curiously: It turns out that the seventh son of the Pei family that she is going to marry looks like this.
He wasn't as tall and slender as the eldest son of the Pei family, but he was still as graceful as a bamboo. Dressed in red, his wedding attire accentuated his elegant demeanor. The candlelight streaming from the table illuminated his delicate features, his cool pale skin, his dark eyes, his slightly raised eyebrows, a youthful air of pure boldness and daring.
He was also very handsome, but he looked nothing like Pei Jia Dalang.
If she had seen this face before getting married, she wouldn't have mistaken Pei Jia Dalang for him, right?
Thinking of this, her eyes became hot, and grievance and shame surged into her heart again.
Before Pei Huaian could speak, he saw her pouting and about to cry again, and hurriedly said, "I know you are very sad, but don't be sad yet. Just now in Chunxuan Hall, the elders all advised my elder brother and I to switch marriages, but I don't want to marry your sister, and you don't want to marry my elder brother either, right?"
Shen Youran tried hard to hold back the tears that were about to fall: “Yeah.”
"Since you don't want to, and I don't want to, then let's just pretend that what happened tonight never happened. You'll still be my wife, and I'll take you to live in Quanzhou and never let you see my brother again..."
"Going to Quanzhou?" Shen Youran remembered that her second brother was studying in Quanzhou, but she didn't have a close relationship with him. She wanted to be with her eldest sister more. "Then won't I never see my eldest sister again? And then there's Daddy, and Mommy..."
"Ah?" Pei Huaian didn't think too much about it. He just thought that he grew up in Quanzhou and his father had been doing business in Quanzhou all year round, so he naturally thought that she would be willing to go there with him.
I didn't expect that she missed her family so much.
It was indeed inconsiderate of him to ask her to sever her ties with her family and follow him to settle in Quanzhou.
"Then...why don't we move out of the mansion someday? My father has bought a house in Wuyi Lane. How about we move there?"
"This..." That's possible.
Shen Youran's heart moved, and she almost wanted to agree to him, but...
"Do you mind?" She lowered her eyes, twisting the corner of her clothes unconsciously with her hands, "Your elder brother and I have already, already..."
She bit her lip, too embarrassed to say it out loud.
"I..." It would be a lie to say that he didn't mind, but he had made love with her several times in his dreams before, and had already desecrated her. Now she was right in front of him, and as long as he could get over that hurdle, he could truly have her.
Besides, the elders insisted on exchanging the bride, and if he couldn't get her back, he would have to marry that "sister-in-law".
Pei Huaian took the initiative to hold her hand to show his determination: "I don't mind."
The unfamiliar touch reminded Shen Youran of that strong and powerful hand. She felt a chill in her heart and tried to break free.
"But I mind..."
Pei Huaian racked his brains to comfort her: "Don't think too much, just think of it as a dog bite..."
The door was suddenly pushed open and a clear voice came from inside.
"Who's the dog?"
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The younger brother is almost tempting his younger sister to fall in love. Guess how the older brother will turn the tide? [Milk Tea]
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