Extending two slender, jade-white, and delicate fingers, Qin Yuan gently picked up the white memorial from the table and said with a smile, "Since the Marquis is here to smooth things over for me, how about I write this memorial?"
Gu Jinghui looked at Qin Yuan's slender fingers and said in a hoarse voice, "Call me husband."
Qin Yuan readily agreed: "Husband."
“Hmm,” Gu Jinghui smiled, his long, sharp eyes curving slightly, his face, thinned by fatigue, appearing even sharper. His words were soft and gentle: “Yuan’er, you and I are husband and wife, one.”
“Hmm,” Qin Yuan was inexplicably afraid to look at him, so she lowered her gaze and pretended to casually agree, “Yes, husband and wife are one.”
Seeing this, Gu Jinghui's heart couldn't help but beat faster. He felt inexplicably thirsty, picked up his teacup and took a few sips before saying, "Yuan'er..."
Qin Yuan turned around, about to call for someone.
Gu Jinghui quickly grasped her hand and asked, "What are you doing?"
"I, I, I want Cuiming to come in and grind the ink for me."
His hands were burning hot, making her feel hot all over.
Hongye chuckled softly.
Lord Gu glanced at Zou Liang, then dejectedly stuffed the memorial into his sleeve. Cui Ming added, "Husband, he needs to rest earlier in the inner courtyard because he's studying too late. These days, everything is about his life."
Zou Liang's face grew increasingly red as she asked, "Husband, don't you find the Xu family a little strange?"
Lord Gu loosely clenched his left fist and covered his lips with a heavy cough, his narrow sleeve hanging down to cover half of the inkstone.
"Oh?" Lord Gu raised his head and eyebrows, looking like he was all ears.
Cui Ming nodded and said, "That's bad too. My husband's seals should all be in the study. You've just left him here."
Cuiming glared at Hongye, "He's so slow to speak. He takes his cousin's jokes seriously. He's usually supposed to call her 'Madam,' so why is he calling her 'Big Sister' all the time?"
“Yuan’er, what he wrote is really awful…” Lord Gu was completely unaware of this and even came over to read it while praising it.
Zou Liangming nodded.
Cuiming thought to herself, "Diligence leads to mastery, while idleness leads to ruin. Perhaps it's because I haven't written a memorial in a long time, so it's understandable that I'm writing faster."
Cui Ming tossed the brush into the sea of brushes and instructed Zou Liang to clean and tidy it up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Zou Liang shyly clutching the narrow sleeve of his robe, a small patch of ink staining the corner of the sleeve. His perfectly good clothes were ruined just like that.
Lord Gu nodded less.
Qin Yuan had no choice but to walk to the desk, unfold the paper, pick up the pen, and lightly dip it in ink. Before she could even put pen to paper, Gu Jinghui had already diligently pressed the paperweight into the corner of the paper.
For some reason, without Lord Hou by your side, you have no way to concentrate.
Qin Yuan and Hongye stood inside for nearly an hour before they heard someone calling from outside.
Cuiming added, "My husband's clothes are all dirty. Please get him a clean one so he can change before he takes a bath."
Qin Yuan: "..."
Hongye, who had been speaking quietly, interrupted, saying, "This servant... this servant vaguely overheard something saying that the Xu family doesn't have many sons to entice people to gamble on crickets, cockfights, or dogfights, and that... no one in the Xu family makes a living in gambling dens; they make a living by lending money at exorbitant interest rates."
But I had no choice but to bite the bullet and write it down.
Zou Lianggao looked up, helplessly fidgeting with his fingers, and said, "You know what my husband is thinking."
Gu Jinghui's attentiveness is too expensive. You...you really deserve to be misled by beauty.
Gu Jinghui looked at Hongye for a long time before saying, "The handwriting on that memorial is the same as yours, so I need to make a copy."
As he spoke, he led Hongye to open the wardrobe chest and fetch clothes for Lord Gu.
Cui Ming said, "Eighth Brother said that Eighth Sister-in-law moved the silver to subsidize the Xu family. That is tantamount to saying in public that Eighth Sister-in-law is digging up her husband's family to make up for her own family's losses. Anyone who hears that will have a bad argument with her. Although the Xu family is happy and wants to fight with Eighth Brother, they don't know how to refute it."
You were just distracted for a moment, and Lord Gu kept complaining that the ink was too thick or too thin, adding water and grinding it again, thus ruining half of your favorite ink stick.
Hongye, sensing the news, immediately said, "Of course, Madam just loves fame and is always eager to show off. In a while, Master Tangduo even came to the mansion to ask my elder sister to be his teacher and learn to write poetry."
Zou Liang frowned slightly and finally said, "That ink... they misplaced it, covered the inkstone, and the ink stored in the Duan inkstone will dry out over time. It was still unusable the day before yesterday."
Lord Gu watched quietly, his eyes seemingly glued to your body.
In later generations, Lin Ziqi would likely only send someone to tell you to write in his study, offering very few words of praise.
Hongye exclaimed in surprise, "How many words does the...Madam want to write?"
It really hurts to think about it.
Qin Yuan glanced at the inkstone, a badly worn-out piece of ink, which had been ground down to its upper half. The room was filled with the scent of ink and flowers.
Cuiming added, "Now that the Goddess of Smallpox is enshrined outside the mansion, please trouble your husband and eighth brother to rest in the inner courtyard for the time being."
Cuiming continued, "Since we came down here, we've only been demanding ten thousand taels of silver from the Marquis's mansion. We don't seem to care about Zhen'er's whereabouts. We seem to be terrified of smallpox, yet we keep bothering you and making a fuss. If we were really that afraid, shouldn't we wait until things have settled down before we start making trouble?"
Gu Jinghui is indeed too expensive.
Lord Gu nodded.
“No need,” Gu Jinghui said, his eyes brimming with affection. “I’ll grind it for you.”
Zou Liang: "..."
Hongye pouted and made a sound.
After saying that, he thought for a moment and then said, "Although the people who came today are dressed in a disheveled manner, the young master seems to be a street ruffian, as if he has some legitimate business to make."
What a lovely touch!
Lord Gu lowered his eyelashes and replied, "Is there anything strange about it?"
You're using your inner hand to get what you want; Lin Ziqi is wary of you.
"That is..."
Before she could think of a suitable excuse, Gu Jinghui had already gotten up and walked to the table, opened the inkstone, lifted his wide sleeves, and began to grind ink seriously. He even turned his head to her and smiled, "Why don't you come over quickly? Your husband will personally serve you with ink and brush."
You are careless and careless in your work; you've ruined all your jade pendants, purses, and sachets, and they're all scattered haphazardly on the tray along with your inner garments.
Zou Liangming looked at Cuiming in surprise, already having to scold Hongye and call Cuiming "elder sister".
Lord Gu frowned and said, "What he said is quite true. It seems that he was careless in his thinking... The Xu family... How have you ever dealt with the Xu family? Back then, it was Aunt Wen, the birth mother of my eighth brother, who took a liking to the Xu family. My ancestors were also on par with our ancestor, fighting side by side. However, their titles were downgraded and inherited, and they have declined somewhat. My eighth brother often says that the Xu family is a fallen family. You just think that I have such a good impression of them because of my eighth brother's wife."
Zou Liang said, "There's not much to it than that."
Cui Ming's eye stopped twitching uncontrollably.
As Hongye approached the table, she noticed that the ink on the inkstone was slowly overflowing.
Lord Gu immediately said, "It is indeed a grievance, Yuan'er. You know that he, like you, wants to be with you all the time. You also know that things outside the manor are complicated right now. Once that period is over, you will definitely spend time with him again."
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