Chapter 1 First Meeting
It is early summer and the weather is as changeable as a child's face.
It was only the afternoon, but the sky was already overcast and it looked like it was going to rain again.
It was only three miles away from Chongwenmen, the entrance to Beijing, when an inconspicuous two-wheeled carriage was seen coming up the post road from afar.
The car walls were painted with black oil, but they were already mottled and unrecognizable.
A wrinkled, bony hand lifted the curtain from inside the carriage.
The owner of the hand was an elderly woman. She was dressed in a blue cloth dress and her hair was neatly wrapped with fine cloth. Although she was dressed simply, she was neat and tidy, and it was obvious that she was not a vulgar country girl.
This person is Zheng Ma, an old servant of the Huzhou prefectural government. At the beginning of the year, Lord Xu passed away, and the Xu family was in chaos.
The two children left behind by Xu Zhizhou were left without any support. They had to watch their uncles and aunts fight against each other, and even the little dowry left by his former wife was swallowed up.
Nanny Zheng thought of the instructions of the deceased second wife, and after discussing with the fourteen-year-old Xu Shuyao, she hastily decided to go to the Chengguo Mansion far away in the capital.
But Huzhou is thousands of miles away from Shangjing, so how could it be an easy task?
Nanny Zheng looked at the dark sky outside, then turned to look at the two young masters snuggling together in the car, and found that Xu Shuyao had slowly woken up and was looking at her with half-open watery eyes.
The nanny was startled and quickly closed the curtain.
Then, with a look of concern on her face, she asked, "Why are you awake? It's still early to go into the city. Why don't you take a nap?"
Xu Shuyao looked at her younger brother who was sleeping comfortably next to her and shook her head slightly.
She reached out and pulled Mammy to sit on her other side, whispering, "It's okay, I've had enough sleep, but Mammy is suffering."
Nanny Zheng is nearly sixty years old. She has suffered a lot in escorting the brother and sister to the capital.
The three of them traveled by water through Tiaoxi River, Taihu Lake, the Jiangnan Canal, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to Tongzhou, which took them more than a month.
At first, the nanny vomited and had diarrhea due to seasickness. Later, she took pills and gradually adapted to the situation. Then the canal flooded, and she was frightened every day. She became so thin that she was just skin and bones.
As for Xu Shuyao and her brother, the younger one just slept soundly, while the older one was alert all the way. However, the fourteen-year-old girl was as mature as an adult.
Nanny Zheng felt both guilty and sympathetic when she heard Xu Shuyao's considerate words.
At her age, she is not suitable for long-distance travel, but her two masters are still young and she is really worried about them.
Thinking of the instructions given by the late madam when she was alive, and the prestigious Chengguo Mansion in the capital, he just tried to hold on.
Fortunately, the journey was relatively smooth, and Nanny Zheng couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief at this moment.
It can be said that the trip was arranged in a hurry. That day, the girl went to Huzhou City for a walk and came back, and suddenly ordered someone to pack up the boxes.
In the girl's words, we don't know when our aunt's people will come, so it's better for us to set off early.
The eldest wife of the Xu family was in a hurry and had sent people to pick them up several times. It seemed that they had made up their minds to let the siblings live there.
Both the master and the servant knew very well what the situation of the eldest wife was now.
The eldest lady has had her nephew from her mother's side appear in front of Xu Shuyao many times, intentionally or unintentionally.
However, even if Xu Shuyao knew her aunt's plan, she could do nothing about it.
Without the elders in the second branch, if the siblings continued to stay in Huzhou, they would surely be eaten to the bone.
Many years ago, Xu Shuyao's aunt married the second master of the Chengguo Mansion as his second wife. Before her death, Xu's mother instructed that if her children were left alone after she was gone, they could go to the capital to seek help from her aunt.
At first she was still hesitant, but when she thought about her younger brother's future and the pressure from the eldest wife, she had to succumb to reality.
The Chengguo Mansion was originally founded on meritorious service, and is now in its third generation. Each generation has produced many talented people, and the family tradition is strict. The still-living Madam Xiao also has a reputation for fairness and strictness.
As an orphan whose parents had both passed away, Xu Shuyao found a place of shelter and then took good care of her younger brother to go to school.
If my younger brother can achieve academic success in the future and find a kind and gentle husband, then her father's solemn instructions to her before he passed away will not be in vain.
As for why I set off suddenly, it all started with what I saw and heard in Huzhou City that morning.
Wang Shaowei was a close minister of the emperor and came from the Qingyuan Marquis Mansion. The Wang family and the Xiao family of Chengguogong were related by marriage.
This time, such a big shot suddenly showed up in Huzhou. When Xu Shuyao heard that this group of people were going back to Beijing, she thought of following them all the way.
She had a good plan in mind. As long as she and the elderly, weak, women and children followed the other boat from a distance, they could rest assured along the way.
At first, Nanny Zheng was skeptical, but it was not until she was sitting safely in the carriage heading straight to Chongwenmen that she believed what the girl said that day.
However, she looked at the group of people in the distance and said with some concern, "Miss! We've been following them all the way here. I'm afraid that young master Wang has already discovered us, but he hasn't gotten rid of us. Do you want to go up and say hello when you enter the city later?"
She thought Xu Shuyao, who was always polite, would agree, but she didn't expect the girl in front of her to shake her head without hesitation, "No need."
How could a young man from a powerful family like Wang Shaowei care about such a harmless behavior of theirs?
Their identities are very different. They know that person, but that person may not know her.
Rather than ending up being rejected instead of trying to get close to someone, it is better to live in peace with each other.
Xu Shuyao believed that this was exactly what the prince needed.
They were talking about the prince in front of them, but they didn't realize that the man was also talking about them.
Wang Shaowei looked up at Chongwenmen right in front of him, but jumped off his horse nimbly and went to the luxurious carriage in front.
At this moment, the noble young man in the carriage was reading a book carefully. He didn't even raise his eyebrows when he knew he came in.
"No... I said, the people behind followed us all the way. You said don't worry about them, do you know them?" Wang Shaowei said this out of the blue.
In front of him, Xiao Mo finally frowned and glanced at him, then turned his gaze back to the book in his hand.
"I don't know him."
After a while, I heard him reply concisely.
Wang Shaowei was obviously used to this kind of treatment. He didn't argue with him and just sat down opposite him.
He looked around idly, then suddenly his gaze fixed on something. He reached out and picked up the book on the small table next to him.
"You actually have this here? You..." Wang Shaowei flipped through the book very quickly, his face full of disbelief.
Xiao Mo had no intention of reading at this moment. He dropped the military book in his hand and took the one that Wang Shaowei was holding.
He even flipped through it and commented, "Not bad!"
After saying this, he glanced indifferently at his cousin who had a strange look on his face.
Wang Shaowei really admired the man in front of him. He looked like a gentleman. How could he remain expressionless while flipping through a pornographic book?
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