Chapter 54 Chu Minglang Wants to Take Her as a Concubine
Yu Tan was taken aback, and for a moment she couldn't remember who it could be.
Aunt He wouldn't knock on the courtyard gate. Uncle Chen should have gone out to buy wine by now, leaving her all alone in the courtyard.
Could it be that Jiang Tingfeng was pestering her relentlessly? She poured the water into the ditch, walked to the courtyard gate, and cautiously opened a small crack. She then glimpsed a person in fine clothes, who was none other than Liu Mama, the personal nanny of Old Madam Song.
Granny Liu bowed respectfully: "Madam, the Marquis has asked me to come here."
Her heart skipped a beat; the words of Old Madam Song kicking her out of the mansion were still ringing in her ears.
He gripped the doorframe and quickly opened the courtyard gate wider to welcome her in.
"Granny Liu, has something happened?"
The person stopped in the courtyard and didn't go into the small hall to greet her. Her storybooks and Yu He'an's official documents were piled on a desk, along with many other small items, making them hard to miss.
She stood in front of Granny Liu, forgetting that no one from the Marquis's residence would ever spy inside.
Granny Liu sighed and said, "The old lady has been ill these past few days, and she still thinks of you even when she's sick."
"Grandmother." She realized her mistake as soon as the word left her mouth and quickly corrected herself, "Is the old lady ill? Is it serious? Has she seen a doctor?"
"I've seen the doctor. He said it's a heart ailment that needs to be treated slowly. I always try to persuade the old lady to relax. But it's not like when you were at home, when you could make the old lady happy with just a few words."
How could Madam Song be sick? She has always been healthy; she just loves to eat sweets.
Yu Tan clenched her fingers, not understanding what Granny Liu meant, and hesitated for a moment.
"The old lady keeps talking about how Madam is alone outside in her sleep. The Marquis is always worried about her, so he sent me to ask if Madam would like to return to the Marquis's residence to see her again."
"Madam, may I go back?"
She simply couldn't believe it, just as she hadn't believed that Old Madam Song would kick her out of the Marquis's mansion.
Why let her go back?
“When you are seriously ill, you are always worried. After all, you were raised by the old lady. How can I not miss you? You don’t need to pack anything. Lanfang Courtyard is still empty. Your things are all in there. Everything will remain the same.”
She wanted to stay in the courtyard and wait for Yuhe'an to return, but her grandmother's illness made her very worried.
"Please wait for me a moment, Granny Liu." Yu Tan returned to the small hall, quickly wrote a letter and left it on the desk, telling Aunt He not to worry, she was just going to the Marquis's residence.
As Yu Tan followed Granny Liu into the Marquis's carriage, a middle-aged man from a shop diagonally opposite in the alley opened his door, glanced at her contemptuously, and sneered, his mockery evident.
She remembered that one night, when she returned from listening to storytelling, he had been hiding in the shadows and spying on her. He was dragged out by Aunt He and given a good scolding, leaving her with a bruised and swollen face.
He mocked her, saying, "She's just a kept woman from a wealthy family, what's with the airs of superiority?"
After saying that, Aunt He knocked out two of his front teeth and didn't appear in the alley for a month. She thought he had moved away long ago.
When the man sneered just now, you could still see the dark hole; the knocked-out front tooth hadn't been replaced yet.
The carriage moved slowly, gradually moving away from the streets and alleys.
She seemed to notice Yu Tan's gaze.
"My lady, with so many people talking, it's inevitable that a lot of strange things will come up. Even though I've only been standing in the alley for a short while, my ears have been filled with all sorts of nonsense."
Yu Tan naturally knew what these words were. Living here, these words from the mistress never stopped. She had explained several times, and a few acquaintances knew about them. But then strangers started saying these things. They were all neighbors, and she couldn't suppress them all with force, so she just let it go.
A beautiful woman always seems to get into trouble, no matter where she goes.
“These marquis’ residences will take care of themselves. Madam should also distance herself from them. The old lady is seriously ill and cannot bear to hear such idle gossip.”
As she drew a clear line, her heart skipped a beat.
Ignoring Liu Mama's words, he lifted the carriage curtain and looked at the courtyard where he had lived for two months, which was getting farther and farther away.
Ignoring the gossip, the past two months have been peaceful and tranquil.
Hopefully, Aunt He saw the note. She had originally agreed to wait for her at the teahouse, but she didn't show up. When she got home and saw the note, she probably wouldn't be too worried.
"My lady," noticing Yu Tan's absent-mindedness, "this alley is never safe; it's not a place to live permanently."
To confirm this statement, howling sounds and the thud of people being slammed to the ground came from the alleyway where vicious dogs were kept, suggesting that a fierce fight was taking place further in.
The alley was always peaceful before, what happened today?
As the carriage drove further away, she craned her neck to look, her gaze meeting Jiang Tingfeng's as he emerged.
The tall and imposing young general always had a fierce look on his face that kept strangers at bay, but this was the second time I had seen panic on his face.
Jiang Tingfeng hurriedly wiped his face, but only spread the bloodstains even more, turning half of his face blood red, making him look like a vicious and evil ghost who had done bad things.
A panicked demon.
Startled, she quickly pulled her head back and lowered the carriage curtain.
When she saw the vermilion gate of the Marquis's mansion, she only glanced at it briefly before lowering her head. Although it was Old Madam Song who asked her to come back, she had a feeling that she wouldn't stay for long.
When they returned to Lanfang Courtyard, Lanxin and the other two were already waiting in the courtyard. The second-class maids and the maids were all there, truly proving that everything was as usual.
After Granny Liu left, the three maids came to life, happily surrounding her and asking how she was doing.
It seems that he didn't suffer any major reprimands after receiving that beating.
As night fell, Lanxin stayed behind to keep watch, bending down to make the bed for her. "My lady, why did you change the incense? Will this incense make you feel more at night?"
The fragrance on her body was no longer the Jade Lotus Incense she used to wear; it had been replaced with medicinal herbs used to treat love poison, emitting a rich floral scent that was almost cloying.
"I won't have nightmares anymore." She lay on the canopy bed, where the original copy of "The Princess Returns to Court" was still on the low table. As soon as she moved, Lanxin handed her the book.
Although Aunt He called herself a servant, she never acted like one.
She was already used to doing these things herself.
"That's good. I'm glad my wife can sleep well."
Has your grandmother asked you anything?
"I asked around and there were some rumors circulating in the mansion. The old lady asked me, and the lady said that the lady was just taking a nap in the study and that he was not reading. The old lady returned the lady's bank notes and account books."
"knew."
She remembered the account book that had gotten wet in the rain. She had been carrying the accounts she collected for a month, and when she got tired, she would go to the teahouse to listen to storytelling. The banknotes were still under her pillow in the small courtyard.
*
After returning to the Marquis's residence, fearing that Aunt He would worry, she sent a message to tell her not to worry.
It was three days later when they met Madam Song.
Even though I slept in a canopy bed for sixteen years, there was always a sense of unreality when I came back.
She woke up earlier than she did in the small courtyard, and by the time Granny Liu came to fetch her, she was already dressed and waiting.
Lanxin felt that Yutan had changed. In the past, when she was in the Marquis's mansion, she was always lazy and would sleep until the sun was high in the sky before getting up. When she woke up, she would lean on the soft couch, looking delicate and gentle.
Instead of sitting upright on a small stool as they do now, for fear of breaking the rules.
Granny Liu smiled and said, "Madam, the old lady wants to see you."
"Alright, please lead the way, Granny Liu."
Yu Tan followed slowly, as if she had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Lanxin followed with her head down, while Yutan only followed Granny Liu forward. She was no longer as unrestrained as before, and let Granny Liu report to the old lady first before she slowly and deliberately went over.
As she passed the flowerbed, the flowers were in full bloom, but Yu Tan only glanced at them indifferently.
In the past, she would pick a bunch of fresh flowers from the flowerbed and run to Hexiang Courtyard to present them as a treasure.
When they arrived at Hexiang Courtyard, Zhao Qiuci was standing at the entrance, her makeup light and her clothes simple and elegant.
"Yu Tan, come with me."
"Please go in first, Granny Liu. I'll be in shortly."
They walked in silence until she followed Zhao Qiuci to the lakeside pavilion, where they met for the first time—the real and the fake heiress.
She missed out on sixteen years of Zhao Qiuci's life, and every time they met, she felt guilty.
A gentle breeze swept by, dispelling the dampness from my palms.
"Yu Tan, where is Mother? Is she better?"
She looked up in surprise. She had thought that Zhao Qiuci might criticize or even insult her, at most maintaining a semblance of harmony.
"You're better now, and you're settled in a safe place." She hadn't expected Zhao Qiuci to care about Zhao Qingwu. "Aren't you angry with us?"
Zhao Qiuci pulled her to sit down, and they leaned close together intimately. Her fragrance wafted over her, much like the scent of Zhao Qingwu.
"How could you think that? She was very good to me. In a remote town in Liangzhou, I was the only girl in our town's private school. Before I started my education at the private school, she taught me to read, write, and benevolent and righteous morals."
She told me that a young woman doesn't have to be confined to the backyard; she should have a much wider world to explore.
She was always melancholy, feeling more guilty than loving towards me. Whenever I asked, she would give me the money on the same day if she could, and if she couldn't, she would save up money to give me the money.
This isn't how a mother treats her children; it's more like a debtor treating a creditor.
That's why Zhao Qiuci became suspicious and started investigating. She found Xie Ling, which led her to join the army to cover up her identity as a woman, hoping to find out the truth. By a twist of fate, she regained her true identity.
"I'm sorry, it's all because of me, how can I not feel guilty?" Yu Tan covered her face, tears slipping through her fingers. The person she feared most was Zhao Qiuci.
If it weren't for those plot entanglements, she would have been able to let go as openly as Zhao Qiuci at that moment.
“Yu Tan, this is fair. I have had a mother for fifteen years. Don’t feel guilty anymore.”
Zhao Qiuci's words were partly her own thoughts and partly at someone else's request.
She asked someone to investigate the case, but the person only asked her not to make things difficult for Yu Tan, at least not on the surface. He didn't ask her to be so magnanimous as to not hold it against her.
She was, after all, a woman who had seen the vast desert sands; she was broad-minded, so it wouldn't hurt for her to overcome this hurdle sooner.
It was as if Zhao Qiuci had waited specifically for her to say these words.
She sat in the pavilion for a while, letting the breeze dry her face, before getting up to go to Hexiang Courtyard.
Under the shade of the tree in the courtyard, Old Madam Song sat in a chair, holding a letter in her hand, her fingertips trembling with anger.
She took a few steps closer, stood beside the chair armrest, and whispered, "Madam."
"Since leaving the manor, your temper has certainly grown; you don't even call me 'Grandmother' anymore." Still not fully recovered, Old Madam Song coughed a few times in exasperation. "Why were you punished by kneeling..."
She squatted down beside Old Madam Song, affectionately pressing her arm against her sleeve, just like she used to whine to her at Hexiang Courtyard. "No, Grandmother, I... I was just... afraid you wouldn't agree to it..."
From this angle, she could just see the envelope, which came from the Chu family in Lingnan. Seeing that she had seen it, Old Madam Song showed the letter to her openly.
Chu Minglang wanted to take her as a concubine.
She was no longer a lady of the Marquis's household, so in their eyes she could not be the official wife.
Chu Minglang used a love potion on her, indirectly forcing her.
There was no way she could marry him, but her relationship with her grandmother had improved a little.
Madam Song said angrily, "I really misjudged you back then. I even went to Lingnan for two months. Quickly bring me a pen and write back to refuse. My old friend is getting senile."
She smiled and said, "Grandmother."
After replying to the letter, Madam Song began to explain the past: "He'an worked diligently day and night to become the top scholar in the imperial examination. The honor and disgrace of the Marquis's mansion will depend on him from now on. He cannot be allowed to get a speck of mud on his body for even half a year."
"You've been siblings for sixteen years. If you were to stay together, people would gossip about you behind your backs for the rest of your lives. Forget about your official careers; the Marquis's mansion would never be able to hold its head high in Bianjing again. That's why I was so angry."
Her smile froze on her face, and she clutched at Old Madam Song's robe helplessly.
It turns out that she faced more than just being ridiculed as a mistress.
The reputation and prestige of the Marquis's mansion were everything that Old Madam Song valued.
If she actually takes that step, she will destroy everything.
“Yaoyao, you’re of marriageable age now. We’ve been arranging marriages for you for a while now, but it’s been delayed for so long. We should have settled your marriage long ago. You can’t bear to part with a child you’ve raised yourself.”
Old Madam Song lowered her head and stared at her intently. After more than two months, her eyes had become much cloudy, but the heavy weight of family affection remained.
"Yaoyao, I'll ask you one more time, is your relationship with He'an just a simple brother-sister relationship, or is there something more to it?"
Author's Note: Thank you Yuyan Youzi Cat Head. And thank you Mi Cat AQ for the nutrient solution! [Milk Tea]
I need to take the day off tomorrow because something came up.
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