Chapter 7

After that day, Sheng Yi and I met often.

Both of us being of ruined name, we might do as we pleased.

We rode horses, fought cocks, matched crickets.

We degenerated utterly.

Sometimes, in a hillside pavilion outside the capital, he would prop his chin and teach me letters with a brush.

Ashamed, I buried my head in a stack of papers, my voice muffled. “Am I truly without ambition?”

“You have had a hard life too, yet still can understand right and duty; while I seem never to have thought to seek a way out for myself…”

Long ago, Xie Changyu had said the like to me.

He too had once indulged me, laughing that he would treat me well all his life. But later, learning the truth fabricated by Elder Sister, he came to loathe me utterly.

“If you had studied as diligently as she, I might yet have liked you.”

“Why must you enjoy the fruit of others’ toil, and take what was hers?”

My head was tapped lightly with the brush handle.

He said, “You would not.”

“No matter how my stepmother dislikes me, she must send me to the family school. She cannot stop me from studying, from the examinations; but you—you never had that path.”

I thought, after all these years, seeing Elder Sister come and go from the girls’ academy, famed through the capital, I should have grown used to it. Yet now I was wronged enough to near weep.

I bore back my tears and looked up, choking, unable to speak.

Sheng Yi gave me a glance and very naturally reached out, his fingertip pressing a handkerchief, wiping my cheek.

“Ink got on you.”

The warmth of his fingertip lingered a moment.

I started, and met his eyes; my lashes trembled faintly.

He coughed twice and turned his head, his ears reddening completely.

In the corner he tapped the table edge a few times with the brush.

“…”

Muttered to himself.

“Whether she is studying well…”

The Sheng family came to propose.

In wedding with the Song family, that Lady Sheng was most reluctant, her manner neglectful.

Mother had hesitated.

But Elder Sister urged her. “Second Young Master Sheng has turned from his wild ways; that is rarest of all. The Sheng family is also a great and honored house; who is to say the second young master will not become heir and inherit the dukedom one day? If my sister marries in, she will not lack for riches and honor.”

She knew Lady Sheng hated Sheng Yi, and the household was restless; she did not wish me well either.

Urged thus, Mother agreed.

When this match was announced, not a few laughed in secret.

Said I was not greedy for wealth.

And Sheng Yi not lustful.

A fitting pair, as it were.

Only Xie Changyu was somewhat displeased.

He and Elder Sister were kindred spirits, a gentleman’s friendship, clear as water. For the first time he questioned her. “How can Song Ying marry such a man?”

Beyond the wall, the qin in the covered walk ceased.

I heard Elder Sister rise; her clothes whispered faintly.

She asked him, “Why do you speak of her always?”

Xie Changyu was long silent.

Her voice was gentle. “Second Young Master Sheng treats her very well; he takes her to roam the world, and she is happy. What is wrong with that?”

“She was spoiled; she likes a young master who obeys her every whim.”

Xie Changyu said coldly, “A parent who loves a child plans deep for its future.”

“Your mother could, for the sake of a good husband for her, stoop to having you ghostwrite and deceive me, that I might take a fancy to her.”

“How could she bear to marry her to such a cockfighting, dog-racing wastrel?”

Elder Sister fell silent.

She grew incoherent by degrees.

“We… how could we go against her, when she likes such days…”

Xie Changyu smiled faintly, somewhat mocking.

“So you would rather leave her untaught and unguided, and let her entrust herself to the wrong man?”