Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I did not sleep a wink that night.

By daybreak, the gates of the Pei Mansion were already surrounded by onlookers waiting for a spectacle.

News traveled fast in the capital.

There were three versions of the story: Third Miss Shen had brought death to her maid on her wedding night; the rear courtyard of the Chief Grand Secretary’s residence was haunted; the memorial tablet of his deceased wife had manifested a miracle. Each was more outrageous than the last.

The nastiest version claimed that on the very first night after marrying in, I caught Pei Yanzhi burning paper offerings for his dead wife. Humiliated and enraged, I pushed my dowry maid into a well as a sacrifice to appease the departed soul.

I nearly laughed out loud when I heard it.

“Why don’t they just say I sacrificed Lord Pei too?”

Nanny Lin was kneeling by the door, looking as if she had aged ten years overnight.

She did not dare utter a word.

Pei Yanzhi sat by the window, reviewing memorials. At my words, he did not even lift his head.

“You may try.”

I said, “Lord Pei, you’re so busy, yet you still have time to joke with me?”

His ink-dipped brush paused.

“I was not joking.”

I shut my mouth.

Sometimes it was truly impossible to tell whether this man was threatening me or sincerely offering advice.

Shortly after the hour of chen, someone arrived from the palace.

The Empress summoned me to the palace to pay my respects.

It was not unusual for a new bride to enter the palace.

What was unusual was that the Empress summoned only me, not Pei Yanzhi.

Pei Yanzhi closed the memorial in his hand.

“She is not going.”

The female official delivering the decree stiffened.

“Lord Pei, Her Majesty’s decree…”

“She was frightened last night. She is ill.”

“But an imperial physician has not taken her pulse.”

Pei Yanzhi looked at me.

I immediately raised a hand to my forehead and leaned back against the chair.

“Oh dear, my head hurts.”

The female official was speechless.

A hint of laughter seemed to pass through Pei Yanzhi’s eyes, but it vanished almost at once.

After the female official left, I asked him, “Why does the Empress want to see me?”

He said, “To see whether you are thoroughly dead.”

I nearly choked on my tea.

Pei Yanzhi handed me a handkerchief.

“Three years ago, when those arrows flew at North Mountain, the Empress’s Maternal Clan was also present.”

As I wiped my mouth, my hand slowly stilled.

“Does she have something to do with Bitao?”

Pei Yanzhi did not answer directly. Instead, he took a thin sheet of paper from his sleeve.

Drawn on the paper was an arrow.

A tiny cloud pattern was carved into the arrow’s fletching.

“This is the arrow that struck Bitao.”

I stared at that cloud pattern for a long time.

Then, all of a sudden, a scene flashed through my mind.

Rain. The neighing of horses. A golden hairpin rolling into the grass.

And a girl in a peach-colored dress rushing toward me, shoving me down the slope.

She said, “Miss, live.”

I clutched my temples.

Pei Yanzhi rose at once.

“Did you remember?”

The pain was so intense my vision darkened, but I still gritted my teeth and asked, “Why did Bitao die in my place?”

He was silent for a moment.

“Because the person who was supposed to die that day was you.”

I looked up at him.

“Why?”

Pei Yanzhi walked up to me, blocking the blinding light beyond the window.

“Because you saw something you should not have seen.”

I asked, “What?”

He said in a low voice, “The account book of the Crown Prince’s secret meeting with the Xiling Envoy.”