After I Was Chosen as His Concubine - Chapter 2

While I was turning my future over and over in my mind, everything suddenly changed.

Madam was preparing to visit a temple to pray. I had finished checking the incense, colored paper, and offerings and was about to report when I heard her tell Wang Fu’s wife to bring my indenture contract.

Half a month later, a nun from the temple came. Wang Fu’s wife attended inside while the rest of us waited outside, unable to hear what happened. When she emerged, she came especially to find me in the servants’ quarters.

Holding my hand, she said vaguely, “What good fortune you have, girl. When I first brought you here, you were still such a little thing.”

Three days later, Madam summoned me, and the riddle was finally solved.

In front of me, she promised that one day I would be given to her son, He Chengying, as a concubine.

He Chengying, courtesy name Yunzang, was Madam’s younger son and the future Marquis of Xinan.

“For beauty, no maid in this estate can compare with you,” she said. “You grew up before my eyes, and you have always conducted yourself with steadiness and grace. Some young ladies from outside do not look as fine after a turn before me. I hesitated for several days, but a fine flower belongs in a splendid garden, and a bright pearl in a jeweled casket. So be it.”

She never asked what I thought. A few light words decided my fate.

So the indenture contract Wang Fu’s wife had taken to the temple must have been for matching our birth charts.

When I left the room, my monthly allowance had already been raised to one and a half taels. Even Madam’s first-rank maids received only one tael, and they were all daughters of senior household servants. A concubine received two taels. My new allowance was a promise of what I was to become.

He Chengying would inherit the marquisate and stood at the center of House Xinan. To be chosen as his concubine was no different from a carp leaping through the Dragon Gate.

The maids I knew came to congratulate me, and even the young ladies sent gifts. Yet my heart remained suspended. I knew the direction of the road, but not what thorns waited on it.

Since entering the main courtyard, I had been cautious and never joined the women circling that golden phoenix. Yet it was precisely that caution which had won Madam’s notice. More than one maid had been sent elsewhere for displaying too much ambition.

One day, the young lord secretly sent for me. I was embroidering in the servants’ room when he called me to the garden.

It was a secluded place where few people passed. When I arrived, he sat in a pavilion, lost in thought. I curtsied and did not dare look at him.

Not because he was ugly, but because he was far too handsome. Madam was a beauty, and he resembled her, with fine, elegant features. His heroic air must have come from the marquis.

He told me to sit, so I sat.

“You know you are to become my concubine,” he began.

How could I not? “This servant knows.”

“I was the one who asked Mother to choose you for my courtyard.”

I froze.

Ignoring my surprise, he went on. “At first, I merely noticed you. So many people in Mother’s courtyard rushed to flatter and serve me, but you avoided me. If you were alone when I arrived, you poured my tea and immediately fetched someone else. If there were many people, you vanished like a cloud the instant no one was looking.

“Whenever I came, I began searching for you. Later Mother said she meant to choose another future concubine from among her maids, and I named you at once. She considered it and did not refuse.

“Do not worry. Even after I marry my principal wife, I will treat you generously and never let you suffer.”