Moonlight Over Pear Blossoms - Chapter 5

Even a workhorse gave up when it was tired. No workhorse could cry every day. Once I discovered Gu Qiyuan slacked off too, I followed his example and started calling in sick every few days.

In the hottest days of summer, I had a storybook in my left hand and iced cream in my right. Life couldn’t have been more comfortable.

*As he gazed at his widowed sister-in-law beneath him, her clothes half undone and her cheeks flushed, he knew it defied every rule of propriety. Yet he still could not stop himself from bending down…*

Ooh. That was spicy!

I was in the middle of the best part when someone snatched the book out of my hands. I looked up indignantly—and froze.

Me: “!!!”

Gu Qiyuan held the book between two fingers, watching me with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Yesterday Li Quan reported that Consort Jing was ill,” he said ambiguously. “I considered coming to see you myself, but from the looks of things…”

I sat bolt upright, a dying patient suddenly revived. “Well, um, your concubine… I’m much better now!”

“Are you?” Gu Qiyuan raised a brow. “Then I assume you’ll come to the Hall of Mental Cultivation tonight?”

I wanted to shout that I couldn’t do it. But given a choice between giving in and getting angry, I settled for being angrily obedient.

“I’ll come. Of course I’ll come!” I vented my resentment as subtly as I could. “As long as Your Majesty needs me, I’ll do it without complaint, even if I get nothing in return!”

Lies. Ten demon swordsmen couldn’t have absorbed all the resentment inside me.

I couldn’t tell whether Gu Qiyuan heard it. He gave a slight nod. “Issue a decree. Consort Jing, of the Shen family, is prudent by nature, diligent in service, tireless day and night, and unfailingly proper. In accordance with the empress dowager’s benevolent wishes, she is promoted to Noble Consort Dang.”

With that, he left. Hupo pulled me down to thank him for his grace.

I ground my teeth. *Dang.* The same character could mean swinging—or wanton behavior, like reading that racy storybook. Which meaning had he chosen? Why did that damned emperor have to be so cutting? He ought to live inside a diagram of yin and yang.

Before long, palace maids and eunuchs filed in carrying wooden boxes. Eunuch Li wore an oily smile. “Your Highness, your blessings have only just begun!”

Ha. So people really did laugh when they were too speechless to do anything else. My face twisted. “Would you like to have these blessings yourself?”

Eunuch Li choked. Quick as a flash, Hupo pressed a handful of gold seeds into his palm, and he went away satisfied.

“The title may sound inelegant, Your Highness, but the rewards are real. Look at this hairpin with red jade and the paired-heart *ruyi* design. Isn’t it lovely? And this jade pin with jeweled phoenix butterflies, this gold-plated silver pin with agate, this gold pin with cloud-and-phoenix patterns…”

Hupo held each one against my hair. I pouted. A few mere ornaments…

Then I glanced sideways. A ruby glittered in the sun.

Holy—!

It was gorgeous!

I lowered my head. “Put them in. All of them. I can take it!”

Quantity eventually brings a change in quality. After almost a month of grueling practice, my hands were terrifyingly fast. While Gu Qiyuan was still reviewing memorials by lamplight, I’d finished stamping mine and was lying on the chaise reading storybooks. Sometimes I fell asleep over them and woke when the sun was high. Hupo was practically ready to move into the Hall of Mental Cultivation to look after me.

The officials had once fretted that the emperor refused to take consorts. Now they worried he’d follow the retired emperor’s example and favor only one woman. One man urged him to distribute his favor evenly.

Gu Qiyuan said indifferently, “If you can do better, you do it.”

The official made a miserable face and didn’t dare reply.

Another impeached me, claiming that a noble consort who spent the night in the Hall of Mental Cultivation had no sense of propriety. Before Gu Qiyuan could speak, my chancellor father leaped up and let the man have it.

“You know propriety? Who was it that favored a concubine and neglected his wife? Your face is broad enough to stretch for a thousand *li*! Why don’t you look at your reflection in a puddle of your own piss? Mind you don’t trip over that long tongue of yours!”

He kept going. When he tired halfway through, Gu Qiyuan granted him a seat and had a eunuch bring tea. The emperor offered no opinion, but everyone knew whom he disapproved of.

The official who’d impeached me turned scarlet with shame and anger. He nearly threw himself against a pillar.

My father scoffed. “Think carefully before you die. How would that delicate concubine of yours survive without you?”

That finished him. The others fell silent and behaved themselves.

After court, my father immediately wrote a family letter and had it delivered to the palace. Six whole pages. The first three praised me and expressed his relief that I’d finally come to my senses. The last three urged me to conceive an imperial heir as soon as possible, keep my pregnancy secret, then astonish everyone.

Me: I didn’t even know what to say.

If I became pregnant, I really *would* astonish everyone. Defiling the imperial harem was a crime that could bring execution upon nine generations of my family. I hadn’t come to my senses. I would have signed my own death warrant.

In tiny letters along the edge of the page, Father had added: *Do not involve yourself with Zheng Huanwen again. You mustn’t give anyone a hold over you.*

Me: “?”

Dear Father, you certainly knew a thing or two about handing someone evidence against us. This letter was the biggest piece of evidence of all!