My Fabulous Forty-Something Father Becomes a Bride - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Willing or not, someone had to marry him.

Mother took out the red bridal veil and set it between my sister and me.

My sister reached toward the exquisite piece of silk. It had been bestowed by the Empress herself.

Her eyes reddened. Her fingers hovered over the brilliant red cloth, trembling several times before she finally seized it.

I took hold of the other end.

“Niannian, you’re still young,” my sister said. “I’m the elder sister. If one of us must marry, I should go first.”

I knew that on the day the edict arrived, my future brother-in-law had dragged his mother to our door in a panic. He and my sister had spoken for a long time. In the end, they left without having accomplished anything, and all of them had red-rimmed eyes.

“You already have someone you love,” I said. “I should be the one to go. A husband is a husband, isn’t he?”

My sister nearly burst into tears again. “But he shouldn’t be a man like that! Marrying him would ruin your whole life!”

That was true. Marrying him meant ruining a lifetime. Better mine than hers, then. At least my sister could still be happy.

Neither of us would yield. Mother dabbed at her tears again and again with a handkerchief.

I knew she could not bear to lose either of us, so she could not bring herself to take a side.

The red veil stretched out of shape between my sister’s hands and mine.

“Enough. I’ll marry him.”

My father, who had spent the past half month ill with rage, climbed out of his sickbed and reached for the veil we were tugging between us.

My sister and I were so shocked that our hands went slack. The veil fluttered down into Father’s grasp.

Its dazzling red silk and brilliant gold embroidery made his skin look even fairer. Father raised his eyes and smiled at the three of us. An ocean of sorrow lay within them. His frail, sickly beauty took on a sudden, breathtaking allure.

Father had placed third in the imperial examination in his youth, earning the title of *tanhua*. At twenty, a man was at the very peak of youthful beauty—one year younger and he would have seemed callow, one year older and melancholy would already have set in.

That year’s top scholar had been a seventy-year-old with wispy white hair and the air of an immortal sage. The second-ranked scholar had been a portly middle-aged man who looked every inch the picture of prosperity.

When the three rode through the streets after the examination, the other two put together received fewer scented sachets and embroidered handkerchiefs than Father did.

Years bent over official documents had since left him worn, but that only lent him the shattered, brooding beauty of a man with stories in his eyes. If anything, age had made him more captivating.

At least, that was what Mother said.

I had not been born when Father was at the height of his glory, so I had never seen it myself. But I thought he was handsome even now, after the years had worn him down. How dazzling must he have been back then?

Mother’s hand froze around her handkerchief. She looked hesitant.

Father gave a tragic, fragile smile. “Strictly speaking, neither Huanhuan nor Niannian has to be considered my child.”

Huanhuan was my sister. I was Niannian.

My pupils practically exploded.

What was this now? My sister and I were not Father’s children? Then Mother had…

I turned to her with disapproval and the faintest trace of accusation in my eyes.

Father was so beautiful and so accomplished, yet Mother had found another man and borne him two daughters as lovely as my sister and me?

How handsome must our real father have been to make her so besotted that even Father was not enough?

Where were her morals? Where was her loyalty? More importantly, where was his portrait?!

My sister looked just as bewildered.

Mother stopped crying. No one knew daughters better than their mother, and one glance at our faces told her exactly what nonsense was running through our heads.

Her grip tightened around the handkerchief. But the marriage ordered by the Empress was still the most pressing matter, so she postponed her explanation.

“Can this really work?” Mother asked. “Wouldn’t it be defying the edict?”

Father gave a cold laugh. For once, the stern authority and chill he kept carefully hidden at home surfaced on his face.

“Isn’t this precisely what they want?”

“They want me in their faction, and they want someone to discipline that idiot whose brains were kicked loose by a donkey. Wouldn’t it be better if I married into their family myself?”

“I’m the one they want. Why make my daughter suffer as an intermediary? If I go to their household myself, doesn’t that save everyone trouble?”

He was right.

I nodded.

Father had once served as Chancellor of the Imperial Academy. He knew a thing or two about disciplining people, and he owned two very serviceable rulers for the purpose.

Besides, eliminating the middleman made any transaction more reliable.

Mother’s palm came flying at me.

I twisted aside like a snake, evading it with ease. Hehe. Missed me.

“What do you mean, he’s right?”