Never Merely a Stand-In - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A gentleman like that, face to face with me morning and night—not falling for him would have been asking too much of human nature.

But I held the line the whole way through, never daring to step over it.

I was a stand-in.

However well Rong Xiuyuan treated me, that kindness was meant for Song Minglan. He was looking through me at another woman’s shadow.

To actually fall in love would be to invite my own humiliation.

I reminded myself of it constantly.

Do not dote. Do not yearn. Do not covet.

Every time something in my heart quietly put out a shoot, I cut it off with my own hands.

It hurt, but that was better than being torn out by the roots later, hurting so badly I would have nowhere to hide my face.

As a stand-in for the Crown Princess, I was excellent.

The hidden blades and open arrows of the palace, the Empress’s needling little tests at her table, the endless ceremonial fuss of the great banquets—I turned them all back without a flicker on my face.

Advancing and retreating with measure, comporting myself properly, never a single fault to be found.

Sometimes even Rong Xiuyuan couldn’t help looking at me a moment longer, and would say, half in earnest and half in jest, “You’re more of a Crown Princess than Minglan is.”

Then Song Minglan tired of the jianghu and came back to the Eastern Palace.

Rong Xiuyuan sounded me out once, asking whether I would be willing to stay on as a secondary consort.

I was not willing.

A stand-in is a stand-in. How could she ever win out against the real thing?

That awkwardness of being neither high nor low—just thinking about it made it hard to breathe.

And beyond that, if I stayed, sooner or later Song Minglan would want me dead.

She was a swordswoman. She could not bear a grain of sand in her eye.

To her, a concubine was a wretch who stole another woman’s husband, a rat to be removed with one stroke of the sword.

I was not done living yet.

So he granted me three wishes.

The first: he chose me a respectable match himself.

My husband was the son of the Ruzhou prefect. His name was Yunsheng—Jiang Yunsheng.

He was clear-featured and gentle, with the air of a scholar about his brows and eyes, and his family was prosperous enough to keep me safe and comfortable all my life.

And so I made my return from the ranks of the missing, and under the title of the Crown Princess’s sworn sister, I was married into the Jiang family in fine style.

Jiang Yunsheng was very fond of me.

When there was nothing to do, he would sit beside me reading some storybook, and when he came to an interesting passage he would pinch up a candied fruit and hold it to my lips.

Mother-in-law caught him at it more than once and said it was too shameless to watch.

He would also slip out of the academy behind everyone’s back and take me fishing by the river, insisting I taste the fish he had charred black and bitter, and then scratch his head and laugh at himself afterwards.

The household accounts and the silver he dumped on me all at once, saying, “My wife keeps the money. I rest easy.”

Jiang Yunsheng was the youngest son of the Jiang family. Above him was an outstanding elder brother, about to sit the imperial examinations, and the common folk had opened a betting pool on him, all of them saying the elder brother would take first place.

For the younger son, Jiang Yunsheng, the odds were absurdly high.

Mother-in-law spoiled him and Father-in-law couldn’t bear to scold him, and so he really did live like a boy who knew nothing of the world’s ways.

I couldn’t stand watching people make a joke of him, so I gritted my teeth and put down five hundred taels on his placing in the top three.

I lost every coin of it.

Mother-in-law was so angry she jabbed her ruler at my forehead. “Isn’t silver nice? Throw it in the water and you’d at least hear a splash. What did you throw it at him for?”

Rubbing my forehead, I said, “A wife has to put some backbone behind her husband.”

She called me a fool and chased me for the storeroom keys, and I was gone in a flash.

Now and then there were less peaceful things.

My father and mother came by every few days to sponge off me, taking silver from my hands to prop up my eldest sister.

I never would have given it, but my foolish husband couldn’t bear to see me upset, and always slipped them money to buy himself some quiet.

When I found out, I was angry enough to forbid him the bed.

He knelt on the floor to apologize, meek as could be, and said, looking up at me, “Anything silver can settle isn’t really a problem. My wife’s happiness comes first. My father can earn more, my elder brother can earn more. I have silver to spare.”

I kicked him in the shoulder, though I couldn’t bring myself to put any force into it.

Later I sent Rong Xiuyuan my second request.

Clear away my parents and their sponging.

One word from the Crown Prince, and they never dared knock on my door again.

The third I never named.

That was really because the family was harmonious. My sister-in-law did look at me sideways now and then, but I was generous with money—whatever she wanted, I bought—and I simply bought my way into her good graces.

Two years passed, steady and settled.

Jiang Yunsheng treated me wonderfully. He rarely said anything stirring, but he did up my hair for me in the mornings, warmed my feet at night, and if I happened to mention wanting the sugar cakes from the west of the city, he would come home the next day with an oil-paper parcel and a grin on his face.