Chapter 1

After my cousin, the marquis’s heir, fell into the water, his entire temperament changed.

Once gracious, gentle, and kind to everyone, he now wore a hard look in his eyes. There was something almost obsessive about him.

With me, in particular, he said whatever came into his head.

He insisted I had forced myself on him and left him under my thumb for the rest of his life.

I clapped a hand over his mouth in alarm.

“Cousin, don’t say such things! Neither of us is married. If you ruin our reputations, Aunt will have no choice but to marry us to each other.”

He stepped back, his eyes full of suspicion.

“You won’t trap me into marrying you again. Not in this life.”

……

Somehow, during my aunt’s birthday banquet, Xiao Che fell into the water.

The hall was full of guests. Cups clinked as everyone drank and talked, and laughter filled the air.

No one noticed he was missing.

Then Aunt sent me to find him. All the guests had arrived, she said, so why hadn’t he come to greet them? He was one of the hosts, after all.

Only then did I realize I hadn’t seen him for quite some time.

I followed the route he would have taken back to his courtyard, then went from there to the poetry terrace he liked to visit.

Just as I was beginning to suspect he had hidden himself away to avoid me again, an urgent cry came from the ditch beside my courtyard.

“My wife! Your husband has fallen into the water! Come and save me!”

I stopped short. That sounded like my cousin.

But since when did he have a wife?

The cries grew louder. I went over to look and was horrified to see someone flailing in the water.

He looked as though he was about to drown.

I hurried off to fetch two servants, who used a long pole to haul him out.

The marquis’s heir, usually so elegant and untouchable, looked like a drowned rat.

Soaked through, his hair coronet askew, he stared at me resentfully.

“Shen Zhining, all I did was exchange a few more words with Shuyao. Did you really have to push me into the water?”

“You’re so jealous! If Mother hadn’t stopped me, I’d have divorced you long ago.”

Xiao Che subjected me to a furious scolding, then ordered me to take him to change his clothes.

When I stood there looking bewildered, he shouted again.

“What? Your own husband can’t ask you to do anything now?”

I hastily cut him off. “Cousin, you’re talking nonsense again.”

He had accused me of trying to seduce him before, but calling me his wife was new.

Besides, wasn’t Meng Shuyao his junior fellow student? She was staying at the estate, and they were always composing poems, riding, and practicing archery together.

When had I ever stopped them?

I was about to argue when he suddenly went still. The tips of his ears flushed red as he looked me up and down.

“Zhining, why are you dressed so beautifully today? And you look so much younger.”

My eyelid twitched.

This was bad.

The fright must have brought on some kind of delirium. If I didn’t snap him out of it soon, it might damage his brain.

Ignoring the usual rules about contact between men and women, I stepped forward and slapped him twice.

“Cousin, how do you feel now?” I asked anxiously. “Is your head much clearer?”

His face had turned sideways under the blows. He stared at me in disbelief, his voice cracking with outrage.

“Shen Zhining, you’re getting bolder by the day! Being jealous isn’t enough for you anymore? Now you dare to hit your husband?”

He insisted on finding Aunt and demanding a divorce, no matter what I said.

If he made a scene at the banquet, my reputation would suffer.

With no other choice, I knocked him unconscious with a chop of my hand.