“Mother, Mother.”
Within the hibiscus gauze curtains, a woman with a beautiful sleeping face felt her long eyelashes flutter at the sound of a child’s voice.
“Mother, Mother.”
Hearing the milky, childish voice once more, Meng Shuhe slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was the handsome sleeping face of the gentleman lying beside her.
His skin was like congealed jade, and his sword-like brows were sharp. Even with his eyes closed, the man beside her was undeniably handsome.
“Mother, stop looking at Father. You should get up and run away quickly!”
Hearing the young child’s voice again, Meng Shuhe sat up in bed and looked around. “Whose child is that? Why is there a child in my room?”
“Mother, I’m in your belly. I am your son, Lu Xiu.”
Meng Shuhe lowered her head and gently stroked her lower abdomen, her face filled with astonishment as she heard the young child’s voice. “My son? Since when do I have a son?”
Though Meng Shuhe had been married for three years, her husband had never touched her.
Yesterday, after receiving a letter of divorce, she had been momentarily consumed by grief and indignation. She had used wine to drown her sorrows with Lu Jing, a scholar who was staying at her home.
She had only slept with the man last night while drunk… how could there be a child already?
“Mother, I really am your son. My name is Lu Xiu, and I am the child of you and Lu Jing.”
“I have come back from fifteen years in the future to the moment you just conceived me. Right now, I am inside your belly.”
Meng Shuhe pinched the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. It hurt. She wasn’t dreaming.
But this was simply too absurd.
After just one night, she had actually conceived a child?
In disbelief, Meng Shuhe asked, “Why did you come back from fifteen years in the future?”
“I don’t know either. Yesterday, Father punished me by making me kneel in the rain. I lost consciousness from a persistent high fever, and when I woke up, I had returned to fifteen years ago, just when you conceived me.”
Listening to the child’s voice, Meng Shuhe got out of bed and searched her bedchamber thoroughly, but she found no child playing tricks on her.
That left only one possibility: the child really was in her belly!
Lu Xiu’s milky voice sounded helpless and anxious. “Mother, I really am in your belly. Stop doubting me and just hurry up and escape.”
Meng Shuhe put on her clothes and coiled her long hair into a bun with a hairpin. “This is the manor from my dowry. Why should I escape?”
Lu Xiu sighed softly. “Yesterday, you got Father drunk and slept with him. Later, relying on the fact that you were pregnant, you entered the Donggong and became the Taizifei because your status rose with your son. However, Father didn’t love you at all. He had another love…”
Meng Shuhe whispered, “Wait… didn’t you say your father was Lu Jing? Taizifei of the Donggong? Lu Jing is the Crown Prince?”
Lu Xiu nodded. “Yes, Lu Jing is currently His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.”
Meng Shuhe looked toward the man sleeping soundly on the bed in disbelief.
Meng Shuhe and Lu Jing had known each other since they were both fifteen, though at that time, she was still the daughter of a small vendor in Jiangnan, not yet the legitimate young miss of the Pingyuan Houfu.
Back then, both she and Lu Jing studied at the Wanhe Shuyuan.
Her family’s pastry stall was set up right outside the academy, and Lu Jing would occasionally come to her home to eat.
Lu Jing was handsome, and Meng Shuhe would always give him extra helpings of pastries. In return, Lu Jing would help guide her with the assignments the teacher gave her after class.
Later, the Meng family found her and brought her back, and she finally learned that she was the eldest young miss of the Pingyuan Houfu in Chang’an Cheng.
Her departure from Jiangnan had been so rushed that she hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to Lu Jing before arriving in Chang’an.
In the four years since she had come to Chang’an Cheng, Meng Shuhe had almost forgotten Lu Jing. She never expected to run into him on the way to this manor to recuperate.
Lu Jing had come to Chang’an Cheng to participate in the Chunwei, but he had been robbed by mountain bandits. He was penniless and had nowhere to go.
Recalling how much he had supported her adoptive parents’ business in the past, Meng Shuhe allowed him to stay temporarily at the manor.
She never imagined that Lu Jing was actually the Crown Prince!
The dignified Crown Prince was actually pretending to be a poor scholar to get free food and lodging at her manor?
Lu Xiu continued, “Mother, Father has always had a girl he admired in his heart. That is why, even though he is nearly twenty and of age, there are no concubines in the Donggong—because he wants to remain chaste for the woman he loves.
“And yesterday, you got him drunk and forcibly took his purity. He was originally furious, but because the Pingyuan Hou is a descendant of meritorious officials and you were already pregnant with me, he had no choice but to invest you as the Taizifei.”
Meng Shuhe said in a low voice, “Last night… I didn’t get him drunk, nor did I forcibly take his purity. We were both drunk.”
She had been married to Shen Qian for three years, and he had never touched her.
He had merely sent a subordinate to deliver a letter of divorce to her. Meng Shuhe had been both angry and aggrieved. In a moment of drunken impulse, she had slept with Lu Jing…
Thinking back on it now that she was sober, she really shouldn’t have done it.
Lu Xiu said, “Mother, after you married Father because of me, you were trapped in the inner palace for fifteen years. Father didn’t love you, and he even extended that hatred to me; he detested me greatly.
“This inner palace isn’t worth staying in. Let’s pack our things and go back to Jiangnan.”
Looking at the sleeping gentleman on the bed, Meng Shuhe gently stroked her belly. “Even if he has someone else in his heart, if I were the Empress, the mistress of the Six Palaces with great power in my hands, wouldn’t that be much better than returning to Jiangnan?”
Lu Xiu’s little milky voice grew anxious. “But Mother, your position as Empress won’t be stable. Fifteen years from now, both your position as Empress and my position as Crown Prince will be in grave danger.
“There are rumors in Chang’an Cheng that Father has already found the woman he loved in his youth. He wants to marry her as Empress and plans to depose both the Empress and the Crown Prince.
“We might not even be able to keep our lives. When Father punished me by making me kneel in the rain, he was surely aiming for my life…
“Mother, let’s just hurry and escape back to Jiangnan. I don’t want this father anymore.”
Meng Shuhe said, “Going back to Jiangnan is fine, but there is one thing I must do before we leave.”
Meng Shuhe picked up a letter of divorce from the table.
This letter was sent by a subordinate of her husband of three years, Shen Qian, the Shizi of the Zhenguogong Fu.
“A letter of divorce?” Lu Xiu said. “I almost forgot that you were married before, Mother.”
“So, have you just been divorced now? That blind, damnable thing! How dare he divorce my mother!”
Meng Shuhe clutched the letter tightly. For a moment, she wondered if her mind had gone a bit mad after being divorced, imagining her unborn child talking to her—or was there truly a child in her womb?
If Lu Jing really was the Crown Prince as the child said, and if they were to marry because of the child while Lu Jing had someone else he wished to remain chaste for, then it would be better for her to draw a clear line between herself and Lu Jing.
As a divorced woman, marrying into the Donggong would likely be difficult to begin with.
Not to mention, Lu Jing already had someone else in his heart.
Meng Shuhe took the letter and stepped out of the room, saying to her maid Lan’er at the door, “Lan’er, prepare the carriage. We are going to the Zhenguogong Fu.”
Lan’er nodded in agreement. “Yes, Miss. I will go prepare the carriage immediately.”
“Mother, what are you going to the Zhenguogong Fu for?”
Meng Shuhe smiled faintly. “If a letter of divorce is to be written, it should be me who divorces Shen Qian.
“In three years of marriage, he has treated me so poorly that he wouldn’t even deliver the divorce letter in person. Naturally, I must go to the Zhenguogong Fu to demand justice.”