The Empress had clearly noticed something as well.
Seeing that Consort Zhou was trying to discreetly examine Lin Zhen without success, she gave her a questioning look.
"Your Majesty, I have been remiss," Consort Zhou said hastily with an apologetic tone.
She then turned her gaze back to Lin Zhen.
Though she had indeed been sizing her up just now, Consort Zhou's gaze held no malice, nor any displeasure toward Lin Zhen.
After all, Lin Zhen was not someone from the palace, and there was no particular reason she should be objectionable.
Rather, it was Consort Zhou who hesitated repeatedly, wanting to explain yet fearing it might cause displeasure. She fidgeted so awkwardly that after a long while, the Empress sighed and said, "We are all one family. You are practically her sister-in-law. Surely if you said something amiss, A’Zhen wouldn't hold it against you? Just tell us what the matter is. This half-said, half-withheld business only makes people wonder."
A noble consort of the palace appearing so full of misgivings—to others, it might well seem that Lin Zhen, the Princess Fu, was so overbearing in temperament that even a consort who had borne a prince dared not engage her in conversation.
Consort Zhou had been in the palace for many years and naturally realized her own impropriety. She understood that the Empress was reminding her, and felt even more apologetic toward Lin Zhen. She quickly explained, "I do have some concerns, but I worried too much and ended up putting Your Majesty and the Princess in an awkward position."
"Does Your Highness have some matter to raise?" Lin Zhen was meeting Consort Zhou for the first time, and was puzzled by these words.
For she and Consort Zhou had never had any dealings with each other.
"It concerns the Third Prince's marriage." Consort Zhou smiled at Lin Zhen, then addressed the Empress.
The Empress was slightly taken aback and asked, "Have you settled on some young lady for the Third Prince?"
None of His Majesty's three sons had married as of yet.
The Empress was not without anxiety for her own two sons, who were growing older by the day.
But every time she raised the matter of betrothals for the princes, the Emperor would say there was no hurry—that princes were of noble birth and their marriages could not be treated lightly, and that he had not yet found suitable families for them.
"Not yet found suitable families," indeed.
A hint of mockery flickered in the Empress's eyes.
It was simply that the Noble Consort had been in the palace for years without conceiving, and the Emperor feared that if the elder princes married and produced heirs, their growing influence would disadvantage the Noble Consort's future children. Hence he kept suppressing any talk of the princes marrying.
…Not only did he forbid marriage, but the First Prince—the Emperor's legitimate eldest son—had established his household outside the palace without being named Crown Prince, without even a noble title, a bare prince with nothing to his name.
Had it not been for his own competence and steady handling of court affairs, and the voices of support from the previous court, their good Emperor would not even have allowed the princes to attend court and build influence.
The position of Crown Prince was reserved for the Noble Consort's son.
That was precisely what the Emperor meant.
If it were only her own sons, the Empress could remain patient. Establish careers first, attend to court matters, and marry later when they were older—there was no rush in matters of matrimony.
For she had often heard physicians say that young women were delicate and needed cherishing, and that it was best for them to bear children after a few more years of maturity. Even if a young princess consort were wed early, the Empress would have urged her sons not to rush into fatherhood.
As it stood now, it was all for the best.
And Consort Zhou, as the Third Prince's mother, taking an interest in his marriage—the Empress felt this was simply a mother's loving concern.
"Does His Majesty have any thoughts on the Third Prince's marriage?"
"His Majesty…" Consort Zhou mentioned the Emperor without any expectation, merely smiling mildly and saying, "His Majesty says there is no hurry. But I was only looking around, considering the daughters of noble houses in the capital, so as not to be caught unprepared later."
Her family background was unremarkable. In her days in the Eastern Palace she had enjoyed little favor—she had merely been fortunate enough to conceive after three or four instances of imperial favor, and from then on had been set aside by His Majesty.
The Emperor had long since stopped seeing her as a person.
All these years, she and her son had survived in the deep palace only thanks to the Empress's protection.
So she held no expectations of the Emperor, and she was no fool—she saw through his little schemes perfectly well.
But Consort Zhou was not grieved by this.
She only concerned herself with the Third Prince's marriage.
"Whose daughter had you set your sights on?" Consort Zhou had always kept a low profile in the palace.
Though she had the Third Prince, he was of mediocre talent and not particularly skilled at court affairs, so she harbored no ambitions. She only thought of clinging to the Empress's coattails, hoping that if the First Prince ever ascended the throne, he might grant the Third Prince a princely title and let him live as a leisurely idle prince.
The Third Prince was also close to his two elder brothers, so the Empress could not help but take an interest.
Consort Zhou paused, then said apologetically, "Some time ago, I had been drawing closer to the Marquis Anping's household…"
At the words "Marquis Anping," the Empress's expression shifted slightly. She furrowed her brows and looked toward Lin Zhen with reassurance.
Lin Zhen's face was calm, showing no reaction to those words, but inwardly she breathed a sigh of relief.
Heavens knew—when Consort Zhou kept glancing at her, she had thought she might have offended Consort Zhou in some way.
Now that she knew it was merely this matter, she was relieved.
As for "Marquis Anping," Lin Zhen now understood why Consort Zhou had hesitated to speak in front of her.
For Lin Zhen was quite familiar with the Marquis Anping's household, having stayed there for a year or so in earlier years.
That was because of her mother.
Her mother had been the only daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness Anping, but as a young child, she had been separated from her family during the Lantern Festival and lost among the common folk, after which her life had been very hard.
Fortunately, a farming family had taken pity and bought her, and she became an ordinary farm girl. She was betrothed to her childhood sweetheart from the neighboring household, a family of scholars who farmed and studied in equal measure. Not long after they married, she gave birth to Lin Zhen, and the couple lived in perfect harmony.
Her husband passed the imperial examinations step by step, and with a future ahead of him, the family was doing well. But before long, people from the Marquis Anping estate came knocking.
They found the marquis's legitimate daughter, only to discover that she was now nothing more than an uneducated farm girl, and their faces turned sour.
That should not have mattered.
They were merely servants, after all, not close kin.
But when her mother brought her back to the Marquis Anping estate, they found that there was no place for her mother to stand there either.
After losing her only daughter, the Marchioness Anping had been deeply grieved, tossing and turning day and night. To lift her spirits, the Marquis Anping had given her a niece from a collateral branch of the family to raise.
The Marchioness Anping grew very fond of this niece, cherishing her like a precious jewel, pouring all the guilt and longing she felt for her own daughter into this girl.
Perhaps when Lin Zhen's mother first returned home, the Marchioness Anping did feel heartache for her own flesh and blood.
But when her perfect niece—raised by her own hands, fresh as a spring scallion—stood beside her own daughter, who was at a loss and clumsy in her ways, the Marchioness Anping could not help but feel displeased.
She found Lin Zhen's mother vulgar, unworthy of the marquis estate's glory and dignity, a disgrace to her.
Even when Lin Zhen's father passed the imperial examinations and placed third, and the Marchioness saw her son-in-law—also from a farming family yet refined and handsome—she said lightly, "What a pity."
A pity for what?
Lin Zhen was old enough to remember things by then, and she remembered clearly the face of the Marchioness Anping, her so-called grandmother.
The Marchioness Anping felt that Lin Zhen's mother was not worthy of her father.
At first, her father still had the spirit of a scholar, wholeheartedly protecting her mother, defending her and standing up for her.
In those days, his feelings for her mother were genuine.
But the easiest thing in this world to change is a man's so-called sincerity.
At some point, her father's words also turned into "You wouldn't understand."
Then who did understand?
The girl from the Marquis Anping estate who had replaced her mother in everything understood very well—she understood his ideals, his scholarly ambitions, and was so knowledgeable…
Her father did not want to be called heartless and faithless, yet in front of her mother, he gradually began to mention another woman more and more often.
Later… later, the entire Marquis Anping estate said that her mother had been carrying on with some groom from the front courtyard, and even the newborn younger brother's paternity was called into question.
Men are strange creatures indeed.
Wanting to be rid of his wife, he would rather believe that she, always so faithful, had cuckolded him—insisting on painting horns on his own head.
He said the son his wife had borne was not his. What more was there to say?
Lin Zhen's mother was still in her month of confinement when she was dragged out of bed and thrown out of the marquis estate. Naturally, Lin Zhen left with her mother.
After that, her mother, traveling during her confinement, developed a women's ailment and bled without end. Lin Zhen, still a small child, shouldered the burden of supporting the family.
And her father, having divorced his restless wife without any rift with the Marquis Anping estate, remarried the precious young lady raised in luxury by the Marchioness Anping, and continued to live in the estate, enjoying marital harmony for all these years.
That affair had caused a great stir back then, and later it affected Lin Zhen.
When her former fiancé broke off their engagement to marry a commandery princess of the princely household, many people spread rumors that she too had been caught in bed with another man, which was why he had angrily called off the marriage.
The tongues of the world are like knives, capable of cutting cruelly into a young woman.
People began to loiter outside her door.
During that time, Lin Zhen even slept with a knife tucked at her side.
Later, when Prince Fu wanted to marry her, the gossip grew even more rampant.
But after becoming the Princess Consort of Fu, even though many people said all sorts of things about how she had married Prince Fu, Lin Zhen no longer cared.
Because she was no longer a helpless woman at the mercy of rumors and slander.
Now, hearing the name of the Marquis Anping estate, her heart was utterly calm.
She was only thinking that the suffering that family had brought upon her mother, the grief that had driven her mother to an early death—these grudges would eventually be repaid.
"It's just that I don't know many people. That Lady Lin, the wife of the Vice Minister of Rites, seems gentle and refined, soft-spoken as she is. And her daughter, in my presence, was shy and bashful, like a little flower bud."
An interesting and lovely girl would naturally win people's affection.
Consort Zhou rubbed the corner of her eye and said, "I thought that since the Third Prince is of a taciturn disposition, such a lovely wife by his side would be a good thing. I never imagined there would be such a connection with Your Highness the Princess Consort."
She had actually known about this old affair of the Marquis Anping estate from the very beginning.
Because it had caused such a stir back then—the marquis estate had made quite a commotion over it.
That gentleman, now serving as Vice Minister of Rites in the Ministry of Rites, had a wife of questionable conduct. The marquis estate, feeling guilty, had compensated him by giving him one of their own beautifully raised young ladies as a replacement—who wouldn't say the marquis estate was generous?
Among the nobility, any bit of gossip spread easily through the palace and beyond. Consort Zhou had also sympathized with Vice Minister Lin back then.
She had also often heard the wife of Vice Minister Lin, who would bring the daughter she had with him into the palace to keep her company, vaguely allude to how unseemly her cousin had been all those years ago.
Consort Zhou had pitied them as well.
But when Prince Fu remarried, and when she heard that the new wife was the daughter of that person from the Lin family who had been cast out of the marquis household, Consort Zhou's heart suddenly skipped a beat.
Not because Lin Zhen and her mother had a bad reputation, and that in the future it might entangle the Third Prince and make things difficult for him.
Rather… she was not a particularly clever or discerning person.
But she had always known that the Empress Dowager was not someone to be trifled with.
Prince Fu was the Empress Dowager's most beloved son, and the previous Princess Fu had been married to him through the Late Emperor's machinations, a wrong match. The Empress Dowager had always harbored resentment over it.
Now that she could finally marry her son again, would the Empress Dowager casually let him bring in someone whose background was unknown?
She feared the Empress Dowager's people had already investigated Lin Zhen's ancestors eight generations back.
But if they had investigated Lin Zhen to the very bottom and still allowed her to enter Prince Fu's household, that meant there was nothing wrong with this second Princess Fu.
And if there was nothing wrong with the Princess Fu, then the one with the problem would have to be…