“Mother, Sister, please come in.”
Closely following the man’s voice, Yu Zhaoyuan inside the room also called out.
With the Emperor and his consort acting thus, others dared not be disrespectful. When Yu Yihe followed Madam Yu inside, she lowered her head a bit further, yet she still sensed a gaze falling upon her, causing her voice to tremble slightly.
“Dispense with formalities.”
After performing the salutations, no matter how much Yu Yihe wanted to keep her chin tucked, she could no longer do so. That familiar face was revealed even more clearly to Emperor Jinghe.
“The second miss of the Yu family?”
He asked plainly, but his status meant that his every move attracted everyone’s attention. Yu Zhaoyuan’s gaze instantly fell upon Yu Yihe, and her breath hitched.
Under the direct and indirect scrutiny of everyone present, Yu Yihe took a deep breath and answered steadily with a single word.
“Yes.”
The Emperor did not ask for her name again, but instead changed the subject.
“Lotuses in the rain; they are quite elegant.”
This sentence caused Yu Yihe’s heart to skip a beat. In the rain… After only a moment’s thought, she lowered her eyes and once again distanced herself from the matter.
“The Imperial Consort dearly loves lotuses; these flowers were picked for Her Ladyship.”
Wei Jingheng took another couple of looks at the person below, whose attire was much more exquisite yet whose temperament remained the same, before finally looking away. “Such deep sisterly affection, indeed.”
As expected, Yu Zhaoyuan did not realize there was any hidden meaning in the previous sentence. She immediately ordered her maid to put the lotuses in a vase and place them on the small table between her and Emperor Jinghe.
The slight jealousy and inexplicable unease that had just risen in Yu Zhaoyuan’s heart were instantly cast aside. Sniffing the lotuses, she said joyfully, “My second sister always remembers what I like.”
As she looked them over, she noticed a lotus on the outer side. That branch had several petals hanging loose, giving it the appearance of a fading lotus. Actually, such an arrangement looked quite beautiful in a plain vase, but women in the palace had always been superstitious about such things.
Yu Zhaoyuan felt uncomfortable looking at it, so she reached out, pulled it out, and placed it casually on the table. Little did she know that her impulsive act was captured by two pairs of eyes.
Wei Jingheng remembered this lotus, and Yu Yihe remembered it too. When their gazes moved away from the lotus on the table, they unexpectedly collided. In those dark, deep eyes, no joy or anger could be discerned, yet Yu Yihe’s breath caught, and she immediately lowered her eyelashes, not daring to steal another glance.
Seeing her submissive posture, Wei Jingheng felt a sense of inexplicable discomfort. He promptly stood up. “I still have government affairs to attend to. I shall take my leave.”
He stood up decisively, his tall and imposing figure like a pine or a mountain. Everyone immediately knelt to see him off. Yu Yihe also curtsied and lowered her eyes to escort the imperial presence, but when her gaze brushed past the lotus held in the Emperor’s hand, her almond eyes widened slightly.
Yu Zhaoyuan also saw the lotus clutched in the Emperor’s hand. Looking back at her second sister, who was behaving unusually properly below, her heart felt complicated for a moment.
Yu Yihe naturally sensed Yu Zhaoyuan’s gaze, but she did not understand its meaning. She was not an unmarried maiden; how could she be worth minding?
After a few breaths, Yu Zhaoyuan finally gestured for the maids to bring seats for Madam Yu and Yu Yihe. Fortunately, the eldest sister, the Madam of Nanning, also arrived, preventing the atmosphere from growing cold.
Rende Hall was the only building in Qiqing Garden named as a “hall,” and it naturally became the residence of the Son of Heaven. Just as Wei Jingheng returned to the hall and sat down, Li Fuhai arrived, holding a jade vase and presenting it before him.
“You are quite clever.”
Wei Jingheng gave a short laugh and placed the lotus he held into the vase. Li Fuhai then placed the vase in an out-of-the-way spot on the imperial desk and informed the Emperor of the information he had sent a little eunuch to gather:
“She is indeed the second daughter of Yu Shilang, but she was widowed and returned home three years ago.”
Seeing that Emperor Jinghe showed no reaction, Li Fuhai explained in detail: “The second Miss Yu is also a pitiful person. Her former husband was the second son of the Beining Marquis. He was weak and sickly from childhood. It took five years after Miss Yu married into the Marquis’s Residence for her to bear a daughter. Unexpectedly, less than three months after the child was born, the second son of the Beining Marquis passed away. Therefore, the Old Madam of the Marquis’s Residence felt the child had cursed her father…”
Before he could finish, a cold laugh came from beside him. He saw the Emperor open a memorial while saying, “His own body was useless, yet he blames it on an infant. That old woman has truly gone senile.”
The scene from that day surfaced in Wei Jingheng’s mind. Thinking of the little girl clumsily mimicking her mother’s posture, he increasingly felt that the Wei family was incompetent. The Beining Marquis was useless in court, and even his inner household was so preposterous.
“This servant thinks so as well. It is said that the Old Madam of the Marquis’s Residence even found a Taoist to read her great-granddaughter’s fate. That Taoist actually claimed that the young master of the Wei family could not withstand his daughter’s destiny, which was why he passed away. This servant was just thinking, how can a daughter’s destiny be more noble than her father’s?”
As Li Fuhai spoke, he added a bit of his own lament. This talk of divining fate was something some believed implicitly while others scoffed at.
“Even if the daughter’s destiny is more noble than her father’s, it simply means she might marry a prince or nobleman in the future, becoming a dragon or a phoenix. That should be a joyous occasion and she ought to be raised well. How could they drive a lonely mother and her daughter back home? The Wei family’s actions are truly indecent.”
However, since she was a lady of the Yu family and a rejected widow of the Beining Marquis’s Residence, Li Fuhai’s previous little schemes fell through.
It wouldn’t have mattered if the Emperor took a fancy to a pretty farm woman; even after the novelty wore off, no one would say anything if she was kept in Qiqing Garden. But when it involved the court, it would inevitably be constrained by the ministers. He understood his master; the Emperor had always disliked trouble.
The Chief Eunuch did not know that as the Emperor listened to his words, his mind wandered for a few breaths.
Moistening his bamboo brush, Wei Jingheng suddenly responded, “It is not as if only that one kind of opportunity counts as having a noble destiny…”
Li Fuhai immediately waited with great interest for his master to continue, but the Emperor’s words stopped abruptly, with no follow-up. However, it was common for the Emperor’s moods to be unpredictable. Within a few breaths, the Chief Eunuch put the matter out of his mind and focused on his own wandering thoughts.
He wondered what midnight snack the imperial chefs in Qiqing Garden would prepare tonight…
As the Chief Eunuch’s thoughts drifted, the Emperor, who had opened the memorial, was not entirely focused on government affairs either. Wei Jingheng once again thought of the woman picking lotuses in the rain—those lustrous arms, the pale insteps chilled by the cold, the tiny, deep pink toes…
It wasn’t until the tip of his brush touched the memorial, creating a blotch of ink, that the Emperor suddenly snapped back to his senses. He shook his head, clearing everything from his mind.
An Emperor who possessed all within the four seas would not agonize over a single woman. Emperor Jinghe immersed his heart back into government affairs.