“Just getting up is helping me.” Zhao E rested her injured hand on her knee.
“Getting up to study?” Zhao Peiyuan let out a scoff. “What use is reading all those books as a cripple? It’s not like—”
“Eat.” Zhao E cut him off, placing the bowl in his hands.
Zhao Peiyuan held the bowl without moving.
“I asked around. Imperial Physician Yu said your legs aren’t entirely beyond hope.” Zhao E spoke slowly. “It’s just that you’ll have to endure some pain—they’d break the bones that have already healed and set them again. Maybe then you could walk.”
“What good is walking? Can I ever fully recover?” Zhao Peiyuan’s eyes reddened, his emotions running high. “Going from a cripple to a lame man—do you think that’s—”
“A lame man is still better than a cripple!” Zhao E rose abruptly, her gaze sharp. “At least, if I die at the hands of my enemies, you’d be able to come collect my body.”
Zhao Peiyuan froze for a moment.
“Think it over carefully.” Zhao E didn’t linger, leaving those words behind as she walked out of the room.
Zhao Peiyuan stared at the direction she’d gone, dazed for a long while.
＊
Once through the city gates, Zhao E stepped down from the carriage.
It was still early, and she didn’t want to go back and face those faces she loathed. She decided to take a leisurely stroll to pass the time.
She bought a few things along the way and was idly browsing a stall of newly made face powder when a commotion broke out behind her.
“Make way, please make way…”
The servant’s loud shouts, the clatter of hooves, and a jumble of curses all mixed together.
Zhao E turned to look.
“Miss, it’s Third Miss’s carriage.” Xishi, sharp-eyed, recognized it at once.
“Seems like something urgent happened.” Xiyu took Zhao E’s arm. “Miss, quickly step aside.”
The other maids instinctively retreated, but Ling Feng moved forward instead, shielding Zhao E as she backed away.
Zhao Yuehua’s carriage sped past, and as it went by Zhao E, she faintly heard crying—it sounded like Zhao Ruxiu’s sobs.
“It stopped in front of the medical hall.”
Ling Feng was trained in martial arts, and even from a distance, she could roughly tell where the carriage had halted.
“Let’s go see.” Zhao E’s curiosity was piqued. She set down the powder box and walked over.
Before she even entered the medical hall, she heard Zhao Ruxiu’s cries: “Doctor, it hurts so much—is my wrist broken…”
Zhao E lifted her skirt and stepped over the threshold.
“What a coincidence. Truly, you can’t avoid running into people in this world.” She looked at the Zhao sisters seated by the table, speaking with a smile.
“Eldest sister.” Zhao Yuehua rose quickly to greet her.
“Zhao E!” Zhao Ruxiu, her face streaked with tears, glared with utter contempt. “You jinx, get out of here! If I hadn’t kept running into you, I wouldn’t be this unlucky.”
“Get out?” Zhao E laughed. “Is this medical hall yours?
Hmm, let me take a look. You hurt my left hand, and now your left hand has ended up like this—isn’t that karma?”
Zhao Ruxiu’s left wrist was bent outward at an odd angle, swollen like a pig’s trotter, and with the wound on her palm on top of that, it was almost unbearable to look at.
“You!” Had her hand not been hurting so badly, Zhao Ruxiu would have gotten up to fight her.
“Sister, don’t be so harsh with Eldest Sister.” Zhao Yuehua admonished her.
“Exactly.” Zhao E’s eyes curved as she smiled, languid and carefree. “I was just bored and came to browse the medical hall, and happened to run into you two.
No need to be so hostile toward me.”
The more she acted like this, the more furious Zhao Ruxiu became: “Sister, who goes loitering around a clinic? She’s clearly here to mock me. Hurry and throw her out!”
“That’s not right.” Zhao E refuted with a straight face: “I am here to loiter. Mocking you is just a side benefit.”
“Zhao E!” Zhao Ruxiu was burning with rage, and rose to pounce on her.
Zhao Yuehua hurriedly held her back, and then apologized to Zhao E: “Eldest Sister, during the polo match earlier, Ruxiu’s horse was startled and she fell and injured her wrist. It’s only because the pain is so great that she lost her reason like this. Eldest Sister, please don’t lower yourself to her level.”
Zhao E laughed once, turned, and left.
Zhao Yuehua truly had inherited Jiang Qingrou’s true teachings; no matter when or where, she could always put on a face of hypocritical goodwill.
By comparison, Zhao Ruxiu had been spoiled rotten, thinking everyone in the world ought to yield to her.
“Sister, are you actually my sister or not!” Zhao Ruxiu watched Zhao E swagger off, so angry she started crying again.
“She has so many maidservants, we’re no match for her at all.” Zhao Yuehua lowered her voice: “When we go back, we’ll complain to Father, and say this wrist injury was also caused by Zhao E.”
Zhao Ruxiu immediately stopped crying and urged the doctor mixing medicine: “Hurry up.”
＊
The sun set behind the western mountains, and the evening clouds were redder than fire.
In an open space within the Fuguo Duke’s Residence garden, Jiang Cheng, a concubine-born son of the first branch, was practicing a set of martial arts, each move and stance quite methodical.
He resembled his birth mother, and was three parts better-looking than Jiang Huaifu. From time to time, his eyes glanced toward the hem of a crimson skirt behind the trees.
After confirming that it was Zhao E hiding in the shadows watching him, his fists swung with even more vigor and power.
When he finished the set of martial arts, he just happened to see that crimson skirt hem leaving. He hurried to follow: “Sister-in-law, please wait.”
His heart surged with excitement.
Jiang Huaifu was impotent; it had already spread throughout the residence in private.
If he could take Jiang Huaifu’s place and claim such a beauty, and then gain her massive dowry as well, wouldn’t that be wonderful?
By then, he would establish his own household, take several beautiful concubines, have a pile of children—wouldn’t that be another great clan!
He would make Jiang Huaifu and his mother, who now strutted arrogantly before him, able only to grovel at his feet and be trampled underfoot as he pleased!
“Brother-in-law…” Zhao E turned her head back, a blush rising on both cheeks, looking like a delicate, shy, startled beauty who had been caught peeking.
“Sister-in-law, do not fear.” Jiang Cheng stepped closer, shedding his usual timidness before Jiang Wang-shi, and revealed a smile he thought was courteous and refined: “Sister-in-law, have you come here for some matter?”
“No, no matter.” Zhao E’s hand trembled, her cheeks flushed red, and she handed him a bowl of chilled floating yuanzi: “For Brother-in-law to quench his thirst.”
Jiang Cheng reached out to take it, deliberately grasping her hand, a smile on his face.
Zhao E panicked, suddenly pulled her hand back, turned, and hurried away.
If she ran any later, she feared she would vomit from disgust at Jiang Cheng’s filthy appearance.
Jiang Cheng still thought she had truly been embarrassed. He stood in place smiling smugly for a while, then ate the floating yuanzi, and in the end even tucked the bowl into his bosom.
“Have someone spread word in front of Jiang Huaifu, saying that Jiang Cheng and I were seen having a private meeting in the garden.”
In the night, Zhao E gave low-voiced instructions to Xiyu.
“This servant understands.” Xiyu responded.
Suddenly, a black shadow darted out from the flower bushes nearby, grabbed Zhao E, and carried her behind a wall of rose flowers.
Ling Feng sensed the movement and was about to act, but after looking carefully, stopped the somewhat panicked Xiyu and the others: “It’s Xiao Wangye.”
Zhao E immediately sensed that the newcomer was Zhou Yu.
Zhou Yu carried a distinctive, crisp fragrance unlike any other.
“Brother-in-law, please show some restraint.” Though Zhao E said this, her hand wrapped around his lean, firm waist.
“I told you, you’re not to get close to that concubine-born brat.” Zhou Yu’s lips brushed against her neck: “Am I not to your liking?”
Zhao E let out a soft, teasing laugh, her hand slowly sliding from his lower back to the front: “Not just to my liking? You’re quite handy too!”