To Be A Virtuous Wife novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Triple-Price Rice

The account room sat at the back of the front court, behind a door with a brass lock.

Yuwei had the key by midnight.

She got it by walking into the Dowager's court at dusk and saying, with six servants listening, "My husband told me I may say no in his name. I am saying no to you keeping this key from me."

Lady Tao had looked at her for three slow breaths.

Then she had handed it over with a smile, and the smile was worse than a slap.

Now Yuwei stood inside the narrow room with a lantern.

Shelves of ledgers ran to the ceiling, smelling of ink and damp paper.

A long table stood under the window.

The prince leaned in the doorway with his arms folded.

"I thought you'd go to bed."

"I thought you were going to watch."

"I am watching."

"From the door?"

"You asked for a quiet room."

She snorted and put her lantern on the table.

He stayed in the doorway for a full ten minutes, and then he came in and sat on a stool in the corner without being asked.

She did not look up.

The first six ledgers were the book she had been given, the household accounts, and they were as neat as a poem.

The second set of shelves held the receipts the accounts were built from.

Now she started comparing.

Rice, coal, silk, lamp oil, charcoal, tea.

Every purchase had a name beside it, and she wrote the names on a sheet of paper.

An hour in, she had a column of prices and a column of dates.

Another hour, and she made a face.

"What is it?" the prince asked.

"Your house buys rice from one shop."

"The Wan Fu Granary. They've supplied us for twenty years."

"Do you know what they charge?"

"No."

"Three times what it costs in the market on the south street. I looked at the price board on the way here." She tapped the page. "Every month. Rice, then coal, then the silk for the servants' winter coats. The same merchant, or one of his cousins, always at three times."

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