The Cold Minister and the Substitute Bride novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Young Madam

Zhiruo meets a household that welcomes her too easily, and learns how the minister binds her chest and how to play Lu Xiuwen; Gao's wife has seen Xiuwen's face.

Biyan left for court before the sun was fully up.

She wore her crimson robe and the winged hat, and she did not look back at the bridal chamber.

Zhiruo watched her go from the window.

Then she looked down at her own wrinkled wedding gown and understood that she had no other clothes.

A knock came at the door.

The old steward stood outside with two maids behind him and a folded pile of blue silk in their arms.

"Young madam," he said, and bowed.

Zhiruo had never been called that.

She had been called girl, you, and once, by Madam Lu, a stray.

"I'm only the," she began, and remembered the listeners, and stopped.

"I am Qin Boyuan, steward of the Xue house," he said calmly. "The master has ordered everything the young madam requires. Breakfast is in the small hall. The house is yours."

The house was larger than the Lu mansion and quieter.

The servants passed her in the corridors, and every one of them bowed.

A groom in the stable yard.

A boy sweeping the bridge over the carp pond.

A laundry maid on the back steps held a basket of white cloth.

She stopped with her mouth open, then smiled so hard her eyes disappeared.

None of them asked her where she came from.

Granny Mo, the cook, was a short round woman with flour on her sleeves and a ladle she used as a pointer.

"Sit," she said, and put a bowl in front of Zhiruo before Zhiruo had even gotten the stool.

It was rice porridge with ginger, a soft egg, and four small pickled plums.

"I'm not hungry," Zhiruo said, and her stomach growled loudly.

"There. You see."

Granny Mo pushed the spoon into her hand.

"The master doesn't eat breakfast," she said, with her back turned. "Never has. Skinny as a bamboo pole. You'll fix that, if you can."

"I'll try."

"Good girl."

The tone was so warm and so ordinary that Zhiruo had to look at the porridge for a moment.

She had been at the Lu house for seventeen years and nobody there had ever said it.

In the afternoon, the laundry maid brought her a stack of soft cotton and a second stack, plainer, folded smaller.

"For the young madam's room," she said, and set both on the chest.

"What are the plain ones for?"

The maid went red to her ears.

"Whatever's needed," she said, and fled.

Zhiruo put the plain stack in the drawer and did not think about it again.

Biyan came home after dark.

She walked through the inner gate with her shoulders square.

She handed the hat to the steward without a word.

Then she climbed to the bridal chamber a little too fast.

Zhiruo heard the lock turn.

She was waiting on the stool by the lamp, in a blue silk jacket someone had put on her bed.

Biyan stood with her back against the door for a moment.

Then, at last, she let her shoulders drop.

"Help me," she said. "Please. I can't reach the knot."

She turned around and pulled her outer robe off her shoulders.

Under the white inner shirt, a long wrapping of grey cloth was bound tight around her chest.

It was laced at the back with a hard knot.

Zhiruo got to her feet.

Her fingers were suddenly clumsy.

She picked at the knot, and it did not give.

Biyan stood perfectly still with her head bowed and her hair coming loose.

"Thirteen years," Biyan said. "You get used to it."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

The knot gave.

The grey cloth slackened, and Biyan's ribs expanded with a shudder under Zhiruo's hands.

Zhiruo unwound the length of it, one turn, two, three.

Her knuckles brushed the warm skin of Biyan's back, and Biyan shivered.

There were red lines where the cloth had pressed.

Zhiruo laid her palm flat over one without thinking.

"Don't," Biyan said, hoarsely.

"Why?"

"Because it's been a long day, and I'm tired, and I've never been touched by anyone," Biyan said. "And I have to learn to be sensible about it."

Zhiruo took her hand away.

Her palm felt as though it had been left in the sun.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry." Biyan turned. She held the loose shirt closed over her chest with one hand, and her face was flushed to the ears. "We have three days. I need you to be Lu Xiuwen, and you do not know Xiuwen, and the Censor's wife does."

"I know Xiuwen," Zhiruo said. "I cut her hair, I carried her books, and I stood behind her at every banquet for seventeen years."

Biyan looked at her.

"Then you are better prepared than I am."

"What about the wife?"

"Gao's wife taught Xiuwen embroidery every spring," Biyan said. "For three years. She knows her face, her laugh, and her hands."

She held out her own hand, palm up, and looked at Zhiruo's freckled fingers.

"She will look at those first."

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