They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: What He Did Alone

Chengzhi's POV

I heard the gate from my bed, and I was in the yard with the quilt around me before I had decided to go.

Lanxi stood in the lane with the lamp, and she had put her whole broad body between me and the woman outside.

Ruolan was on the other side of the gate, in a gray cloak, with snow in her hair.

I had not seen her since the engagement was broken, and I had been a child for most of that time.

She was smaller than I remembered.

"Chengzhi," she said. "You are well. I heard it at the banquet, and I did not believe it."

"You sent the ginseng."

"Of course I did."

"Thank you for it. It was a good root."

She smiled at that, a little, with her eyes lowered.

Lanxi did not move.

"Come to the house tomorrow," Ruolan said. "My father is at the salt office until evening. There is something you should hear from me, and not from the street."

"I'll come," I said.

"Alone."

"He'll come alone," Lanxi said, before I could answer. She did not look at me. "He can say what he likes to you. But he comes home to me after."

"Naturally," said Ruolan, and went away down the lane.

Lanxi shut the gate and leaned her back against it.

"You don't have to go," she said.

"I wrote that I would end it myself, to her father's face. I never did." I tried to say it lightly. "It has been left undone for four months."

"It was ended for you. The matchmaker came with the gifts."

"Yes. Why was it ended before I could?"

She had no answer to that, and neither had I.

All night I lay and listened to the words she had said in the snow.

Not yet.

I kept hearing it as not the man.

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