They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Writing Box

I found Madam Lu in the kitchen at dawn, and she did not turn around.

She was cutting radishes on the block with small hard strokes.

"The porridge is on," she said. "You may carry it in."

"Madam, I saw you at the wall last night."

The knife stopped.

"You were at the wall with Bai Zhiyuan," I said. "You gave him a box."

She turned around slowly with the knife still in her hand.

She is a tall woman, and in her kitchen she looked taller.

"You have been a wife for one night," she said, "and you are already questioning me in my own house."

"I'm not questioning. I'm asking what was in it."

"My son's essays."

"All of them?"

"All the ones he thought worth keeping." Her chin came up. "Zhiyuan tells me the academy wishes to print a collection, so that his name stays before the examiners while he is ill. Do you know what that is worth? He cannot even sit the pre-test, and still his name will be read in the capital."

"Did he bring a paper from the headmaster?"

"He is Chengzhi's friend."

"Did he?"

"I do not need a paper from my son's friend!" Her voice cracked on the last word.

She put the knife down.

Her hands were pricked red from the needle, and they shook a little on the block.

I thought of what she had said in the passage the night before, and I had ten things I could have answered.

I said, "Will you ask him when it comes back?"

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Carry the porridge," she said.

Zhiyuan himself came to the gate after breakfast, in his neat grey-blue robe, with a paper packet of sesame cakes.

"For the bridegroom," he said, bowing to me first, and then to Madam Lu. "I would have come to the wedding. My father kept me at the office."

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