The Cold Minister and the Substitute Bride novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hat
On the wedding night Xue Biyan lifts the formal hat and her hair falls: the Prime Minister is a woman, and the bride is a maid in another woman's place.
The red veil smelled of camphor and somebody else's perfume.
Han Zhiruo sat on the edge of the wedding bed with her hands folded and counted the candles through the cloth.
There were six, and the two on the left were dripping.
Six hours ago she had been scrubbing the Lu family's courtyard steps.
Now she wore a bridal gown cut for a taller girl, and the hem had been pinned up with twelve pins.
Lu Xiuwen had run away the night before the wedding, and the Grand Secretary's wife had not wasted a minute.
"The Emperor ordered this marriage," Madam Lu had said, gripping Zhiruo's chin. "If the Prime Minister's bride is missing, every person in this house is punished. You, too, Zhiruo. You most of all."
So Zhiruo had been washed, dressed and put in a sedan chair.
She had not been asked.
The door opened.
Boots crossed the floor, slow and even.
They stopped in front of her.
Zhiruo stared at the black leather toes under the edge of the veil and felt her stomach turn over.
She had heard what the Prime Minister was like.
Cold, people said.
A man who had won first place in the exam at seventeen and had never smiled since.
"Madam," said a low voice above her.
It was calm, and it was lower than she had expected, and it was not a man's voice.
A long hand lifted the veil by two corners and drew it off her head.
She looked up.
Xue Biyan stood over her in crimson and black robes with the gold belt of the first rank at her waist.
She was very tall.
Her face was narrow and pale, with sharp brows and a jaw.
She wore the black winged hat of the ministers, and under it her eyes were dark and perfectly still.
"You are not afraid of me," Biyan said.
"I am," Zhiruo said. "I'm only sitting very quietly about it."
Something moved at the corner of Biyan's mouth.
It was gone before it was a smile.
Zhiruo was looking at Biyan's throat.
There was no lump at the throat, and the skin there was smooth and thin as a girl's.
Biyan sat down in the chair by the table and poured two cups of wine.
She did not hand either one over.
She set them both down and looked at the door.
"The walls here are thin," she said, very low. "There are listeners in the corridor. They will stay until the second watch. I would rather you spoke quietly."
"I haven't said anything yet."
"No. You've been watching my neck."
Zhiruo's face went hot under the paint.
"I'm sorry, Minister."
"Don't be. You are not stupid, and I need someone who isn't." Biyan lifted both hands to the hat. "I have to take this off. I take it off in this house every night, alone. I was told the bride would be a silly girl who would cry in the corner until morning."
"I'm not Lu Xiuwen's silly kind of girl."
"I think you're not."
Biyan's fingers found the cord under her chin.
She untied it.
She lifted the hat from her head and set it on the table with a click of black lacquer on wood.
The topknot underneath was held by a single jade pin.
She drew that out too.
Black hair fell past her shoulders and down her back, heavy and straight, almost to her waist.
It fell.
Zhiruo stopped breathing.
Biyan stood in the candlelight with her hair down and her hands at her sides, and she did not look away.
"Now you may scream," she said. "It would be a sensible thing to do. The guards would come, and I would be finished, and so would you. I wanted you to see it before you chose."
Zhiruo did not scream.
She was surprised to find that her hands were steady.
What she felt was not fear.
It was the plain, flat sense of a door shutting behind her and another one, a moment later, opening.
She stood.
She was a head shorter than the minister, and she had to tip her chin up.
"Then I'll tell you what I see," Zhiruo said, in a whisper. "I see a woman who is alone in a house full of listeners. I see a bride the Lus sold to save their own necks. And if I scream, I'm dead, and if I go home, I'm dead."
"That is the shape of it."
"Then there's nothing to choose."
She reached up.
She did not decide to do it.
Her hand rose, and her fingers touched a loose strand beside Biyan's cheek and tucked it behind her ear.
Biyan went absolutely still.
Her eyes dropped to Zhiruo's mouth and rose again.
Her hand closed around Zhiruo's wrist, warm and not rough, and held it against her own jaw for a breath, two.
The pulse under Zhiruo's thumb was going as fast as her own.
"You are not Lu Xiuwen," Biyan said.
"No."
"I know. I have seen Xiuwen at a spring banquet. She is taller and she has a mole on her chin." Biyan's voice dropped to almost nothing. "And I am not a man."
"I know," said Zhiruo.
The candles guttered.
Outside the door, a floorboard creaked.
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