They Jilted the Broken Scholar, So I Married Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gifts Come Back
The Hua matchmaker returns the betrothal gifts in the Lu courtyard before the whole lane, and Lanxi steps out of the crowd and says she will marry him. Chengzhi, who has not spoken a sensible word in nine days, says her full name.
The salt merchant's matchmaker unrolled the betrothal contract in the middle of the courtyard and read the ending of it out loud.
Half the lane stood in the gate to hear.
I stood in the back of them with a covered bowl of noodles in my hands.
It was the ninth day since Lu Chengzhi had fallen from his horse.
For nine days I had carried a bowl to this house, and for nine days his mother had taken it at the door and shut the door again.
"My master returns the betrothal gifts," she read. "Two bolts of silk, a jade ring, a pair of silver cups."
Servants set the gifts down on the stone one at a time, so everyone could count them.
"His daughter weeps to say the match cannot go on. She cannot be tied to a man who does not know a brush from a spoon."
The aunties by the wall nodded. They had all expected it.
"She will pray for him every morning," the matchmaker said. "She asks that no one blame her."
Nobody in the lane said a word against the salt merchant's daughter.
Hua Ruolan had a sweet voice, and she had never once come to our stall without paying double.
I looked for Chengzhi.
He sat on the step by the well in his pale scholar's robe, building a tower out of pebbles.
There was a line of black stitches under his hair at the left temple, where the road had opened his head.
Every time the tower fell he said "Oh," softly, and started it again.
Nine days ago he could recite the whole Book of Songs without stopping.
Now he could not say what to call his own mother.
Madam Lu stood very straight beside the gate, with her hands folded so tight the knuckles were white.
She did not cry.
She was a proud woman, and the whole lane was watching her.
Bai Zhiyuan was at her elbow, as he had been every day that week.
He was Chengzhi's classmate, second only to him at the provincial exam, and he had been bringing Madam Lu rice and eggs since the fall.
Once he had asked her, kindly, if Chengzhi's writing box was somewhere safe.
She had said it was under the bed, and he had said good.
"Madam, be gentle with her," Zhiyuan said now to the matchmaker, quietly. "It is her son."
The matchmaker rolled up the contract.
"Gentle is how we have been," she said. "Anyone can see what he is now."
"Who would take him, after this?" a woman by the well said, not softly enough. "He can't even feed himself."
"The Shen girl might," said another, and a few of them laughed. "Look at the arms on her. She could carry him to the bed."
Someone turned to look at me.
Then all of them did.
I am a big girl.
I am tall, and I am wide in the hips and soft in the middle, and my arms are thick from kneading dough since I was nine.
I had heard every joke about it at least once, usually from people eating my noodles.
I had never heard one while holding a bowl that was meant for him.
I had loved Lu Chengzhi for three years.
I had never told him, or my mother, or anyone.
He was a juren and the best scholar in Qinghe, and I was the noodle seller's daughter who left a covered bowl at the academy gate every third day.
His bowl always came back clean.
And in the bottom of it, every time, lay one candied hawthorn.
I had thought it was the academy boys' way of saying thank you.
I had eaten every one.
Now I stood in the Lu courtyard and watched a tower of pebbles fall for the fifth time, and the best scholar in Qinghe asked the ground, "Where's the horse?"
I put the bowl down on the edge of the well.
My hands were shaking, so I wiped them on my apron.
Then I walked out of the crowd.
The laughing stopped before I reached the middle of the yard.
"I'll marry him," I said.
It was very quiet.
The matchmaker looked me up and down, from my floury sleeves to my shoes.
"Girl, you sell noodles at the bridge."
"My mother does, and I do," I said. "Lu Chengzhi is a juren of this county. If the Hua house doesn't want him, the Shen house does."
"Child," Madam Lu said. Her voice cracked on it. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I know what he can't do," I said. "I've watched him for nine days from your gate."
The aunties whispered.
Zhiyuan said, "Miss Shen, this is kind of you, but surely your mother," and I did not turn around.
"He ate at my stall for three years," I said. "I'm not leaving him in the yard with a pile of pebbles."
I turned to the matchmaker.
"Tell Miss Hua he has been spoken for."
The matchmaker opened her mouth, and found nothing to put in it.
Then the pebbles clattered.
Chengzhi had stood up.
He walked through the middle of the courtyard, past the silk and the silver cups, past his mother, past Zhiyuan with his hand half raised.
He stopped in front of me and looked up into my face and did not look away.
Nobody had told him my name.
I had never said it at the academy gate, and the bowls had never carried a word.
"Shen Lanxi," he said.
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