To Be A Virtuous Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Cup
Yuwei wakes as the prince's wife, sees powder on a tea cup and switches it with her rival's in front of the whole household; then her absent husband speaks from the doorway.
Yuwei woke with a headache and a stranger's red bedcurtains over her face.
The last thing she remembered was a spreadsheet on a hospital laptop at two in the morning.
The bed she lay in was carved wood with a canopy, and the sheets smelled of cedar.
A round-faced girl in a brown jacket knelt beside it, crying so hard her braids shook.
"Mistress, you're awake, thank the heavens."
"Who are you?"
The girl cried harder.
"Dongmei, mistress. Please don't joke about it today."
Memories came in pieces.
She was Han Yuwei, twenty-two, only daughter of a scholar who had gambled his house away.
Eleven days ago she had been married to the Prince of Anbei.
The prince had not come to the wedding.
She had bowed to a sword on a stand, and been told it stood for him.
"What time is it?" Yuwei asked.
"Almost the hour of the snake, mistress. The Dowager's morning tea."
"What happens if I'm late?"
Dongmei wiped her face with her sleeve.
"Last time you were late, she made you kneel in the courtyard until noon."
Yuwei sat up.
Her head cleared at once.
She was thirty-one years old, she had audited eleven hospitals, and she had never knelt for a late fee in her life.
"Then help me dress," she said. "And tell me everything you know about this house, quickly."
Dongmei talked while she pinned.
There was a Dowager Princess, Lady Tao, who ran the household and the seal.
There was a side consort, Bao Zhiqing, the Dowager's niece, who had lived in the Pear Court for a year.
There was a prince nobody had seen in six months.
"And the old me?" Yuwei asked. "Was I any good at fighting back?"
Dongmei looked at the floor.
"You cried a lot, mistress. And you ate everything Zhiqing's cook sent over."
"Did I get sick afterward?"
"Every time."
Yuwei looked at the girl in the bronze mirror.
A round face, dark eyes, a short fringe.
Not her own, but it would do.
"From now on," she said, "nobody sends me anything I haven't watched them make."
The tea hall was red and gold and crowded.
Fifty servants stood along the walls.
Lady Tao sat at the head on a carved chair, small and upright, with pearls in her hair.
Her smile was soft.
Zhiqing knelt beside the tea table in plum silk, her hands folded.
She was very pretty, and she was already looking at Yuwei.
"Sister," Zhiqing said sweetly. "You are late, but I forgive you. Please, carry the cup to our aunt. I have already poured."
She lifted a small tray with two cups on it.
Yuwei took it.
Both cups were white porcelain with a blue rim.
She looked at them for as long as she looked at any suspicious invoice.
The cup on the left had a faint pale dust along its lip.
The cup on the right did not.
Zhiqing's eyes flicked to the left cup.
It was a very small flick.
It was enough.
Yuwei carried the tray toward the Dowager.
She knelt on the cushion, as the old Yuwei would have done.
Then she turned to Zhiqing, tray in both hands, and smiled for the first time in this body.
"You poured these yourself," she said. "So you should have the honor of the first cup, sister."
The hall went quiet.
"I couldn't," Zhiqing said. "It's for the Dowager."
"Then the Dowager will have the second cup, after you show me the first is safe."
Yuwei held the left cup out to her.
"Drink."
Zhiqing's smile did not move, but her fingers did.
"Sister is rude."
"Sister is careful. I've been sick after every cup from your kitchen. Humor me."
Lady Tao folded her hands in her lap.
"Yuwei. This is a tea ceremony, not a trial."
"Then it will be quick, Mother."
Yuwei stayed on her knees, the cup steady in front of Zhiqing's mouth.
Fifty servants watched.
A kettle hissed in the corner.
Zhiqing had two choices, and both of them were visible to every person in the room.
She took the cup, because refusing would have been a confession.
She drank it in three small swallows.
Then she set it down, and for four breaths nothing happened.
Zhiqing's face went from pink to grey.
She pressed a hand over her stomach.
"Aunt," she whispered. "I feel unwell."
She stood, swayed, and ran out of the hall with her skirts in her fist.
A maid ran after her.
Yuwei turned back to the Dowager and offered the second cup.
"Mother, shall I serve you the clean one?"
Lady Tao looked at her for a long moment.
"You've become quick," she said.
"I've become hungry, Mother. It sharpens a person."
She said it gently and held the cup steady, and the Dowager did not take it.
Someone near the door coughed.
The whole hall bowed.
Yuwei turned her head.
A man stood in the doorway in dark green robes with dust on the hem.
He was tall and lean, with a thin scar through his left eyebrow and a black cord holding half his hair.
She had never seen him in her life, and she knew exactly who he was.
He looked at the cup in her hands, and then at her face.
"My wife," said the Prince of Anbei, in a quiet voice. "You hold a cup differently now."
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