The Cold Minister and the Substitute Bride novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Lu Madam
Madam Lu arrived at the Xue mansion the next morning in a green sedan chair with four bearers and a maid to carry her fan.
She did not wait to be announced.
She swept across the front courtyard in a gown of plum silk, past the gate men, who bowed and did not hurry, and into the main hall, where Zhiruo was folding laundry with Granny Mo's second-in-command.
"Zhiruo," she said.
Not "Xiuwen," not "Madam Xue."
The laundry maid dropped a sheet.
Zhiruo stood slowly.
She had been Madam Lu's maid for seventeen years, and her knees remembered it before she did, and began to bend.
She stopped them.
"Madam Lu," she said. "You are welcome to the Minister's house."
Madam Lu's painted mouth twisted.
"Do not play the lady with me. I lent you a gown and a husband, and I have come to be paid." She raised her fan and pointed it. "Five thousand taels. I will take it in silver or in ministry grain notes. The Grand Secretary has debts you know nothing about."
"I know nothing about them."
"Then you will learn." Madam Lu stepped nearer, and her scent filled the air, cloying and sweet. "I could go to the Chief Censor this afternoon, you know. I could tell him that Xiuwen ran off with a physician's boy and that you are only a kitchen girl in her red veil. How long do you think your pretty husband would stay a minister then?"
The hall had grown very quiet.
The servants had appeared, one by one, in every doorway.
The laundry maid.
Two grooms.
Granny Mo with her ladle in her fist.
Zhiruo noticed them without turning her head.
"You would also be saying that you sent me," she said. "That the Grand Secretary's house put a servant in a bride's place and deceived the Emperor's own decree."
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