The Cold Minister and the Substitute Bride novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Xiuwen's Choice

Zhiruo slipped out from under Biyan's arm without waking her and went down the dark stairs with a lamp.

Steward Qin was already in the kitchen doorway, in his night robe, with a kitchen knife in his hand.

He lowered it when he saw her.

"A woman, alone," he whispered. "She says her name is Lu."

The back door stood open on the cold lane.

In the light of the lamp, a tall figure in a torn green coat leaned against the frame, breathing hard.

She had lost one shoe.

There was straw in her hair.

"Zhiruo," said Lu Xiuwen.

Zhiruo stood very still.

Qin tactfully put the knife on the table, found a task in the pantry, and shut the door.

"I came over the garden wall," Xiuwen said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I did not know where else."

"Come in. You're freezing."

Xiuwen came in.

Zhiruo gave her a stool by the stove and a bowl of the rice porridge the kitchen had kept warm, and Xiuwen held it in both hands and did not eat.

"Gao locked me in his storeroom," she said. "He did not hurt me. He only asked me, very gently, each morning, whether I had decided to be a good daughter."

"What did he want from you?"

"To say you were a fraud, in front of the court. To say it in my own voice." Xiuwen's lips trembled. "He said my father would be pardoned. He said my mother's house, too. And he said you would be sent to the prison house and the Minister would be shamed, and that if I did not agree, my physician would be arrested."

"Your physician's apprentice."

"Yes. He is safe now. He is in the river town with his master." Xiuwen swallowed. "I don't know how he got free. I think Madam Gao sent word."

"Gao's wife?"

"She came last night with a tray of food. She sat with me." Xiuwen gave a small broken laugh. "She taught me to embroider, you know. A silk pine. She said, I have been quiet for thirty years, child, and I will not have the girl from my spring lessons used like a stick. She unlocked the storeroom and left the garden door open."

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