CH 53

The rich kids were making a lot of noise in the streets, causing the diners in the surrounding restaurants to look over. Lechers started drooling more and more.

The situation was far from ideal. Xia Yujin stopped their imaginations from running wild and quickly asked Xishuai to go find a sedan chair, stuffing Liu Xiyin and her maid inside together so that they could go back home as quickly as possible without any further incident.

Liu Xiyin gave him a gentle curtsy, wiped her tears, and climbed into the sedan chair. When the curtain fell back, she looked at Xia Yujin with deep and earnest affection. The corners of her mouth pulled back with a wistful smile, a smile that could lead men to madness.

Xia Yujin was struck dumb, but his body inexplicably started shivering lightly in the wind.

The rich aristocrats were all expert lovers. How could they miss a woman’s amorous glance?

They grabbed Xia Yujin and dragged him back to the restaurant with endless jeers.

“Your Highness, you are a married man, but I, your brother, am not yet!”

“You’re a bastard of a brother-in-law! Trying to get advantage of your closeness with her? Obscene! Outrageous!”

“Will Great General Ye let her cousin become your concubine? Careful she doesn’t chase you out in the street with her sword!”

“Bah! In the street? He’ll get caught before he can even step out of her room.”

“If you have a tigress at home, forget about the concubine. No matter how beautiful the concubine is, it won’t end up well.”

“Exactly, just obediently stay at home and raise your children with your wife.”

His manly mask damaged, flustered and exasperated, Xia Yujin retorted, “My wife listens to me for everything. One concubine? Even if I take four or five of them, she’ll virtuously attend to me!”

“She’ll give you a concubine?” asked the nephew of the Leader of Court Gentlemen Xu.[1]

“She… We’ll talk about it later,” Xia Yujin said.

“Seize the occasion,” Leader Xu’s nephew said with a smile. “Go home and tell her you want to take her cousin as your concubine.”

“For your status as a prince,” Deputy Minister Zhang’s son egged him on, “you only have three at home right now, a concubine and your tongfang maids. That’s very little. When ordinary wives enter a family, they bring four dowry maids to show their virtuousness. The general has been a part of your family for so long already, but not only didn’t she bring any good-looking dowry maid, she didn’t even give you a regular tongfang maid. It would be justifiable to ask for her cousin to become a maiden-family concubine.[2] In any case, with Miss Liu’s status, it counts as social climbing; a rare and true beauty, a docile and pleasant temper and, even rarer, interested in you. Wouldn’t it be a pity not to take her?”

“Wretches!” Xia Yujin said angrily. “How can you all think so wantonly? My wife said that her cousin was looking for a serious family to marry into. How could you waste such a proper young woman?”

“The two cousins get along well,” said the son of Grand Servant Chang. “How would it be a waste for you to marry her?”

“Forget it, he only speaks and shuts up when his wife tells him to,” Fat Chen sourly said. “He talks big but does he ever act? It’s fine, there’s no shame in being afraid of your wife, it’s not as though we don’t understand your problems.”

His pride stomped on, Xia Yujin banged on the table and shouted, “Who’s afraid of his wife!”

Grand Servant Chang’s son laughed. “If you’re not afraid,” he said, “why don’t you go ask the general? The opportunity won’t present itself forever.”

“I… I…” Xia Yujin was no saint; confronted with the feelings of a beautiful woman, how could he not be affected? But he also felt a little jittery and uneasy, as though there were a viper hidden next to his bird’s nest, or a hunting cat waiting by his rat’s burrow. Even if he couldn’t see the danger, he felt a chill and his blood run cold; this small-animal instinct had helped him avoid danger several times. But this time, he himself couldn’t understand why this sense of danger appeared around a beautiful and kind girl. Could it be because she was too beautiful, and therefore unsafe? He pondered for a long time, during which his companions mocked him several times, before falteringly reasoning, “Ye Zhao and I haven’t been married long, so I have to show her some respect. Even if I wanted to take a concubine, it’d be in two years. Ye Zhao said a while ago that my two tongfang maids have served for so many years that they’d be given an official title later. Three concubines is a lot anyway, I’ll wait for their looks to fade before I change. And my health isn’t good, so… indulging… in lust… could harm me.”

Everyone burst into laughter. Only Fat Chen, thinking of the name of that beautiful woman, was in low spirits.

Chest hurting from anger, Xia Yujin downed seven or eight cups of wine.

The restaurants on the Qin River were all connected to each other. Everyone stretched out their heads to watch the spectacle.

Hu Qing was a bachelor and a good friend of the old single widower Qiu Laohu. Today, they were drinking with Commandant Sun, whose wife had chased him out with a stick, and together they watched this farcical and heroic rescue of a damsel in distress.

Qiu Laohu touched his chin. “Fuck, this lady’s really fucking beautiful. How’d she get mixed up with the prince?”

Commandant Sun, glassy-eyed from alcohol, stared for a while, then sneered, “What’s the use of beauty? I… I only went to Baihua House to sleep for a while and my wife destroyed the grapevine trellis in the courtyard. Knowing how fierce our General Ye is, if her little lord dares to make her wear horns…? Hehe… she’ll destroy every trellis from here to the Northern Desert.”

Hu Qing took a sip, shaking his head. “She won’t.”

“Why not?” asked Qiu Laohu.

Hu Qing gave a wry smile. “The general feels guilt towards the prince. She fears that she’ll lose him, she fears any change in his affection. How could she accept to wrong him, even a bit? She doesn’t care either for the domestic struggle for favor. As long as the prince says something, forget one…”

“One what?” Ye Zhao, in high spirits, strolled upstairs. She hadn’t heard clearly what they were just talking about. She carelessly plopped down on a stool and hailed the waiter, asking for a pot of Da Hong Pao.[3] “Sorry I’m late. What were you just talking about? I think you said my name?”

“We were just wondering,” Qiu Laohu said honestly before Commandant Sun could open his mouth, “if the prince needs romance and wants to take a beautiful concubine — will you stop him?”

“A beautiful concubine? All right! I love beautiful women.” Ye Zhao’s eyes lit up. “As long as he’s happy with it, forget one woman — he could take one hundred and eighty concubines. There’d be a host of stunning women surrounding him, blowing and plucking their instruments, birds twittering and singing. It would be a beautiful and picturesque scenery.” She sighed after a beat. “If it weren’t for my mother-in-law forbidding it…”

Domestic in-fighting? Which lord, whose life had been swept by such a storm, would care about the little squabbles of his household?

Hu Qing gave everyone a look that said, I told you so.

Commandant Sun suddenly felt that his wife’s jealousy was better than the general’s “virtuousness.”

“Let’s not mention it, it’s too sad. I have something to tell Fox first.” Ye Zhao waved at Hu Qing, sizing him up from head to toes. A strange smile appeared on her lips.

Hu Qing shuddered and fought back the impulse to turn around and flee.

“Do you want a wife?” Ye Zhao asked.

“I… am going to become a monk,” Hu Qing said.

Ye Zhao heavily clapped his shoulder, sending him staggering, then excitedly said, “Guaranteed to be as beautiful as a goddess. Big chest, slim waist, exquisite butt! Knows every feminine art and housekeeping, has a gentle temperament, excellent in every respect. How about it? Brothers help each other, right?!”

After thinking about a match for Liu Xiyin for several days, she’d made a list of young and promising unmarried courtiers, crossing them out from the top. She felt that the relationship between a mother- and a daughter-in-law were fraught among the highest families, so it was better to go to the lower ranks. Although Hu Qing wasn’t of high status, he was brilliant; though he liked to tease people, he had no particular vice, and as long as he put in the slightest effort, he was very good at making money. More importantly, his family was simply populated: his mother had been the mistress of the house, and now there would be no one to butt heads with. Besides, Hu Qing and she had a lifelong friendship. For her sake, he would not treat her cousin lightly.

Hu Qing remembered the woman who was just with Xia Yujin, compared her to the cousin he’d been told would come a while ago, and understood. He’d seen Liu Xiyin several times as a child, when they’d lived together. She was not so gorgeous at the time, only a gentle and quiet, obedient and hard-working child, often driven mad by Ye Zhao and following closely behind her. During the war, he helped send some gifts to Liu Xiyin and received the embroideries she sent back; she also organized the ladies and matrons of the North into sewing together cotton-padded clothes, sent to the soldiers to fend off the cold. He thought she was a good young woman, with dexterity, dignity, and courtesy.

But why would a sensible young woman behave like this, throwing coy looks at her cousin-in-law in the middle of the street?

Besides his good looks, Xia Yujin’s status was also higher than hers. There was really nothing there that would make her eye-catching, right?

Unless…

Hu Qing was starting to suspect something. He looked up at Ye Zhao, who was trying hard to matchmake her cousin. After lengthy reflection, he asked, “Hey… Did you offend your cousin?”

Ye Zhao resolutely shook her head. “No.”

“I mean, when you were young and wild.”

“Ah, then…” Ye Zhao said, embarrassed. “I committed so much outrage, in the whole of the Northern Desert… Was there someone I didn’t offend?”

[1 ↑] 1 Lit. 中郎 zhōngláng. Translation from Brief History of the Official System in China by Xie Baochen (Baike Baidu says that later all 中郎将 were called 中郎). A position that had to do with palace guards.

[2 ↑] Lit. 滕妾 téng qiè. A concubine who came from the same family as a man’s main wife, generally a close member of the family. Their presence was useful to establish the main wife’s status and position in the husband’s household. Their status was also higher than that of regular concubines.

[3 ↑] A type of expensive oolong tea.