Chapter 402 — Yigui

Before he could finish, Chen Jia raised his hand and slapped him across the face. The look in his eyes was frightening, and his voice was the softer and more sinister for it: "If you want to live, do not talk nonsense."

Huzi had followed Chen Jia for so many years, and even at Chen Jia's lowest ebb he had never once struck him like that.

Cold sweat broke out all over him; he answered "yes, yes" again and again and bolted headlong into the crowd.

Chen Jia watched his back recede and could not help heaving a long sigh.

From what he had seen of Madam Dou, she did not look like a woman bent on using Yigui against the Yingzhen household. This affair was plainly far more tangled than he had imagined.

Plunging into it headlong as he had, was it fortune or calamity?

For some reason the picture of the first time he saw Yigui rose before his eyes.

Her arms wrapped around her chest, she had crouched shivering in the dark corner of the guest room, her frightened eyes like those of a cornered cub, and the white skin left bare, blotched blue and red, had looked like fine jade willfully damaged, enough to wring a pang of pity from anyone.

Chen Jia sighed again in spite of himself.

And what of it, that she was a noble daughter?

The cleverer the face, the harder it was to survive in a place like this.

He heaved his third long sigh of the day, turned, took his horse by the reins, and slowly rode away from the towering, imposing Yingzhen residence.

Dou Yan paced back and forth outside Song Yan's study for a long while, unable to think how to tell him about it.

To keep it from him went against her grain, and she was loath to see him so deceived; yet to tell him, she feared, would only wound him.

Song Yan, for his part, waited a long while and still did not see Dou Yan come in. It was like a pair of shoes, one half off and the other not yet landed: the suspense fretted him until he could make no sense of the documents in his hand. At last he pushed the curtain aside himself and stepped out, and standing on the study steps he asked her with a smile, "Must I come and invite you before you will come in?" Then he teased her further: "The weather is fine enough today, I grant you, but the wind is rather warm on the skin. If you wanted me to come out and fetch you, you might at least have picked a shadier spot. There is no need to stand in the middle of the courtyard and suffer for it."

Dou Yan laughed in spite of herself and shot him a look, but her heart had eased a good deal.

She sat down with him in the study and, weighing every word, told him what had happened.

Song Yan knew that Dou Yan had been looking into the Li family's affairs. Dou Yan had always had her own way of doing things, and he trusted her deeply and had never questioned her. Now, hearing what she said, he was astonished: "You say that little girl bears a certain resemblance to me? That cannot be. Even if Father had kept a woman somewhere outside, and wanted to bring the child home, and a girl at that, it would only mean a few more mouths at table, a few more sets of clothes, and a dowry for her when she married. She might even have been married into some family that would be of use to the Yingzhen household. Mother could never have stopped him, and Father could never have been so indifferent as to let the Li family raise her in such a haphazard fashion."

"That is just why I think there is something fishy about it," said Dou Yan. "If it were some other sort of thing, it would be easy enough to deal with, but this is a living, breathing person. And judging by the Li family and the Xuanqing Sect, the girl may well know nothing at all... What do you think we ought to do?"

Song Yan was silent for a moment. "Let me see the girl first, and we will talk after that."

Dou Yan breathed a sigh of relief, then said hesitantly, "If she really is a child the Duke of Yingzhen left outside, do you mean to acknowledge her?"

Song Yan seemed a little vexed. "We will decide when the time comes."

It was indeed a hard knot to untie.

The Li family had raised her this way for a reason; they must want something by it. And Yigui had been married off, and married to a scoundrel besides. Whether or not he acknowledged her, once any rumor got about, it would be trouble.

Dou Yan's head began to ache.

Now it was Song Yan's turn to comfort her: "The boat will straighten itself when it reaches the bridge. With the two of us of one heart, what hurdle can we not get over? Even if a rumor does get out, does the Yingzhen residence not still belong to Father? What has it to do with us?"

That was true enough.

Dou Yan turned to Song Yan and smiled.