Upbringing
Before they had even reached the rear courtyard, the sound of maids weeping and wailing reached their ears. The guards hurried after a disheveled nanny, racing toward Nanny Luo's quarters.
Bai Jingyan gripped tightly the hand Chun Tao offered to steady her, and Chun Tao quickened her pace all the more.
"Bring me those girls who hurt my second sister — now!"
Bai Jinchi's whip cracked through the courtyard. The ground was a mess of broken branches and churned, muddy snow.
The maids struck by Bai Jinchi's whip were bloodied all over. Too terrified of her status to fight back, they only trembled, begging over and over, "Fourth Young Miss, please, spare us!"
The young guard at the head of the Zhongyong Marquis party strode forward and caught the whip mid-swing. Then he turned a cold, stony gaze on Bai Jinchi.
"Fourth Young Miss, that is quite enough. This is the Zhongyong Marquis Estate, not the Duke of Zhenguo's! It is not a place where you may do as you please!"
Bai Jinchi clenched her teeth and yanked at the whip, but no matter how hard she pulled, it would not budge in the guard's grip.
Restrained for the first time in her life, Bai Jinchi's eyes flew wide — then her jaw tightened all over again. She pressed her foot hard into the ground and hauled on the whip with all her strength. Still it did not move.
"Jinchi."
At Bai Jingyan's call, only then did the guard release the whip.
Bai Jinchi withdrew it, shot the guard a single deep, unreadable look, and walked over to Bai Jingyan.
"Eldest sister."
The young guard watched the two sisters, surrounded by maids, disappear along the eaves toward the inner chambers. Then he turned and spoke to the guards behind him.
"Stay here and keep watch. Make sure no one of the Bai family's Fourth Young Miss gets hurt."
Inside the room, Madam Zhang of the Marquis clutched her two daughters to her, huddling and trembling.
"Eldest Miss Bai."
Only after hearing the maids outside greet in a line did she relax and smooth her clothes.
By the time the maids had come in to announce that Eldest Miss Bai had arrived, Madam Zhang was seated properly in her chair. The two young ladies of the Marquis Estate sat with their hair disheveled, sniffling and dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs.
"Show Eldest Miss Bai in."
As Madam Zhang held her hand warmer, a dark, somber shadow flickered across her eyes.
The Duke of Zhenguo's Estate had stood in the imperial capital ever since the founding of Great Jin. And yet a mere Fourth Young Miss of the Bai clan dared raise a whip against her daughters! And on the grounds of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate, no less!
But the fortunes of the world were ever turning. Barely half a month ago, Madam Zhang had heard a secret from her husband, the Zhongyong Marquis: the Bai clan, that century-old noble house, was destined to fall along with the Duke of Zhenguo himself. Soon enough, the first-rank positions of the capital's great families would belong to the Zhongyong Marquis Estate.
What did it matter that Jin Lang had married a daughter of the Duke's Estate? Once the Bai family sank into ruin, their daughter would be nothing but a burden to him. And before long, the crown prince's seat would be her son's as well.
When Bai Jingyan entered and paid her respects, all fear of the Bai family had already been washed from Madam Zhang. She puffed herself up and spoke with deliberate grandeur.
"So Eldest Miss Bai does observe propriety after all. The Bai family and the Jin family are joined by marriage, which makes me an elder to you young ladies now. Let me, then, speak frankly, as an elder should: whatever disagreement you may have, it is not right to draw a whip on someone before a senior. Is the Bai Fourth Young Miss so boorish and wild for want of proper schooling? Tell me — how does she differ from the shrewish women of the common streets?"
Recalling the welts across her daughters' bodies, Madam Zhang ached with such humiliation and resentment that she could have struck Bai Jinchi across the face herself.
"Your daughters hurt my second sister and pushed her into the lake — she hovers between life and death as we speak! Is this the 'proper upbringing' of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate, to take a human life so carelessly?"
The Fourth Young Miss Bai Jinchi did not waver one bit before the dignity of the household's principal lady.
The Fourth Young Miss of the Duke of Zhenguo's Estate in the capital was a girl brimming with righteous indignation. She had once whipped a young noble who rode his horse pell-mell down the street and knocked over an old man. To restore Bai Jinxiu's dowry, she would have thrown away even her own name.
But Bai Jinchi's indifference did not mean Bai Jingyan shared it.
If she let Madam Zhang run her tongue freely against Bai Jinchi, her sister's reputation would be dragged through the mud.
Before Madam Zhang could speak again, Bai Jingyan rose. She fixed the woman with a frigid, merciless gaze and posed her question.
"You style yourself an elder, Madam — so versed in etiquette that you presume to lecture us on the upbringing of the Duke of Zhenguo's Estate. Yet how is it your own daughters of the Marquis were raised to such viciousness? Sisters-in-law plotting to take their new elder sister's life — that, to my eyes, is the mark of beasts, nothing less."
"What did you say—!"
Madam Zhang's fury choked the words in her throat. Pressing her hand hard against the edge of the table, her glare grew fiercer by the moment. At last, barely mastering her anger, she forced the words out.
"My girls were merely playing with their new sister. Plotting, indeed! For Eldest Miss Bai to lay such a charge upon the daughters of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate without a shred of evidence — that is hardly fair."
Bai Jinchi bristled, but Bai Jingyan held her back. Her eyes darkened. She suppressed the impulse to flay Madam Zhang alive, and the murderous edge in her gaze showed plainly through.
A chill crawled up Madam Zhang's spine under that stare. She shifted her clothes, uneasy.
Bai Jingyan answered with a cold smile, perfectly composed.
"My second sister has a gaping wound in her head and hovers at death's door, yet you dismiss it as an injury sustained while playing with her sisters-in-law. The two young ladies of the Marquis Estate have nothing but a few scrapes, yet you smear my fourth sister as some heartless, ill-mannered shrew from the streets. Tell me, Madam — do you take us for children, to be handled as you please? Then shall I fetch my grandmother, the Grand Princess, to settle the matter?"
At the mention of the Grand Princess — the apex of the Bai family's standing — Madam Zhang finally realized her mistake. Even with every man of the Bai clan dead, the Grand Princess of the present day stood as an unassailable shield over the Duke's Estate.
Madam Zhang steadied her feelings and touched her handkerchief lightly to her lips. But the anger would not settle, so she pressed Bai Jingyan once more.
"You have a remarkably clever tongue, Eldest Miss Bai. But the mouth is a gateway to misfortune. You are nineteen already, and not a single matchmaker has come calling — I suspect the word is out that you are unlikely to bear children, and sharp-tongued besides. Who, then, would dare take you to wife? I say all this for your own good, of course."
Bai Jingyan had cast reputation aside long ago. It was Bai Jinchi who could not swallow the insult, her face flushing crimson.
"Why, you—"
Then Bai Jingyan's cool voice drifted out, soft and unhurried, without the faintest trace of agitation.
"Madam, I would suggest you save such counsel for your own two daughters. My second sister has been married into the Marquis Estate for all of three days. In three short days, your daughters have tried to take her life and you yourself have meddled with her dowry. If word of this spreads, what family would marry its daughter into the Jin household — and which man of the Jin family would take a bride at all?"
Cold sweat poured down Madam Zhang. After bearing her two daughters, she had only with great difficulty obtained a son — a boy she treasured so dearly that it hurt her eyes to look upon him.
She had sold off every one of Bai Jinxiu's maids, exactly as Nanny Wu had instructed, in her eagerness to shield her daughters — and in her haste she had quite forgotten that those maids were part of Bai Jinxiu's dowry.
Worst of all, if this affair ever got out, her son would find it nearly impossible to take a wife in the future.
"Oh — and I nearly forgot to tell you, Madam. Nanny Wu herself said that your daughters quarreled with my second sister and hurt her. She has already been bound and sent to my second aunt, and Nanny Zhang has gone to the Duke's Estate to ask my grandmother how she intends to settle the matter. Madam — I shall take my leave now."
With that, Bai Jingyan bowed to Madam Zhang and led Bai Jinchi out.
"Mother!"
White-faced with terror, the eldest daughter of the Zhongyong Marquis Estate trembled like an aspen leaf, her face drained of all color, and turned to Madam Zhang.
"What do we do now?"
"Mother!"
The second daughter began to weep aloud in fright.
The second daughter had quarreled with Bai Jinxiu first; the eldest had struck Bai Jinxiu on the head. Then the second daughter had pushed her into the water again.
Madam Zhang decided this was the moment to endure. The Bai family of the Duke of Zhenguo's Estate was, for now, still the most powerful house in the capital. To put the matter quietly to rest, she had to swallow her rage and bow her head.
"Someone — bring Huya here at once!"
Before Madam Zhang could chase after them and stop it, Second Madam Yu of the Bai family had already carried Bai Jinxiu out of the Marquis Estate. Nanny Zhang had even returned driving the Grand Princess's carriage to take Bai Jinxiu home.
Only days before, the second daughter of the Duke's Estate had married with a dowry fit to carpet the roads red for ten li, and the heir of the Zhongyong Marquis had been resplendent in his own right. It was a wedding between two houses of great power, and with such a handsome couple besides, the city folk had been trading stories of the match with delight — and now, scarcely within the same month, the Bai family's second daughter lay hovering between life and death!
The onlookers pressed thick around the gates of the Marquis Estate, murmuring this and that to one another.
Madam Zhang, ringed by her maids, hurried out and bowed low before all those people. Tears brimming, she raised her voice.
"Second Madam Yu! Second Madam Yu! With the snow falling so heavily, carrying Jinxiu back to the Duke's Estate will do her illness no good at all. Just now the Fourth Young Miss whipped my daughters bloody, and they confessed their fault and swore never again to play so rough with their sister by the lake! If there is anything I have failed to tend to properly, please tell me, and I shall make amends! But to take her away like this — I cannot allow it!"
Bai Jingyan, seated in the carriage with her hand warmer, lifted the curtain of the window. At the sight of Madam Zhang crouching low in feigned humility, a cold smile touched her lips.
The words sounded plausible enough. On the surface it was deference, but turn the phrase over and it accused the Duke of Zhenguo's Estate of wanton brutality. Bai Jinxiu had merely fallen into the lake while playing with her sisters-in-law, yet the Fourth Young Miss of the Duke's Estate had whipped them without pausing to weigh right or wrong, and pressed them to the very end. And now, on this bitter cold day, Second Madam Yu was carrying off a newly married daughter and forcing her back to the Duke's Estate.
"Don't you dare wag that lying tongue!"
Bai Jinchi seized the whip at her waist and made to descend from the carriage, but Third Miss Bai Jindong, seated in the same carriage, pressed her firmly back down.
"Madam Zhang holds a noble lady's title with an official rank. If you so much as raise your whip against her, everything will unfold exactly as that woman wishes. And above all — your good name would be finished!"
Bai Jindong patted the back of Bai Jinchi's hand and went on.
"Sit still. I'll go to eldest sister's carriage and we'll discuss it."
"How dare she—!"
Just then Second Madam Yu, who had been about to board the carriage, cried out in fury. Her voice, thick with emotion, trembled faintly through her tears.
"My daughter has been married into this house for only three days! And now she is about to lose her life! How could anyone be so craven as to leave her in this beast's den of a Zhongyong Marquis Estate?"
Zhongyong Marquis Jin Dezhuo had not yet walked as far as the gate when he heard his wife groveling and offering apology after apology. But Second Madam Yu was not only driving people to the brink — she was shrieking as though the Marquis Estate itself were a demon's cave. Fury boiled up inside him; he flung back the hem of his long robe and strode out past the gate.
"Second Madam Yu — have you perhaps forgotten that the Bai family's second daughter is married into this household?"
Standing with his hands clasped behind his back, Jin Dezhuo's face was dark and severe. He meant to intimidate her.