Getting Carried Away
The candles in the private room burned brightly, and five braziers roared with such fervent heat that though the window had clearly been open just moments before, a warm current of air had greeted her the instant she stepped inside.
Seeing Soi standing at the doorway with the tea tray, Jin Gengsheng sprang forward and took it from her hands, slipping her a coin.
He poured tea for Bai Jingyan as he spoke.
"The owner of Mangang Tower sold this establishment to someone a fortnight ago. About half a year back, the owner of Yanque Tower next door made an in-law match with an official of the Directorate of Street Administration, and when he later expanded his tower, he swallowed up half of this very street beside Mangang Tower. That's why no light reaches these windows anymore! The original owner of Mangang Tower took Yanque Tower to court over it, but he burned through his entire fortune without ever reaching a verdict, and in a fit of fury, he finally went back to his hometown."
There was nothing great or small happening in Dadu that Jin Gengsheng did not know.
"Eldest Miss, please sit a while. I'll keep watch downstairs, and the moment your carriage enters the city walls, I'll come up and tell you at once."
Jin Gengsheng bowed to Bai Jingyan.
"Chun Tao, when I got down from the carriage, I thought I saw a doll-maker across the street. Go with Jin Gengsheng and buy a few things for the young ladies of the house. Something you can carry home with you."
Bai Jingyan took a sip of tea and said it with a smile.
In ordinary times, Jin Gengsheng and Chun Tao rarely crossed paths — one served in the inner residence, the other in the outer. Bai Jingyan knew this well enough, and she wished to give the two of them a chance to be alone together. In this life, she hoped they would come to know each other, and to protect each other, as they lived on. She hoped they would never, as they had in her past life, miss each other and carry the regret to their graves.
Jin Gengsheng and Chun Tao flushed crimson in an instant. They dropped their heads low and hurried out of the room.
Only Bai Jingyan and Chunyan remained in the spacious room. Bai Jingyan looked at Chunyan's aggrieved expression — as though she had suffered some terrible injustice — and spoke.
"Go stand guard at the entrance."
Chunyan, her eyes rimmed red once more, bowed with cupped hands and went out sniffling.
The braziers blazed so fiercely that even after only a short while seated, beads of sweat began to form. Bai Jingyan threw the window wide open — and in the instant she lifted her head, her gaze collided with a pair of deep, well-like eyes belonging to a man standing at the window across the way.
For a heartbeat, Bai Jingyan was thrown into disarray.
Xiao Rongyan, standing at the opposite window, was every bit as startled. The hand that had been toying with the jade cicada suddenly stilled.
He wore a snow-white robe, tall and slender, standing face to the light, his gaze as placid as still water. His bearing was gentle and warm enough — yet the moment their eyes met, Bai Jingyan thought she glimpsed in his pupils something cautious, profound, and utterly unreadable.
In that fleeting moment, the look in his eyes shifted to a soft warmth, and with easy composure he inclined his head lightly toward her — a completely different man from the cold, hard authority who had radiated such commanding majesty only moments ago.
The two windows stood a mere three feet apart. In her past life and this one alike, it was the first time she had ever stood this close to Xiao Rongyan.
To slam the window shut in a panic would make her look frightened and flustered, so Bai Jingyan straightened her back and returned his bow, light and unhurried.
From somewhere inside Yanque Tower, the sound of Lu Yuanfeng bickering loudly with someone carried through the air.
"I'm telling you, every word is true! If you don't believe me, ask Brother Xiao. Bai Eldest Miss is a beauty in every sense of the word — her looks put even Liu Yafu, the County Mistress of Nantao, the famed beauty of the south, utterly to shame. Isn't that right, Brother Xiao?"
Xiao Rongyan did not turn his head. He gazed at Bai Jingyan's exquisitely sculpted features with perfect composure, a smile so faint it was about to vanish entirely into the depths of his dark eyes.
"That's true. She is a devastating beauty, without question."
The deep, low voice drifted over softly, and Bai Jingyan felt her face burn.
How can that man be so shamelessly reckless with his words?
"See that! See that!"
Lu Yuanfeng slapped the table in excitement.
"You keep saying I'm exaggerating! But surely you'll believe Brother Xiao! That day, red lantern light spilled across the white snow, and standing in that glow, Bai Eldest Miss in her white fox-fur cloak at the corridor's edge — it was like a painting come to life, I tell you."
Bai Jingyan hastily shut the window. The hem of her sleeve swept across the go board in the motion, sending the stones skittering and clacking around the room.
Chunyan flung the door open and rushed in. Seeing Bai Jingyan, red to her very neck, bending down to pick up the scattered stones, she hurried to her side.
"Eldest Miss, let me gather them."
Bai Jingyan nodded, wiped her damp palms with her handkerchief, and then — without thinking — glanced back at the already-closed window. When she caught the faint reflection of Xiao Rongyan's figure in its glass, her heart pounded hard against her ribs.
Chunyan finished collecting the stones and, seeing Bai Jingyan seated in her chair with her face still glowing scarlet, tucked them into their container and said with a smile, "Eldest Miss, your face is all flushed. You must be terribly warm. Shall I open the window and let in some air?"
Her heart still in wild tumult, Bai Jingyan caught Chunyan's hand just as she reached for the window. Her voice came out more stern than she intended.
"There's no need."
"Eldest Miss?"
Chunyan started, for she had never once seen Bai Jingyan so unstrung.
It felt as though something were lodged tight in her throat. Bai Jingyan released her grip on Chunyan's arm, carefully buried the tangle of feeling inside her, and said with a stiff face, "Go outside and stand."
Lately Bai Jingyan had spoken to her alone with particular severity, as if trying to keep her at arm's length, and the unfairness of it welled up in Chunyan's chest. Sniffling, she bowed to her mistress and went to stand outside the door.
Once more, Bai Jingyan was left alone in the room. She turned her head to look out the window again. Only when she confirmed that the opposite window was empty did her heart finally settle.
But the window had been left unlatched, and the raucous laughter of Dadu's young noble sons — Lu Yuanfeng among them — kept drifting up. And each time the words Brother Xiao floated through the noise, her heart, for reasons she could not name, lurched all over again.
Bai Jingyan closed her eyes and spent a long while calming her mind, then picked up a single stone from the go board.
Having bought the dolls, Chun Tao and Jin Gengsheng exchanged a few brief words beneath the tower before coming back up to wait on their mistress.
"Eldest Miss, I bought so many dolls! I got one for you too — look, Eldest Miss!"
Chun Tao came forward holding a doll aloft, bending at the waist, her face splitting into a wide grin.
"Eldest Miss, doesn't this general on horseback look just like you? So dignified and imposing!"
When Bai Jingyan saw the doll in Chun Tao's palm, its hands gripping the reins and a sword, a flood of emotion crashed over her.
With her body as it was now, it would likely be years before she could don armor and ride to war again.
Night's dark curtain settled over the city, and as the bell tower lit its beacon, the shops lit their lanterns one after another. Over Dadu, blanketed in white snow, the gentle glow of red lantern light overflowed everywhere.
Before the teahouses, the taverns, and the brilliantly illuminated gates of wealthy mansions, the crowds thronged without cease — people streaming past the lanterns in an endless, bustling tide.
When Jin Gengsheng spotted an elm-wood carriage bearing the Bai family crest of the Zhenguo Duke Estate passing the city gate's inspection and rolling slowly into the lantern-lit streets, he darted nimbly up to Mangang Tower.
Gathering his hem, he hurried up the stairs, opened the door, and said to Bai Jingyan, who was eating wontons, "Eldest Miss, the carriage has entered the city."
"Understood. Go."
She collected herself, dabbed lightly at her mouth with her handkerchief, and gave her orders.
"Chun Tao, open all the screens."
Chun Tao answered and swung open every carved, flower-latticed partition along this floor's corridor.
Bai Jingyan had never once seen this cousin in her past life, but she had heard no small amount about him — enough to know that this creature had squandered the reputation the Bai family had spent long generations building.
Bai Jingyan lifted her teacup and clenched it hard in her hand. Her eyes were sharp and cold.
In this life, this cousin had not yet fallen into the Liang King's hands. She was curious what sort of character he might have.
If his nature was fundamentally good, then he could be taught with care and guided onto the proper path.
But if he had simply been born rotten to the core, then she intended to use this opportunity to grind him underfoot — a small service, as it were, toward piling glory upon the Bai family's name.
"Eldest Miss, your cloak!"
Chun Tao draped the cloak over Bai Jingyan's shoulders.
Then she replaced the charcoal in a silver hand warmer pierced with plum-blossom fretwork and handed it to her.
Holding the hand warmer, Bai Jingyan stood in the corridor where several red lanterns glowed. She saw Jin Gengsheng speaking with Nuo Ping below, then sent her gaze farther out toward the Zhenguo Duke Estate's carriage. Her eyes were strikingly clear and bright.
Inside the carriage, a pretty woman held up the screen with one hand and gazed out at Dadu's dazzling brilliance. She was so intoxicated by the flourishing spectacle that her heart pounded in her chest.
"My son — we've finally made it into Dadu!"
The woman turned her head, one hand propped against her hair, and looked at the youth sprawled on the long bench inside the carriage, a straw stalk hanging from his mouth.
"Once you're entered into the Zhenguo Duke Estate and registered under your father's name, you'll be a young master of the estate from then on! I've heard the seventeenth son of the Bai family is a very impressive sort — why, you'll be the eighteenth son of them all!"
Bai Jingyan — Bai Jingxian — spat out the straw stalk and pushed himself up with one hand. Squinting, he drawled his reply.
"I don't want to go anywhere near a battlefield. Who cares about being the eighteenth son! What I want is pretty women. Mother, the maids of the duke's estate must all be gorgeous, don't you think?"
"Oh, ancestors, spare me — will you shut that mouth of yours!"
The woman hastily let the screen fall and stared at Bai Jingxian with a face gone white.
"Once you're inside the estate, you had better mend those filthy habits! The duke's estate is nothing like that little house we came from. When you bullied that farmer's daughter to death, it was easy enough to slip silver into the right hands and make it disappear — but if your grandmother the Grand Princess and the old duke himself ever learn you've been toying with the manor's maids as you please, you had better prepare to lose both your legs!"
Bai Jingxian only stuck the straw back in his mouth at that. Then he flopped onto his back with both hands laced behind his head and crossed his legs.
"What's the point of getting into the estate anyway? We were far freer back at the old house."
"You — when will you ever grow up—"
Before the woman could finish, the carriage jolted to an abrupt halt. She staggered, slammed against the carriage wall, and fell, crying out in pain.
Jarred by the same lurch, Bai Jingxian's body knocked hard against the interior. He spat out the straw stalk and flung it across the carriage. In that instant, the light in his eyes turned sinister and venomous.
Without so much as a glance at his mother to steady her, he shoved the flower-carved wooden door open with all his strength, seized the coachman by the hair, and slammed the man's head against the railing, again and again. Unleashing a fury he made no effort to contain, he roared in a savage voice.
"Are you blind, you son of a bitch? What in the hell do you think you're doing driving like that? Were you trying to kill me, crashing on purpose?"