Too Clever by Half
At the news that Bai Jingyan intended to gift them a pure-blooded foal, the two children's bright eyes lit up. They swore, bouncing with excitement, that they would never skip another lesson.
Before she had even stepped down from the carriage, Bai Jingyan caught sight of Hongqiao kneeling with impeccable posture before the gates of the Duke of Zhenguo Estate. Her eyes narrowed to slits.
In her previous life, Bai Jingyan had crossed paths with Hongqiao at the King Yang Estate. The woman had lavished the prince with absolute devotion. Years later, when he led troops under imperial orders to purge the bandits of Mount Ping, Hongqiao had given her body to the brute of a bandit chief, and thanks to that sacrifice the prince was able to wipe out the Mount Ping bandits in a single stroke. Hongqiao's corpse, in the end, was buried on that same mountain.
How highly, then, must the prince regard her, if he was willing to send the most devoted of his confidantes?
Supported by Chun Tao, Bai Jingyan descended from the carriage, with Bai Jindong following close behind her.
"The eldest daughter of the Bai family has arrived," someone muttered, and the crowd began to whisper.
Bai Jingyan walked straight up the steps without so much as a glance at the kneeling woman. The anxiety got the better of Hongqiao, and still on her knees she called out to her in a hurried voice.
"Eldest Miss Bai! I am Hongqiao, a maid of the King Yang Estate! I know full well that I overstepped myself in attending to His Highness and stirred his anger, and I know that is why he severed ties with me. He even tried to give me his jade token and I refused to accept it... And I understand that is why he came to see you while he was still ill, and you would not receive him!"
Bai Jindong's eyes went round with outrage, and she opened her mouth to retort — but Bai Jingyan, who had just turned away, stopped her with a look.
Hongqiao wept in sorrowful tones.
"Eldest Miss... I am nothing but a lowly servant. My heart for His Highness is true, yet I ask only to serve at his side — I would never dare harbor any other ambition! His heart holds you and you alone. How can you, Eldest Miss, sever his affections over the likes of a worthless slave like me? Because you refused to see him, His Highness coughed up blood the moment he returned home. This humble one truly had no choice but to come begging like this, so I beg you, Eldest Miss — save His Highness's life! I will atone for my offense with my death on this very spot... You will never lay eyes on me before you or His Highness again, so I implore you, forgive him!"
With that, Hongqiao pulled the hairpin from her hair and drove it toward her own chest.
Bai Jinchi, standing among the onlookers, moved like lightning. With a hiss of splitting air, her whip came cracking down across Hongqiao's wrist. The hairpin sailed far away with the snap of the lash, and Bai Jinchi pinned the woman where she knelt.
Fury surged through Bai Jingyan, and a cold light bled into her gaze.
So this was the woman who had truly given everything for the prince. She spouted her pretty words and meant to end her own life here, making it an established fact before the whole city that some private passion existed between Bai Jingyan and the prince.
"There is noMeans more vile — no scheme more despicable than this!"
Bai Jindong clenched her teeth. Thank heaven her eldest sister had told them to be prepared — and thank heaven she had told Bai Jinchi in particular. If this maid had actually died at the gates of the estate, their eldest sister would have had a hundred mouths and still no way to clear her name.
"Eldest Miss, His Highness cannot live without you! I am too dull-witted to know what else could be done, so I meant to pour out this worthless life of mine to quench your anger — Eldest Miss, I beg you, forgive His Highness!"
Hongqiao wailed pitifully.
The crowd began murmuring among themselves as though they had just stumbled upon some astonishing secret.
So the famously upright eldest daughter of the Bai family had, all this time, been carrying on a secret romance with the prince!
At Hongqiao's words, Chun Tao's face flushed dark with fury. Every time the woman opened her mouth, it was nothing but talk of a private affair between the eldest miss and the prince, beginning to end. Chun Tao found herself cursing Chunyan all over again.
"Open your mouth one more time and I'll tear that tongue out of your head!"
"Let her talk," Bai Jingyan said. "If she hadn't, I might never have known such a thing was even being said about me."
She turned her head toward an old servant standing at the gate. Then she smiled, easy and unhurried.
"Bring out a chair."
Hongqiao's heart hammered in her chest. She knew full well that the eldest miss was no easy mark — her original plan had been to finish her speech, take her own life, and leave Bai Jingyan without even the chance to offer an explanation. But now that she had been cut off, she found herself flustered beyond measure.
Bai Jingyan settled onto the chair the gatekeeper brought out. She handed her hand warmer to Chun Tao with instructions to fetch one more piece of charcoal, then spoke with leisurely calm.
"Word has it, I hear, that I shared some private affection with the prince. It rather seems you've come to defame me over it?"
Hongqiao's heart lurched wildly. She answered none of Bai Jingyan's questions, only wept on and pressed on with her own script.
"Eldest Miss, His Highness can neither sleep nor eat because of you! Four days ago he came here himself, gravely wounded, and you still would not see him! At this rate I fear for His Highness's very life!"
"Jindong," Bai Jingyan said, "go to the estate's steward and have him pay a visit to the King Yang Estate. Tell them that one of the prince's maids is causing an uproar at the gates of our dukedom, and that if his illness is not too grave, the prince had best come in person to retrieve her. And if his illness is truly so severe that he cannot move — then I suppose we shall have to trouble the Grand Princess to escort me to the King Yang Estate instead, so that we may settle this matter at his gates."
Having delivered these words to Bai Jindong with unmistakable force, Bai Jingyan turned back to Hongqiao with a smile — then went on in a tone that was relaxed, yet carried all the weight of authority.
"Since this touches my own reputation, it seems I must ask after it properly."
The moment Hongqiao opened her mouth, Bai Jingyan cut her off.
"By Hongqiao's own account, the prince called at our estate just four days ago — so his health can hardly be in any great danger. Which means he will be perfectly able to come."
Bai Jingyan's eyes blazed like torchlight, a razor edge of light hidden deep within them. That smile, cold to the marrow, sent a shiver crawling up Hongqiao's spine, and she stood there in helpless panic, not knowing what to do.
The prince had sent a man to shadow Hongqiao. The moment that man saw how badly things were going, he bolted like his heels had been oiled and raced back to report the truth to his master.
Yet the steward of the Duke of Zhenguo Estate arrived even faster than the prince had anticipated. He had no sooner received word of what had transpired at the estate gates than he heard it announced from outside: the Zhenguo steward had come to pay him a call.
The prince sat before the brazier with his eyes shut. Rage simmered in him that Hongqiao had failed to follow the plan. In his haste to bind Bai Jingyan to him beyond all denial, he had only made a ruin of the whole affair — too clever by half.
That Hongqiao's devotion ran deep enough to throw away her own life was true enough. But if haste and panic had ruined the matter, then she was simply incompetent.
He recalled how Bai Jingyan had flattened the Marquis of Loyalty and Valor's nose in front of his own gates, how she had punished his second uncle's illegitimate son at the family manor, and what had happened at the palace banquet — and he concluded that if he went to her now as he was, he would not stand a chance.
If only Du Zimei were still alive. If only he could ask Du Zimei what ought to be done. The wound at his side tightened; fresh blood seeped out, and his headache worsened.
The prince calmed himself, thought the matter through with care, and finally ordered Donggil to attend to his clothes.
What needed doing now was not dragging Bai Jingyan to him by force, but mending his relationship with her.
Everyone in the capital knew him as the frail, incompetent prince — so he did not fear lowering his head and humbling himself before Bai Jingyan. He need only declare that his devotion to her was genuine, and claim that Hongqiao had acted on her own, overstepping all propriety and giving offense.
The truth was, the prince had not wished to reveal any connection to the Duke of Zhenguo's family. When the estate eventually fell, he had no intention of being dragged down with it.
But this was no time for such calculations. It seemed he could afford to proclaim, openly, that he was in love with her. Once he played the frail invalid and begged the Emperor for a marriage decree, Bai Jingyan — however reckless her boldness — would never dare defy a sacred command.
The prince drew on his outer robe. He reflected that he had leaned far too heavily on Du Zimei all this while; the man's death had been like snapping both of his wings. When the chance arose, he decided, he must find himself another capable strategist.
The steward of the King Yang Estate, Donggil from the prince's own retinue, and Gao Sheng, one of his most capable men, arrived together before the gates of the Zhenguo Duke Estate.
Seeing the crowd packed solid in front of the gates, the steward hurried forward and bowed to Bai Jingyan.
"Eldest Miss Bai, please accept our sincerest apologies. I am the steward of the King Yang Estate. I have failed to train the prince's servants properly, and they have caused your household great offense. I will take this maid away at once."
"One moment."
Bai Jingyan looked at him and asked with a smile, "Where is His Highness the prince?"
"Our Highness was on his way here by carriage when he coughed up blood so violently that we had to turn back and carry him home to the estate! Surely you don't expect His Highness to come in person just to collect a servant? If anything were to happen to His Highness, ten of you, Eldest Miss Bai, could never bear the consequences!"
Donggil's cheeks bulged with fury as she glared at Bai Jingyan, as if cursing the vindictiveness in her heart.
But Bai Jingyan did not spare her so much as a glance. A mere servant at the prince's side was beneath her notice.
"Since the prince is too gravely ill to come," she said, "then forgive the trouble, but kindly carry this message back to him."
Standing on the steps with her hand warmer in her grasp, Bai Jingyan looked down at the King Yang steward.
"Four days ago, this estate dismissed thirty-nine servants in all. Chunyan, the maid who attended me, received fifty strokes of the rod and still has not risen from her bed. You likely don't know the reason, so let my old steward here explain it to you, right now, in front of everyone."
Bai Jingyan fixed her gaze on Gao Sheng, the prince's able subordinate, and her expression hardened.
"His Highness the prince bribed five of our servants and tried to dig my private secrets out of my own maid. So my mother broke all five of their legs and sold off their families, every last one of them. Chunyan alone barely kept her life — out of the bond of having grown up together since childhood, and because I once spared the life of the most beloved maid I ever had."
Sweat beaded on the steward's brow, and Donggil stood by looking deeply uncomfortable.
"According to this young lady here," Bai Jingyan went on, raising her voice, "the prince gave me his jade token and I refused it; he came to me wounded and I would not see him. And why would that be?"
Then, her face cold and impassive, she spoke to the steward with deliberate gravity.
"I am a woman, yes — but I was raised on books, and I know full well what propriety is and what shame is. I was taught that every matter must be conducted openly and by the proper path. If His Highness truly holds me in his heart, then the way is simple: consult the elders, confirm whether any betrothal exists, and if none does, send a matchmaker. Had he followed the command of his parents and the word of a go-between, I would never have said a single word of objection. Is that not what respect means?
"And yet what has His Highness done instead? He bribed the Bai family's servants. He bought off the maid at my side to pry into my private affairs in secret. Time and again he tried to seduce my maids into arranging meetings with me! Out of concern for the dignity of my grandmother and the imperial house, I swallowed it all — once, and then again. I thought that once I sold off his hired spies, His Highness would take the hint. I thought that so long as our estate and I comported ourselves with restraint, we had nothing to fear! Never once did I imagine he would stoop to something like this. That His Highness would useMeans this filthy, this ugly — would use a maid's very life to drag my name through the mud!"
"Th-that..."
Donggil flushed with anger at Bai Jingyan's words.
"Isn't Eldest Miss Bai holding herself a bit too high? Our Highness is a prince of the dynasty — there is no woman he cannot have if he wants her! Does she think the world begins and ends with Bai Jingyan? Even knowing she is a woman who can scarcely conceive, His Highness never turned away from her. And now she plays the lofty, unattainable lady? What exactly is it she thinks she has to be proud of?"
"Donggil! Withdraw!"
The King Yang steward's face had gone deathly pale.
"His Highness knows I am a woman who can hardly bear a child..." Bai Jingyan said slowly, "...and he believes that if my reputation falls far enough, I will have no choice but to enter the King Yang Estate. Is that it?"
Her face darkened, and an air of suffocating menace rolled off her.
"Old steward, carry this word to the prince: the people of the Bai family would sooner have every bone in our bodies broken than ever learn to kneel. So even were we wed off to pigs and dogs, we would never, never go to a scheming coward who deals in filthy tricks!"