Riding the Long Wind – Chapter 10

Chapter 10

It was Ye Shi’an.

On the day of her wedding, Ye Shi’an had come back.

Liu Yuru sat completely still inside the palanquin. When she had lifted the veil, she had not actually expected him to be there. She had done the calculation: he had just finished the provincial examinations, and by any reasonable reckoning, he would need several more days of rest before making the journey home.

His being here made no sense. And it made her mind go in directions she had no business following.

Why had he come back early?

Could it be that he had…could it be…

The thought arrived uninvited and she pressed it down immediately. She had always been the kind of person who held herself steady. This particular thought was too dangerous to entertain. She forced it away, lowered her veil, and let the palanquin carry her forward through the noise of music and firecrackers and well-wishers crowded at the Gu family gate.

She told herself not to think. She took the red silk cord from Gu Jiusi’s hands and followed him across the threshold, through the wedding rites, the chanting of the officiant, the boom of firecrackers. She and Gu Jiusi bowed to heaven and earth together.

There was none of the trembling or fluttering she might have imagined for herself in a different life. This wedding was nothing like the one she had spent years picturing. But she found, rather than grief or anger, a strange hollow calm. It was a ceremony, and she was moving through it, and there was nothing more to feel about it.

After the bowing was done, attendants guided her into the bridal chamber. She sat alone on the bed, veil still in place, and did not move.

Yin Hong stayed to keep watch. Outside, the wedding banquet was in full swing. The contrast between its noise and the silence of the room was sharp enough to feel physical. Yin Hong picked up some pastries from the tray. “Miss, you have not eaten anything since this morning. Will you have a little something?”

“No.” Liu Yuru said. Then, quieter: “The veil has to be lifted by the groom. If it falls by accident, it is bad luck.”

Yin Hong set the tray down and sighed.

She had grown up alongside Liu Yuru and knew exactly what she had given up. Hearing her speak now with such quiet submission about this marriage made Yin Hong feel something she could not quite name. A tenderness and a sorrow all at once.

“Today outside,” Yin Hong said carefully, “I saw the Ye family’s Young Master. You were being carried so quickly, do you think he might have…”

“Mind what you say.”

Liu Yuru’s voice was even. It was a warning.

But the words had already landed. Liu Yuru’s own heart had not been still since the moment she saw him.

She let her voice come out level. “I am a member of the Gu household now. Yesterday is dead and gone. Do not bring it up again. If someone overhears, there will be trouble.”

Yin Hong knew she was right. She said yes without enthusiasm and let it go.

The banquet went on into the night. Gu Jiusi did not come. Eventually footsteps approached from outside, and after a brief exchange, Liu Yuru heard Ye Yun’s voice telling the attendants to go downstairs, that Madam Gu had sent her to keep the bride company.

Liu Yuru was surprised, though she showed nothing. When the room had emptied and just the two of them were left, Ye Yun sat down beside her and sighed. “There is no one else here now. Come, take the veil off for a bit. Put it back when it is time.”

“Rules should not be broken,” Liu Yuru said politely. “We can talk like this. It is fine.”

“Always rules, rules, rules,” Ye Yun said, a little helplessly. She did not push further. “You say rules with your mouth and ignore them with your heart, and one day that gap is going to cause you real trouble.”

Sitting here talking with Ye Yun felt, for a moment, like being back in the world before all of this. Something in Liu Yuru ached quietly. She wanted badly to ask about Ye Shi’an, and knew she absolutely could not, and so she said only: “What brings you here?”

“I was at the banquet downstairs,” Ye Yun said, “and Madam Gu came to find me. She said you had been alone in the room for a long time and might be bored, so she asked me to come and sit with you.”

Something warm settled in Liu Yuru’s chest at that. Jiang Rou was a good mother-in-law. She had seen that from the beginning, and she intended to remember it.

“Madam Gu is very thoughtful.”

“She really is,” Ye Yun said, cracking a sunflower seed between her teeth. “Sometimes I honestly do not know whether marrying into the Gu family is good or bad for you. My grandmother does like you, but she could never be as genuinely warm as Madam Gu. And my mother, well, not causing you grief would be as much as you could hope for. Though knowing you, she probably would not find much to use against you anyway.”

Ye Yun probably should not have said all of that, but Liu Yuru did not stop her. She knew Ye Yun’s way of talking, and let her go on. Then Ye Yun said, almost in passing: “Oh, my brother came home. You know that, right?”

Liu Yuru went still. After a pause, she said: “I thought he needed more time. What brought him back?”

“News of your engagement to the Gu family reached him. He came back early.”

Ye Yun hesitated a moment. Then she said: “Yuru, please do not blame my brother for any of this.”

Liu Yuru could not find any words. Ye Yun went on slowly. “Before your coming-of-age ceremony, my grandmother wrote to him and asked what he thought about a match with you. He said he would follow whatever the family decided. Then the Gu family made their offer, and my grandmother let it go. With the Gu family being what they are, and my grandmother’s temperament being what it is…”

She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to.

Liu Yuru understood completely. The Ye family cared about their name above almost everything. Even setting aside the fact that the Gu family had moved first, they would never allow their eldest son to marry a girl who had already been through one broken engagement. And even if they had been willing to fight the Gu family for her, they would not have done it for an unremarkable merchant’s daughter with nothing particular to recommend her.

Liu Yuru had known this from the beginning. She had never expected it to be otherwise.

“But my brother did not think that way,” Ye Yun went on, as if afraid Liu Yuru might hold it against Ye Shi’an. “When he heard about you and the Gu family, he wrote home immediately. He said Gu Jiusi was not a suitable match for you, and that since an understanding had already been reached between the families, a gentleman keeps his word, and the Ye family should go to the Gu family and set things right. He said Master Gu was a reasonable man who would not use his position to bully people. So he came back himself specifically to…”

“But it was already too late.” Liu Yuru’s voice came out flat.

She could hear nothing in her own words. But under the veil, her tears had not stopped.

She was suddenly very glad she had not taken it off. She did not want Ye Yun to see her like this.

Ye Yun, though she could not see Liu Yuru’s face, knew that she was not all right. She sighed and tried to offer something useful. “Things being what they are, marrying Gu Jiusi may not be the worst outcome. At least Gu Jiusi is fond of you. My brother may look good on the surface, but honestly, he is cold-hearted. Everything he has is poured into his career. Being his wife would be exhausting.”

“Gu Jiusi is good, really. He is unreliable, yes, but his family has real power, and you could spend your whole life doing nothing and be perfectly comfortable. Most importantly, he cares about you. You saw how he bought out an entire rouge shop just to give you one case without it looking like a private gift. Everyone in Yangzhou has been talking about that. Yuru,” Ye Yun took Liu Yuru’s hand gently, “please do not resent my brother. And please do not be sad. Your life is going to be good. All right?”

Liu Yuru said nothing for a while. Then, quietly, in a voice held very carefully together: “Do not worry. I have thought it all through.”

“That is good.” Ye Yun let out a long breath. “You cannot imagine how little I have slept these past weeks. I was afraid you would hate our family, hate my brother, afraid you would not be all right, afraid you would shut me out. We grew up together. You are closer to me than any of my sisters. Please do not let this put distance between us.”

“It will not.” Liu Yuru sighed, and said softly: “Ah Yun, I am a little tired. Will you let me rest?”

“Of course, of course.” Ye Yun stood up at once. “Rest. I will go.”

She said her goodbyes and slipped out. Liu Yuru was alone.

She stopped trying to hold anything back, and let herself cry quietly into the silence.

If she had never come close to having what she wanted, perhaps she could have lived without it more easily. But she now knew that what she had wanted most had been almost within reach. Ye Shi’an had wanted to marry her. How was she supposed to be at peace with that?

She felt everything churning inside her: rage at the Gu family for ruining everything she had built, at Gu Jiusi for his childish recklessness. But she also could not deny Jiang Rou’s kindness, or those moments of unexpected consideration from Gu Jiusi, and so her hatred never quite completed itself. She did not know who to blame for her fate, and so she sat alone under the wedding veil and let the tears fall silently into the red silk.

She cried for a long time. When she finally stopped, she slipped off the bed while the room was still empty, repaired her makeup by feel, and settled back onto the bed. The noise of the banquet carried on outside, and then gradually it faded. Then the door flew open with a bang and someone crashed into the room. The door slammed shut again. And then came Gu Jiusi’s voice, furious and hoarse: “Let me out! Gu Langhua, if you have any nerve at all, let me out! The wedding is done, you said that was enough, what are you locking me in for now? Are you going to keep me pinned down for the rest of my life?”

“Be quiet!” Gu Langhua’s voice came from outside, cold and flat. “Lock the windows as well. If he steps out of that room tonight, break his legs.”

“I spit on you!” Gu Jiusi yelled back. “You lying old man! You said once the wedding was done you would let me alone, and now you are locking me up again? You have no integrity! Let me out! Or I will never forgive you for this!”

Gu Langhua did not answer. There were sounds of bolts being driven home, and then footsteps receding, and then silence.

Gu Jiusi sat by the door and cursed. Liu Yuru sat by the bed with her veil on and listened.

After a while, Gu Jiusi ran out of energy and stopped. He got himself up off the floor, found the water pitcher, drank, and then turned around and discovered that Liu Yuru was still sitting upright on the bed, completely motionless. He took an involuntary step backward. When he recovered himself, he said, with a slight stammer born of having been startled: “Why are you just sitting there with that thing on your head? You are not asleep?”

“You had not come back,” Liu Yuru said, in a voice made deliberately empty. “The veil is not yet lifted. I did not dare sleep.”

“You could not lift it yourself?” He seemed genuinely puzzled by this, but he walked over anyway and pulled it off in one motion, then carried his water cup back to the table.

Liu Yuru sat without moving. Gu Jiusi glanced back at her, saw her still frozen in the same position, and frowned. “The veil is off, so why are you sitting there like a statue? It is the middle of the night, stop frightening people. Go wash your face and sleep.”

“You have not yet shared the wedding cup with me.”

Gu Jiusi’s hand jerked and he nearly spilled the water.

He turned around slowly and looked at Liu Yuru sitting on the bed. Her face was completely unreadable, still as water in a well, without a trace of the quickness he had caught glimpses of in their earlier encounters.

He looked at her for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he said: “Were you really willing to marry me?”

Liu Yuru looked at him and did not answer.

Gu Jiusi held the wine cup, and something in him seemed to have become a little uncertain. He said, with some halting: “I have actually always known that none of the well-born girls in Yangzhou think anything of me. All I have going for me is money and my face. Nobody taking me seriously makes complete sense. I never cared about being taken seriously anyway. All I ever wanted was to marry someone who genuinely liked me, and I genuinely liked, and live out a quiet life together.”

“And so?” Liu Yuru did not understand where he was going.

She watched him think for a moment. Then he poured a cup of tea, came over with an ingratiating expression, and sat in the chair across from her, holding the cup out to her.

Liu Yuru took it and said nothing, and then Gu Jiusi said, with the most charming smile he possessed: “Miss Liu, I am aware that you are a perceptive and extremely intelligent woman.”

She raised her eyes and waited.

He smiled again, then said: “So I want to make a proposal. I know you did not marry me because of me. So here is what I am thinking. I will give you the household to manage and the family’s resources to work with. You can use them to build up your own position and make yourself independent. Once you have found your footing and made something of yourself, if you happen to fall for someone, or if I happen to fall for someone, we agree to part ways amicably. What do you think?”