“All right.” The furrow in his brow eased.
They sent no calling card ahead and alerted no one else in the Zhang Family — they simply waited outside the side gate for a short while before being quietly ushered inside by a maidservant from Yinyue’s side.
Chen Baoxiang crept along on careful feet; Zhang Zhixu found himself involuntarily hunching along with her. The two of them inched toward the front hall like a pair of burglars.
“Oh.” Li Bingsheng waved at them without the least surprise. “You’re here?”
Chen Baoxiang: “……”
Zhang Zhixu: “……”
Good heavens — why was His Majesty here?
The two of them took a synchronized step back, and looked up to check the placard hanging over the hall.
“You haven’t gone to the wrong place.” Li Bingsheng waved a hand. “Both of you, come in and sit down.”
Chen Baoxiang felt a touch awkward. She stepped inside and made a straightforward account: “This subject has old ties with the Fourth Young Miss of the Zhang Family — we are close friends — so I came to see how she was doing.”
“What a coincidence.” Li Bingsheng rested her chin in her hand and smiled. “I also have old ties with someone, so I came to see how they were doing.”
Chen Baoxiang turned her head, and saw Zhang Ting’an kneeling below, his face ashen.
This was old ties?
Old grudges seemed more like it.
“Your Majesty, will you permit your humble subject to take Elder Sister Chen for a walk outside?” Zhang Yinyue spoke up, her voice small and tentative.
Li Bingsheng was quite magnanimous, waving a hand: “Go on then. Fengqing, stay.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The two of them darted out of the main hall. Before Chen Baoxiang could even ask anything, Yinyue was already rattling away: “It’s too frightening, too frightening — my elder brother, all these years without taking a wife — it turns out it really was because of her.”
“What?” Chen Baoxiang was thunderstruck.
The social customs of Dasheng were relatively open, and in great houses, the children tended to marry on the later side to begin with — most people only started families after the age of twenty.
But Zhang Ting’an was already thirty-two, and had preferred to take in an adopted son over ever getting married.
Chen Baoxiang had initially assumed he was the sort to devote himself entirely to serving the state with no desire for a family — yet somehow, it turned out to be because of His Majesty?
The two young women huddled in a corner and crouched down to gossip: “Baoxiang-jiejie, did you know — my elder brother was His Majesty’s study companion in childhood.”
“Ah? He’s actually educated?”
“Don’t let the full beard fool you — that’s deliberate on his part. He was quite handsome once, actually. He just didn’t want to go to the Eastern Palace and continue attending on His Majesty, so he grew out his beard and ran off to the frontier.”
“Your elder brother doesn’t like His Majesty?”
“How should I put it.” Yinyue scrunched up her face. “I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t like her — only that, someone like His Majesty… he can’t accept it.”
Chen Baoxiang’s mind flashed to the image of His Majesty draped over various male favorites, and she fell silent.
“My elder brother is fixed in his thinking — he believes that love can only exist between two people, with no room for a third or fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh or eighth. But His Majesty feels that she was lucky enough to be born with power over all under heaven, so what is the point of only ever tasting one flavor — and so they fell out.”
Well, that was… you couldn’t really blame either of them.
Chen Baoxiang rubbed her chin: “So has he come around and yielded to His Majesty now?”
“No.” Yinyue shook her head. “Elder Brother is more stubborn than a donkey — you could break all his bones and he still wouldn’t surrender his principles. It’s His Majesty who came in disguise today, hoping to use the grace of not holding the Zhang Family accountable for their offenses as an inducement to get Elder Brother to reconcile with her.”
“Wow.” Chen Baoxiang marveled.
Yinyue marveled too: “Quite the extraordinary sincerity, isn’t it? But Elder Brother is not pleased — His Majesty just now made a joke about having him enter the rear palace, and he nearly slit his own throat with a blade.”
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