The Golden Cicada's Waist

[Love at first sight + angsty romance + a touch of coercive possession] A resilient, gentle orphan and a refined, warmhearted yet calculating power broker After Jiang Yan lost both her parents at the age of eight, she lived under the care of relatives. In the year she came of age, someone from the Marquis of Wuning’s household arrived to postpone her marriage to the marquis’s eldest grandson. She thought the delay meant the marriage would eventually be called off, but the following year, the young lord’s wet nurse personally came to Jiangnan to bring her to the capital. Jiang Yan had transmigrated into this world, but everything she had seen and heard made her afraid to overstep. She thought it would be the start of a beautiful life, but after the wedding came a husband who kept putting off consummating the marriage, a shrewish concubine, and a mother-in-law who was always putting on airs. The old woman who attended her kept reminding her that she needed a child to secure her place in the marquis’s household. Jiang Yan was embarrassed to bring it up, especially since her husband always spent the night in his concubine’s room. Fortunately, the elderly maid at her side understood her embarrassment and went to speak to him herself. /// The Marquis of Wuning’s household had a secret. Their eldest son, Pei Heng, had been injured by bandits while traveling to study and could no longer father children. To keep this secret hidden, the marquis’s family married Jiang, whose engagement they had long wanted to break, into their household. Concubine Sun suggested a compromise to the Second Madam of the Marquis of Wuning: have the heir take his elder brother’s place...