The Dandy's Hidden Beauty

The Playboy’s Secret Darling

Duan Xuanchen, heir to the Langya Duan clan, is Jiankang’s most notorious playboy. He spends his days cockfighting and racing horses, and everyone hates him, even the dogs.

At the wedding banquet celebrating the alliance between the Xie and Lu families, he sees the Lu family’s second daughter, Lu Mingyu, quietly and gently painting with a brush. “How dull,” he scoffs.

Before he can finish speaking, she suddenly crumples the painting and tosses it into a brazier. As the flames leap up, she looks at him. “Do you dare come with me?”

Three months later, they meet again on a pleasure boat on the Qinhuai River. Their brief affair is over, and he offers her a jade token. “If you ever run into trouble, use this to find me.”

She rolls the token between her fingers and smiles. “Will you come whenever I call?”

“Through fire and flood, I’ll be there.”

But the token traces an arc through the air in her hand and falls into the heart of the Qinhuai River.

Everyone in Jiankang knows the Lu family’s second daughter as a model of aristocratic virtue, meek and submissive.

Duan Xuanchen toys with his wine cup and sneers. “What a ‘well-behaved’ girl.”

Then, on the eve of her wedding, a blood-written letter arrives at breakneck speed, bearing three words: “Will you steal me away?”

He kicks over the banquet table, mounts his horse, and races off, smashing the aristocratic clans’ marriage-alliance scheme to pieces.