[Strong male lead, gentle female lead ✘ devoted couple ✘ beautiful, delicate heroine ✘ domineering husband who dotes on his wife] Qi Yu, the once-mighty Marquis of Jing’an and a legendary battlefield god of war, is suddenly struck down and becomes a “cripple” confined to a wheelchair. The whole city is in an uproar, and his former engagement becomes a hot potato.
Shen Jin, the legitimate daughter of the Minister of Rites’ household, would rather die than marry him. To protect her own daughter, the matriarch, Madam Zhou, grits her teeth and registers the timid, beautiful concubine-born Shen Li as her own, forcing her to take her sister’s place in the bridal sedan.
Everyone waits to laugh at this ridiculous substitute marriage and expects the marquis’s household to reject the concubine-born daughter standing in for the bride.
On their wedding night, Shen Li trembles before the groom, who is rumored to be cold and cruel.
But Qi Yu lifts her chin, his gaze dark and deep.
“Third Miss Shen? You dared to deceive the emperor with this substitute marriage. Your nerve is impressive, Madam.”
“Now that you’re here, behave yourself. This marquis has no patience for troublemakers.”
He keeps her in his study and personally teaches her painting, staining her fingertips with cinnabar. Night after night, he has her tend to his injured legs, allowing no one else near him.
Everyone laughs that the Marquis of Jing’an’s household has gained a pitiable, ridiculous wife in name only.
But Shen Li alone knows how, in the dead of night, the hands accustomed to wielding swords and blades hold her tightly, and how the man in the cold wheelchair treats her as his only source of warmth.
When wicked servants bully her, he sneers, “Anyone who touches her dies.”
When her birth family abandons her, he says scornfully, “You don’t deserve my wife.”
When the imperial physician examines Qi Yu again, he is stunned by the pulse beneath his fingers.
“Marquis, your legs... can feel things?!”
The man strokes the warm, delicate wrist of the wife in his arms and murmurs with a chuckle,
“Whether my legs are well or not, my wife knows best...”
“Good Li’er, tell them: have you ever seen a cripple in bed?”
