The Ice-Cold Prince’s Physician Wife

In March, the Jiangnan rain fell in fine, woven threads.

The rain washed over the stone-paved streets of Gusu, leaving them gleaming with a dark, oily sheen. The white walls and dark-tiled roofs on either side of the street blurred in the mist, like an ink painting that had yet to dry. On the canal, black-canopied boats glided slowly by. The boatwomen’s soft Wu dialect drifted through the curtain of rain, so gentle it seemed to melt into the water.