A Beauty's Marriage Plot: I Tried to Avoid the Powerful Minister, but Fell into the Emperor's Embrace

Shen Tang was the most down-and-out legitimate daughter of the Duke's household. Her mother had died young, and her stepmother was cruel. She knew that without a powerful protector in this cutthroat aristocratic family, she would be casually married off as some widower's second wife.

So she put on her most dazzling dresses and attended every banquet, patiently waiting for a promising match to take the bait and change her fortunes.

She read people's hearts, weighed the pros and cons, and considered every eligible nobleman in the capital. The one she feared most was Xiao Yan.

Xiao Yan had a face as cold as jade and eyes as deep and icy as a pool. Just standing near him made her spine prickle. Every time Shen Tang met his gaze, as if he could see right through her, her instinct was to run. She knew this man was too dangerous for her to provoke.

Xiao Yan watched coolly as she worked the room, ingratiated herself with people, and struggled to make a living.

He looked down on her self-serving calculations, but he also knew she had no choice and was only trying to protect herself from a position of weakness.

Until, at a banquet, a group of noblewomen joined forces to make things difficult for her. She endured it and accepted her punishment, then got drunk and fell asleep in a pavilion.

In her drowsy haze, she mistook the cold, aloof minister for someone from her past. She looped her arms around his neck, clung to him with soft, affectionate warmth, and breathed against him, her breath hot.