The Beauty of a Marquis's Household

Next up: the historical second-chance romance New Widowhood. Add it to your reading list. Plainspoken, beautiful country girl VS refined, depraved villain of a powerful official After his elder brother died young, Marquis of Jingwu Huo Yanshi became a powerful force at court and devoted himself to his family. He carefully groomed his nephew Huo Yun, teaching him both scholarship and martial arts, and arranged his engagement to the daughter of Chancellor Cui, his childhood sweetheart. But then his nephew brought a country girl back to the capital, saying she had saved his life, that they had married in the countryside, and that he would give her a proper wedding and bring her into the family. Huo Yanshi looked at the country girl kneeling beside him. She was dressed plainly and looked timid and nervous, nothing like the daughters of the capital’s great families. Her only redeeming qualities were her full, beautiful figure and her shameless clinging to his nephew. Huo Yanshi would never allow the nephew he had pinned his hopes on, a favored son of heaven, to marry a woman like that. To make his nephew see sense, he pretended to be tender toward the country girl and did everything he could to seduce her. At last, he succeeded in driving a wedge between her and his nephew. But when the girl finally took the hint and decided to leave the marquis’s household, he suddenly wanted to know why such an ordinary country girl had so completely captivated a nephew raised in wealth and luxury... Ye Zhen grew up working the fields in the countryside. After returning to the capital with her new husband, the prestigious, powerful family constantly reminded her that she was no match for the noble and handsome heir of the marquis’s household. It was only when she saw her husband rekindling his old romance with the noble Miss Cui that she finally gave up hope. She left a letter of divorce and prepared to return to the countryside in Zhongzhou. Before leaving, she went to bid farewell to her husband’s uncle, Marquis Huo, wanting to thank him in person for looking after her during that time. Huo Yanshi was wiping down a kind-faced Buddha statue when he turned and saw Ye Zhen bend her slender neck, her gentle brows and eyes filled with timidness as she called him, “Uncle.” He remembered passing his nephew’s room at night and hearing this country girl use that same voice to call her husband again and again, pleading for mercy. Huo Yanshi’s smile remained gentle, but he turned the Buddha statue in his hands to face away from them. That night, Ye Zhen discovered what kind of sinister, rampant desire lay beneath the gentlemanly exterior of the uncle she had always looked up to... At first, Huo Yanshi thought a lowborn country girl was of no consequence. Later, he hated her coldness and indifference. No matter how sincerely he pleaded, she refused to spare him so much as a glance. Huo Yun had admired his uncle Huo Yanshi since childhood, honoring him like the father he had lost and obeying his every word. But after Huo Yun was manipulated into losing the woman he loved, consumed with regret, his uncle appeared before him holding the hand of his former wife. At that moment, he swore he would reclaim the title of Marquis of Jing’an and take her back from his uncle. Blurb written on 2025.12.19 Reader advisory: 1. The female lead is not perfect, nor is she a strong, independent woman. She is a simple country girl with limited experience. She has her own strengths and will grow. 2. The female lead is not a virgin, but the male lead is. He is nine years older than her. The female lead and the second male lead only held a wedding ceremony in the countryside, not a proper marriage, and she will only become romantically involved with the male lead after separating from the second male lead. 3. This is a melodramatic story in a fictional setting, featuring an uncle and nephew competing for a woman. It’s a shameless, trope-filled guilty pleasure. No moral judgment of the author, please. Next up: New Widowhood. Add it to your reading list. On the day the heir of the Duke’s residence was laid to rest, the young emperor came to pay his respects at the mourning hall. Looking at the duke’s family kneeling across the floor, he summoned only the heir’s wife, Su Qingyan, into the inner hall. No one knew that behind layer upon layer of white curtains and funeral banners, Su Qingyan, the new widow they all despised, was being pressed down onto the altar table by the emperor. Dressed in plain white mourning clothes, Su Qingyan angrily rebuked him. “My husband’s body isn’t even cold, and his memorial tablet is right there!” Gu Ningyuan glanced at the name on the tablet, the man he had hated for three whole years, and said coldly, “Then let him watch.” Ten years ago, Su Qingyan, the younger daughter of Imperial Physician Su, met the deposed Crown Prince Gu Ningyuan in the palace. Unfazed by his brooding silence, she badgered him to talk with her and tried to make him laugh, keeping him company through the long days and nights in the cold palace. The day Gu Ningyuan reclaimed his position as Crown Prince, he painted a picture for Su Qingyan with his own hands. It showed a black swallow and a white swallow, their wings overlapping as they nestled close together. He personally made her a vow in her ear: May the swallows never part and share their nest year after year. But a year later, when Gu Ningyuan ascended the throne, he was also the one who said, “The Su family is unworthy of becoming empress.” Su Qingyan tore the painting of the swallows in two, vowed that she and the emperor would be strangers for life, and married someone else. Later, he waited for her to regret it, but she turned around and married another man. Everyone knew Emperor Guangyu was violent by nature, had murdered his brother and usurped the throne, and ruled the court with an iron fist. But no one knew that he had loved someone he could never have, and that though longing gnawed at his bones, he could only hold himself back. He waited three years, finally seeing her sickly husband pass away. This time, he would never let his swallow fly out of his palm again. Bonus scene: It was rumored that Su Qingyan was proud and haughty, disliked by the great families, and only enjoyed a comfortable life in the duke’s household because her husband doted on her without restraint. Now that her husband was dead, she would have been thrown out of the duke’s household already if she hadn’t had a daughter to protect her. Everyone thought she would have to learn to keep her head down and work hard to please her late husband’s family. But to their surprise, she carried on as she pleased, even daring to meet her lover in secret right there in the duke’s residence. One day, her mother-in-law led a group of women to catch her in the act. They planned to make her leave her daughter behind and throw her out of the household. But before they could even enter, they saw through the hanging curtains that Su Qingyan was disheveled and flushed, held in someone’s arms as a hand gripped her slender waist. The supposedly ruthless, overbearing Emperor of Great Wei had buried his face in the hollow of her neck, pleading mournfully, “What must I do for you to come back to me?” Theme: Evildoers get what they deserve