Jade Held Close to the Heart

Original title: My Spendthrift Husband Throws Money at Me

Blurb:

Ning Wanyu, the youngest daughter of the Vice Minister of Censors, is said to be as beautiful as a fairy. But she is kept within the inner quarters, and few have ever seen her. Her fearsome reputation has also kept her unmarried until the age of seventeen.

One day, an imperial decree arranges her marriage to Lu Huai, the son of a merchant.

Lu Huai is an idle, uneducated wastrel who spends his time in the pleasure quarters, a thoroughgoing playboy.

Everyone craned their necks, eager to see how much chaos the Lu family would be thrown into.

But all they saw was Ning Wanyu keeping to the rules and managing the household in perfect order. She never asked where Lu Huai went, and even when he got drunk and spent the night away from home, they never argued.

Everyone envied Lu Huai for having such a good wife, certain that she loved him to the very depths of her heart.

Lu Huai thought so too.

Until one day, he saw Ning Wanyu standing beside another man, smiling and chatting, her face alight with a joy he'd never seen before. The man called her by her childhood nickname.

As the wind blew and the flowers fell, he finally understood: she wasn't unhappy because she didn't know how to be happy. She was unhappy because she didn't love him.

*

Everyone felt sorry for Ning Wanyu's marriage, saying she should have married someone better instead of ending up like this

Alone on her wedding night, while her husband continued to swagger off to the pleasure quarters after they were married.

But Ning Wanyu doesn't think her marriage is all that bad.

She has a generous mother-in-law who never lets her lack for gold or jewels, and a stern but soft-hearted father-in-law who stands up for her in front of other families.

The Lu family's considerable wealth supports her, and precious medicinal herbs make up for her physical weakness and ease her pain.

She thinks life couldn't be better than it is now, and what Lu Huai does hardly matters.

But to maintain her comfortable life, she still has to get along with Lu Huai.

She just doesn't know how, so she secretly buys lots of romance novels and clumsily follows their rules.

Until Lu Huai discovers the books.

Holding a book by one corner, he looks at her intently. "If you don't understand love, why follow a book? I'll be your teacher and teach you. As for tuition..."

He takes Ning Wanyu's hand. "Pay me with your true heart."

*

The wind rises from nowhere, but love always leaves a trace.

Coming Soon: Love Poison

The Su family, in the outskirts of the capital, is famous for making incense. Since Su Yunfang took over the workshop, business has been flourishing.

Everyone in the surrounding villages envies her. They say that although the Su family has only one daughter, she is so shrewd and capable that she has made a wonderful life for herself.

Someone who remembers the past points out that the Su family once took in a brilliant young boy, but he disappeared several years ago.

Su Yunfang will always remember that she had an older brother. Her parents treated him as their own, and she believed he loved her too.

But the deeper her trust had been, the more his decisive departure hurt her.

She hears that he has changed his name to Qin Yunhua, become a high-spirited top scholar, won the emperor's favor, and risen to become the youngest head of the Court of Judicial Review.

She hears it all as if it's a story about a stranger.

How could the head of the Court of Judicial Review, whose name frightens children into silence, be the same person who gently wiped away her tears and soothed her to sleep when they were young?

Su Yunfang thought their lives had gone their separate ways for good four years ago.

But the day after her engagement, she sees a procession carrying a dowry to her door.

Her neighbors look uneasy as they tell her that the head of the Court of Judicial Review has asked to marry the Su family's daughter.

*

"Can't we go back to how things were?"

"Go back to how things were?" Qin Yunhua slowly savors those four words, then smiles rather abruptly.

He takes Su Yunfang by the wrist, patiently unfolds her clenched fist, and intertwines their fingers.

His eyes are deep and still. "You want me to treat you like a brother."

He lifts their joined hands and kisses her wrist. "But would your brother treat you like this?"

Everyone says he's gone mad.

He has gone mad, but has anyone ever seen an addict who was still in his right mind?

The scent everyone praises on her is the poison that makes him addicted, haunting him in his midnight dreams.

Theme: A precious gem is kept close to the heart. Learn to cherish the one before you