The Escaped Maid [Coercive Romance]

#Coercive Love##The Pursuit After the Breakup#

Blurb:

A Tan had worked as a maid in the Marquis's residence for three years and had saved enough money to buy her freedom.

On the night she fled, she crouched on the wall, waiting for a gap in the night patrol. She figured the ferry crossing was thirty li to the south, and her cousin did laundry over there. She could surely put her up for a while.

The light of the torches illuminated her face.

He sat on his horse, unhurriedly brushing the dead vines off the wall with his riding crop. He looked up at her. "You've got some nerve."

A Tan gritted her teeth and lowered herself from the wall. Her knees struck the flagstones. He didn't dismount. Instead, he lifted her chin with his riding crop.

"I gave you permission to buy your freedom," he said. "I never said you could leave me."

Only later did A Tan realize that they weren't heading back to the Marquis's residence.

She was thrown into a remote country house. The gate was locked, and the only person she saw was a mute old woman who brought her meals each day. Sometimes she heard his voice beyond the wall as he admired flowers and did another woman's makeup.

"She's nothing but a runaway slave," she heard him say. "Beating her to death would be fine."

A Tan tightened her grip on the broom, then slowly let go.

It wasn't until a rainy night that he burst into the woodshed, reeking of wine, and pinned her down in the hay. He bit her earlobe until it bled.

"If you try to run, I'll break your legs."

He buried his face in the crook of her neck. The small patch of skin pressed against hers was scorching hot.

The rain kept falling outside.

A Tan raised the sharpened bamboo sliver she had prepared long ago and drove it viciously into his chest. "Then go die."

Two years later.

A Tan sat in her shop, wrapping herbal tea for a customer, when she heard someone call from outside, "Madam Shen, someone's here to see you."

She didn't look up. Her fingers kept folding the corners of the yellow paper.

"He says he's come from the north."

She raised her eyes.

A figure stood in the light at the doorway, smiling faintly. "Madam Shen, I've come to break your legs."

Reader's Guide:

1. A melodramatic story, happy ending, one-on-one romance.

2. The hero says one thing but means another, while the heroine seems soft and easygoing but is actually clear-eyed.

Theme: Love yourself before loving someone else.