The Master's Wife

Xu Xianru was the daughter of a ninth-rank assistant director at the Court of State Ceremonial, a low-ranking official in Shuntian, a place full of nobles. Her mother had taught her from childhood to be cautious and discreet, and Xu Xianru had taken those lessons to heart. After her mother died of illness, her father remarried and brought home a younger daughter who was two years her junior. Xu Xianru became even more careful to keep her head down.

So when her father wanted her to become the second wife of the Grand Secretary Zhou, she married him gladly.

She honored her mother-in-law and treated her stepson, who was about her age, with sincerity. Her mother-in-law and stepson, who had initially disliked her, began to treat her kindly. But the good times didn't last. Grand Secretary Zhou died, and since she had no children, her mother-in-law threw her out.

Her maternal uncle took her in. In the second month of her widowhood at his home, her aunt arranged a match for her.

It was Zhou Zhanyan, the junior minister of the Court of Judicial Review, born into a distinguished family.

Though timid by nature, she refused for the first time.

She had two secrets. First, that junior minister had been a student of her late husband, so for the two of them to marry would violate the proper order of things. Second, she had unexpectedly spent a night with her cousin, but he had no wish to marry her. No matter how she hinted, he pretended not to understand.

Everyone said Zhou Zhanyan was gentle, modest, disciplined, and exceptionally gifted in both character and appearance, a noble young man without equal in Shuntian.

But she couldn't accept. She was pregnant, and if she married him, she would be doomed.

When she finally resolved to leave without telling her uncle's family, pack her bags, and return to her hometown of Suzhou, that noble young man intercepted her on the Grand Canal.

Like a graceful bamboo in the bitter wind, he walked up to her and bent down. His pale jade-like palm rested on her belly, and his voice rang out, clear and warm. "Ru Niang, where are you taking my child?"

He was clearly smiling, yet Xu Xianru was terrified. She thought he must have gone mad.

How did he know?

And how could the child possibly be his?

Theme: Redemption and healing through love.