My Lord, Would You Be Pleased?

Ruoyan was the legitimate second daughter of the Yun family, but her mother had suffered greatly giving birth to her and had never liked her.

She lived cautiously. The only daring thing she ever did was sneak a glimpse of the young gentleman staying at their residence, keeping her love for him hidden in her heart.

Fortunately, he fell in love with her, too. He came to propose with gifts, and her family agreed.

But one day, when she returned home, her mother hugged her and wept, demanding that she marry into the Xuanyang Marquis's household and break off her engagement to Jiang Yinghuai. If Ruoyan refused, her mother said plainly that she would kill herself.

Ruoyan went to break off the engagement, never seeing the despair and madness in her young gentleman's eyes.

Later, on the night she married into the Xuanyang Marquis's household, the struggle for the throne ended in defeat, and her new husband died. Branded a criminal's wife, she was sent to the entertainment quarter as a slave.

On a night of torrential rain, she was pinned beneath a man. After fleeing in panic, she fell in the rain, with the men who meant to violate her in pursuit.

Ruoyan was utterly helpless when she heard the faint jingle of carriage bells and saw someone step down from a carriage ahead. She fell to her knees and clutched the hem of his robe. Her pale, fragile face lifted, her eyes brimming with tears. “Please, save me.”

The rain blurred her vision, yet she could clearly see that the man she was begging was Jiang Yinghuai, the former fiancé whose proposal she had rejected, now the most powerful grand secretary in the cabinet. But she had no other choice but to beg him.

Fortunately, Jiang Yinghuai agreed. In the pouring rain, the young gentleman's clothes got wet as he swept her up in his arms.

That night, servants brought her to his room. The young gentleman who had once been so familiar now seemed like a stranger. He gripped her chin without the slightest tenderness and asked, “Do you regret it?”

Ruoyan nodded.

But he only smiled, withdrawing his hand as if it were dirty and wiping it again and again with a handkerchief. He left her with a single remark: “Too late. You refused to be my wife, so now you can only be my concubine.”

He told her to choose for herself, but what choice did she really have?

Theme: Love that comes too late