Gathering the Wind and Moon

My next book, Mistaking the Marquis for a Guard, is also a sweet story about a substitute bride, an arranged marriage, and love after marriage. If you're interested, you can bookmark it in my author page

She is the Marchioness of Cheng'en and the daughter of the Grand Preceptor.

She has a secret: she is not the noble Mu Jingyao, but Ye Luoyi, a village doctor who came in her place as the substitute bride.

Only by keeping this secret can she save her own life, the lives of the villagers of Taoyuan Village, and the love of the man she has no right to love.

Fu Huaishu, the Marquis of Cheng'en, dotes on her and treats her with the utmost tenderness. He thinks of her every moment and is rarely apart from her, except when attending court.

His attentive devotion makes her both happy and miserable. She knows Fu Huaishu loves Mu Jingyao, not her, the substitute. Yet she sinks deeper and deeper, falling in love with the man she should never have loved.

"Why have you been frowning all day, my lady? Have I upset you again?"

"No. I was only thinking of your kindness, my lord, and feeling guilty."

"Why feel guilty? We are husband and wife. Of course I should love and protect you."

"What if I weren't who you think I am?"

Ye Luoyi kept her secret close and accepted his kindness with a pounding heart, greedily wishing she could spend her whole life this way.

At last, a great fire destroyed the palace of a concubine, and the Marchioness of Cheng'en changed completely overnight.

-

The people of the city watched with amusement as the Marquis of Cheng'en went mad searching for someone, paying no heed to the wife lawfully wed to him at all. "That's a man's heart for you: it changes in an instant."

At last, he saw her again. She cowered before him, a tiny bundle, murmuring, "A common woman like me is as far beneath the Marquis as mud is beneath clouds... Please forget everything that happened between us and live well with your wife."

He felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar, cold from head to toe. "So this is what it feels like to want someone and not have them? How unpleasant."

But he didn't care. As long as he could bring her back, and keep her at his side every day, affection would grow with time. "Whether we're worlds apart or... something else, let's talk about it when we get back."

Unexpectedly, she pressed a sharp object to her own neck and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. "My lord, I'm not going back. There's no place for me in the marquis's residence anymore. Your wife is the woman who lives there."

"What if I insist on taking you back?"

"You keep calling me 'my lord.' Don't you know what those words mean?"

"Even if I dragged you back by force, no one would dare say a single word against it."

Theme: A woman's growth, independence, and strength.