Marrying into the Right Family

The year Chu Jinyao married Pei Shu, she had only just turned fifteen. For three years, she served her mother-in-law and managed the household, using her own dowry to run the concubine-born branch of the family with more dignity than the main branch. Then, on the anniversary of her father’s death, he handed her a divorce letter. “You’re barren and jealous, unfit to be a wife.” Those eight words turned everything she had done over the past three years into a joke. She calmly took the divorce letter, tore it to pieces in front of him, then turned around and married the legitimate son of the eldest branch. From then on, Chu Jinyao was no longer the discarded wife of the second branch. She was the future matriarch of the marquis’s household. But by then, the marquis’s household was already an empty shell: The father and daughter of the eldest branch were frail and spent their days surrounded by medicine jars. The widowed aunt of the third branch guarded an empty title just to protect herself. The twins of the fourth branch were helpless and alone, bullied by others. The young uncle of the fifth branch had ambitions but could only while away his days. Everyone thought she was courting disaster, but she went into business with her widowed aunt, taught her younger siblings how to make their way in the world, and tempered the carefree young uncle into the sharpest blade of all. As a woman, she took on the rise and fall of an entire family. Years later, the marquis’s household had regained its former standing, and the family genealogy was rewritten. The former wife of Pei Jizhi was gone. At the very top of the family tree, one name stood boldly written: Head of the family, Chu Jinyao.