Forced into a Marriage Swap, She Has the Capital's Nobles Waiting for Her to Divorce

Shu Qingning and her elder sister share the same mother. Her sister is betrothed to Pei Yu, the Marquis of Ningbei, while Shu Qingning is promised to Wen Yunzhou, a minor official at court. Then came the terrible news: Pei Yu had died in battle, and his body was never found. Spoiled by their family, her sister wept and made a scene, insisting they exchange fiancés. Shu Qingning neither argued nor fought back. She obediently agreed. She used their father’s greed for power to engineer an exchange of dowry lists, then had her sister and their biased mother confined to their quarters. To her surprise, her sister insisted on marrying on the very same day, and even tried to seize the most auspicious time to leave home. Shu Qingning knew it would be hard to establish herself when she was marrying a dead man, so she could only rely on herself! She cast off her usual meekness and claimed the auspicious hour for her departure. As soon as she entered the marquis’s residence, she put the second branch of the family in its place. She found a master from the Temple of National Protection to select a new stepson to bear the coffin and smash the bowl for the marquis, earning the trust of the old lady of the house. She was then entrusted with managing the household and raising two stepsons. She always upheld the virtues of a wife and treated the servants with compassion, while bringing the ambitious second and third branches to heel and restoring order to the household. Just as she was settling into a comfortable life, a struggling scholar she had once sponsored became the top scorer in the imperial examinations and sang her praises. The young heir she had casually rescued at a banquet also recovered from his heart ailment under her care and fell for her. Even a prince whose wife had died wanted to marry her as his second wife, impressed by how well she managed a household. Who could have guessed that Pei Yu, the Marquis of Ningbei, whose body had supposedly never been found, would pull her into his arms and say, “She belongs to me. Whoever dares covet her will die!”