Meanwhile, a decidedly less amorous meeting was happening in another room. Lady Yu had sent Li Tai Xuan and his wife to their new quarters, and now she had led Yue Niang and Tai Cheng to their rooms.
"You'll be staying here for the time being," Lady Yu said, and Yue Niang fought the urge to sigh as she looked around the room.
Who knew that she would be back in this same room after so long? Was this the world's idea of a joke?
And if she had any suspicions that Lady Yu didn't remember her, they were all thrown out the window. The choice of room already proved it - Lady Yu had given her the very rooms she claimed before, when she was slated to be the lady of the manor.
She adored this set of rooms, because it had a glorious view of the sunset, paired with a lovely night breeze tinged with the smell of flowers from outside.
"Thanks Lady Yu," Tai Cheng politely replied, since his wife was too busy sighing into thin air to respond. "Do you know where my daughter is?"
At this question, Lady Yu's face coloured. "They're in Jingwei's room."
"Ah." There was no need to explain further. "Will they come out anytime soon?"
There was an awkward pause as Lady Yu sent someone to check. In less than a minute, the maid scuttled back into their room, face burnt a bright red.
"They are busy. With… each other." She said haltingly, before fleeing at the disgruntled look that crossed Yue Niang's face.
"These kids… that boy can't keep in his pants." Yue Niang grumbled. "He better not knock up my daughter before marriage. I'll kill him."
"I'll help," Tai Cheng added, an ugly scowl blooming on his face at the thought of his baby daughter having a child out of wedlock.
"I've provided condoms in the drawer." Lady Yu reassured them, trying to put their worries to rest, but that only made them look more disgusted.
"Does he bring women back so often that you have to stock up on condoms in his drawers?" Yue Niang demanded. "Isn't he some kind of playboy? Oh god, we should have dragged him to the doctor to check for STDs."
Next to her, her husband looked slightly horrified. He had completely forgotten about the venerable diseases - his brain was focused more on the fact that his sole daughter was dating Sun Jingwei.
"Of course not!" Lady Yu retorted angrily. Yue Niang was her beloved mistress once upon a time, but she wasn't going to let her badmouth Jingwei like all the other degenerates on the internet. "Before your daughter, he had never brought a single woman home to this mansion! And he uses protection! We never got news of a pregnancy!"
And Lady Yu prided herself on keeping track of Jingwei's affairs. Someone had to, and Captain Mu's job scope didn't extend to protecting him in bed.
She was the closest thing Jingwei had to a mother all these years, and Lady Bi Yu would have hated her friend calling her son a whore!
"Really? That's a welcome surprise." Tai Cheng blinked cheerfully. "Wife, he isn't so bad! Our daughter is now his only exception! We don't have to worry about Sun Jingwei's illegitimate children roaming the countryside."
Of course, if any of the younger staff heard, they wouldn't realise that this was a dig at Sun Haowei. Sun Haowei was now a stern hot-headed billionaire that wasted more tea than he drank, but back then in his heyday, he certainly sowed a lot of wild oats!
Li Tai Cheng had his hands full cleaning up his mess. He remembered cursing his stupid boss back then for all his antics - he never impregnated a lady, but goddamn there were a lot of women throwing themselves at him, and he never declined.
In fact, who knew if there were still any wild oats lingering in the wild? One of these days, karma was going to smack Sun Haowei in the face.
"Husband, it's because Sun Haowei would have blown a gasket otherwise." Yue Niang explained. "You know his temper better than I do. Imagine if Jingwei brought all the girls he hooked up with back here. He'd be disowned!"
"..." Tai Cheng couldn't refute that.
"Nonsense, Jingwei is a perfectly loyal man!" Lady Yu replied hotly. "Bi Yu would be devastated to hear you say this of her son!"
The couple was startled, along with some of the staff. They eyed the trio with speculative eyes - why had Lady Yu suddenly called the late Lady Sun by her maiden name? Surely that was the height of disrespect!
"Shush!" Yue Niang's eyes darted to the staff, a warning look on her face. Lady Yu waved them away, and they reluctantly dragged their feet outside the room. Only after they heard the definite click of the door being locked, did Yue Niang turn back to Lady Yu, a scowl on her face.
"Yah, Yu Ming Yan, what are you trying to pull?" Yue Niang hissed. "Your staff are going to be suspicious of us now!"
"They won't talk," Lady Yu said.
"Servants always talk, don't you know that?" Yue Niang scoffed disbelievingly. "Gossip spreads faster than germs in mansions like this."
"Don't talk down to me or tell me how to do my job," Lady Yu replied, trying to hold onto her temper. She missed her old mistress her older sister, but it she wasn't going to let herself be scolded as though she was incompetent. It had been over twenty years.
"I'm not the same girl you left behind."
There was a stunned silence at that proclamation, and Yue Niang could only laugh ruefully to herself.
"You're not wrong. But the fact that you're still here shows that you haven't changed much. Still the same scared girl." Yue Niang stated. "Why haven't you left to look for a job elsewhere? I understand staying when Bi Yu was still here - but it's been at least 10 years, and her children are grown. Why didn't you leave?"
"Where else could I have gone?" Lady Yu burst out at the implied insult, her emotions boiling over like soup left on a stove for too long. Tears began to form in her eyes.
"It's easy for you to say! You just left without warning! And you never looked for me! You promised you would stay with me forever - that you'd be my sister forever! I trusted you! Waiting for you to return!"
Yue Niang flinched. She hadn't bothered with involving Yu Ming Yan in her plot to escape her engagement. Instead, she left her alone, knowing that Bi Yu would look after her instead. She cut off all ties as easily as her knife through curtain fabric, but now there was a stubborn thread poking out, crying right in front of her.
"Well, you shouldn't have stayed here for so long anyway!" Yue Niang retorted, not liking it whenever people called her out for her behaviour. That was a fatal flaw of hers - she hated admitting she was wrong, especially not to people she used to lead.
"You wasted your youth on this place! Didn't you always claim that you wanted to meet your one true love, marry him and have a lot of children? You can't do that while you're here!"
"I changed my mind," Lady Yu said primly, even as her eyes were wet with unshed tears. "I grew up, and decided to pick the path that would guarantee a content life, since everyone I knew and loved left me without a single goodbye! Don't you dare judge me for my decisions Li Yue Niang, you have no right!"
Yue Niang fell quiet as Yu Ming Yan - wait, it was Lady Yu now, as Lady Yu scrubbed at her eyes with a gloved hand. A wet patch formed, obvious on the white silk glove.
"It's alright, we're not blaming you," Tai Cheng said consolingly, keeping his voice low and steady. He wasn't that close to Yu Ming Yan back then, but he felt terrible at the way they left her behind, rationalizing to themselves that it was for her own good.
"Doesn't sound like it to me," Lady Yu said with uncharacteristic bitterness, glaring at the floor. "And stop speaking for your wife, she has a mouth of her own."
Tai Cheng elbowed his wife, his eyes hinting at her to apologise. She was out of line, and she knew it.
"I'm… sorry." Yue Niang began weakly. There was another pause, and Lady Yu wanted to roll her eyes. Once a heiress, always a heiress it seemed. Apologies clearly weren't her strong suit, even after all this time.
She decided to throw a bone out of pity.
"What for?"
"Huh?"
"What are you apologising for?" Lady Yu asked.
"I apologise for leaving you behind. But please understand, it wasn't as though we hated you or we didn't want you or anything like that." Yue Niang said frantically, wanting to set things right but not knowing how to. It wasn't like in the past, where Ming Yan could be cajoled with sweet treats or dresses from her extensive wardrobe.
Admittedly, she had never fucked up this badly in the past either.
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