“Just tell the truth. What happened?” Madam Wen asked with a darkened face. She was exhausted after seeing all the guests off, but she didn’t take a rest at once and Gu Xishu was summoned here by her.
“I am innocent, Aunt! Why… why should I push Fourth Miss Shao into the water? I have no reason to do that!” Gu Xishu cried again with grievances. She looked delicate, so people would feel sorry for her when she was wiping her tears with an aggrieved look.
“Who could it be if it’s not you? Since you asked her to go with you, why did you leave her halfway?” Madam Wen didn’t stop questioning her as she did before as soon as she saw Gu Xishu crying aggrievedly. Madam Wen had known nothing about such a dangerous accident that happened in her mansion!
Suddenly, Madam Wen thought of her younger daughter, who also died in the water. She felt a pain in her heart. She loved her younger daughter most, and she had never thought that she would die so early.
“I… I was with Fourth Miss Shao, but… but on our way, a servant came to us and told me that Second Cousin… was looking for me, so I went for him!” Gu Xishu seemed to look a little uneasy.
Madam Wen was infuriated. Her second son was such a playboy who had been in an ambiguous relationship with Gu Xishu for a long time. That’s why they ended up like this.
Madam Wen had been pissed off before. She did want Gu Xishu to be her second son’s concubine. However, Prime Minister Wen thought that since his second son was too useless to marry a Miss from a noble family, why not marry Gu Xishu to be his wife? In addition, it was said from a transfer order that Prime Minister Wen’s elder sister, Gu Xishu’s mother was coming back soon and would get a promotion.
Whether Gu Xishu would become a concubine or not, she would disgrace the Mansion of the Prime Minister. Moreover, her mother couldn’t agree.
Considering these, Madam Wen felt that her husband’s idea did make sense and she also agreed to let Gu Xishu be the wife of her second son instead of a concubine. That was why she took Gu Xishu to her birthday banquet and introduce her to the guests today.
Out of expectation, Gu Xishu made trouble again, and it had something to do with her second son too.
Madam Wen knocked on the table hard and asked angrily, “Why did Shi’an want to see you? And why did it have to be at that time?”
“It’s… it’s nothing important. It’s just some external affairs that Second… Second Cousin was a bit confused about!” Gu Xishu pinched the corner of her upper dress with guilt, lowered her head and said with a blush.
In fact, she was very reluctant. If Wen Shi’an hadn’t insisted on seeing her, she wouldn’t have left Shao Cailing at that time. When she was led out, she found that it was indeed Wen Shi’an who wanted to meet her. However, Wen Shi’an wasn’t baffled by external affairs or wanted her help. He just wanted to hug and kiss her, for the reason that they hadn’t met each other for a long time because of Madam Wen’s strict injunction.
So he called Gu Xishu over when When Madam Wen was too busy to notice them.
Gu Xishu had always been fond of Wen Xichi. Unfortunately, she could only marry Wen Shi’an. Although she didn’t like him, she could only let him hug her and kiss her for a while, and then she left with an excuse that she had to help Madam Wen accompany the guests.
However, it was impossible for her to tell Madam Wen about it, so she could only push it to Wen Shi’an.
On hearing that it was relevant to Wen Shi’an again, Madam Wen was in extreme anger. Both her eldest son and youngest son were promising, but only the second son was so incompetent that he was neither good at literature nor was capable of doing martial arts.
What’s more, he always indulged in eating, drinking and pleasure-seeking. It was bearable for Madam Wen that he flirted with Gu Xishu in daily life. But how could he do that at her birthday banquet? He had no dignity as a young master of an aristocratic family at all.
“You… you two…” Madam Wen was so angry that she kept gasping for breath. She wished that she had never given birth to the second son!
“But it’s really not me who pushed Fourth Miss Shao, Aunt. Who knows whether she fell into the water by accident and she blamed it on me? How, how can I make time to push her? Besides, I didn’t know that Second Cousin would ask to see me in advance, and it’s impossible for me to arrange someone else to do that early!”
When Gu Xishu saw that Madam Wen got angry, she pinched her handkerchief with grievance and wiped her tears sadly again.
Madam Wen took a deep breath to suppress the anger in her heart. Madam Wen had raised Gu Xishu since she was a child and treated her as a daughter, so she certainly liked her niece very much. Seeing her aggrieved look, Madam Wen became soft-hearted. She felt aggrieved for Gu Xishu for her marrying her disappointing second son.
How could Madam Wen not know that her niece was actually in love with Wen Xichi?
However, it was doomed to be like this due to a freak combination of coincidences.
Madam Wen calmed down, stopped scolding Gu Xishu, and asked calmly, “Does anyone else know that you have an appointment with Fourth Miss Shao?” She did not believe that Shao Cailing would fall into the water on purpose to set Gu Xishu up.
On such a cold day, it might lead to a lifetime of illness, not to mention that she was also an unmarried girl. If she was haunted by the disease, it would also be an obstacle for her to have children in the future.
“I… I just came up with such an idea on the spur of the moment. I just want to go for a walk with Fourth Miss Shao. We haven’t seen each other for so many years. I wanted to walk around and talk about our childhood with her,” Gu Xishu said and cried, and her voice started to tremble. It was obvious that she was trying hard to hide her grievances.
Because she was just a cousin Miss of the Mansion of the Prime Minister, she was often ignored when the other masters of Wen’s Mansion were invited. So Madam Wen rarely took her out.
Madam Wen felt increasingly distressed when seeing Gu Xishu like that. It was indeed the truth that Gu Xishu was not a daughter of Madam Wen’s mansion, so other mansions rarely put her name on the invitation cards. Madam Wen felt that she owed Gu Xishu a lot even if she treated her like a daughter.
Recently, Madam Wen had even ordered Gu Xishu to stay in the mansion and not to go out. Because she thought that Gu Xishu would be a concubine for her second son, and as a concubine, Gu should not expose herself too much in public. At that time, Madam Wen still intended to find a good wife for her second son.
Thinking of this, she increasingly felt that Gu Xishu was indeed wronged. Gu Xishu’s parents were going back to the capital city. So at this time, she couldn’t let Gu Xishu be treated unfairly anymore.
“Well, don’t cry. I will find out who intended to frame you up!” Madam Wen’s voice softened.
While they were talking, a servant girl came in and reported, “Madam, Third Young Master has come!”
“Invite him in!” Madam Wen hastened to say. As soon as she heard that her most promising youngest son came over, she immediately became happy.
Gu Xishu also raised her head, but there were still tears in the corners of her eyes. Her watery eyes were already focused on the door. When she saw Wen Xichi at the door, her passion for him almost overflowed from her eyes.
Instead of Second Cousin, the handsome Third Cousin in front of her was the one she wanted to marry.
In the past, when she was hooking up with her Second Cousin, she never thought that she would marry him, so she didn’t care much about the differences between the two brothers. But after it was decided that she could only marry her Second Cousin Wen Shi’an, she began to feel Wen Shi’an was a stupid man. “How could he be compared with my handsome Third Cousin?
“No, I can’t marry Second Cousin. I have to marry Third Cousin!
“There must be ways. There must be ways! Shao Yanru also said that as long as I haven’t married Second Cousin, I still have a chance. I am still unmarried and Third Cousin is also single. There were plenty of opportunities for me, weren’t there?”
Thinking of it, Gu Xishu looked at Wen Xichi with increasing passion, and her eyes were full of affection.
Wen Xichi stepped forward, bowed to Madam Wen, and then sat down aside.
Gu Xishu hastened to step forward and bowed to Wen Xichi with bashfulness. “Third Cousin!”
Since she cried just now, so her face was still with tears and looked very attractive. And her eyes were particularly appealing. She looked at Wen Xichi with her tender eyes. Perhaps it was because Wen Xichi remained silent for long that she staggered and lost her balance. She fell straight to Wen Xichi.
Wen Xichi reached out to catch her in the hand, and Gu Xishu couldn’t help leaning into his arms. Even though Madam Wen felt that Gu Xishu was wronged just now, she couldn’t stand Gu Xishu now, and she snorted.
Wen Xichi stood up, stepped aside, and loosened his grip on Gu Xishu, who later bumped straight into the chair he had been sitting in before. With a cry of “Ouch”, Gu Xishu failed to control her body and hit the railing of the chair. It was not a light hit, so she was in so much pain that the tears at the corners of her eyes immediately fell across her face, which made her look extremely miserable.
“Sit decently!” Madam Wen’s face darkened. No matter how partial she was to Gu Xishu, she couldn’t help getting angry at this time. Gu Xishu was already her second son’s woman, so it was inappropriate that Gu Xishu had intimate contact with her youngest son.
Realizing Madam Wen was really angry, Gu Xishu did not dare to play tricks anymore. She endured the pain and sat in the chair, looking obedient.
A trace of disgust flashed in Wen Xichi’s eyes, but he sat down in the chair opposite to her calmly, as if what happened just now had no impact on him at all.
“Mother, I’ve checked it out. No one has been to the place from which Fourth Miss Shao fell into the water. Only Cousin Gu has been there with her!” Wen Xichi reported to Madam Wen. It was Madam Wen who had asked her youngest son to investigate it.
If there was a person with evil intentions in the Mansion of the Prime Minister, it would be a disaster if he or she stayed in the mansion. Moreover, it always reminded Madam Wen of her daughter who died young, and she inexplicably felt that the two cases might be linked.
But investigation results showed that it seemed to have nothing to do with anyone except Gu Xishu. Hearing her youngest son’s words, Madam Wen looked at Gu Xishu suspiciously again.
“No! Aunt, Third Cousin, I swear it has nothing to do with me. I… I am really wronged. I did nothing except for asking Fourth Miss Shao to go there!” Seeing that their attitudes changed, Gu Xishu immediately cried with grievances. Tears rolled down her white and tender face, which made people feel distressed.
Madam Wen, in particular, felt sorry. When she was about to comfort Gu Xishu, she heard her youngest son say, “Cousin Gu, you seemed to have said the same words when the same accident happened to my sister. Why did you say that again now?”
In fact, Wen Xichi’s words were unintentional, but as soon as he finished speaking, not only he was greatly shocked, but also Madam Wen was so stunned that her face turned as pale as snow. And then their eyes were all focused on Gu Xishu…
