Chapter 324 — Lingering Echoes
Purple Streets of Chang'an Page 2 of 2
From this day forth, she was Song Yan's wife!
She would bear Song Yan sons and daughters. She would raise the children together with Song Yan, she would be a good mother, a good wife...
Dou Yan held Song Yan tightly and no longer suppressed her own feelings, moaning softly in time with him...
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The winter rain of the night before had struck down the last few leaves on the branches, leaving the courtyard in a sorry litter.
Chen Jia stood beneath the covered walkway, letting the cold morning wind blow against his face.
He asked Huzi, who stood with hands hanging respectfully before him: "You truly did not hear wrong?"
Huzi sounded a little aggrieved. "Brother Chen, I truly did not hear it wrong! Everyone in Zhending knows of this matter. The Pang family's young master still limps when he walks to this day, and because of it he has not yet married. They say the betrothal gifts his family offered came to five hundred taels of silver."
Chen Jia was amused. "Why don't we go into that business ourselves? Buy a Yangzhou slimming beauty, marry her off as a girl from a respectable family, and pocket the five hundred taels..."
"Brother Chen, don't joke about it!" Huzi cried. "The Pang family are in-laws of the Wang family!"
But Chen Jia suddenly fell silent.
Did the heir know he had married such a shrew?
He instructed Huzi: "Go to Zhending again, and find some way to get to the bottom of it. Has anyone from the Ying Duke of the State's household ever been to Zhending?"
If someone had been there, then the heir must know what sort of wife he had taken... and yet he still valued the Dou woman so highly. That showed just how formidable the Dou woman was!
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In the Hall of Nurtured Aspirations, Third Master Dou, Dou Xiuchang, sat on the heated kang by the window, gazing out through the glass-paned window.
On the second day after their arrival in the capital, the heir of the Duke of Ying and Dou Yan had gone to Sophora Tree Lane, and Dou Bingheng had even taken a day's leave to keep them company at home. Dou Yan had shown no courtesy, telling them to come to the Ying Duke of the State's household two days later to reconcile the accounts. Dou Bingheng had not refused... which set Dou Xiuchang secretly guessing at the relationship between Dou Yan and Sophora Tree Lane.
Zhao Liangbi came over and pointed to one of the expenditures, smiling. "Third Master, this sum is noted as not yet recovered. After that there is nothing more written, do you recall? Could it have been entered together with some other account?"
Dou Xiuchang lifted his head.
On the east side of the flower hall, Zhong Bingxiang led seven or eight of the Hall of Nurtured Aspirations' best accountants, abacuses clacking as they checked the accounts; not one of them so much as glanced at them. But Dou Xiuchang would wager that every one of those ears was pricked up, just waiting for him to explain where this sum had gone.
Dou Xiuchang got down from the kang and rummaged out from a chest an account book bearing the large red characters "Twenty-Twenty," turned to one of its pages, and said, "This sum—Fourth Sister gave the word, and it was remitted." He pointed out to Zhao Liangbi the corner of the page signed with Dou Zhiwei's name and stamped with Dou Yan's seal.
Zhao Liangbi answered with a smile, made a mark in the account book, and returned to the east side of the flower hall.
The clatter of abacuses grew denser.
Dou Xiuchang gave a long sigh.
Reconciling accounts was like tearing away the last fig leaf, bringing men to draw blades and face one another.
Uncle must have foreseen this turn of events—that is why he put on the airs of an elder and thrust himself upon the Yingzhen Duke's household!
He sat back down on the heated brick bed and drank his tea at his leisure.
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Song Cen, however, was finding it hard to sit still.
Dou Xiuchang was a junior, and moreover one of Dou Yan's own family; coming to the Yingzhen Duke's household, by both propriety and reason, he ought to have paid his respects to Song Cen.
Song Cen, for his part, played the elder to the hilt: after exchanging a few words with Dou Xiuchang, he came straight out and asked what he had come for.
On this matter, the Dou family had long since reached a consensus.
Dou Xiuchang said, unhurried and unruffled, "My seventh uncle dotes on Fourth Sister, and has decided to add to her dowry. Entrusted by Seventh Uncle, I have come to deliver the dowry to Fourth Sister."
This is what comes of having no sons!
Song Cen gave a few cold laughs in his heart at the time, offered a pile of polite words, and then raised his teacup to signal that the audience was over.
But who would have thought that five or six days had passed, and the accounts still had not been handed over and settled.
He had also sent men to make inquiries. Those who came back all said that seven or eight people were reckoning accounts in the reception hall, so busy they had not even the leisure to swallow a mouthful of water—they really were checking the accounts.
What sort of accounts could take so long to check?
Even the Yingzhen Duke's household had taken only five or six days to check its accounts.
Song Cen summoned Zeng Wu. "Go and make inquiries—just how much dowry has the Dou family actually added for the Lady? Why is it still not handed over and settled?"
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Sisters and brothers, today's content was rather inconvenient to write at the office, mm, so it got delayed a great deal... ~~~~(_
ps: Typos and the like will have to be caught tomorrow; everyone please make do for now.