Song Yuming accepted the bowl and chopsticks. “Have you eaten?”

Xue Dongting wasn"t hungry. She spooned rice into his bowl as she said, “I"m not hungry now…” Afraid it would make him hold back his eating, she smiled and added, “I"ll eat when we get back.”

He hesitated, then picked some vegetables from the basket and ate.

He ate in silence, eating fast but not crudely. Xue Dongting watched him, eagerly awaiting his appraisal of her cooking, but he said nothing. Seeing how he wolfed it down, she suddenly felt it at once funny and sad. This man, thirty and all alone in the world. What was his story? Had he experienced great suffering too?

When he had done eating, Xue Dongting packed up the bowls and dishes and was about to leave when the fisherman said, “I"m not comfortable with you walking back alone. I"ll walk you back.”

She hesitated, recalling that riffraff she had run into earlier. She looked up at Song Yuming and said softly, “I"m a woman of the brothels, you… you don"t despise me?”

Song Yuming"s brows knit slightly. “What kind of talk is this? Why would I marry you if I despised you?”

Xue Dongting bit her delicate lip. “Don"t worry,” she whispered, “though I"m from that kind of world, I know all about "til death do us part"… Since I"ve married you I won"t harbor any improper thoughts…”

Song Yuming detected how serious she sounded. His staunch face cracked in a wisp of a smile. He stepped forward and picked her up, delicate thing, and princess-carried her off the boat and onto the bank. She was carried all the way back home.

She rested her head lightly against his chest and didn"t say a word the whole way.

When they got back home, he put a small string of copper cash in her hand. A dozen or more coins run through a cord of hemp. Xue Dongting looked at the cash in her hand and tears began to fall like rain.

Song Yuming saw her crying and didn"t know what to say or do. He patted her shoulder. “I"m not used to saving up money. Usually I would just take whatever little I earned into town and buy wine with it. Now that I have you, don"t worry. It won"t be like that anymore.”

Xue Dongting cried even harder.

Third Prince had thousands and thousands of taels of gold, but none of that was hers. Only that final, cold sword through her heart belonged to her.

She gripped the little string of cash he had placed in her hand, her heart a tangle of emotion. She was happy she had met this honest and reserved man, but she was also afraid it would be as fleeting as a cloud pa.s.sing by, which would be more painful than her lowborn status as a singsong girl.

She was wracked with sobs, crying out all her bitter misery, and then she finally felt a little better. Song Yuming didn"t go back to the river, but boiled some thick rice paste and caulked the bedroom window with it. Xue Dongting knew he was worried about her getting cold. She was lost in thought as she watched his hulking frame at work outside the window. Song Yuming finished with the window, then went to the courtyard and chopped firewood. He was really strong. One swing of the axe and the log was split in two. He stacked the wood up neatly, seemingly not fatigued at all.

At dusk, it was windy outside, the window cas.e.m.e.nts rattling. Xue Dongting boiled a kettle of water and was about to go tell him not to work too hard and to come inside and drink some water. But there was suddenly a knock on the door. She felt her heart pinch. In her previous life she had learned well how to observe people"s words and actions. She could tell by the knock that it was a woman.

Song Yuming stopped his work and went to open the door. Xue Dongting saw a pet.i.te woman pa.s.s by the window. She was around twenty years old and she stood at the door timidly.