Wearing a lotus-pink skirt, Liu Ruyan stood on the deck with a smile and said to Wang Xiuhe, “It’s been a few days, Sister Xiu. Have you missed me?”
Wang Xiuhe stared at her in shock, her hand trembling as she pointed. “How are you with him?!”
The “him,” of course, referred to Fu Jingxuan.
Second Madam Liu shot a look of disdain at Fu Jingxuan. “I certainly didn’t want to be with him. If not for a valuable piece of business I had to conduct with him, I wouldn’t have bothered.”
Fu Jingxuan raised an eyebrow, drew a folding fan from his waist, flicked it open, and paid her no mind.
The relationship between these two was clearly discordant, so why had they come together?
Wang Xiuhe furrowed her brows, her voice turning shrill. “Didn’t you agree to do business with me before? How can you go back on your word now?”
Upon hearing this, Liu Ruyan gave a start and then burst into a loud laugh. “Xiuhe, you’re sounding like a naive young girl now. We are both merchants; in business, one must always choose the most advantageous deal. Fu Jingxuan offered better terms than you, so of course I will side with him.”
Wang Xiuhe was beyond furious. “What kind of business could possibly exceed half of the imperial rewards!”
Liu Ruyan gave a mocking snort. “Sister Xiu, do you truly take me for someone who only recognizes coins and cannot tell good from bad?”
“You…”
“You what you!” Liu Ruyan’s expression shifted as her elegant eyes turned sharp. She had been a fiery character in her youth, and after enduring in silence for months, she finally let it out at Wang Xiuhe. “From the Tea Tasting Convention, I already knew you were up to no good. Are all the descendants of the Fang clan dead or something? Why insist on letting Fu Jingxuan flaunt his skills just to disrupt the peace of my Fu family? What kind of conscience do you have?!”
Wang Xiuhe was speechless for a long moment, reminiscing, “You were pretending to faint at the Tea Tasting Convention? You two were working together even back then?”
Liu Ruyan said, “Otherwise? Did you really think I’d let a green-headed boy like him provoke me into collapsing on the peak of Mount Yuming?”
“But the two of you are clearly like fire and water!”
“What do you mean ‘fire and water’? If he were still in the Fu family, he would be my mortal enemy; but now that he’s come to the Fang family, he’s at most a business rival. Sister Xiu, you’ve been clever throughout your whole life; surely you can’t fail to see this conflict of interest, right?”
Wang Xiuhe murmured, “Impossible. How could you side with him? You should hate him in your heart.”
Liu Ruyan said, “Sister Xiu, you really are something. My hating him is a private family matter. Now that you’re instigating trouble between us, aren’t you just trying to tear both our houses down? No matter how useless he is, his surname is still Fu! No matter how useless I am, I am still his second mother! Even if we fight to the death among ourselves, we will never allow someone surnamed Wang to tarnish the honor of those surname Fu either!”
Wang Xiuhe hadn’t expected a muddled woman like Liu Ruyan to be so clear-headed. Seeing that the situation was becoming difficult to salvage, she steadied her nerves and explained, “The Tea Tasting Convention was indeed a lapse in my judgment, but weren’t we just calling each other’s sisters and planning for the future a few days ago? I trusted you so much…”
“But I didn’t trust you,” Second Madam Liu said with a curl of her lips. “I don’t pretend to be virtuous, but you, Sister Xiu, are far more despicable. Your reputation for deceit is practically written across your forehead, and you expected me to believe you? Bah! All that talks about protecting me from the Tao and Hu families to help me rise; I see it now. You meant to use me to eliminate them, then cast me aside and make me the second Fang Changru!”
Wang Xiuhe shook her head, her eyes already turning bloodshot. “I did not commit any treachery; it was the Fang family who betrayed me first! If you won’t help, then so be it, but give me back my tea!”
Liu Ruyan said, “The tea isn’t with me.”
“What did you say?” Wang Xiuhe could no longer maintain her composure as she looked at the empty merchant ships trailing behind the lead vessel.
She had known all along that the pair from the Fang and Fu families would target this batch of tea; ever since the Tea Tasting Convention, she had anticipated this confrontation. So, she decided to outsmart them by renting a warehouse at the ferry and placex the tea there, then waited for them to make a move so she could catch them red-handed, just as she had tried today. Yet, being naturally cautious, she felt after careful consideration that the ferry was unsafe, and the Fang residence even less so; which was why she had turned to Liu Ruyan for help.
While the four great families primarily dealt in the tea trade, they all dabbled in related side businesses; the Fang family operated a eating house, while the Fu family managed shipping.
Knowing that Liu Ruyan loathed Fu Jingxuan and would never conspire with him under any circumstances, Wang Xiuhe had struck a shipping deal with her. She had sent the prepared tea onto Liu Ruyan’s merchant ships several days early by arranging a few reliable hands to escort the cargo to the capital. Meanwhile, she had filled the ferry warehouse with decoys, waiting to “catch the turtle in the jar.”
It had never occurred to her that Liu Ruyan would actually defect and conspire with Fu Jingxuan to set her up.
“Where is my tea? That is business for the Imperial Family; moving it at will is a capital offense!”
“Why would anyone be executed?” Liu Ruyan laughed. “The Fang family’s tea was sent back to the Fang residence by me long ago. Calculating the time now, it has likely already arrived.”
Upon hearing this, Wang Xiuhe turned pale with fright. She stared at her in a daze for a moment before clutching her skirts and racing toward the Fang mansion.
Watching her stumbling silhouette, Second Madam Liu glanced at Fu Jingxuan. “There is one thing I do not understand.”
Fu Jingxuan said, “Please, speak your mind, Second Mother.”
Liu Ruyan said, “Wang Xiuhe and I are hardly acquaintances; at most, we are related by marriage. Why did she trust me so much that she dared to hand over ten thousand piculs of tea for me to transport?”
Fu Jingxuan arched an eyebrow with a faint smile playing on his lips. “Does Second Mother remember that I used to write to the Fang family every year?”
Liu Ruyan remembered; every time the courier came to the house to collect mail, San Bao would hand one over. “Were you not writing to Fang Zesheng?”
Fu Jingxuan said, “Only the first two were written to him.”
“And the ones after that?”
Fu Jingxuan tilted his fan, pointing in the direction Wang Xiuhe had gone. “They were all written to her.”
Liu Ruyan frowned. “What did you write?”
Second Young Master Fu laughed. “Merely some household trivialities; writing of Second Mother’s faults, then of my dissatisfaction with how I was treated; writing of First Mother’s health, and then of Father’s inaction. Those letters were nothing but the messy, rotten scandals of our Fu family. Letting her read them made her think she held all the trump cards in the Fu household, which is why she repeatedly let her guard down around me.”
Liu Ruyan was astonished. “Did you actually foresee this day coming?”
“How could I? I am not a divine fortune-teller.” Fu Jingxuan winked at her. “It is just that I knew long ago that I would come to the Fang family. Speaking of which, I have to thank Second Mother for that.”
Second Madam Liu froze for a moment, then a bolt of realization struck her chest like thunder. She pointed a trembling finger at Fu Jingxuan. “You played me? You played me with that scheme to marry in Shuang’er’s place!?”
Fu Jingxuan waved his fan and smiled. “Let us not mention things of the past. Now that I am a member of the Fang family, Second Mother is my closest kin from my maiden home.”
Liu Ruyan was about to erupt in rage when Fu Jingxuan immediately added, “I can teach all of my tea-tasting skills to Big Brother. And the leverage I held over you since childhood will rot in my belly.”
Liu Ruyan blinked, forcing back the insults that were about to burst forth. She adjusted her hairpin and said, “Being played or not isn’t such a big deal. Hurry to the Fang residence and see how that Head Merchant of yours is doing.”
In the back courtyard of the Fang residence, the lights were as bright as day.
One hundred thousand piculs of tea fragments and ninety thousand tea cakes were piled in the open courtyard like a mountain.
Wang Xiuhe’s bun had been jostled askew from her running; a precious tasseled hairpin hung precariously from her loosened hair, looking quite disheveled. The Fang family servants she had replaced over the years had all been locked in the woodshed. The tea workers who had helped Liu Ruyan deliver the goods had not left; they stood on either side of the inner courtyard, each holding a torch.
Wang Xiuhe leaned against the ancient ebony doors, gasping for breath for a long while. In the reflection of the firelight, she saw Fang Zesheng, who was draped in a deep black cloak, sitting steadily before the mountain of tea, watching her in silence.
