Chapter 9 The Truth
Inside the carriage.
Pei Zhao used a handkerchief to wipe my tears.
He pretended to dislike it. "You look like a beggar from the city right now."
"If I hadn't come to find you, you would have had to take a tree branch and beg your way home."
He sighed. "But with your personality, you probably wouldn't even get any money from begging. You'd only get beaten."
I stopped sobbing.
I hit him. "Pei Suizhi!"
He grinned playfully.
I turned away and ignored him.
After a long time, I suddenly remembered something. I turned back and grabbed his arm. "Has Lan Qiao gone home?"
Lan Qiao was my personal maid.
Pei Zhao nodded.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Lan Qiao had met Su Yunqing's carriage on the way.
Su Yunqing saved her.
She learned that Pei Ye wanted to kill me.
She brought Lan Qiao back to the Pei mansion right away and told the family to search for me immediately.
Madam Pei blamed my disappearance on mountain bandits. For the sake of reputation, she deliberately confused the truth.
She tried to cover up the fact that Pei Ye had tried to kill me.
Lan Qiao wanted to argue back.
But she had no solid evidence.
Madam Pei was certain that Su Yunqing would not speak about what happened in the temple in order to protect her own reputation.
But she did not expect that Su Yunqing did not care.
In front of everyone, she publicly revealed that Pei Ye had drugged her and tried to violate her.
Pei Ye received a beating.
The matter was ultimately bad for Su Yunqing's name, so it ended there. Fortunately nothing had happened, and the Su family let it go.
However, the two families had formed a grudge.
Madam Pei was so angry that she fell ill and called for a doctor that very night.
I sighed. Serves her right!
She truly deserved it!
...
When the carriage arrived at the Pei mansion gate.
Su Yunqing heard I had been rescued and came to see me that night.
She happened to see Pei Zhao carrying me out of the carriage.
It looked like disappointment flashed across her eyes for a moment.
But in the next moment, her gaze returned to me. She asked anxiously, "Young Madam, what happened?"
"Are you injured?"
"I have already called for a doctor. Let's go inside and let him examine you."
She really was as the servants described—exceptionally good.
Gentle, considerate, beautiful, and graceful, with a good family background too.
If it were not for me.
She would have been Pei Zhao's wife.
The two of them...
I imagined that picture.
They would have been very well-matched.
Pei Zhao waved his hand in front of my eyes. "What are you thinking about?"
I came back to my senses. "Has Miss Su left?"
"Yes, I just sent her out."
Pei Zhao sat on the couch and quite naturally held my ankle to apply medicine.
His long fingers gently took some milky-white ointment and rubbed it in circles over my wound.
I suddenly thought of something and stared straight at him.
I asked, "Do you like Miss Su?"