The Apothecary Diaries

Chapter 16: The Garden Party (Part One)

With about an hour to go until the party started, Consort Gyokuyou and her ladies-in-waiting were passing the time in an open-air pavilion in the gardens. There was a lake hopping with all kinds of carp, and the trees were dropping the last of their fiery-red leaves.

"You really saved us."

The light of the sun was still plentiful, but the wind was cold and dry.

Normally the girls would have been standing there shaking, but with the warm stones under their clothes they found it wasn't so bad after all. Even Princess Lingli, whom they'd worried about, was curled up, cozy in her cradle, which was equipped with a heating stone of its own.

"Be sure to take out the stone under the princess periodically and change the wrapping. Otherwise she might get burned. And take it easy on the candies; too many of them will make the inside of your mouth go numb."

Maomao had several replacement stones waiting in a basket, along with the princess's diapers and a change of clothes. At a request to the eunuchs, the charcoal grill for heating the stones had already been moved to a discreet position behind the party venue.

"All right. But still..." Gyokuyou chuckled teasingly, and the other ladies-in-waiting also wore wry smiles. "You are my lady-in-waiting, remember." Gyokuyou pointed to the jade necklace.

"I am indeed, milady." Maomao decided to take her words at face value.

Gaoshun watched his master solicitously inquiring after the health of the Virtuous Consort. With his sublime smile and ambrosial voice, Jinshi was practically more beautiful than the consort herself, who was widely regarded to be exceptionally gorgeous even though still very young. Jinshi's current outfit was different from his usual plain official's garments only by virtue of some embroidery and some silver pins in his hair, yet he threatened to outshine the consort in all her finery. This could well have made him an object of resentment, but the overshadowed consort herself was looking at him starstruck, so perhaps there was no real problem after all.

His master was downright criminal, Gaoshun concluded.

After having visited with the other three consorts, finally Jinshi came to Gyokuyou. He found her in the open-air pavilion on the far side of the lake. It was ostensibly his duty to divide his time equally among all four of the women, but of late it seemed he had been seeing quite a good deal of Gyokuyou. Perhaps it wasn't right to look askance at him for that; she was the Emperor's favorite, after all. But there were clearly other reasons for his visits as well.

It seemed his old habit of playing endlessly with his toys had never been cured. Troublesome, Gaoshun thought with a shake of his head.

Jinshi bowed to the consort. He praised the beauty of her scarlet outfit.

She certainly did look lovely in it, Gaoshun privately agreed. The foreign mystique and her natural allure combined to be practically palpable.

Consort Gyokuyou was perhaps the only person in the rear palace who could truly compete with Jinshi for sheer elegant purity.

That was hardly to say the other women around were not beautiful, and indeed each tried to emphasize her own charms. One of Jinshi's singular talents was his ability to speak directly to those charms. Everyone likes to hear their own best qualities praised. And Jinshi was very, very good at it.

He never lied, either. Although at times he refrained from telling the entire truth. He affected complete nonchalance, but the left corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly upward. From long years of service to him, Gaoshun recognized this. It was the look of a child with his toys. Troublesome.